> There is NO EVIDENCE that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change.
This isn't how climate science or causality works in relation to climate change. The climate is a chaotic, complex sysem that does not have a single, identifiable nexus by which we can "prove" things happen.
Climate scientists know this and, instead of trying to demonstrate irrefutable proof, point to a better need for monitoring and warning systems, of exactly the type mentioned in this article.
It is unfortunate that the author felt the need to lean into this argument, as is it precisely this kind of perspective that leads people to become suspicious of monitoring and warning systems (by generally rejecting scientific argumentation) - the exact problem that the author claims led to avoidable deaths.
The whole approach is quite confusing to me - why identify the issue and then act to reinforce the issue?
- if his analysis of data is correct this _one specific kind of wetter event in this one specific region_ seem to not have happened majorly more or less in recent years
- but similar events did happen since the 1940 often enough to call it IMHO negligent to not have precautions in place
- people are already abusing the even to push political propaganda, mostly about the weather service not doing a good job (probably with the intend to kill it doge style and replace it with a Musk company or similar), similar people on the other side are using it for political propaganda about climate change distancing yourself from either of it seems good
- now making people believe climate change is bad (as it really is) sound good, but if you use faulty easy to disprove examples for it it can easily have the opposite effect, in addition politicians use climate change to opt out of responsibility as in "no one could have predicted it because that new caused by climate change", but it isn't new and predictable (and was predicted)
so instead of derailing the discussion into one about climate change which most likely will end up fruit less it's better to focus about the facts at hand
- it's a flash flood risk area
- similar events have happened frequent enough through history for this to be known
- it was warned, repeatedly and reasonable price, about the damage
- either the warning didn't reach people or they ignored it
and in the last point we have direct actionable things:
Ignored it? Hold people responsible for negligence, idk. about US law but in the EU negligence (especially gross negligence leading to harm of people) is something you mostly can't opt out of no matter what you try.
Not reached them? Then that is another action point where we can find ways to improve it.
You are right that the trend within the area does not point towards a greater risk of flooding. You are right to point out that we should only make claims based on data. You are, again, right to say that climate models do nothing to predict increased flooding in Texas.
I was not saying that climate models would have predicted this.
What I think you have missed is that the climate is a global system and that there is a substantial amount of data to indicate that a shifting climate leads to a greater frequency of events that fall outside of local trends. This doesn't prove that the flooding event was a result of that (though some people may likely argue that point).
My point was that we need to pay close attention to monitoring and warning systems, that the article says exactly this, and that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal.
> that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal.
I agree. Thus claiming a single isolated local event is the result of climate change without strong evidence (which in a chaotic system is usually impossible to collect) is counter productive because there is no data to back it up and in turn it make climate change look like fools who keep yelling about things that are false.
Which is why anyone who cares about climate change should refute every attempt to blame local conditions on climate change. We can state there is a trend, but we can rarely state that any specific situation wouldn't have happened without climate change.
This would be a great starting point for a much wider conversation on the various factors that lead to climate events leading to loss of human life (urbanisation, lack of ecological resilience, dependency on fragile supply chains, political inaction and misdirection, etc etc).
It seems to me that a HN comment thread isn't really built for that, but here's my concern - it seems that the quality of dialogue and debate (generally, but especially in the US) has degraded to the point where it's really just about "yes it is" or "no it isn't". This leads to more division, infighting and the removal of much-needed nuance at a time when a more sober digestion of the matter is quite urgently needed.
Just to say, wouldn't it be nice if there was a forum where this actually happened. Perhaps if the air con was doused with oxytocin ahead of time or the participants had mandated micro-doses of something euphoric...
"Going back through U.S. weather station records dating to 1955, Kunkel found that rain over the past 20 years has become more intense in the eastern two-thirds of the country, including the southern Great Plains, where Texas is located. Intensities have remained the same or declined in the West and southwest.
At the 700 stations that began collecting data in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the highest proportion of two-day rainfall records have been set in just the past 10 years, Kunkel said, though that doesn’t fully reflect most Western stations, which were established later.
Nielsen-Gammon said the overall intensity of extreme rainfall in Texas has increased by 15% over the past 40-50 years."
Real data that seems to contradicts the post (the post is about flooding events not rain, which are corrolated). Now we have a point to work with in a debate instead of people who want to insist on something that fits their bias without fact checking.
Author uses a bunch of maps and charts to support their own narrative, one which all but ignores the reality they get at in the fourth paragraph:
> Furthermore, weather model forecasts indicated the potential for a major precipitation event over this historically flood-prone region during the prior days.
So the answer is yes. Yes, it could have been entirely avoided had the landowners built in such a way that respected the land’s tendency to flood. Yes, it could have been avoided if landowners took warnings seriously, paid attention to past flood events, if the state had put flooding mitigation measures on a river or area known for flash flooding, or if literally anyone had observed that putting dormitories at or near river level was a generally awful idea from a safety perspective.
The fact people died in one of the most predictable types of disasters out there, yet are still trying to weasel around blame or fault, is beyond shameful, and something we don’t need Op-Eds about so much as we need more people calling it what for it is:
This is a lot for someone to wade through, especially non-American. I dislike those HN posts with AI content, but I did ask an AI to summarise and explain (culturally and geographically) what I was reading. Maybe it will help others.
Reading this just reminds me that you need to be involved in local politics if you want change.
They voted against building an early warning system because, as one person put it the money coming from FEMA was:
> Resident 2: And I'm here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House.
These are the gibbering idiots that will represent you. Biden wasn't even the most "Communist Government" of the previous 10 years.
Not entirely sure (as an outsider) what makes him Communist outside of not throwing Sieg Hiels when he was elected.
For a lot of these people the term Communist is basically a synonym for sick or evil. I have seen very extreme people using Communist and homosexual interchangeably as terms for what they consider immorality. "They're homosexual, communists trying to destroy America." "It's a Jewish, homosexual agenda." "What about Senator John Smith's wife?" "She's a homosexual, too."
It's what always happens in Texas. People see cheap areas to build and recreate in without doing any historical research about risks. Local governments are also often inept and reactive because they're small town hillbillies who don't believe in climate change either and perhaps aren't even full-time public administrators. It's 97.5 for riverine flooding on the FEMA all causes risk map tool (until DOGE defunds that). Build and camp on high ground in high drainage density areas, create permanent reminders in the form of flood gauges to maintain awareness, and refund ATX NWS for the 2 senior flood prediction forecasters who were pushed out. And practiced preparedness plans and require insurance in AE flood zones for all those who live in those areas.
Flash Flood Alley exists from Medina county to the south to Cooke and Grayson counties in the north. Uvalde had 22" fall in 3 hours in 1935.
Part of me feels like the state should prevent people from building in places like this but we already do so much of that people end up just living in RVs and parking them in places like this which is worse.
The state requires flood insurance for property that is in a defined flood area, and that insurance is sometimes either quite expensive or in some cases just not available at all.
The blame games on the climate and NOAA budgeting, Biden/Trump to blame etc. are just a smoke screen. The area is called Flash Flood Alley for a reason. The shallow soil, hilly topography, and local climate means that flash flooding is not an uncommon or unforeseeable event. So if local and state officials are serious about saving lives, there is one solution that they have the power to implement: zoning. Prohibit building anywhere within the high-water mark of a stream. Prohibit building anywhere water runs off (In Texas, they say, nothing is more dangerous than a dry creek bed).
So if you are a local or state level official, this is what is under your control. The problem tho is that unlike the hypotheticals, taking a stand on this would require action, and/or taking responsibility.
This article is juggling two topics that essentially aren’t related.
The first topic is whether people will listen to weather warnings and change behavior in response to them in the first place. In that sense, it seems like a direct and urgent evacuation order should have happened, but I do still find the timeline rather short. Hindsight is 20/20 on that.
The second topic is the author’s opinion that the left-leaning section of media isn’t doing their due diligence.
Let’s be real here, the author of the article is using a cherry-picked event that happens to allegedly not be a result of climate change to try and discredit the general idea of climate change. I don’t think the author intended to discredit climate change as a concept but that’s how the audience will read it.
Sure, the New York Times got it wrong in this specific case and at least partially jumped to a conclusion, but it is established observed scientific fact that human caused climate change is causing and going to cause more extreme weather patterns moving forward.
It is also established fact that DOGE made cuts to the NWS and had to re-hire to stabilize the department as recently as last month. [1] Furthermore, the Trump administration intends to make deep cuts to the NOAA within its 2026 budget proposal. [2]
So while this specific event may not have been affected by budget cuts, we don’t know that for sure yet. Opposition Democrats are asking for investigations into that very question.
And even if NWS cuts didn’t affect this event, it’s still entirely fair for the political discussion to question the merit of making cuts during the same timeline as a preventable tragedy. At some point the administration must own the optics it generates for itself. If it didn’t want those optics it would commit to fully funding the NOAA and NWS, but because this administration has taken action to cut staff and funding, they do have to own the optics even if the optics aren’t always perfectly in line with the truth of the cause and effect. That’s just how politics work.
In other words, if I cut funding to the road department or even merely propose funding cuts and the next day my constituent hits a pothole, they’re going to blame me even if my actions didn’t directly create that pothole. And that blame is politically justified and warranted, because my political stance is that we are spending too much on road maintenance, when clearly that’s not the case.
New York Times did not got it wrong, the author got the New York Times wrong.
First of all, the NYT article did NOT claim that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change, and for sure it did not claim that there is any evidence for it. In fact, the supposedly left leaning morally indefensible article actually said that: "Hill Country – the part of the state where the Guadalupe River swelled on July 4 – is sometimes called “flash flood alley” for how at risk it is to seemingly out-of-nowhere surges of water."
So the NYT already acknowledges the history of flooding. The main focus of the article is that climate change is increasing the chances of floods 'such as these in Texas' and highlight the importance of NOAA for dealing with its impacts. And it does so by making a sound argument with references to authoritative sources.
Until an attribution study is done you can't say for sure that 'science says' the odds of the Texas floods were increased by climate change. But you can't say it wasn't either. I won't be so annoying to say its morally indefensible, but its definitely incorrect.
Furthermore, the idea that climate change increases extreme weather events is quite defensible and easy to understand, maybe there is even consensus about it among climate scientists. Its not morally wrong to think the Texas floods fit into this pattern, it is actually quite obvious to think they do.
> First of all, the NYT article did NOT claim that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change, and for sure it did not claim that there is any evidence for it.
Honesty I was close to pointing this out but decided to make the most “benefit of the doubt” argument possible.
What sort of _technical_ solution might exist to this problem?
Likely __hightly__ targeted mobile device alerts. Localize to cell tower and maybe even quadrant and issue warnings like "You are in a flood plane that might experience a flood based on heavy rainfall."
It can't be like the 'smoke alarms' which I've been trained are just 'battery eating middle of the night awakeners'. I've only _only_ ever had those go off because it's a low battery, or on a muggy hellish night because it cooled off enough for the relative humidity inside to become condensing. False alarms literally Pavlovian train someone that it is not an emergency, it's an annoyance.
for anyone unfamiliar with Cliff Mass, he's a meteorologist here in the Seattle area, and a professor at UW, who has pivoted almost [0] entirely to this sort of "soft" climate change denial.
quite predictably, every time there's a major weather event in the news, he will chime in to give reasons why he thinks it shouldn't be blamed on climate change:
> 2018: Northwest Wildfires: Are We Seeing a "New Normal" Due to Climate Change or The "Old Normal"? [1]
> 2021: Is the Texas Cold Wave Caused By Global Warming? [2]
> 2021: Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No. [3]
> 2022: Misinformation about Sea Level Rise [4]
> 2025: Why the LA Wildfires Have Little to do With Long-Term Drought or Climate Change [5]
> 2025: Seattle Times Climate Lab Misinforms about Climate Change, Sea-Level Rise, and Seattle Flooding [6]
the overall takeaway across all his reporting seems to be that everyone but him is over-exaggerating the effects of climate change.
and his "no connection to climate change" message often gets repeated beyond his blog, for example [7]:
> Mass also emphasized that the floods had no connection to climate change.
> “The climate change connection is non-existent. There is no trend in heavier precipitation in this region. There is no upward trend in floods,” he explained.
> when he's not comparing the George Floyd protests in Seattle to Kristallnacht
Deeply, deeply pathetic. He is either so uninformed he shouldn't talk about it (I mean, I understand talking out of your ass when you're in your twenties, but the older you get, the more pathetic it becomes) or he knows and still does the comparison, which is pathetic in a different way.
Part of it that the commenters so far missed is that to do anything about climate change will affect profits for the oil industry and cause corporations aplenty to have to come up with new manufacturing materials and processes. It also means consuming less. The solutions are seen as a threat to owners of capital who will fight until the earth is in flames to do anything about it. Our politicians and many media sources are owned by these people.
Basically, it started with Reagan[0] and the Republicans equating environmentalism with leftist (read - Communist, and therefore evil) agitation (through its links with feminism and the hippie/antiwar movement) in order to court business interests who favor deregulation and lax environmental standards.
It became a 'wedge issue'. A common tactic in 2-party politics is for a campaign to push their candidate to become indistinguishable from their opponent, and then pick one issue that divides the voter base, hopefully in their favor. It has to be something that your party can rally around and their party can't compromise on. Conservatives are generally pro business and anti government regulation, while liberals are usually pro environment and regulation, hence the battle of climate change.
The US has two political parties of roughly equal size.
One of those parties has gone completely off the rails into authoritarianism and science denial. Oligarchy is at the root of it: the barons can't sell "clean coal" and "drill, baby, drill" if climate change is seen to be tearing the world apart. Money über alles.
You'd think most people would be repulsed by such a party, but turns out that humans have a neat little exploit! Due to the fact that the parties are completely entrenched and about equally as popular, people intrinsically assume that their policies also have equal merit.
Only if you ignore reality and redefine science with an absurdly narrow definition (mostly focused on trans folks) and ignore everything else. One side claims absolutely ironclad proven wrong things like "ectopic pregnancies can just be moved and saved", "vaccines cause autism", but because they have a narrow interpretation of sex and gender, they think that allows them to claim "SCIENCE, BITCH". No, just no.
Corona conclusively proved that Democrats are every bit as capable of scientism as Republicans.
People - even leading scientists - who questioned natural origin, mandatory lockdowns, school closures, vaccine effectiveness, or any of a dozen other narratives were demonized and attacked in the name of science. "Do your own research" became a phrase of mockery, while "trust 'the' science" was used as a thought terminating cliché.
And neither party are really taking climate science seriously, it's just that one pays lip service a bit more.
You aren't engaging with any of my points, just repeating the dogma - which helps proves my point.
> School closures worked well for preventing spread.
Show me the data.
And, at what cost? Was the juice worth the squeeze? ... How many teachers have you talked to lately? Because the universal consensus is that closures did serious damage, still being felt to this day.
And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed. Researchers who raised it were shadow-banned from Twitter, Facebook etc. That's not science, it's authoritarian dogma from an unaccountable political class.
There were superior alternatives - putting air purifiers in classrooms would have been a big one. But we weren't permitted to even have that conversation.
> Vaccines actually solved the covid issue.
Or, basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity; like with every global pandemic ever. Did you see any data on this? Or are you 'trusting the science' which you haven't actually seen.
> Lockdowns did worked, actually.
Oh? So, you can point to countries where there were no lockdowns and they got torn apart, can you? ... Because researchers who have looked at that question say it isn't actually that clear [0].
The purpose of lockdowns was to slow the spread so that chronically underfunded and privatized healthcare systems wouldn't utterly collapse. Fair enough - but it wasn't presented that way, and investment in public health hasn't been improved since. Instead, most systems in the West seem stretched more than ever, while we have plenty of money for sending Israel bombs and weapons, or building concentration camps, or deporting people at ludicrous expense, etc.
... But that wasn't even what I was talking about - I was talking about how even questioning mandatory lockdowns was enough to make people lose their jobs, and get censored from mainstream and social media. It's not very scientific to censor scientists.
> there is no "both sides" on climate change. Republicans are actively trying to make it happen.
And Democrats pay lip service to stopping them, but don't seem very effective. And when something like Deepwater Horizon happens, or the DAPL protests, or support for fracking is an issue, where is the Dem leadership? Quietly backing the fossil fuel companies, every single time.
What's needed is radical change, immediately. That's the view of basically every scientist. Democrats pretend not to understand that. It's nowhere near good enough, and I see no reason to expect change; not the slightest glimmer of hope for what's necessary.
From your own link: "He also points to a 2021 study that attempted to quantify the effect of specific government interventions on the spread of Covid-19, using data from 41 countries. It reveals that certain aspects of national lockdowns might have been more impactful than others. The researchers found, for example, that banning gatherings of more than 10 people or closing schools and universities was especially effective, reducing transmission by more than 35% on average. Shutting restaurants and bars seemed to make slightly less difference to transmission, however.
What's more, the researchers suggest that adding a strict stay-at-home order on top of such measures "only had a small additional effect" in terms of slowing down Covid-19 – estimated at below 17.5% on average."
> You aren't engaging with any of my points, just repeating the dogma - which helps proves my point.
Frankly, I think we're all very tired of engaging with anti-Covid response points which have been debunked to hell and back, and then back to hell again.
Scientific evidence is not "dogma" just because you, intuitively, disagree with it. That's fine. The real world does not follow very simple logical frameworks. It's complex, it's messy.
Was our, or anyone's, Covid response perfect? Of course not. But this was a novel disease, one and in which our understanding of it changed day by day. Read that a few times over and you'll begin to understand why we did what we did.
> And, at what cost? Was the juice worth the squeeze? ... How many teachers have you talked to lately?
Basically, blue states that had more of them had results getting almost as bad as red states without them have it. Lives were saved at some acceptable lowering of test scores.
> And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed.
Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. Other people telling you that you are wrong is not supression.
And also, bullshit with researchers being censored. Especially hypocritical from someone conservative or republican.
> basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity
Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
> Basically, blue states that had more of them had results getting almost as bad as red states without them have it. Lives were saved at some acceptable lowering of test scores.
Are you seriously asserting that school closures are the difference between red state and blue state mortality rates??
> Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. ... bullshit with researchers being censored
The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
> Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
Did covid 'go away' in the global south, where they didn't have vaccines? Hmmmmm......
> Are you seriously asserting that school closures are the difference between red state and blue state mortality rates??
What's your explanation for the difference?
> The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
I don't know about you, but I don't use Facebook for science research.
Was there censorship on, idk, arxiv regarding Covid?
I think you're the one who mentioned it up the comment chain, but I agree with the view that the messaging coming from (well, everywhere) is divisive and dogmatic.
> Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
Facebook also pushes false narratives. Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else, and engagement is found on the fringes.
I really like the parent comments you made. They didn't come off as "one-sided" (in any direction), but more so "let's step back and think about it." Kind of like a blameless post-mortem, blameless in the way of saying it wasn't _our_ faults, the general public, because who are we to really fight against these companies who have so successfully weaponized our basic emotions and values against ourselves? And what can we do to "wake up" (not in a "red-pill" or "sheeple" way) and collectively see that all of these narratives that we are fed are for no common person's best interests, and that we've been had, and how can we work together next time (if we even can work together on the same platforms which pull us apart)?
I know that the realization that I came to after reflecting on everything that happened over the past (5, 10, 15) years is that the only thing that _I_ can do is focus my energy towards my community - my friends, my neighbors, those people who I can in someway touch without relying on corporations with ulterior motives to stand between us.
And, like you alluded to, to also accept that most things are out of my control. Nothing I do will ever sway climate change, for instance. An example that sticks out to me is Greta Thornberg. She had what seemed to be very pure intentions about making a stand for a better future (whether that is or isn't the case isn't the focus here), but, no matter what side of the issue a person falls on, the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her - her motivations, her knowledge, her parents; the narrative given to 'conservative'-leaning people were all of her flaws, and the narrative given to 'liberal'-leaning people was the manufactured outrage about what the 'conservatives' were saying - and then, Boom: now nobody is actually talking about the issue, and the divide grows wider, and the focus is taken off of the companies who indisputably take advantage of the world (can anyone actually make an argument that the waste poured into rivers, for example, is _good_ for the inhabitants of the earth?).
Climate change, wars for profit, mass censorship and surveillance, etc, aren't blameless issues - there are people doing these things, people like you and I (only wealthier). Fossil fuel companies knew for a fact that they were causing climate change, and responded by poisoning the global conversation while suppressing alternatives.
What's between us and a better world is class awareness. So, for example, when you say things like "Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else", you're missing a major piece of the puzzle.
The daily atrocities in Gaza could drive tremendous engagement on Facebook, were they not heavily censored and suppressed.
Same goes for mainstream media. Look how unanimous the opinion of the media and political class was against Luigi. Look how they chorused in unison with smears against Jill Stein, or against Assange, Snowden etc. Again, all people who had their stories suppressed on social media as well.
This also explains how with Greta "the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her" - there's an agenda that unites the tiny number of billionaires who own basically all media in the West. The element of class even explains neatly why the media stopped covering Greta - because she started connecting the world's issues to capitalism and inequality. (You know, like MLK did, right before he was assassinated.)
So please don't think I have a message of blamelessness for the world's issues. There's more than enough blame to go around, and the problems won't be fixed if we keep ignoring the problems stemming from massive wealth inequality.
I'm okay with a bad faith article as we get to see how bad information spreads and discuss it in the open. Sometimes the author learns form this which is good.
I doubt this sad event could have been avoided, looking back, yes things could have been done. But based upon how funding is chosen and applied and who people vote for, things would have to been done differently for the last 40+ years.
This could be looked at as a result for bad choices our elected pols made over decades.
>Are voters responsible for what their elected officials do?
If someone tells you what they're about and you vote them in, yes. If someone shows you what they're about when in office and you re-elect them, double yes.
>What about if you didn't vote?
Fun idea. If you didn't vote, you're not a voter I suppose, and it's not your fault. But if you would've preferred a different outcome that could've been achieved by the alternative candidate and you still opted to abstain, then perhaps you're responsible to a degree.
>If they are responsible then do they deserve to suffer for those poor decisions?
I certainly wouldn't argue that anyone "deserves to suffer" for poor decisions, but it's true that actions have consequences. Shouldering blame, perhaps, might be a better way of looking at it, but I don't suggest that in a mean way.
If you vote for people based on them defunding or preventing precautionary measures and then your elected officials defund or prevent precautionary measures, then yes. If the party says "I will cause harm" and you go "I like that because people I dislike will be harmed", then again, yes you are responsible.
No.These types of things are unavoidable.
The full risk profile of our planet is immpossible to determine.
Should some great portion of the risk profile be determined, it will cover essentialy everywhere.
Even reducing it to stuff with a fractional percentage of a disaster per year will be forbiding.
And there is absolutly no way to impliment a country wide action and response network that does not end up running everything through the all powerfull department of saftey, which is politicaly and practicaly immpossible.
bottom land is always, flat, near water, productive, with many other resources on the hills and in the river, and then occasionaly, a trap
Just telling people not to live on fucking flood plains, goes nowhere......it is a perenial recuring problem that is so common and ancient that it has been recognised by archiologists, that
humans have exploited the resources in river valleys, built there settlements, and then denuded all of the vegitation, and then blam, a flood, and there settlement gets instantly burried, bad for then, awsome for archiologists who find all there stuff, in water logged soil, interesting organic artifacts are often in "perfect" condition.
It was avoidable and in fact, whole countries manage to avoid it. It took series of bad intentional decisions for this to happen the way it did.
And fun fact is that people who made those bad decisions first falsely blamed others, congratulated themselves on being awesome. And now that they want money from FEMA, they still want to destroy it. And they still want to cut weather prediction which they blamed despite being correct.
> The full risk profile of our planet is impossible to determine
This is a classic 'unless we can have a perfect solution to the problem, we shouldn't do anything all' argument. It is usually applied to problems where the solutions involve helping non-rich people.
Each individual doesn't need the full risk profile for the planet, only a local subset. That's much easier to model and make assumptions. Like "this is a river, it could flood. How likely and how bad?".
At a very high level, you are technically correct - existence is inherently risky and, try as we might, we can't always prevent disaster from striking. Disaster will strike again, somewhere.
At a more macro level, we certainly do understand relative risks of specific areas after interacting with them long enough. We begin to get a better picture of what makes one flood plain significantly more dangerous than another. There are instances where things like this can be avoided, or at least mitigated to a certain degree.
> There is NO EVIDENCE that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change.
This isn't how climate science or causality works in relation to climate change. The climate is a chaotic, complex sysem that does not have a single, identifiable nexus by which we can "prove" things happen.
Climate scientists know this and, instead of trying to demonstrate irrefutable proof, point to a better need for monitoring and warning systems, of exactly the type mentioned in this article.
It is unfortunate that the author felt the need to lean into this argument, as is it precisely this kind of perspective that leads people to become suspicious of monitoring and warning systems (by generally rejecting scientific argumentation) - the exact problem that the author claims led to avoidable deaths.
The whole approach is quite confusing to me - why identify the issue and then act to reinforce the issue?
but how could he not have leaned into it
- if his analysis of data is correct this _one specific kind of wetter event in this one specific region_ seem to not have happened majorly more or less in recent years
- but similar events did happen since the 1940 often enough to call it IMHO negligent to not have precautions in place
- people are already abusing the even to push political propaganda, mostly about the weather service not doing a good job (probably with the intend to kill it doge style and replace it with a Musk company or similar), similar people on the other side are using it for political propaganda about climate change distancing yourself from either of it seems good
- now making people believe climate change is bad (as it really is) sound good, but if you use faulty easy to disprove examples for it it can easily have the opposite effect, in addition politicians use climate change to opt out of responsibility as in "no one could have predicted it because that new caused by climate change", but it isn't new and predictable (and was predicted)
so instead of derailing the discussion into one about climate change which most likely will end up fruit less it's better to focus about the facts at hand
- it's a flash flood risk area
- similar events have happened frequent enough through history for this to be known
- it was warned, repeatedly and reasonable price, about the damage
- either the warning didn't reach people or they ignored it
and in the last point we have direct actionable things:
Ignored it? Hold people responsible for negligence, idk. about US law but in the EU negligence (especially gross negligence leading to harm of people) is something you mostly can't opt out of no matter what you try.
Not reached them? Then that is another action point where we can find ways to improve it.
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You are right that the trend within the area does not point towards a greater risk of flooding. You are right to point out that we should only make claims based on data. You are, again, right to say that climate models do nothing to predict increased flooding in Texas.
I was not saying that climate models would have predicted this.
What I think you have missed is that the climate is a global system and that there is a substantial amount of data to indicate that a shifting climate leads to a greater frequency of events that fall outside of local trends. This doesn't prove that the flooding event was a result of that (though some people may likely argue that point).
My point was that we need to pay close attention to monitoring and warning systems, that the article says exactly this, and that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal.
> that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal.
I agree. Thus claiming a single isolated local event is the result of climate change without strong evidence (which in a chaotic system is usually impossible to collect) is counter productive because there is no data to back it up and in turn it make climate change look like fools who keep yelling about things that are false.
Which is why anyone who cares about climate change should refute every attempt to blame local conditions on climate change. We can state there is a trend, but we can rarely state that any specific situation wouldn't have happened without climate change.
This would be a great starting point for a much wider conversation on the various factors that lead to climate events leading to loss of human life (urbanisation, lack of ecological resilience, dependency on fragile supply chains, political inaction and misdirection, etc etc).
It seems to me that a HN comment thread isn't really built for that, but here's my concern - it seems that the quality of dialogue and debate (generally, but especially in the US) has degraded to the point where it's really just about "yes it is" or "no it isn't". This leads to more division, infighting and the removal of much-needed nuance at a time when a more sober digestion of the matter is quite urgently needed.
Just to say, wouldn't it be nice if there was a forum where this actually happened. Perhaps if the air con was doused with oxytocin ahead of time or the participants had mandated micro-doses of something euphoric...
Data: https://apnews.com/article/texas-flood-climate-change-drough...
"Going back through U.S. weather station records dating to 1955, Kunkel found that rain over the past 20 years has become more intense in the eastern two-thirds of the country, including the southern Great Plains, where Texas is located. Intensities have remained the same or declined in the West and southwest.
At the 700 stations that began collecting data in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the highest proportion of two-day rainfall records have been set in just the past 10 years, Kunkel said, though that doesn’t fully reflect most Western stations, which were established later.
Nielsen-Gammon said the overall intensity of extreme rainfall in Texas has increased by 15% over the past 40-50 years."
Real data that seems to contradicts the post (the post is about flooding events not rain, which are corrolated). Now we have a point to work with in a debate instead of people who want to insist on something that fits their bias without fact checking.
Author uses a bunch of maps and charts to support their own narrative, one which all but ignores the reality they get at in the fourth paragraph:
> Furthermore, weather model forecasts indicated the potential for a major precipitation event over this historically flood-prone region during the prior days.
So the answer is yes. Yes, it could have been entirely avoided had the landowners built in such a way that respected the land’s tendency to flood. Yes, it could have been avoided if landowners took warnings seriously, paid attention to past flood events, if the state had put flooding mitigation measures on a river or area known for flash flooding, or if literally anyone had observed that putting dormitories at or near river level was a generally awful idea from a safety perspective.
The fact people died in one of the most predictable types of disasters out there, yet are still trying to weasel around blame or fault, is beyond shameful, and something we don’t need Op-Eds about so much as we need more people calling it what for it is:
A wholly preventable tragedy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TexasPolitics/comments/1ltnjf8/we_h...
This is a lot for someone to wade through, especially non-American. I dislike those HN posts with AI content, but I did ask an AI to summarise and explain (culturally and geographically) what I was reading. Maybe it will help others.
https://chatgpt.com/share/686cfd32-f578-800e-997b-1fbee9c185...
I found the summary valuable.
"People from Houston" is code for liberals for those who aren't familiar.
I wasn't. I thought Austin was 'liberal' city?
Wow, that is incredibly infuriating. Truly politics above all else. The political brainwashing there seems to be entirely complete.
How would one even begin to undo that level of programming?
Reading this just reminds me that you need to be involved in local politics if you want change.
They voted against building an early warning system because, as one person put it the money coming from FEMA was:
> Resident 2: And I'm here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House.
These are the gibbering idiots that will represent you. Biden wasn't even the most "Communist Government" of the previous 10 years.
Not entirely sure (as an outsider) what makes him Communist outside of not throwing Sieg Hiels when he was elected.
For a lot of these people the term Communist is basically a synonym for sick or evil. I have seen very extreme people using Communist and homosexual interchangeably as terms for what they consider immorality. "They're homosexual, communists trying to destroy America." "It's a Jewish, homosexual agenda." "What about Senator John Smith's wife?" "She's a homosexual, too."
Wow I'm glad that one graph settled all of climate science such that it's now morally indefensible to think anything other than what the author thinks
It's what always happens in Texas. People see cheap areas to build and recreate in without doing any historical research about risks. Local governments are also often inept and reactive because they're small town hillbillies who don't believe in climate change either and perhaps aren't even full-time public administrators. It's 97.5 for riverine flooding on the FEMA all causes risk map tool (until DOGE defunds that). Build and camp on high ground in high drainage density areas, create permanent reminders in the form of flood gauges to maintain awareness, and refund ATX NWS for the 2 senior flood prediction forecasters who were pushed out. And practiced preparedness plans and require insurance in AE flood zones for all those who live in those areas.
Flash Flood Alley exists from Medina county to the south to Cooke and Grayson counties in the north. Uvalde had 22" fall in 3 hours in 1935.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Flood_Alley
https://www.cityofdenton.com/ImageRepository/Document?docume...
Edit: I live on high ground in FEMA zone X within a mile / 2 km of the Guadalupe river.
Part of me feels like the state should prevent people from building in places like this but we already do so much of that people end up just living in RVs and parking them in places like this which is worse.
I wish I had better ideas.
The state requires flood insurance for property that is in a defined flood area, and that insurance is sometimes either quite expensive or in some cases just not available at all.
The blame games on the climate and NOAA budgeting, Biden/Trump to blame etc. are just a smoke screen. The area is called Flash Flood Alley for a reason. The shallow soil, hilly topography, and local climate means that flash flooding is not an uncommon or unforeseeable event. So if local and state officials are serious about saving lives, there is one solution that they have the power to implement: zoning. Prohibit building anywhere within the high-water mark of a stream. Prohibit building anywhere water runs off (In Texas, they say, nothing is more dangerous than a dry creek bed).
So if you are a local or state level official, this is what is under your control. The problem tho is that unlike the hypotheticals, taking a stand on this would require action, and/or taking responsibility.
This article is juggling two topics that essentially aren’t related.
The first topic is whether people will listen to weather warnings and change behavior in response to them in the first place. In that sense, it seems like a direct and urgent evacuation order should have happened, but I do still find the timeline rather short. Hindsight is 20/20 on that.
The second topic is the author’s opinion that the left-leaning section of media isn’t doing their due diligence.
Let’s be real here, the author of the article is using a cherry-picked event that happens to allegedly not be a result of climate change to try and discredit the general idea of climate change. I don’t think the author intended to discredit climate change as a concept but that’s how the audience will read it.
Sure, the New York Times got it wrong in this specific case and at least partially jumped to a conclusion, but it is established observed scientific fact that human caused climate change is causing and going to cause more extreme weather patterns moving forward.
It is also established fact that DOGE made cuts to the NWS and had to re-hire to stabilize the department as recently as last month. [1] Furthermore, the Trump administration intends to make deep cuts to the NOAA within its 2026 budget proposal. [2]
So while this specific event may not have been affected by budget cuts, we don’t know that for sure yet. Opposition Democrats are asking for investigations into that very question.
And even if NWS cuts didn’t affect this event, it’s still entirely fair for the political discussion to question the merit of making cuts during the same timeline as a preventable tragedy. At some point the administration must own the optics it generates for itself. If it didn’t want those optics it would commit to fully funding the NOAA and NWS, but because this administration has taken action to cut staff and funding, they do have to own the optics even if the optics aren’t always perfectly in line with the truth of the cause and effect. That’s just how politics work.
In other words, if I cut funding to the road department or even merely propose funding cuts and the next day my constituent hits a pothole, they’re going to blame me even if my actions didn’t directly create that pothole. And that blame is politically justified and warranted, because my political stance is that we are spending too much on road maintenance, when clearly that’s not the case.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/national-weather-service-hiring-spr...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/11/nx-s1-5361366/major-budget-cu...
New York Times did not got it wrong, the author got the New York Times wrong.
First of all, the NYT article did NOT claim that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change, and for sure it did not claim that there is any evidence for it. In fact, the supposedly left leaning morally indefensible article actually said that: "Hill Country – the part of the state where the Guadalupe River swelled on July 4 – is sometimes called “flash flood alley” for how at risk it is to seemingly out-of-nowhere surges of water."
So the NYT already acknowledges the history of flooding. The main focus of the article is that climate change is increasing the chances of floods 'such as these in Texas' and highlight the importance of NOAA for dealing with its impacts. And it does so by making a sound argument with references to authoritative sources.
Until an attribution study is done you can't say for sure that 'science says' the odds of the Texas floods were increased by climate change. But you can't say it wasn't either. I won't be so annoying to say its morally indefensible, but its definitely incorrect.
Furthermore, the idea that climate change increases extreme weather events is quite defensible and easy to understand, maybe there is even consensus about it among climate scientists. Its not morally wrong to think the Texas floods fit into this pattern, it is actually quite obvious to think they do.
> First of all, the NYT article did NOT claim that the central Texas floods are the result of climate change, and for sure it did not claim that there is any evidence for it.
Honesty I was close to pointing this out but decided to make the most “benefit of the doubt” argument possible.
What sort of _technical_ solution might exist to this problem?
Likely __hightly__ targeted mobile device alerts. Localize to cell tower and maybe even quadrant and issue warnings like "You are in a flood plane that might experience a flood based on heavy rainfall."
It can't be like the 'smoke alarms' which I've been trained are just 'battery eating middle of the night awakeners'. I've only _only_ ever had those go off because it's a low battery, or on a muggy hellish night because it cooled off enough for the relative humidity inside to become condensing. False alarms literally Pavlovian train someone that it is not an emergency, it's an annoyance.
for anyone unfamiliar with Cliff Mass, he's a meteorologist here in the Seattle area, and a professor at UW, who has pivoted almost [0] entirely to this sort of "soft" climate change denial.
quite predictably, every time there's a major weather event in the news, he will chime in to give reasons why he thinks it shouldn't be blamed on climate change:
> 2018: Northwest Wildfires: Are We Seeing a "New Normal" Due to Climate Change or The "Old Normal"? [1]
> 2021: Is the Texas Cold Wave Caused By Global Warming? [2]
> 2021: Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No. [3]
> 2022: Misinformation about Sea Level Rise [4]
> 2025: Why the LA Wildfires Have Little to do With Long-Term Drought or Climate Change [5]
> 2025: Seattle Times Climate Lab Misinforms about Climate Change, Sea-Level Rise, and Seattle Flooding [6]
the overall takeaway across all his reporting seems to be that everyone but him is over-exaggerating the effects of climate change.
and his "no connection to climate change" message often gets repeated beyond his blog, for example [7]:
> Mass also emphasized that the floods had no connection to climate change.
> “The climate change connection is non-existent. There is no trend in heavier precipitation in this region. There is no upward trend in floods,” he explained.
0: when he's not comparing the George Floyd protests in Seattle to Kristallnacht (https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article244800747.h...)
1: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/08/northwest-wildfires-a...
2: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/02/is-texas-cold-wave-ca...
3: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/was-global-warming-ca...
4: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/03/misinformation-about-...
5: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/why-la-wildfires-have...
6: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/06/seattle-times-climate...
7: https://mynorthwest.com/john-curley/texas-floods-cliff-mass/...
> when he's not comparing the George Floyd protests in Seattle to Kristallnacht
Deeply, deeply pathetic. He is either so uninformed he shouldn't talk about it (I mean, I understand talking out of your ass when you're in your twenties, but the older you get, the more pathetic it becomes) or he knows and still does the comparison, which is pathetic in a different way.
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Part of it that the commenters so far missed is that to do anything about climate change will affect profits for the oil industry and cause corporations aplenty to have to come up with new manufacturing materials and processes. It also means consuming less. The solutions are seen as a threat to owners of capital who will fight until the earth is in flames to do anything about it. Our politicians and many media sources are owned by these people.
Basically, it started with Reagan[0] and the Republicans equating environmentalism with leftist (read - Communist, and therefore evil) agitation (through its links with feminism and the hippie/antiwar movement) in order to court business interests who favor deregulation and lax environmental standards.
[0]https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environme...
It became a 'wedge issue'. A common tactic in 2-party politics is for a campaign to push their candidate to become indistinguishable from their opponent, and then pick one issue that divides the voter base, hopefully in their favor. It has to be something that your party can rally around and their party can't compromise on. Conservatives are generally pro business and anti government regulation, while liberals are usually pro environment and regulation, hence the battle of climate change.
> Conservatives are generally pro business and anti government regulation,
Conservatives love government regulations. They do not like the kind of regulation that prevents frauds or prevents them from harming others.
But, they like it when government regulates personal lives of their perceived enemies, protects large businesses at the expense of poorer people.
The US has two political parties of roughly equal size.
One of those parties has gone completely off the rails into authoritarianism and science denial. Oligarchy is at the root of it: the barons can't sell "clean coal" and "drill, baby, drill" if climate change is seen to be tearing the world apart. Money über alles.
You'd think most people would be repulsed by such a party, but turns out that humans have a neat little exploit! Due to the fact that the parties are completely entrenched and about equally as popular, people intrinsically assume that their policies also have equal merit.
Hence our descent into shit.
the oil industry
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An answer which fits both "sides" with each side claiming the other side is the one doing damage.
Only if you ignore reality and redefine science with an absurdly narrow definition (mostly focused on trans folks) and ignore everything else. One side claims absolutely ironclad proven wrong things like "ectopic pregnancies can just be moved and saved", "vaccines cause autism", but because they have a narrow interpretation of sex and gender, they think that allows them to claim "SCIENCE, BITCH". No, just no.
Corona conclusively proved that Democrats are every bit as capable of scientism as Republicans.
People - even leading scientists - who questioned natural origin, mandatory lockdowns, school closures, vaccine effectiveness, or any of a dozen other narratives were demonized and attacked in the name of science. "Do your own research" became a phrase of mockery, while "trust 'the' science" was used as a thought terminating cliché.
And neither party are really taking climate science seriously, it's just that one pays lip service a bit more.
This is just not true. School closures worked well for preventing spread. Vaccines actually solved the covid issue. Lockdowns did worked, actually.
And no, there is no "both sides" on climate change. Republicans are actively trying to make it happen.
You aren't engaging with any of my points, just repeating the dogma - which helps proves my point.
> School closures worked well for preventing spread.
Show me the data.
And, at what cost? Was the juice worth the squeeze? ... How many teachers have you talked to lately? Because the universal consensus is that closures did serious damage, still being felt to this day.
And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed. Researchers who raised it were shadow-banned from Twitter, Facebook etc. That's not science, it's authoritarian dogma from an unaccountable political class.
There were superior alternatives - putting air purifiers in classrooms would have been a big one. But we weren't permitted to even have that conversation.
> Vaccines actually solved the covid issue.
Or, basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity; like with every global pandemic ever. Did you see any data on this? Or are you 'trusting the science' which you haven't actually seen.
> Lockdowns did worked, actually.
Oh? So, you can point to countries where there were no lockdowns and they got torn apart, can you? ... Because researchers who have looked at that question say it isn't actually that clear [0].
The purpose of lockdowns was to slow the spread so that chronically underfunded and privatized healthcare systems wouldn't utterly collapse. Fair enough - but it wasn't presented that way, and investment in public health hasn't been improved since. Instead, most systems in the West seem stretched more than ever, while we have plenty of money for sending Israel bombs and weapons, or building concentration camps, or deporting people at ludicrous expense, etc.
... But that wasn't even what I was talking about - I was talking about how even questioning mandatory lockdowns was enough to make people lose their jobs, and get censored from mainstream and social media. It's not very scientific to censor scientists.
> there is no "both sides" on climate change. Republicans are actively trying to make it happen.
And Democrats pay lip service to stopping them, but don't seem very effective. And when something like Deepwater Horizon happens, or the DAPL protests, or support for fracking is an issue, where is the Dem leadership? Quietly backing the fossil fuel companies, every single time.
What's needed is radical change, immediately. That's the view of basically every scientist. Democrats pretend not to understand that. It's nowhere near good enough, and I see no reason to expect change; not the slightest glimmer of hope for what's necessary.
0 - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...
From your own link: "He also points to a 2021 study that attempted to quantify the effect of specific government interventions on the spread of Covid-19, using data from 41 countries. It reveals that certain aspects of national lockdowns might have been more impactful than others. The researchers found, for example, that banning gatherings of more than 10 people or closing schools and universities was especially effective, reducing transmission by more than 35% on average. Shutting restaurants and bars seemed to make slightly less difference to transmission, however.
What's more, the researchers suggest that adding a strict stay-at-home order on top of such measures "only had a small additional effect" in terms of slowing down Covid-19 – estimated at below 17.5% on average."
> You aren't engaging with any of my points, just repeating the dogma - which helps proves my point.
Frankly, I think we're all very tired of engaging with anti-Covid response points which have been debunked to hell and back, and then back to hell again.
Scientific evidence is not "dogma" just because you, intuitively, disagree with it. That's fine. The real world does not follow very simple logical frameworks. It's complex, it's messy.
Was our, or anyone's, Covid response perfect? Of course not. But this was a novel disease, one and in which our understanding of it changed day by day. Read that a few times over and you'll begin to understand why we did what we did.
> And, at what cost? Was the juice worth the squeeze? ... How many teachers have you talked to lately?
Basically, blue states that had more of them had results getting almost as bad as red states without them have it. Lives were saved at some acceptable lowering of test scores.
> And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed.
Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. Other people telling you that you are wrong is not supression.
And also, bullshit with researchers being censored. Especially hypocritical from someone conservative or republican.
> basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity
Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
> Basically, blue states that had more of them had results getting almost as bad as red states without them have it. Lives were saved at some acceptable lowering of test scores.
Are you seriously asserting that school closures are the difference between red state and blue state mortality rates??
> Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. ... bullshit with researchers being censored
The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
> Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
Did covid 'go away' in the global south, where they didn't have vaccines? Hmmmmm......
0 - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeate...
1 - https://www.thefp.com/p/i-fought-government-censorship-and-w...
2 - https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/why-did-scientists-...
> Are you seriously asserting that school closures are the difference between red state and blue state mortality rates??
What's your explanation for the difference?
> The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
I don't know about you, but I don't use Facebook for science research.
Was there censorship on, idk, arxiv regarding Covid?
I think you're the one who mentioned it up the comment chain, but I agree with the view that the messaging coming from (well, everywhere) is divisive and dogmatic.
> Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
Facebook also pushes false narratives. Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else, and engagement is found on the fringes.
I really like the parent comments you made. They didn't come off as "one-sided" (in any direction), but more so "let's step back and think about it." Kind of like a blameless post-mortem, blameless in the way of saying it wasn't _our_ faults, the general public, because who are we to really fight against these companies who have so successfully weaponized our basic emotions and values against ourselves? And what can we do to "wake up" (not in a "red-pill" or "sheeple" way) and collectively see that all of these narratives that we are fed are for no common person's best interests, and that we've been had, and how can we work together next time (if we even can work together on the same platforms which pull us apart)?
I know that the realization that I came to after reflecting on everything that happened over the past (5, 10, 15) years is that the only thing that _I_ can do is focus my energy towards my community - my friends, my neighbors, those people who I can in someway touch without relying on corporations with ulterior motives to stand between us.
And, like you alluded to, to also accept that most things are out of my control. Nothing I do will ever sway climate change, for instance. An example that sticks out to me is Greta Thornberg. She had what seemed to be very pure intentions about making a stand for a better future (whether that is or isn't the case isn't the focus here), but, no matter what side of the issue a person falls on, the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her - her motivations, her knowledge, her parents; the narrative given to 'conservative'-leaning people were all of her flaws, and the narrative given to 'liberal'-leaning people was the manufactured outrage about what the 'conservatives' were saying - and then, Boom: now nobody is actually talking about the issue, and the divide grows wider, and the focus is taken off of the companies who indisputably take advantage of the world (can anyone actually make an argument that the waste poured into rivers, for example, is _good_ for the inhabitants of the earth?).
Climate change, wars for profit, mass censorship and surveillance, etc, aren't blameless issues - there are people doing these things, people like you and I (only wealthier). Fossil fuel companies knew for a fact that they were causing climate change, and responded by poisoning the global conversation while suppressing alternatives.
What's between us and a better world is class awareness. So, for example, when you say things like "Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else", you're missing a major piece of the puzzle.
The daily atrocities in Gaza could drive tremendous engagement on Facebook, were they not heavily censored and suppressed.
Same goes for mainstream media. Look how unanimous the opinion of the media and political class was against Luigi. Look how they chorused in unison with smears against Jill Stein, or against Assange, Snowden etc. Again, all people who had their stories suppressed on social media as well.
This also explains how with Greta "the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her" - there's an agenda that unites the tiny number of billionaires who own basically all media in the West. The element of class even explains neatly why the media stopped covering Greta - because she started connecting the world's issues to capitalism and inequality. (You know, like MLK did, right before he was assassinated.)
So please don't think I have a message of blamelessness for the world's issues. There's more than enough blame to go around, and the problems won't be fixed if we keep ignoring the problems stemming from massive wealth inequality.
> can anyone make the argument...
Yeah, bud
It's good for me
Silently smirking Sisyphus
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Why is this on hacker news...? An editorial opinion blog about a climatic disaster in a region of US?
Even typing out this comment feels dirty as it's against hn commenting rules.
However...this is 50 percent of threads nowadays.
Climate is science and peoples blogged opinions are posted here all the time.
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I'm okay with a bad faith article as we get to see how bad information spreads and discuss it in the open. Sometimes the author learns form this which is good.
I doubt this sad event could have been avoided, looking back, yes things could have been done. But based upon how funding is chosen and applied and who people vote for, things would have to been done differently for the last 40+ years.
This could be looked at as a result for bad choices our elected pols made over decades.
>This could be looked at as a result for bad choices our elected pols made over decades.
It's not just the elected pols, it's the people who voted for the elected pols, too.
I wrestle with this. Are voters responsible for what their elected officials do? What about if you didn't vote?
If they are responsible then do they deserve to suffer for those poor decisions?
>Are voters responsible for what their elected officials do?
If someone tells you what they're about and you vote them in, yes. If someone shows you what they're about when in office and you re-elect them, double yes.
>What about if you didn't vote?
Fun idea. If you didn't vote, you're not a voter I suppose, and it's not your fault. But if you would've preferred a different outcome that could've been achieved by the alternative candidate and you still opted to abstain, then perhaps you're responsible to a degree.
>If they are responsible then do they deserve to suffer for those poor decisions?
I certainly wouldn't argue that anyone "deserves to suffer" for poor decisions, but it's true that actions have consequences. Shouldering blame, perhaps, might be a better way of looking at it, but I don't suggest that in a mean way.
If you vote for people based on them defunding or preventing precautionary measures and then your elected officials defund or prevent precautionary measures, then yes. If the party says "I will cause harm" and you go "I like that because people I dislike will be harmed", then again, yes you are responsible.
No.These types of things are unavoidable. The full risk profile of our planet is immpossible to determine. Should some great portion of the risk profile be determined, it will cover essentialy everywhere. Even reducing it to stuff with a fractional percentage of a disaster per year will be forbiding. And there is absolutly no way to impliment a country wide action and response network that does not end up running everything through the all powerfull department of saftey, which is politicaly and practicaly immpossible.
bottom land is always, flat, near water, productive, with many other resources on the hills and in the river, and then occasionaly, a trap
Just telling people not to live on fucking flood plains, goes nowhere......it is a perenial recuring problem that is so common and ancient that it has been recognised by archiologists, that humans have exploited the resources in river valleys, built there settlements, and then denuded all of the vegitation, and then blam, a flood, and there settlement gets instantly burried, bad for then, awsome for archiologists who find all there stuff, in water logged soil, interesting organic artifacts are often in "perfect" condition.
It was avoidable and in fact, whole countries manage to avoid it. It took series of bad intentional decisions for this to happen the way it did.
And fun fact is that people who made those bad decisions first falsely blamed others, congratulated themselves on being awesome. And now that they want money from FEMA, they still want to destroy it. And they still want to cut weather prediction which they blamed despite being correct.
> these types of things are unavoidable
The floodings or the tragedies?
> The full risk profile of our planet is impossible to determine
Was this really necessary to avoid this specific tragedy?
> The full risk profile of our planet is impossible to determine
This is a classic 'unless we can have a perfect solution to the problem, we shouldn't do anything all' argument. It is usually applied to problems where the solutions involve helping non-rich people.
Nirvana fallacy
Each individual doesn't need the full risk profile for the planet, only a local subset. That's much easier to model and make assumptions. Like "this is a river, it could flood. How likely and how bad?".
At a very high level, you are technically correct - existence is inherently risky and, try as we might, we can't always prevent disaster from striking. Disaster will strike again, somewhere.
At a more macro level, we certainly do understand relative risks of specific areas after interacting with them long enough. We begin to get a better picture of what makes one flood plain significantly more dangerous than another. There are instances where things like this can be avoided, or at least mitigated to a certain degree.