Good morning John, give me four minutes
so that we can have a legit conversation about a warmer Earth, and what that means for actual weather.
The kind of conversation that we never get to have because it doesn't fit into a 15-second soundbite.
Here's what we all need to get, and I don't think it's anybody's fault
for not getting this. When we talk about the effect that a warmer Earth will have on the weather.
We're not talking about what's gonna happen.
We're talking about what's probably gonna happen, or more properly, the probability of what will happen.
We are never going to know how many big storms are gonna hit the U.S. in any given hurricane season,
but we can take a look over the last 50 years and see how many major storms formed per year.
And I'm doing that right now--
I'm putting a dot for every year; most of the years had two storms, some of them had five, some have had four, and some had zero.
That year with seven storms there, that was 2005, the year that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Alright, yeah, you see
what happened here. There is a curve.
This is a probability distribution,
and it is always how we should be thinking about how a changing climate is affecting weather today,
now, this year--not the dots, the curve. Every year at the end of the hurricane season, this probability curve
collapses into just another dot. It is no longer a set of things that could happen, it becomes a very specific thing that did happen.
Last year it collapsed into four major storms, the year before that two, the year before that two again, and the year before that zero.
Oh, do we have a trend happening here? No, no,
no, this is not a trend! Every year the curve runs itself again,
and it might collapse down to zero or it might collapse out to seven. Like, look at the dots!
Obviously, no one dot on this curve is important, and also the curve is saying that all this stuff happens. Everything
that's in here is well
inside of the realm of normality. The number of serious storms from year to year can jump dramatically while being the effect of the same
probability curve. A warmer planet doesn't take you from this, to this, because global energy in the system
isn't the only important variable. It takes you from this,
to this. Something important is changing, and that's shifting the curve. When that new curve
collapses into its reality dot, that might still be at zero,
it's just less likely than it used to be. And years like 2005 will still be rare,
they will just be less rare. And if there are more strong storms,
there's a higher likelihood that they'll end up hitting in the worst places
possible, as Harvey did, as Katrina did. Homes that used to be considered safe might now find it difficult to get insurance because no one
understands
probability curves like the people who work at insurance companies. And these probability curves are what we use to determine whether a flood has, like,
a 1 in 100 chance of happening or a 1 in 50 chance of happening, and as that changes
those "hundred-year floods"
start to not be "hundred-year floods". And the curve can shift before
we're aware of it. Like, with this, we only get one new dot a year,
which is why we create computer models-- so that we can run
hurricane seasons over and over and over again with slightly changed
variables to see what will happen. And what we see with more energy in the global system is the curves shifting towards stronger,
wetter storms. The more carbon we release into the atmosphere the more these curves shift,
and that is the future that we have to accept, and
the one that we have to prepare for. And also, the one it's good to try and understand a little bit, so thanks for
taking four minutes to do that. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
That took substantially less than four minutes. I'm quite proud of myself. So here
we are together, and the end's gonna have so much time. I'm going to Australia,
see ya at Vidcon Australia, Australia-people. This shirt is the new giraffe-love shirt designed by Ming Doyle. I like it a lot,
you can get it at [dftba.com]. What else should I talk about? We sold out of backpacks!
So this is mine, you can't have it. These are my favorite fidget toys because they're quiet. They make no noise--
I can play with them while I'am on a phone call, and it is not as noisy as this [repeatedly clicks pen].
Everybody hated me, and now they don't anymore. Maybe there's a Youtube video
I should make you go watch-- Crash Course Film Production,
with Lilly Gladstone--so good, and the recent series on guns in America from Healthcare Triage--really well done. Okay, Bye!