Will there be clearly abnormally high rates of climate disasters in Summer 2023?
44
390
870
resolved Nov 1
Resolved
YES

The North Atlantic ocean is abnormally warm with many claiming this will bring about several climate disasters.

Resolves as: will at least 3 highly influential* news sources publish a story about the Northern hemisphere Summer of 2023 showing abnormally high rates of climate disasters, by the end of October 2023?

*Taking suggestions on how to more clearly operationalize this. I'm thinking meeting any of the following criteria would qualify a source:

  • >2M subscribers (NYT had 7.8M in 2021)

  • >10M unique monthly website visitors (LAT has >40M)

  • >250k total daily viewers (Fox News has >1M)

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I'm always hesitant to bet on this stuff because everyone seems to have wildly different levels of epistemological 'clarity' and is incredibly surprised when others disagree.

bought Ṁ100 of YES

@AndrewHartman the resolution criteria give me some confidence. but, sure, we've always gotta take counterparty risk as a factor in our bets

@Stralor Those criteria don't really seem geared sufficiently for truthiness as opposed to notoriety, to me. I agree it's better than nothing, though.

predicted YES

the resolution criteria are super clear! I agree they have little to do with the truth of the statement, but they are very clear

bought Ṁ500 of YES

I think this resolves YES already? Not sure how you'll measure sources, but I'm confident some of these count

Guardian, aug 26: A relentless barrage of extreme weather events, fueled by human-caused global heating, has swept the North American continent this summer

US News, Aug 17: U.S. Racks Up Billion-Dollar Disasters During ‘Summer of Extremes’ ... Scientists warn that many extreme weather events are fueled by climate change and will likely only increase in the future.

Washington Post, July 13: Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink ... Scientists say there is no question that this cacophony was caused by climate change — or that it will continue to intensify as the planet warms. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from burning fossil fuels, have raised Earth’s temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels

Foreign affairs, aug 25: The planet has broiled this summer, with July winning the unwelcome title of the hottest month since records began, in the nineteenth century. Given the rapid pace of climate change, however, July offered merely a taste of the heat to come. ... Nearly 5,000 local heat and rainfall records were broken in the United States alone; globally, the number exceeded 10,000. ... Although climate scientists have long predicted an increase in such extreme weather events, some have recently expressed alarm at the sheer speed at which the climate is changing. The sudden explosion of record temperatures carries a warning for humans: adapt or die. The scale of the climate catastrophes suffered throughout this year ... [many of the events they refer to are northern hemisphere]

AP: Swaths of the US are living through a brutal summer. It’s a climate wake-up call for many ... And some psychologists believe the attention on a cascade of record-shattering heat, wildfire smoke, extreme flooding and Jacuzzi-hot ocean water could be “another turning point” in efforts to raise awareness about the everyday impact of climate change

Axios: Report: Severe storms in U.S. this year lead to record insured losses ... The big picture: That's according to a report out Wednesday from Swiss Re Group, which estimated global insured losses from natural catastrophes at $50 billion — the second highest since 2011. "The effects of climate change are evident in increasingly extreme weather events," the report notes.

NPR: U.S., European heat waves 'virtually impossible' without climate change, study finds ...

The life-threatening heat waves that have baked U.S. cities and inflamed European wildfires in recent weeks would be "virtually impossible" without the influence of human-caused climate change, a team of international researchers said Tuesday. ...

Soaring temperatures are punishing the Northern Hemisphere this summer. In the U.S...

Washington Post: Maui fires not just due to climate change but a ‘compound disaster’ The links between human-caused climate change and fires are well-established. Global warming means plants can more easily dry out, because warmer air hastens the evaporation of water. As the air sucks more moisture from the land, fire risks are increasing.

NYTimes: Climate Disasters Daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal.’ Around the United States, dangerous floods, heat and storms are happening more frequently. Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware.

@jacksonpolack Yep, thanks for the sources. Resolved YES!

Your question is if there will be an abnormally high rate of climate disaster, but your resolution criteria are more about whether major news outlets will call it as such. I would vote YES on the first and NO on the second.

@ErwinRossen Yeah, I'm unhappy about this too but am unsure of how else to do this. I'll personally only know it's happening based on news sources and the like. I'm happy to take suggestions here.

@LucasSato I also wouldn't know. Perhaps something about what scientists are saying, like published journal articles or IPCC reports? It would be hard to say upfront what would and what wouldn't count though.

@LucasSato take a look at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events

You cold make the resolution criteria something like "If the number of climate disasters in 2023 is 2.5 standard deviations higher than the mean number of disaster per year during the period between 1992 and 2022, this resolves yes".