Polar Vortex, Climate Change & Confirmation Bias

Great work!

Texan here. It was awful. We had power for most of the week but was without water for six days. Hoping this invokes some sort of change. Lots of people suffered and died.

my bias: people suck

Great video as always!

I was exactly thinking the same. No specific event can be contributed specifically to cc. And as Adam mentioned, there is still debate about the polar vertex's effect on cc.

This is how to save ourselves ------ cancel currency, get rid of money and greed. Reduce human activities significantly

Psychology is so interesting

Confirmation bias? adversely what have you to say about the poles moving? I wont go into detail here, as your a scientist. Comment on the facts. No bias

I remember seeing this great graph which talked about how the climate crisis will cause an increase in extreme hot and extreme cold in the short term, and eventually a move away from extreme cold to just the extreme hot. So it seems that we’re still very early in terms of how bad it’s going to get. And already we’re seeing so many temperature records being smashed.

But I find it odd for mainstream scientists to say hold your horses on calling the Texas thing climate change, when it obviously is a result of the wavy jet stream. Anyone can see that surely. The guy who runs the Environment Agency was talking about how weather events of the last few years have surpassed their worst case scenario projections for climate. I’m really concerned that people like Michael Mann are now standing in the way of the most bold action we need.

Texan here I was thankfully fine, 🙏 and was deep down knowing this was climate change. 😔 also you’re posting more than once a month right?

comment for the algorithm

just want to say your videos are awesome! Keep up the awesome work! <3

as ever - peep the links in the description for plenty more info behind everything discussed in this episode!

Fascinating, thanks for another great video Adam!

So you're saying God was mad at Texas and punished them with a huge cold snap?

what all of us on all sides tend to use too often is the word "is".

what i see are some papers that show a climate change related component.
Kretschmer "The role of Barents–Kara sea ice loss in projected polar vortex changes" would be an example.

when it's (yet) impossible to know if something is definitely true or not, what i'd like to know is if there's a risk that it's true, and if so, how severe the consequences might get. because in my opinion that's what article 15 of the rio declaration says we should act on:

"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."

the same goes especially for climate sensitivity, feedback loops and tipping points. it's nice that (according to skeptical science) the "IPCC reflects scientific consensus on climate change". but then again, if the scientific consensus turns out to be way off, and it's actually worse (which wouldn't be the first time), it would probably have made more sense to look at the full spectrum from best to worse case, and then decide how big a risk we're willing to take.

Thanks for this important video. I lost power for 9 days from the Oregon ice storm, but it's much more of a shock to those in Texas, especially due to systemic flaws.

Cohen, Judah, Xiangdong Zhang, J. Francis, T. Jung, R. Kwok, J. Overland, T. J. Ballinger et al. "Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather." Nature Climate Change 10, no. 1 (2020): 20-29.

I know it is off topic, but I subscribed for your plants... ;p and your content, thank you!

great info

Thank you so much for discussing both sides of these confirmation biases! It can be easy to get caught up in all sorts of gloom and doom biases when we are not careful.

Hi Adam, great video (actually, awesome video!) - I think the recent outage in Texas can be another case study on how a lack in proactivity in developing a clean and resilient energy infrastructure could lead to a disaster which disproportionately affects the poor =] Btw, out of curiousity, I just want to ask you where can I read more about areas in the UK that will be affected more by Climate Change (e.g. published reports - universities/governement,etc.)? I'm keen to know more about this topic (I'm from the UK and I'm not a Climate Scientist, so I'm not sure where to start).

So my own bias is that America has a rather shoddy electrical grid, with outages frequently happening when just one powerline/station goes down and there's no backups from elsewhere. Is this true?
Great video, thank you for explaining those common misconceptions from both sides!
Very important point about the human element in preparing for severe weather events. It's maybe understandable that a warm place like Texas isn't perfectly equipped to keep all the roads clear when it snows, but basic necessities like energy and water should absolutely still be functioning at sub zero temperatures if there's even the slightest chance of 'winter'. (Then again, roads are also important for emergency vehicles... so... maybe keep those clear too.)

Scientists have always predicted that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events happening more often.

The facts are that climate change has begun and is happening now.

It doesn’t matter if this particular event in Texas was caused by climate change. Simply because of climate change we can expect more events like this in the future.

In other words, if you consider the big picture: extreme weather happening more often over a set period of time. Then you can argue that every single extreme weather event is caused by climate change simply because the frequency has increased due to climate change.

You can’t just say this singular weather event was caused by climate change. But you can say the frequency of these events is caused climate change, because you have the events that would have happened anyway in addition to the events caused by climate change.

Texan and meteorologist here. Because I am a meteorologist here in Houston, I am frequently asked if the big freeze was induced by climate change. I usually start with my "you can't use one event has evidence for or against climate change" spiel. However, what I find most interesting about the big freeze from a climate perspective is that a solid 30 years went by without a comparable freeze. You might say "well, people were calling this a once in 30 year event so didn't it happen right on schedule?" Well, if it is just once in every 30 years, then why was 1989 just the worst arctic blast since 1983? Was this a once in 6 year event back in the 80s? Then as you start going back through the 1970s all the way back to the 1890s, you find that relatively comparable blue northers where happening maybe once every 15 years. Of course, what one deems as a comparable event is going to depend on their metric. But what is obvious to me is that the average coldest air mass of the season is getting warmer and deep freezes that keep places like Houston below freezing for 2+ days are becoming rarer. So if you are asking me if I can see any climate change influences on the recent freeze and if my answer is yes, then it is the fact that it took so long for this to happen again. Just my two and a half cents.

Adam - the problem with Arctic amplification & jet stream changes was originally thought to be what you said, cold air masses could move south more frequently (& warm air masses north). But now it appears to be a jet stream that gets “stuck” in place, prolonging whatever weather you’re having. IOW, Rossby waves are moving more slowly around the Earth. Michael Mann & Jennifer Francis have worked on this.

Just going trough your videos, great content.

Texas incidents of '21-'22 were real-their local tv news broadcasts.