Comment by alt227
13 hours ago
> But this is something the world has never seen and I mean that literally
Lets not forget there have been bigger and hotter events than this in local past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1877%E2%80%931878_El_Ni%C3%B1o...
You may tie this in to climate change in general to prove your point, but this is a discussion about El Nino weather event and it is important to remember the current situation is not unprecedented.
This El Nino is expected to be worse than that based on the El Nino 3.4 temperatures we are already seeing. This is why most weather people are talking about it so much.
We do not have the same data for the 1877 event that we do for the last strongest El Nino in 1997. And this one is much stronger than that by far:
https://xcancel.com/BenNollWeather/status/208864941472211787...
> expected to be worse
Lets not speculate, currently there have been worse ones in the past. If this eventually becomes more extreme then yes it will become a big talking point, but it is not there yet.
It’s not called speculation. It’s called the scientific extrapolation. The reason why we do this is to prevent people from dying. If we wait till it becomes extreme and we’re saddled with food shortages it’s too late.
And currently , this is the worst El Niño ever recorded at this point. El Niño right now is worse than the El Niño in 1997 was at this point. Much worse. We simply don’t have these numbers for 1887.
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It's hard to rationally discuss this with non-experts as you will immediately be labeled an AGW denying crank and downvoted to oblivion.
Yes, AGW is real. Yes, extreme weather and climate events have occurred before AGW. No, I am not saying that AGW is incapable of making these extreme events even worse.
For instance, California has experienced megadroughts lasting decades or hundreds of years in the relatively recent past.
The global average temperature was about 1.5C lower back then.
You miss the point, the warming of El Nino is relative.
El Nino warmed the earth more back then relative to average temperatures than it currently is now.