637
U.S. rocked by four 1-in-1,000-year storms in less than a week (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.

In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

“Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.”

It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago

Fun fact, the reason we all call it "climate change" and not "global warming" was because the George W Bush administration directed NASA to do so, as they deemed it less "scary" to the public:

In interviews, Republican politicians and their aides said they agreed with the strategist, Frank Luntz, that it was important to pay attention to what his memorandum, written before the November elections, called ''the environmental communications battle.''

In his memorandum, Mr. Luntz urges that the term ''climate change'' be used instead of ''global warming,'' because ''while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.''

Also, he wrote, ''conservationist'' conveys a ''moderate, reasoned, common sense position'' while ''environmentalist'' has the ''connotation of extremism.''

President Bush's speeches on the environment show that the terms ''global warming'' and ''environmentalist'' had largely disappeared by late last summer. The terms appeared in a number of President Bush's speeches in 2001, but now the White House fairly consistently uses ''climate change'' and ''conservationist.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/us/a-call-for-softer-greener-language.html

What drives me insane is how everyone on the left just... went along with it. Now we retroactively rewrite history and claim that they were always separate terms with entirely different distinct meanings. And knowing that so many highly educated, inquisitive, independent thinking people didn't think to question that or look into that, it frightens me.

[-] [email protected] 55 points 1 day ago

While the Bush administration certainly had (very obviou$) reasons for trying to downplay it, I also remember at least some scientists at the time arguing that climate change was a better term because people are particularly stupid about the term global warming when it paradoxically results in some places having a greater number of and more extreme cold events.

Ex: every time some dumbfuck Republican brought a snowball into Congress to talk about how global warming is fake because look here’s snow!!

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

I also remember at least some scientists at the time arguing that climate change was a better term because people are particularly stupid about the term global warming when it paradoxically results in some places having a greater number of and more extreme cold events.

That's how I recall the term climate change coming into favor, too.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

That snowball guy finally died last year, thank God. Too bad it wasn't from a flood or hurricane.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

The left went along with it because they were tired of all the "then why is it so cold in winter?" comments from the stupid half of the family tree.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

We still get that now. As if cold things can’t exist when it’s hotter.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Good to know! They should have been a little more creative and called it something familiar and snappy like Sport Utility Environment or Gas Guzzler.

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
637 points (99.5% liked)

News

30923 readers
2778 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]