Harvey? The hurricane that was the first to make landfall after 12 years of no hurricanes? After we were repeatedly explicitly promised increased hurricanes because of global warming? The one that Wikipedia lists as merely a category 4 and looms large in your mind simply because of where it happened to hit?

Did anyone ever admit their predictions about increased hurricanes during those 12 years were wrong? I never saw it. You just remember the images, not the 12 years of no images.

And I remember wildfires in California when I was a kid, too. Except now probably about 10 million people live closer to them and like to build houses in the way of them. (Oh, and let's not forget how many of those fires turn out to be less about "global warming" and more about arson. After a certain point, dry is just dry.)

This is part of why I really can't get myself too worked up over Certain Environmental Doom... it's always people sharing emotionally vivid anecdotes instead of data. When I look at the statistical data, it isn't much to get worked up over. The IPCC warming estimates have already been revised down to the point that it's hardly worth worrying about; it's not as if "zero degrees of change in a century" was ever on the table.

It's the emotionally charged anecdotes that get you worked up and feeling doomed and hopeless. Again, who benefits? Sure isn't you.

I'm personally more interested in the ocean plastic problem than global warming at the moment. Global warming has really failed to pan out as a threat, in my opinion.

But then, bear in mind once again I'm brushing 40. If you're twenty-something and inclined to pull your hair out over what I'm saying here, think about where you would be with another 15 years of your current level of concern, but if you looked outside on the same world you do now. I see anecdotes and anecdotes and anecdotes about how horrible climate change is, but the data isn't anywhere near as scary as the news stories being written... in fact I see the news stories getting scarier even as the data gets less scary to me. In fact it's downright bizzare to compare the predictions made now nearly twenty years ago to what actually happened, and to read all these stories that are written as if the predictions made twenty years ago actually happened, or perhaps even happened worse than predicted, instead of being rather a ways off the mark.

Personally, I'd probably actually be more concerned if I read a story that basically said "Here's the predictions made 20 years ago. Here's why they didn't pan out. Here's the models that we made 10 years ago that fixed the problem and evidence that they've done a great job predicting the last ten. Here's why those models are showing problems 20 years down the road and why this time we actually know what we are talking about." But that's not what I read. What I see is just screeching panic, and most damningly, denial that any error was ever made when it is plainly obvious that errors were made, and that IPCC report estimates have in fact been trending down and not up. When no error can ever be admitted, it's clearly a political process, not a scientific one, because it's in politics you can't ever admit you were wrong, not even a little, with the only error you're allowed to admit to is that you didn't realize how right you were at the time. I don't recommend driving yourself into anxiety and insanity for a process so obviously filled with politics.