Bet you didn’t know there are experts on the topic of debris flow down the slopes of the Swiss Alps. (That’s what they call it, as opposed to “landslide” although presumably if enough debris flows fast enough it becomes one.) But there are, and if you live on the slopes of the Swiss Alps you may well be glad to know it though if you live anywhere else in the world you probably don’t care, even if you plan occasionally to visit the slopes of the Swiss Alps. Such is the plight of the academic scribbler who spends a lifetime learning everything there is to know about a topic only to realize that most people not only don’t care about it, they didn’t even know it was a topic. Which may explain why so many experts try to make their work seem more interesting by saying that they are not merely studying “X”, but “X” and climate change. (Not to mention that grants tend to flow in large amounts down government slopes toward such claims.) Then they can warn you that climate change is going to make debris flow down the Swiss Alps worse, and the fashionable folks ever eager to hear the worst about the climate crisis will think them very interesting. Until they realize that with climate change you always #HaveItBothWays.

The study claiming climate change would make “debris flow events” worse was published in 1997. (And what is a specialization without weirdly antiseptic terminology?) They looked at rainfall data and noticed that “intense precipitation events” could trigger slope instability and debris flow events. Which makes perfect sense. So, they reasoned, climate change is making extreme rainfall worse so it will trigger future landslides and send all those yodeling bankers and chocolatiers into Lake Geneva along with their deposit slips, candy wrappers and so forth.

Or not. Because, alas, nine years later some other experts in debris flow on Swiss mountains looked into the paleoclimate records and found something curious. While debris flow events since the 1500s did seem to coincide with wet periods, they were becoming less frequent in recent years not more. They hypothesized that rainfall mattered, but only at certain times of the year. At other times of the year it might not have any effect, or might perhaps even be associated with less risk of debris flow.

All of which is an impressive mountain of speculation not a solid field of established knowledge. And speaking of speculation, looking at climate model projections they argued that debris flow events were likely to happen less frequently in the future under climate change.

So academic scribblers don’t just have a challenge making their life’s work seem interesting. If they try to boost their popularity at parties by claiming their work is related to climate change, people will eventually discover that this doesn’t mean much because whatever theory they push, you can #HaveItBothWays.