Climate change is bad.

But is it all bad?

Inevitably, unequivocally, irredeemably bad, with no possibility of any exceptions, however meager?

You needn’t be a climate scientist to be skeptical of such a claim.

Nature — even human-influenced nature, as in this case — is rarely if ever so absolute in its effects.

And particularly with a system as dynamic, and as complicated, as the global climate.

To argue, or even to imply, that everything resulting from our warming planet harms humans, or the Earth itself, seems to me an example of propaganda rather than science.

This matter intrigues me not because I question whether our reliance on burning fossil fuels over the past century and a half or so has contributed to warming at a rate faster than what has been documented in previous cycles over which humans had no influence.

The evidence that this is true ought to be persuasive to anyone who can look at it dispassionately.

Polar ice sheets are losing mass.

Alpine glaciers are shrinking.

Oceans are warming and becoming more acidic. But it seems to me that in addition to chronicling these effects, some people have become prone to attributing pretty much any weather event to the same human-caused increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The list includes phenomena that were around centuries before we started burning coal and petroleum.

Rainstorms, for instance.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, rain did not come only in gentle, refreshing, benevolent showers.

Sometimes it sluiced down, causing floods and landslides.

And of course sometimes it still does.

Many experts believe that a warming climate makes such events more likely, and there are scientifically valid theories, largely due to warmer air being able to hold more moisture, to explain this trend.

But here’s the thing: If we accept that our noxious exhalations contribute to making downpours more moist, shouldn’t we also concede that, in some places at some times, cloudbursts might well yield benefits that exceed, at least in the short term, their detrimental effects?

The Los Angeles Times explored the relationship between a warming climate and precipitation (both rain and snow) in a February 2024 article that focused on potential effects in California.

The Times reporter talked with several climate scientists. Their consensus was that based on current temperature trends, storms in the state, and likely across the West, will become less frequent but more intense.

Notably, the experts said that although computer models forecast those changes, actual measurements thus far have not shown that this is happening.

“Climate models clearly project an intensification of rain, especially from atmospheric rivers, in the future,” said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “And that’s a very high confidence expectation for a warmer future. However, we have not observed that trend yet.”

What struck me about the story is that neither the reporter nor the scientists seemed interested in broaching the question of whether these predicted changes might benefit California in any way.

My point is not that we should be complacent about trying to reverse climate change because its effects aren’t wholly terrible.

But since experts believe that dealing with climate change is likely to be the work of decades, it seems to me we ought to acknowledge that, in the meantime, storms that bring more precipitation to drought-prone places such as California should be welcomed even as we try to curb the conditions that contribute to those storms and that lead to other, indisputably harmful, effects.

Saying this does not detract from the campaign to combat climate change.

I wonder, though, whether some people have become so committed to this cause that they refuse to concede that anything positive could be associated with a warming climate.

This is understandable. But I don’t believe it is reasonable. Worse, I don’t think it is a defensible attitude from people who simultaneously implore society to “pay attention to the science.”

Although the L.A. Times article was dominated by dire predictions of devastating, deadly floods and mudslides spawned by super storms fueled by the fevered climate, it included one section that I found heartening.

Some of those quoted recommended that California officials explore ways to make use of the temporary abundance — or overabundance — of water during future storms.

This was a recognition, albeit a tepid one, that if droughts get worse in the future, as scientists expect, then trying to garner benefits from the soggy interludes is not only sensible, but also obligatory.

I found it curious that although the story discusses tactics such as “punching holes in some paved areas of cities to create room for capturing stormwater,” the word “dam” doesn’t appear in that section of the story.

There was, however, a reference to “engineered reservoirs.”

Which sounds to me like something that would require a dam.

Dams, of course, are frequently branded as villains these days, killers of salmon and destroyers of natural habitat.

But when water is apt to get more scarce, a dam can serve much as a bank does for people who want to be prepared for lean times.

The other ideas listed in the Times story are logical, too — particularly diverting storm runoff into areas where it will replenish aquifers depleted by decades of intense irrigation that enables California farmers to produce more food than most countries.

But I hope the people making decisions don’t discard dams just because they’re made of concrete, steel and other materials with big, nasty carbon footprints.