In a stacked deck the cards are no longer in random order, instead they are arranged to favour specific outcomes.
Climate change stacks the deck for certain types of extreme weather events. As the planet warms scientists expect heat waves to become more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense. With them will come droughts and wildfires. As well as more 'hot and dry' events scientists predict there will be more extreme wet weather including storms and flooding.
This has tremendous implications for water resources and agriculture. When we break records now—and we are breaking thousands of them—we break them by a lot.
Reinsurers like MunichRE report that extreme weather/climate events have increased in recent decades. This graph shows events for 1980-2010. It's interesting to see that geophysical (earthquakes, tsunamis & volcanoes) events have not changed much, whereas the climate/weather related events have increased markedly over the 30 years.
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Global warming has stacked the climate deck towards more exteme weather events that will destroy livelihoods and wealth in rich countries as well as poor countries.
Heidi Cullen, Chief Climatologist for Climate Central, used the 'stacked deck' metaphor in a Daily Beast article (22/4/2012).
