If you think you know which of those are done by the civilized world and which of those are done by pagan Wildlings, you know nothing about modern climate science and culture.
In George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", a wall separates two very different people - think England and Scotland. South of The Wall, the people of Winterfell are always preparing for the worst. North of The Wall, they are just living their lives and rolling with the punches. And there is a lot more (consensual) sex. These two groups live in the same world but approach it in very different ways.
Think such an obvious disparity is not possible? You have clearly never driven over the border from Pennsylvania into West Virginia.
On the left, dour, practical, methodical. Is is possible she actually does know something? On the right, she is convinced you actually know nothing worth knowing, but she is a lot more fun to be around.(1)
In our analogy, representing the gloomy folk of Winterfell with their constant "Winter is coming" doomsday prophesying, are royal elites, let's call them climate scientists, and then we have the willing masses that support them and accept what they are told, let's call them Union of Concerned Scientists members and Think Progress writers.
Representing the free love, 1960s-era children of nature to the north are...Republicans.
The Winterfell side is not wrong in their pessimism. Just like predicting Peak Oil or the end of the Solar System, the Winter Is Coming pessimists are going to be right eventually. That's just math. Even the Chicago Cubs are going to win another World Series at some point, the laws of probability assure us (2) - so of course winter is coming, that is what seasons are. And if you are always predicting the Apocalypse, every fact is supporting evidence when framed properly.
For those Wildling Republicans, life is a little simpler. Their belief is 'hey, stuff just happens, this is the world, we will adapt'. If blue-skinned zombies come marching out of the woods, the free market will fix it. They have a lot of history on their side also, because they know the extent of the elites' plan is to just build a giant wall but they dislike the military too much to make sure there are enough soldiers to do anything. And the free market has solved weather issues before, our wildlings insist - the government didn't build the first houses, people who wanted to get out of the rain did.
In an ideal world, the evidence-based people south of The Wall would be right and the hippy-dippy baloney(3) nature freaks north of The Wall would be wrong. In the real world, it isn't so simple. The wilding Republicans are correct in one way - sometimes things just happen, like Ned Stark getting his head chopped off for no other reason than to make us incur costly Wall repairs of our own after we throw our books at them. But sometimes things can be predicted, and that is where science can help. Predictions just have to be accurate and not agenda-based.
In our real-life Game Of Thrones, we have winter that is coming and it is likely going to be a lot more like real winter than the warmer stuff we were promised since the 1990s. We project that because English and Scottish people are not waiting for members of The Watch to disappear, they are looking at North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), barometric pressure variations. When the west winds are strong, that will mean a more wintery winter.
But our Winterfell folks are saying is it worse than just a winter. They looked at NAO values over the last 115 years and found that 60% of the all-time record highs and 40% of the record lows for Decembers occurred during the last decade - to them, that means swings are wider and the weather is getting more unstable. Yes, that is a little like a baseball player saying "I led this club in ninth inning doubles in the month of August" (4) but it could be a harbinger of doom just the same.
Is there a permanent pattern of wild weather swings or is it just random natural fluctuations in climate? Science doesn't know, but if you do, I know which side of the wall you live on.
NOTES:
(1) Rose Leslie, who played Ygritte in the television version of the books, had one of the most difficult jobs in recent film history. Everyone who read the books heard her say the words "You know nothing, Jon Snow" in various situations and with all of its subtexts - contemptuous, chiding and even sweet - in their minds. Trying to perform that without disappointing the faithful book readers couldn't have been easy. Here is one example in what became a litany.
(2) Though almost 30 years later, Steve Goodman's "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request" prophecy is still laughing at statistics:
(3) Lord Business recently dismissed such hippy dippy baloney in "The Lego Movie" but George Carlin was doing that back in 1966:
(4) From "Mr. Baseball":
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