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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.
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.
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".
That means we have to bar scientists from speaking on a subject if their fact based statements contradict or offend someones political views. So the President of the US is allowed to celebrate his ignorance and reach an audience of millions with his factually incorrect take on climate, but someone with a scientific discovery and the evidence to prove it can't speak to it, because political opinion is sacrosanct.
That is very troubling.
Here's an alternative approach: the arguments made by politicians on science should be judged on their scientific merit. The arguments made by scientists on science should be judged on their scientific merit. If a scientist makes a political statement, judge it on it's political merit - unless they claim it is science, in which case, judge it on it's scientific merit. It's possible, even essential, to tell good science from bad. A political argument framed as a scientific view does not pass a simple sniff test, and is readily exposed.
People who adopt a position on science based on treating political opinions as inviolate are self selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Seriously.
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.
Damn, son! You ARE an apologist, aren't you. TLDR. But, I would like to comment on one single statement you made:
How about severe cold temperatures and floods? Yep, I know -- we ALL know. Those too. You see, this is what makes you alarmists sound so ridiculous. Absolutely EVERY undesirable weather phenomenon is blamed on climate change.
sig: sauer
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...
Whenever I see "scientific consensus" I see someone who doesn't know what Science actually is. There is no consensus in science. Science doesn't require consensus, it requires testing and verification. Piltdown Man was once "Scientific Consensus" and we know how that turned out.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.