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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.
When is the world gonna smarten up and start listening to Slashdot posters and not Oxford scientists when it comes to climate change?
Clearly, it's all gotta be a hoax because it's cold as fuck here right now. And, the smartest man in America told us it was a hoax, so there's that, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
This is a clickbait headline. Shame on Scientific American for posting that headline, and shame on Slashdot for following along.
Let's quote from farther down in the article:
Today, scientists still generally agree that it's impossible to attribute any individual weather phenomenon solely to climate change. Storms, fires, droughts and other events are influenced by a variety of complex factors. And they're all acting at once, including both natural components of the climate system and sometimes unrelated human activities. For instance, a wildfire may be made more likely by hot, dry weather conditions, and by human land-use practices.
This contradicts the headline. Scientists aren't blaming individual disasters on climate change.
Climate is the statistical distribution of weather, including the normals and extremes. In many cases, it follows the normal distribution. However, other distributions may be appropriate especially for certain variables like precipitation. The scientists are saying that climate change is causing the distributions to change, and they are quantifying how the distributions change. They can then say that a particular event is more or less likely to occur as a result of climate change, and that's what they're actually doing.
The article references three events that they say are "impossible" without climate change, one of which is http://www.ametsoc.net/eee/2016/ch3.pdf. This is a modeling study, basically integrating climate models forward with various forcings to test whether they could reproduce a given event. Because the model failed to reproduce the result over a period of 5,200 events absent anthropogenic forcing, they concluded that the event was impossible without anthropogenic forcing. While climate change may have made the event much more likely, the claims are probably misleading.
If you trust the model, you might be able to argue that the probability is less than 1/5200 of the event occurring in a given year (or something similar) given that the model failed to reproduce the result. It's probably much less than 1/5200, based on this statement:
However, simulated internal variability would need to be more than twice as large as the most extreme case found in the CMIP5 models, for even the most extreme simulated natural warming event to match the 2016 observed record.
That doesn't mean that the probability is zero. The other issue is the model, and whether it's accurately reproducing the statistical distribution of weather. It's easy to determine if the model is reproducing the mean, because we should know that part of the distribution with a high degree of accuracy. Extreme events, by definition, are rare, and therefore we can't quantify that part of the distribution with as much certainty, and can't know as well whether the model is reproducing those parts of the distribution very well. The actual climate model software is fundamentally no different than weather models, which certainly have biases and other known issues.
I believe the results are still pretty damning, that the events would be extremely unlikely to occur in the absence of anthropogenic forcing. It's still exaggerating to say that the extreme event would be impossible without anthropogenic forcing, and there's no need to make that claim. If the event didn't occur over 5,200 years of a model simulation, and the model didn't even come close to reproducing the event, there are two possibilities that aren't mutually exclusive:
1) The model has issues reproducing extreme events like the one being studied
2) The event would have a much less than 1/5200 probability of occurring in a given year
I suspect the second possibility is probably accurate. It's a damning statement to make without saying the event would have been impossible without anthropogenic forcing. It also forces the deniers to debate the validity of the model (actual science) rather than attacking the credibility of the scientists for not being precise in their statements.
So who do I believe, just about all the scientists in the world, or some assclown who doesn't know the difference between a model and a theory?
Hmmm...tough choice.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
In fact let's make it interesting - shall we?
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.
didn't read the article. Not that it sensationalist title matched the content as usual. Now everybody get to yelling at each other and calling each other dummies. Thats the solution to global warming if you handle it the way people usually do.
From TFA about halfway in:
Whenever I read the words 'climate model', I generally replace them in my head with the words 'wildly inaccurate climate model'. Scott Adams has some interesting things to say about the subject. The point is that the scientists trying to attribute a specific event to climate change can simply sift through hundreds (thousands?) of climate models until they find the one that gives the highest probability that the specific event was due to climate change. Then they hold a press conference to proclaim they know this with "near certainty".
I personally believe humans definitely do influence climate, but I think it's the wrong approach to try and convince the public using computer simulations that have no hope of being accurate.
Instead, I suggest a better approach is to point out that digging shit out of the ground and burning it into the air is not a long term solution. The planet is quite livable with all that shit underground. What makes us think that bringing it up out of the ground and burning it into the atmosphere will have no effect? Logically thinking, it's not a good idea. It will definitely cause problems, and science has demonstrated what those problems could be (acidic rain and oceans, warming temps, mercury from coal, etc.). We must find other ways to harness energy.
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.
Meanwhile in Central Europe, we're having temperatures equivalent to early March. You see, temperatures in the temperate zone are determined by the current path of polar jet stream. Areas between the jet stream and the nearest pole are cold. Areas between the jet stream and the equator are warm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
There's a word called "hyperbole". Learn it. Understand it. When somebody says, "That dude's got all the money in the world", they don't mean the dude literally has every dollar, ruble, rial and pound all the mints in the world ever printed or stamped.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
No, that's not what's being done here and anyone who reads this like that is scientifically illiterate.
The entire 'weather is climate' argument is used by the denialist baffoons to try and discredit the entire concept of climate change. It's essentially saying 'since it happens to be very cold outside the climate cannot be warming.' This is not that in reverse, because the scientists are not trying to prove that the climate is warming by pointing at singular weather events, they don't need to do that because the fact that the global climate is warming has been proven a long time ago by the data and the scientific consensus on the topic is very clear.
They're not claiming that 'weather equals climate', but the entire core of the issue of climate change is that climate affects the weather, that's the whole reason it's a problem. Heating of the entire climate is predicted to increase extreme weather phenomena on both ends of the spectrum (meaning: extreme cold and heat) as well as storms.
It's right there in the damn summary:
No-one's saying that these events were solely caused by global warming but it's pretty clear at this point that the continued warming of the atmosphere is bound to make heat waves and droughts both more common and more severe. Why anyone would think that studying how big of an affect the added energy is having on these events somehow means the experts in the field are 'reversing' the definitions of the term is beyond me.
The reason it's good that this is done is because there exists a misconception both among the general public as well as politicians that climate change is somehow a threat that solely exists in the future. But seeing as how nearly every year in the 2000s so far has broken the record for the hottest year, it's obvious that we're already seeing/feeling the effects of a warming climate, so in my opinion it's very good that this is brought to people's attention so that the sort of 'oh well, we'll deal with the problem later' attitude that some people seem to have can be countered. The problem is already here, and it's already affecting the global populace's health, economy and food production.
On a related note, the talk of climate change 'alarmists' has always seem moronic to me. It's not 'alarmism' to point out facts such as the global average temp is going up year after year, or that there are more and more extreme weather phenomenon. Take an analogy from medicine. Saying you wake up one day with a cough that gets increasingly worse as the days go by, until one day you spike a fever and start coughing blood. You go to the doctor who says they're going to need to do some tests on you, because the symptoms clearly indicate that something is wrong with your body and you may be in danger if that's left unchecked.
If one takes the same attitude in this scenario that many people seem to take towards climate change you'd stand up, laugh, and go 'ahahaha, you're just one of those 'human health alarmists'. Plenty of people have coughed blood and not died, so what do you know? Clearly nothing, so I'm just going to go home."
Now the thing to understand here is that the skeptic maybe right, but we need to consider the game theory of the situation: if your goal is to live longer, then your chances of survival are drastically increased by seeking medical attention, even though it is possible that your body will heal on its own without outside help. Put yourself in this situation and ask, would you rather choose a doctor who wants to ru
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
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)
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.
It looks pretty clear that some warming has occurred in the past 100 years. It is also pretty clear that there is no consensus on how much warming has occurred and to what that might be attributed. A notionally good starting point for making an assessment of all this data is to base it on the principles of information theory. As a starting point, calculate the entropy of raw measurements in the data sets and then the entropy of adjusted measurements to determine if the information content is the same. Other entropy-based calculations could possibly lend support to correlating conditions in the environment - perhaps for attribution. This sort of mathematics could provide a more compelling substantiation than mere political grandstanding based on models. In any case, such attribution is too weak to be used to establish legal liability. Full disclosure: I am much less skeptical of the warming phenomenology than I am that we can know how much the environment has warmed based on models.
This is not that in reverse, because the scientists are not trying to prove that the climate is warming by pointing at singular weather events, they don't need to do that because the fact that the global climate is warming has been proven a long time ago by the data and the scientific consensus on the topic is very clear.
Science doesn't prove good hypothesis like maths. It works on by falsifying bad ones. If your hypothesis is not falsifiable, it's not science.
Keeping looking for reasons your hypothesis being true is not science either - it's confirmation bias. Which of course is fine, you're free to believe whatever you want. But you're not going to convince many people to accept your preferred policies if the underlying basis of them is not scientific especially if those policies cost countless billions.
Meanwhile particle physicists have incredibly rigorous standards of falsification and only want a few million a year for new accelerators.
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;
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
Legal experts suggest that attribution studies could play a major role in lawsuits brought by citizens against companies, industries or even governments.
Money Shot.
Always follow the money.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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...
So... Every time we read about that "97% of scientists agree", we are to understand that it is mere hyperbole? I call BS.
People were happily shouting 97%! 97%! And now you were called on it, and suddenly it is only hyperbole. I'd say it was lies and manipulation, perpetrated throughout the media.
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.
And yet there are lots of things that the scientists have consensus in. How does the Sun shine is an example, along with related things such as, is the Sun getting hotter. The scientific consensus is pretty strong that the Sun shines through nuclear reactions even though no one has actually gone to the core of the Sun and observed fusion happening. Likewise the consensus is pretty strong that the Sun is getting hotter even though the rate is so low at perhaps a 10th of a degree every million years that we can't measure it and I've seen conflicting claims varying by 100's of millions of years about when it will get to hot for the Earth to support advanced life as we know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Whenever I see "scientific consensus" I see someone who doesn't know what Science actually is.
Whenever I see someone denying the existence of scientific consensus I see someone denying reality.
There's scientific consensus about all sorts of things like whether phlogiston exists, whether the Earth is flat, what the orbits of the planets are and so on and so forth.
You're trying to pretend that consensus doesn't exist in science in a last desperate attempt to rationalize your contrarian opinions on climate science.
Piltdown Man was once "Scientific Consensus" and we know how that turned out.
Congratulations, you qualify as being not even wrong. That's worse than being simply wrong by the way.
Even if we accept your assertion is correct (it isn't) your "logic" is still deeply flawed. Just because one bit of science was wrong in the past it doesn't stand to reason that a other bit in particular is going to get overturned.
Your reasoning could equally be used to disbelieve the (roughly) spherical earth theory because that's a consensus.
99.999% of science relies on consensus because it would never advance if everyone had to verify ecery one of the stack of theories themselves before advancing onto something new.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And that is exactly what this study shows which hasn't been shown before: that a small number of extreme events were very likely due to human influence on climate change, and not due to natural extremes that would have occured without human involvement. At the very least read the summary even if you don't follow the links.