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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A NOAA study has been published, which claims to attribute various extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change.
According to the NOAA press release;
“For the past four years, this report has shown that human activities are influencing specific extreme weather and climate events around the world,” said Thomas R. Karl, LHD, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “In the 79 papers that have been published through the annual report over the past four years, over half of these papers show a linkage to human-caused climate change.”
When a climate change influence is not found it could mean two things. First, that climate change has not had any appreciable impact on an event. Or, it could also mean that the human influence cannot be conclusively identified with the scientific tools available today.
In this year’s report, 32 groups of scientists from around the world investigate 28 individual extreme events in 2014 and break out various factors that led to the extreme events, including the degree to which natural variability and human-induced climate change played a role.
Read more: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/explaining-extreme-events-2014
The strapline of the report betrays the speculative nature of this effort;
This BAMS special report presents assessments of how climate change may have affected the strength and likelihood of individual extreme events.
The disclaimer in the report itself is even funnier;
Challenges that attribution assessments face include the often limited observational record and inability of models to reproduce some extreme events well. In general, when attribution assessments fail to find anthro- pogenic signals this alone does not prove anthropogenic climate change did not influence the event. The failure to find a human fingerprint could be due to insufficient data or poor models and not the absence of anthropogenic effects.
Lets just say I would be a lot more impressed if NOAA could explain the extreme events of 2016, rather than trying to retrofit alarmist explanations to events they have no skill to predict. Starting with an assumption that an anthropogenic effect is playing a substantial role is not the same as demonstrating that this is the case. Retrofitting an explanation is easy – everyone can explain a stock market crash, after it occurs.
Consider the following (talking about Californian wildfires);
… A process called CO2 fertilisation (Donohue et al. 2013) tends to increase vegetation activity simply through the uptake of an increasing atmospheric CO2. Under such a scenario along with a wetter climate, vegetation growth would increase and subsequently supply sufficient fuel load.
And here I was thinking California was scheduled for perpetual drought. But I guess this is NOAA, they can disagree with James Hansen if they want.
Interestingly the report contains a testable prediction or two. Some good news for people in the Upper Midwest, who suffered through the brutal 2013-2014 winter. According to NOAA, nobody is likely to ever see such a winter again;
… While a winter comparable to 2013/14 would have been roughly a once-a-decade event in 1881 (return periods from 5–20 years), it has become roughly a once-in-a-thousand years event in 2014 (return periods from 90 to over 10 000 years). is implies that extremely cold winters are two orders of magnitude less frequent in today’s climate than in that of around 1881. Using a Gaussian t rather than GPD, the change in probability for such a cold winter would go from once-in-14 years in 1881 to once-in-200 years in 2014 (Supplemental Fig. S3.6). Due to the area-averaging, these changes in odds are more extreme than those found by van Oldenborgh et al. (2015) for individual stations since 1951, but match the drastic reduction in odds that Christidis et al. (2014) computed for cold springs in the United Kingdom. …
But lets assume for the sake of argument, that NOAA are right, and climate change is causing more extreme weather. What should we do about it?
Would you rather face a dangerous hail storm on your bicycle, or would you prefer to be protected by a safety capsule made of steel and toughened glass?
Would you prefer to suffer an extreme heatwave with, or without, the benefits of air conditioning? How insufferable would Summer be, if you couldn’t afford to cool your house, because electricity bills had skyrocketed beyond your ability to pay?
Would you give up home heating, so people who won’t be born until you are long dead, could enjoy a few more snow days?
Would you give up your right to travel by air, to make room for people rushing to attend climate conferences in exotic holiday destinations?
Nothing about the climate movement makes sense.
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Absolutely the most pathetic excuse for science I’ve read in a while. Have these people no shame?
Would you give up your car, to stop a few heatwaves?”
Of course not, I’ll need my nice air-con even more if there are heatwaves.
I am starting to see the way this is going, since no side is able to attain a clear victory
Concessions and fig leaves will be given to both sides while the tax plan marches on.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/11/06/world/ap-climate-countdown-emissions-report.html?_r=1
[snip – off topic rant -mod]
Try snipping the rest of the OT posts
“Would you give up your car, to stop a few heatwaves?”
Good luck trying to stop fun like this:
That’s just dumb.
I thought the same thing back in the 70s when someone tore up the asphalt on private property.
Of course the bill for repairs was sent.
Of course it is dumb, those poor tires.
The engines gotta love showing what they are capable of though ?
We had a ’68 nova when I was in Jr. high. My big brother would do ‘neutral drops’ and burn rubber with a 250ci straight six and a 4:10 axle. The rear end was really light and traction was bad in slick conditions. Oversteer was a problem if you weren’t prepared for it. My hand-me-down ’63 Belvidere was actually better in the snow and it had a clutch, so I could bark two gears with a 225ci slant six.
Someone really oughta canvas the RYC for an opinion …
“Who has more fun than people ?”
Yep, the world over …
[Note: “Kent Pitman” is a sockpuppet name used by a banned commenter. Mr. ‘Pitman’ has wasted a lot of time only to have all his comments deleted. ~mod.]
Except that nobody in China or India will do anything so you will still look like a fool.
Even if the rationing is insane?
Sorry I am more “Believers and Lemmings first”.
I support government action toward Obesity that puts us all on the same playing field. If we need to be vegetarians, we should all be vegetarians. Asking people to be vegetarians, individually, and at their own discretion is not the same thing at all. If I unilaterally decide to go without, my family may think me crazy or my work may think me irresponsible or my customers may think me confused about priorities. But if I do the same actions in response to legal requirements, then so must my other family members, my co-workers, and my business competitors. No one then views my actions as looney or irresponsible or unresponsive. I no longer am indulging in some whim that sets me apart, nor is my effort lost because I do it and most others don’t. Now my efforts are a normal part of a greater whole, and their significance joins the actions of enough others so as to matter.
[Note: “Kent Pitman” is a sockpuppet name used by a banned commenter. ~mod.]
But as Willis pointed out in a recent article, whilst cattle numbers are up, in effect there are little more cattle today in the US than there were wild bison in the 1800s. We have just replaced one species with another, and the amount of methane that they produce is similar..
“…my family may think me crazy or my work may think me irresponsible, etc.”
Rational thinking people will still think the same about your mental state, in a government controlled future, as they do now. Your rationalization that allows you to do goofy stuff will not fool anyone.
Prohibition worked great! Between 1920 and 1933 not one drop of alcohol was consumed in the United States. It was an amazing accomplishment. The playing field was leveled for the “greater good.” Just ask Joe Kennedy.
If NOAA has insufficient data why aren’t they there collecting it instead of writing harebrained reports.
Because the purpose of the report was to provide quotable quotes for politicians. Nothing to do with data or science. Keep on eye out for pronouncements from Obama and senior staff to follow to the effect that NOAA says…
Yep. Here’s the quote: “For the past four years, this report has shown that human activities are influencing specific extreme weather”.
So it doesn’t matter if there is no real data in the report. It’s really a report that’s says they could get a report with real numbers if the models worked, but they don’t, so this is what we would want the results to say, and maybe the results would say what we are guessing because no one really knows for sure. Then the press can say “But this report says it’s all true!” I’m seriously just waiting for them to fake everything and just go with it. Why not? The ends justify the means to these tunnel vision idiots. The truth is not what they are seeking.
“In the 79 papers that have been published through the annual report over the past four years, over half of these papers show a linkage to human-caused climate change.”
…that has to be a lie
It’s a prerequisite for all papers to show a linkage to human-caused climate change.
If the contrary is there, it is not going to publish. The same is also true if the paper is from a person who does not believe in man made global warming. If published, it suffers unusual delay.
Plus intense investigation and criticism of it’s author’s funding sources.
..dammit! it’s is a contraction of it is. Stowaway apostrophe. (“the crux of the biscuit”)
The “Godzilla” of El Nino’s to inundate LA On BreitBart, http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/11/07/el-nino-godzilla-of-storms-predicted-to-wreak-havoc-on-california-destroy-homes/
Just for a laugh.
First, what’s the definition of an “extreme weather event”? How can one say there’s more, or less of them until we know what they are?
What’s a “climate event”?
Anything which “could” have a “human attribution” component. Otherwise, it’s “just weather”.
Huddersfield, 2017
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/06/desert620_1857005b-460×288.jpg
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100222487/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-we-have-to-trust-our-scientists-because-they-know-lots-of-big-scary-words/
“In general, when attribution assessments fail to find anthropogenic signals this alone does not prove anthropogenic climate change did not influence the event.”
In other words, we humans are guilty until proven innocent. Wow…
What the hell is a attribution assessment? These guys spend a crap load of time and money in an attempt to prove something that is not provable (either way) , and of course fail. Then they state that their failure to prove a positive does not prove the negative is true.
(then they say that their motives are pure and should not be questioned … they are scientists by God! And e-mails that relate to, and lead up to this garbage are not relevant to the final outcome.)
Cut the funds.
If they are scientists by God, then let the church fund them.
Oh no! I said that on a Sunday…
DonM:
You ask
It is the exact opposite of what climastrologists pretend it is.
In an attribution study (or ‘assessment’) a system is assumed to be behaving in response to suggested mechanism(s) that is modeled, and the behaviour of the model is compared to empirical data. If the model cannot emulate the empirical data then there is reason to suppose the suggested mechanism is not the cause (or at least not the sole cause) of the changes recorded in the empirical data.
It is important to note that attribution studies can only be used to reject hypothesis that a mechanism is a cause for an observed effect. Ability to attribute a suggested cause to an effect is not evidence that the suggested cause is the real cause in part or in whole.
But climastrologists DO claim attribution studies are evidence that a suggested a mechanism – notably AGW – IS a cause of climate change. These claims are not science, and they usually have the form
“a model cannot emulate observed global warming unless an anthropogenic effect is included “.
The game of Cludo demonstrates why attribution assessments can reject a suggested cause but not demonstrate a suggested cause is correct. At the start of the game all the ‘suspects’ may be attributed as being the ‘murderer. The game progresses by obtaining evidence which rejects suspects as being the ‘murderer’ until only one suspect remains.
Climastrologists start with only one ‘suspect’ (usually AGW) although there are many possible ‘suspects’ both known and unknown.
Richard
“inability of models to reproduce some extreme events well. In general, when attribution assessments fail to find anthro- pogenic signals this alone does not prove anthropogenic climate change did not influence the event. The failure to find a human fingerprint could be due to insufficient data or poor models”
Well after all, the IPCC “models” and those “geographers” running the models have demonstrated to great extent their “lack of ability, lack of knowledge and lack of talent” for forecasting, predicting and projecting the current “climate” or even the climate of 30 minutes from now let alone the climate 5, 10, 50 or 100 years hence.
And the lack of a “fingerprint” of Man may just be well due to a fact that there is NO “fingerprint” of Man.
In Paris when the Attorney General of New York State dines with the Latin-Pope Francis, and exchange “sushi” in an embrace, the fate of “Elliot Spitzer” also a former attorney general of New York State who welded the 1921 Martin Act, only to his own demise.
I happened to be at the same hotel in DC when the “Feds” informed Mr. Spitzer a few (or one) doors away, and I was only complaining of the wifi connection being buggers and was whisked away into another room far away on the other side of the building. I had no idea of what was going on until much later.
Ha ha True Story
Side note: What is the American Geophysical Union’s interest in this? Ah Ha! Pssst “Google” That!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/07/us-exxon-mobil-climatechange-case-idUSKCN0SW01M20151107#Ep8OKV66dmQ8IhFH.97
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer
I’m inclined to think there is an influence, but that it’s so small it gets lost in the noise.
It’s hard to imagine a more unscientific statement.
What we are seeing here is self-delusion. Since the climate is not doing what they thought it would do they are in a panic. They are looking for anything they can find to back their previous claims. This is actually quite a well known behavioral reaction to failure.
Watch out for Thom Karl. He twists facts.
Usually that’s called lying.
“Would you give up your car, to stop a few heatwaves?”
Well, normally I have to plug in my truck and tractor during the winter to get them to start. They aren’t electric, they are diesel. The gasoline car needs the same when not garaged. Heat wave? How about cold waves. I try to do my part to cancel out those nasty sinusoidal waves.
After this summer I would willingly give up my car to GET a few heat waves.
CO2 from cars is OK.
It’s the CO2 from coal-fired power stations which is the nasty stuff.
You need to be a highly accredited climate scientist to know the difference between the two types of CO2.
I would be happy to give up my catalytic converter!
Local papers gleefully ran with the story-the headline is all that mattered. NOAA and other fed agencies are slowly conditioning the low information voters, the superstitious and the gullible to blindly accept their agit-propaganda. At the same time NOAA and others try to reverse the null hypothesis, even for those who’ve never heard of null hypothesis, especially those, due to not having any science education or critical thinking ability. Remember Trenberth insisting the null hypothesis has to be reversed in his feeble attempt to sway others to first assume humans are affecting climate/weather and to rationalize the complicity in promoting junk science(fraud).
NOAA is now the biggest Climate Liar on the planet:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/images/no%20slow%20down%20in%20global%20warming.jpg
Bruce Cobb,
Good catch. It’s hard to believe it, but NOAA has decided that lying is their only alternative, now that it’s been almost 20 years of no global warming:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PaintImage113.png
NOAA routinely “adjusts” the past temperature record:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/NOAA-september-2014-2015.gif
Your plots are of note, but are you convinced that the blue shaded area between 1991 and 1005 is all because of Mt. Pinatubo?
Have a look at the satellite data from 1980 to 1996, it shows a similar but deeper dip between 1983 and 1988, and another broadly similar dip commencing in 1988 reaching its trough in 1989.
I attach a plot covering the period 1980 to 1996. If you did not know the date of Mt Pinatubo, you would be hard pressed to identify when on that plot, the eruption took place. There is quite simply so much short term variability. See;
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1996
What about plotting a parallel line from about 1900 to 1940. It would be just as steep from which one could reasonable conclude that the 1950 to date warming is no faster than the natural (non CO2 induced) warming between about 1900 to 1940. What does NOAA say about that?
Reason why cooling in troposphere were due to volcanoes is shown below and how they affected the stratosphere. The ratio in change between stratosphere and troposphere is around 3:1. The temperatures out of this range are down to stratospheric aerosols. Therefore minimum temperature change during Pinatubo is 0.25 c and minimum for El Chichon 0.1 c.
http://www.biocab.org/Temperature_Anomaly_Stratosphere.jpg
Thing is, of course, giving up your car wouldn’t stop anything except your travels.
No!
“The failure to find a human fingerprint could be due to insufficient data or poor models and not the absence of anthropogenic effects.”
But wait a minute. Presumably the models used are the same, or at least similar, in both cases – the cases where attribution to AGW can be made as well as those cases where such attribution cannot be made. Nobody undertaking such an investigation starts out with a “poor model”, at least not one they know to be poor; presumably they deem it to be a “good model”, which is why they are using it. So why is the model poor or the data insufficient only when no attribution to AGW can be made? Could it not be the case that a poor model or insufficient data leads to misattribution to AGW where none exists? Is that impossible somehow? And is this what passes for the scientific method with the AMS?