Look out, folks! There’s a new rodeo in town – one that goes by the name of ‘Climate Attribution’. It’s got its sights set on every extreme weather event that has ever happened, and it’s not shy about taking credit for them either.
Here is the description of an upcoming session at AGU23, called “Bridging the Gap from Climate to Extreme Weather: Observations, Theory and Modeling”. They’ve got a whole bunch of scientists ready to convince us all how climate change is responsible for just about everything bad under the sun.
Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: Climate Attribution’s Best Friend
What tickles me is that these climate attribution studies all seem to be classics example of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. You know, that’s when a sharpshooter shoots at a barn, then draws a target around the closest cluster of bullet holes to boast about his accuracy.
This is precisely what’s happening with these extreme weather attributions. Climate scientists pick out the extreme weather events, paint a target around them, and voila, climate change did it! But what about the regular, run-of-the-mill weather events? Is climate change conveniently on vacation when those happen? If we want to talk about attribution, let’s put everything on the table, not just the extremes that make good headlines.
The “Bridge” to Nowhere
The conference blurb states that it aims to “bridge the gap between climate and extreme weather.” But isn’t this just creating a bridge where no river exists? It seems like a great effort to confirm their biases rather than objectively analyzing the data. And if the bridge does exist, they’ve only built half of it. Where are the studies showing climate change’s influence on mild, sunny days? Or on the perfectly average rainfall?
The Climate Physics of Convenient Omission
This conference promises to delve into “underlying climate physics” that generate extreme weather events. Now that’s a loaded term if I ever heard one. But let’s be real, physics doesn’t just switch on for hurricanes, tornadoes, and heatwaves. It’s always at work. So, why the selective study? Could it be that regular weather events don’t quite have the same ‘doom and gloom’ appeal?
Hitting the Bullseye or Just Firing Blanks?
The conference also promises to explore “the mechanisms by which their statistics vary across climate states, including global warming.” Now, I’m no statistician, but I know a thing or two about playing with numbers. When you’re only focusing on extreme events and attributing them to climate change, you’re not painting an accurate picture. You’re skewing the data to fit the narrative. It’s like firing a round of blanks and claiming you hit the bullseye.
While they’re at it, maybe these rodeo clowns can figure out why climate change is making EF-3 and stronger tornadoes decline in the US for over five decades. But in case that’s just TOO HARD, maybe they can get rid of the evidence, because that’s a lot less work and a lot less embarrassing.
So folks, as we watch this upcoming conference unfold, let’s not forget to keep a keen eye on where these sharpshooters are drawing their targets. How likely is it that they honestly exploring the influence of climate on weather events across the board, or are they just highlighting the extremes for a round of climate change bingo? And remember, it’s all fun and games until someone starts blaming sunsets on global warming.
For a bit of refreshing sanity, here’s Pielke Jr. on the hype over flood attribution:
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Does this climate attribution remind you more of science or sharpshooting?
HT/MM
30 years of weather affects climate by definition. Climate cannot affect weather, that’s the cart before the horse. Cause and effect. So simple a child can understand the concept.
Notice that not even the nick-picker has tried to defend the anti-science of “attribution studies”
For heatwaves, it is easy to assume some outcomes and be wrong.
An outstanding one says that if average temperatures over 100 years have warmed by 2 degrees C, then heatwaves have also become hotter by 2 degrees C. Then, it follows that heatwaves are related to climate change and thus, attribution studies can be used.
Couple of problems.
In the many detailed studies I have done with official Australian data, I find that most locations show no such increase in hottest heatwave temperatures. Some rise a little, some fall a little, but within the noise envelope.
Problem two is that the temperature noise variation over these 100 year spans is so large that a physical effect is usually impossible to show. Pat Frank has shown this with thermometer instrument performance. Bill Johnston on Bomwatch blog has shown this by correcting for the physical effects of rainfall on temperature measurements. Rain cools.
Third problem, the IPCC and The Establishment has uncritically agreed with a handful of Aussie lady academics that heatwaves are becoming hotter, longer and more frequent. Serious cherry picking, most of their analysis ignores data before 1950. It is also suspect from lack of treatment of uncertainty in past temperature measurements. When you analyse actual locations rather than aggregated regional data, you will not find support for IPCC dogma. I wish more people would do this and show the world.
Geoff S
Why is there low confidence that climate change is responsible? Surely that is high confidence that climate change does bigger all?
The wording has been deliberately chosen to avoid saying that. It would damage the overall message that they wish to convey.
All this talk of targets reminds me of this Far Side cartoon.
https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/234468724324527156/
Texas Sharpshooter. That always reminds me of the good ol’ days of the climate crisis debates. No one beat Watts and McIntyre.