Many people take the connection between climate change and extreme weather events — wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. — for granted. But the actual scientific data … tells a more complicated story.
Extreme weather events are everywhere and their connection to climate change is obvious.
At least … according to the media.
Many climate science researchers, however, make a more subtle claim: Climate change is real and humans are contributing to it — but there hasn’t been any corresponding explosion in extreme weather.
Why the confusion? Partially because the media is at the end of a long game of telephone. There are lots of people responsible for translating complicated scientific research into something laypeople can understand — and many of them don’t necessarily understand the science either.
The result: scenarios like the media rushing to blame the 2023 Canadian wildfires on climate change — despite the fact that the research shows no evidence of Canada being at elevated risk for climate-related fires.
These misperceptions have real-world consequences: Attributing every bout of extreme weather to forces outside of our control can leave us feeling powerless. But there is a wide array of tools we can use to mitigate the consequences of the most dangerous kinds of weather events.
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What about the apparent relationship between Climate Activism and Weather Extremism???
The relationship between a politician’s lips moving and telling lies is a little stronger.
And a yet stronger relationship is a Democrat Congress passing laws and my wallet getting proportionally lighter
They’ll take your wallet and you’ll be happy.
.
“Why the confusion? Partially because the media is at the end of a long game of telephone. “
Nope. Not in the slightest. The media, and politicians, are at the beginning of a long game called propaganda. They know exactly what they’re doing.
It’s gotten out of control, especially since government use of propaganda on U.S. citizens became legal. One source on the etymology of propaganda says that it’s derived from the Latin, “congregatio de propaganda fide,” meaning ‘congregation for propagation of the faith.’
On “climate change” propaganda, one might argue that this is in conflict with the separation clause.
When did “government use of propaganda on U.S. citizens became legal”?
Propaganda has always been used of course, but certain prohibitions to “informing” via “programming” of U.S. citizenry were removed about 10 years ago.
Here are two somewhat polar takes, so what? vs. propaganda ban repealed.
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/propaganda-so-what/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
Well, I’m not surprised- I see total nonsense here in Wokeachusetts in my field of forestry- not so much from the feds, but from the state- lies and propaganda, which I’ve been complaining about for half a century. Hasn’t made me popular here. One former state “Chief Forester” once testified to Congress about various forestry issues, representing the National Assoc. of State Chief Foresters. What he said was not only lies and propaganda, but complete idiocy- truly as stupid as humanely possible. Of course, I deconstructed it on the web site I started back around ’97 using lots of satire and sarcasm. He didn’t like it so he tried to have my forester license revoked. They sent me letters saying there were going to INVESTIGATE me for unprofessional behavior, though the behavior had nothing to do with my professional work. They let me swing in the wind for several months until I contacted the Boston office of the ACLU. That office had one of their attorneys get involved and she wrote a ferocious letter to the state- which almost immediately threw out the complaint. Despite what many people say about the ACLU being a bunch of commies, they do like to defend the first amendment and they’re pretty good at it- sufficient to convince the state to get their jack boots off my neck.
The head of the Department of Homeland Security declared that his department has both the power and the obligation to regulate misinformation. Of course his department also gets to define what is misinformation.
Damn, I thought it was called SPIN
Which reminds me of a George Carlin video I just watched:
Words That Hide the Truth – George Carlin
I saw him twice on stage- best live entertainment I’ve ever seen. I think he was a genius. I wish he was still around talking about the “climate emergency”.
Brilliant.
True for some- but I’ve talked with several politicians in Wokeachusetts and they are not very smart. Many have no clue about anything other than which way the political winds are blowing, then they vote in a way that will let them stay in office until they get a higher paying job, often as a lobbyist. It’s a nasty system but all political systems are nasty. I think it was Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
I agree. This is no miscommunication due to confusion.
There are some fools who believe this nonsense, but no one with a lick of curiosity can stay that spectacularly uninformed.
They know exactly what they’re doing.
And the “scientists” are complicit when they don’t call out the inaccurate reporting.
Man has no control over the weather, irregardless what the climate cult proclaims. To preserve one’s sanity it is best to realize what you can control and what you cannot. That limits the factors which can lead one to insanity, which is where the climate cult is at. They’re all nuts.
“irregardless”
Not a word.
pedantic person
Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter
Fret not over irregardless, its fate is beyond us and is less certain than ever. Word puts a red squiggle under it, but Docs accepts it.
Suggest you read: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-irregardless-a-real-word-heh-heh
They say, in part:
Is ‘Irregardless’ a Real Word?LOL, the look on your face right now.
It has come to our attention lately that there is a small and polite group of people who are not overly fond of the word irregardless. This group, who we might refer to as the disirregardlessers, makes their displeasure with this word known by calmly and rationally explaining their position … oh, who are we kidding … the disirregardlessers make themselves known by writing angry letters to us for defining it, and by taking to social media to let us know that “IRREGARDLESS IS NOT A REAL WORD” and “you sound stupid when you say that.”
The way dictionaries are compiled, they are not the authority on correct language or on correct words. They are simply a record of the words that people actually use. In practice, they do tend to show bias towards political correctness (not at all the same as language or word correctness).
[edit added] ‘incorrect’ it may be, but ‘irregardless’ is already in the Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/irregardless
have to admit I would just use regardless
what narks me is forecastED
when forecast is sufficient, and until american media mangled things, was the term used
i attended a stupid local school affair to deal with local school issues. The Vice-Principal said “irregardless” and my (school teacher) wife noticed my annoyance. She wrote on her notepad for me to see, “PhD in education.” Yes, indeed, “irregardless” is not a word–but many highly educated individuals use it.
To be pedantic (:-)) …
A word is a single unit of language that can be represented in writing or speech.
Any word is a combination of letters/sounds with a specific meaning.
If a non word is used … it becomes … a word !!
If it is used often, it enters the general language.
If it is not used often, it is still a word.
At least in English- some nations, like France, get anal about their language. 🙂
As long as everyone understands what was meant, then any complaint is meaningless. Ain’t it.
It is a word … because YOU just used “irregardless” to illustrate “irregardless” doesn’t exist !!
All hail Jeff, defender of the ling lang!
Irregardless, Jeff, it begs the question, 😉do you comment like that because you want to offend, because you don’t realize that it would offend, or because you don’t give a proverbial unit of excrement whether you offend?
Ironically, I also think it would be good if people used proper words properly. But regardless, that begs the question that there is such a thing as ‘proper words’, doesn’t it?
I left out
“Affectionately R.”
Poor Jeff! I would not have piled on had I first read all the other comments. All in fun!
Yesterday’s made-up word is tomorrows just plain word.
At one point in time, gay just meant happy.
Irregardless of your opinion, people will continue to use it.
“Ain’t” ain’t a word either. But we all know what it means.
I had to wear gloves this morning to help keep my hands warm. Didn’t need them in the afternoon as the temperature surged from about 48F to 76F over the course of the day.
Did you call 911 to report this “climate emergency”?
That would be good. But maybe I’ll send an anonymous letter instead of calling.
That’s quite a dramatic temperature increase… And you survived it??? Human is truly a miracle machine
I wear gloves to protect my hands while gardening. Many weeds have thorny spikes that also have irritating chemicals. My roses have thorns too–and they need regular pruning. Gloves are a must.
Another important post. Nice work.
The video is intelligible even at 2X speed. Well done.
These guys have a bunch of really well done and eye-opening videos on their web site.
There are two parts to the extreme weather attribution fraud. First, it is claimed that a contrived set of radiative forcings can be used in the climate models to match the global mean temperature record. This started with Hansen et al in 1981 (figure 5) and has continued through all of the IPCC reports as discussed by Ramaswamy et al [2019]. Second, starting with the Third IPCC climate assessment report (TAR, 2001) these forcings were divided into ‘natural’ and ‘anthropogenic’. The climate models were rerun to create a ‘natural’ baseline and an ‘anthropogenic’ warming in the global record. A rather vague statistical argument that the warming changed the ‘tails’ in the normal distribution (Gaussian) curve of the surface temperature was used create the illusion of an increase in extreme weather. This is illustrated in Figure 1. The original work was performed at the UK Hadley Climate Center by Stott et al [2000] and Tett et al [2000]. These are the people to blame for the start of the extreme weather argument that led to net zero.
In reality, an infrared radiative forcing or decrease in the long wave IR (LWIR) flux emitted to space produced by an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration does not change the energy balance of the earth. Nor does it produce an increase in surface temperature. Any slight heating of the troposphere is dissipated by wideband LWIR emission back to space.
Radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity are pseudoscientific nonsense.
A more detailed discussion of climate energy transfer is provided in the recent book ‘Finding Simplicity in a Complex World – The Role of the Diurnal Temperature Cycle in Climate energy Transfer and Climate Change’ by Roy Clark and Arthur Rörsch. A summary and selected abstracts are available at
https://clarkrorschpublication.com/.
More information on climate pseudoscience is available at https://www.venturaphotonics.com.
.pdf summaries can be downloaded using the links:
https://venturaphotonics.com/files/VPCP_025.1_GreenhouseGasForcings.pdf
https://venturaphotonics.com/files/VPCP_026.1_TheCorruptionofClimateScience.pdf
Figure 1: The ‘attribution’ of warming in the global mean temperature record to ‘anthropogenic’ causes. The contrived set of pseudoscientific forcings used by the climate models to simulate the global mean temperature record are separated into natural and anthropogenic sources. The climate models are rerun using the natural forcings to create a fraudulent ‘natural’ baseline and the anthropogenic forcings to show the ‘human caused’ warming. A vague statistical argument is used to claim that the anthropogenic warming caused an increase in the frequency and intensity of ‘extreme weather events’.
Roy Clark – I may be a bit pedantic in saying this, but I think it matters: Radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity are legitimate concepts, it is only misuse of them which is pseudoscientific nonsense. Incidentally, no-one has yet shown that climate sensitivity is a constant.
Part of the problem with using radiative forcing is that it is done using “averages” which don’t tell the whole story.
E.g. it is claimed that increased CO2 reduces cooling at night. Does it?
The cooling at night is an exponential/polynomial decay. That means that the higher the starting point the steeper the decay slope at the beginning. So if the sinusoidal daytime temp winds up being higher at sunset, the earth actually compensates by increasing the rate of decay starting at sunset.
Does this result in the earth actually increasing its cooling at night regardless of the CO2 in the atmosphere? The atmosphere may warm slightly due to the increased radiation from the earth but the surface actually cools off faster.
Where is this recognized in the “CO2 reduces cooling” theory? In the radiative forcing theory?
What really reduces cooling at night is humidity–water vapor. CO2 amounts are pretty consistent around the globe, but humidity isn’t. I guess these people never noticed the difference in night temperatures between humidity areas and desert areas.
It’s why it gets cold at night in Las Vegas but not in Miami! If it was CO2 controlling it they should both cool off the same.
Something that politicians and the media have never heard of:
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
the courage to change the things we can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I think many politicians and media people have heard that phrase
😉
The absurdity of claiming man made climate change makes the weather worse should be obvious to all. What then do we blame for all of the wonderful clement weather we get every day around the world?
For an immediate lack of anywhere else, I’m gonna drop this one in here…
How humans change the weather:
(Never mind climate, nobody knows what it is anyway)
It’s in the photo attached, which is in fact 2 photos
The 2 photos were taken within a minute of each other at about 05:00BST = an hour before sunrise in (very) rural Cambridgeshire.
The ‘top’ photo (looking north-west) shows a stubble field – there had been in fact beans still standing there until a few days before. But the plants themselves would have entirely died weeks ago with dead/blackened stalks carrying the bean-bearing pods remaining.
(Looking very similar to what a grassland fire would leave behind. Beans are an ugly crop, to eat as well as grow)
The lower photo was taken simply by turning the camera through 180° to look south east.
What you see is a crop of sugar beet – very green and very much alive, well, healthy and still growing.
Those 2 fields were simply on opposite sides of a (not very) main road.
What I want to know is: (I know but I want you to work it out or at least think on it)
Why is there fog/mist hanging over the dead/bare/desolate stubble field and why is there no mist/fog hanging over the green/living/alive & well field?
(Apart from the very far distance. The sugar field was/is surrounded by vast areas of winter-wheat stubble)
It does impinge on something that went past here recently = the oft-repeated quote about Autumn (fall)
How “Autumn is a season of mists (and mellow fruitiness)
Hint: Farmers made the mists but what is actually going on there, thermodynamically?
Yet once more, you were lied to by your kindergarten teacher
and Modern Science has reverted to exactly that: Kindergarten Science.
btw: I am NOT berating farmers – they are only doing what they are told to do;
Esp= Grow Cheap Food and mountains of it.
But as many of us know, there are no ‘cheap’ lunches – let alone Free Lunches
“Attributing every bout of extreme weather to forces outside of our control can leave us feeling powerless.”
Thinking it is within our control is probably worse. Making sacrifices to the sun god or finding witches to blame should be something of the past.
Such is human nature – are we going to change it?
I agree that this is a very poor choice of phrasing and word usage.
Who thinks we need to find a reason for natural processes that have always and will always occur?
Should we sit around assigning blame for Earthquakes and Volcanoes?
I see no reason to discuss weather using such terms as “attribution”.
oh for heavens sake! extreme events like fire flood and the rest ALWAY were and will remain utterly beyond human control
we can mitigate and build wisely but natures always going to throw a tanty and wipe someone or something out
thats life
and for countless generations we knew and accepted that
the worried looked to gods the less needy look to themselves
The weather is and will remain 100% outside of the control of people.
To suggest otherwise is to play by the rules of the alarmists.
Nope. Not in the slightest. The media, and politicians, are at the beginning of a long game called propaganda. They know exactly what they’re doing.
************
Our TV screens, computer monitors, and mobile devices are now just Orwellian telescreens to serve the policy agenda that MSM elites have all mapped out for us. All we have to do is listen, watch and believe.
An arrogant and egotistical mainstream media that believes it is entitled to engineer public policy and influence and control the belief systems of the masses is an MSM that has abandoned the whole idea of journalism. If it were possible, their FCC licenses should be pulled.
Orwellian Big Brother lives….
Oops, this was meant as a reply to Jeff Alberts above at 6:28PM on 9/21.
With cellphone cameras everywhere now we can see all the bad weather that occurs around the world and with radar and satellites we can now track all of the bad weather. That doesn’t mean there is more of it. The death rates from bad weather have been going down while coverage of bad weather has been going up.
“LONDON, March 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — At least 1,500 deaths in Britain can be directly linked to climate change since 2000, as the country grappled with severe heatwaves, while four major floods caused billions in financial losses, Oxford University scientists said on Tuesday.
In a study, they analysed existing data from two deadly heatwaves in 2003 and 2018…”
Friederike Otto blaming discretely solar driven heatwaves on human driven climate heating, when the truth is that climate cannot be modeled without such solar forcings.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQemMt_PNwwBKNOS7GSP7gbWDmcDBJ80UJzkqDIQ75_Sctjn89VoM5MIYHQWHkpn88cMQXkKjXznM-u/pub