From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Roger Pielke Jr looks at the science (or not!) behind extreme weather attribution:

In the aftermath of many high profile extreme weather events we see headlines like the following:
- Climate change made US and Mexico heatwave 35 times more likely — BBC
- Study Finds Climate Change Doubled Likelihood of Recent European Floods — NYT
- Severe Amazon Drought was Made 30 Times More Likely by Climate Change — Bloomberg
For those who closely follow climate science and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such headlines can be difficult to make sense of because neither the IPCC nor the underlying scientific literature comes anywhere close to making such strong and certain claims of attribution.
How then might we understand such high profile claims?
Read his full analysis here.
His take away message is that weather attribution from the outset was deliberately intended for political and media purposes. It was introduced because the IPCC was able to find any real evidence that weather was actually getting more extreme.
He notes:
First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends. This is not my opinion, but has been openly stated on many occasions by the researchers who developed and perform event attribution research.2 Such research is not always subjected to peer review, and this is often by design as peer-review takes much longer than the news cycle. Instead, event attribution studies are generally promoted via press release.
For instance, researchers behind the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative explain that one of their key motives in conducting such studies is, “increasing the ‘immediacy’ of climate change, thereby increasing support for mitigation.” WWA’s chief scientist, Friederike Otto, explains, “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” Another oft-quoted scientist who performs rapid attribution analyses, Michael Wehner, summarized their importance (emphasis in original) — “The most important message from this (and previous) analyses is that “Dangerous climate change is here now!”
.
It has certainly been successful in its objective. I can personally confirm that the BBC routinely not only headlines attribution claims as if they were fact, they even use them to reject my complaints, even when the actual data shows them to be false. To them, attribution claims and facts are interchangeable.
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Typo? “It was introduced because the IPCC was able to find any real evidence”
Did you take English at school?
Strange comment. I also noticed the lack of the word ‘not’ in the sentence.
I’ve been taking English all my life.
Doesn’t fit context of the article. It would make more sense with ‘unable’.
Yes, a typo.
His take away message is that weather attribution from the outset was deliberately intended for political and media purposes. It was introduced because the IPCC was UNable to find any real evidence that weather was actually getting more extreme.
It would seem he took the UN out of it. (/humor)
“IPCC was able” Should be “IPCC was unable”
The reason the IPCC owns its own “science”, is because it has been UNABLE to attribute weather events to any climate change, which, by definition takes 50 to 100 years of ACCURATE AND COMPLETE data, and such data still does not exist, even since 1979 when LIMITED AND INCOMPLETE satellite data started to become available.
Even with a 100 years of good data- it would be difficult to attribute weather events to events to a cause such as increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not at all! Just program your computers to show “it was CO2 wot dunnit.” Its what the UN IPCC has done to support their CliSciFi machinations.
According to the WEF, the WEF owns the science.
Just now, 05:30 GMT, some “expert” on BBC. Radio 4 told us that Cat 3,4 &5 hurricanes had become more frequent and stronger over the last 20 to 30 years because of man made climate change. The lies being told are just outrageous and any retractions or clarifications are never seen as widely as the original lie.
Men can give birth.
Right,, it says so in the bible
In my opinion, gender affirming care should involve psychology, not hormones and scalpels.
You are not alone in that
opinionintelligent understanding of biology and medicine..And what significance does “the last 20 to 30 years” have in “climate” terms when hurricane activity varies on annual, decadal, and multi-decadal time scales??
NONE!
I direct all of you to Table 12.12 on page 90 in Chapter 12 of the August 2021 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), such Table is titled “Emergence of Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs)” that exist now and that are projected to emerge by 2050 and 2100 by UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models using the wholly unlikely (exaggerated) future CO2 scenarios RCP8.5 and, newer, SSP5-8.5. Hurricanes, as listed on Table 12.12, are not now nor are they expected to “emerge” as “driving” climate change out to and beyond the year 2100.
It’s the BBC’s job to know that reality can’t possibly be true if it’s disproven by the narrative. And the narrative must be true, because there’s so much money and power to be extracted with it. If we aren’t all going to die without More Communism, the people pushing More Communism might be insufficiently fervent and fail at that all-important task.
It is remarkable how we are force to transition to communism (you will have nothing but you will be happy) given it was not that long ago that the major complaint was about consumerism (as in the economy needs more consumerism).
It is impossible to attribute any specific weather event to global warming. The entire field of climate attribution of weather events is pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. Anybody who supports this nonsense is either totally ignorant of climate science or is deliberately lying.
“Anybody who supports this nonsense is either totally ignorant of climate science or is deliberately lying.”
Why not both?
Point made. Add: or is addicted to the dopamine effects of sensationalism and fearmongering.
Sensationalism is by far the worlds greatest opioid. I would venture a guess it is much more addictive.
In the aftermath of many high profile extreme weather events we see headlines like the following:
Antarctica is too Green-
Antarctic Peninsula is worryingly greener than it’s ever been before (msn.com)
There is no escaping the dooming
OMG, there’s mosses being found there! We should panic!
Because OF COURSE less FROZEN WASTELAND is “bad news.”/sarc
The UK i newspaper ran the story under the headline “Scientists ‘shocked’ by Antarctic vegetation” (5th Oct)
They are in fact only talking about the Antarctic Peninsular and a small patch of the Peninsular that has increased in size from 1 sq km in 1986 to 12 sq kms (0.6 sq mile to 7.5 sq miles) in 2021.
Antarctica itself covers 14.2 million sq kms / 5.5m sq miles according to Britannica and NASA.
I think we should be very worried 🙂
1 sq km is 0.386 sq miles. I think you forgot to square the conversion factor
“I can personally confirm that the BBC routinely not only headlines attribution claims as if they were fact, they even use them to reject my complaints, even when the actual data shows them to be false.
To them, attribution claims and facts are interchangeable.”
It’s even worse – TV licence funded – BBC “fact checking”, is a pure demonstration of bias.
It is pushing all form of disagreement with their fakery into a “conspiracy theories” bollox area.
You couldn’t make it up, – it’s the BEEB with the unashamed bias and conspiracy.
We can remember how they made little fuss about the Teflon Tony claims of WMD in Iraq and justified bombing the daylights out of civilians there…
Idem the Hillsborough disaster – the cops Never did anything wrong.
Always defending pedos like Huw and Jimmy. WTF!
They do the same in middle east – “right to defend” ends up liquidating 30 000+ innocent women and kids.
NF worries about that from the BEEB.
It reminds of “the real fascists are those constantly stating it’s the other side are the fascists”.
(Actually very little better than Putin’s Russian federation, run by a band of thugs and murderers. They practiced their bombs and guns stuff first in Syria, just like Israel with yankee backing is now doing in Lebanon and Gaza).
Nothing new to see here.
“They do the same in middle east – “right to defend” ends up liquidating 30 000+ innocent women and kids.”
In WWII, America and Britain carpet bombed Germany. America also carpet bombed then nuked Japan. Japan killed about 2,500 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Hamas killed 1,400 people last year. But, America’s population is 35 times greater than Israel. It would be as if a terrorist group killed 50,000 Americans. What would America do then? Or Britain? The Palestinians and Lebanese should wipe out these terrorist cells if they want to avoid being smashed by Israel.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
When you grow up you’ll realize that all nations are run by thugs- but some are somewhat nicer than others. All nations are really just gangs that get as big as they can before others restrain them.
Maybe the thugs are the US?
I agree with some points but disagree with most.
However, while I still am allowed, I will defend your right to have and opinion and express it.
“They do the same in middle east – “right to defend” ends up liquidating 30 000+ innocent women and kids.”
Which were completely the fault of hamas, and no one else.
That is 97% true. There were acknowledged mistakes made, a few, far fewer than any prior war.
No it’s 100% true, since Hamas initiated the conflict.
In Britain it is seen to that everyday is furnished with a climate related story of some sort of grim context, landslide, flood in some part of the world. In recent times our Met Office has placed great emphasis on incidence of thunderstorms and, optionally, flooding, The Met Office has a massive Cray computer bashing away at climate models but how clever of its analysts and programmers to factor in floods! As for lightning, most people here would treat electrical storms as an interesting phenomenon such as a meteorite shower. The whole thing seems to be a desperate attempt to make nature a gruesome enemy threatening and heartless. As for flooding, we also suffer from neglected sewage systems and the ejection of untreated sewage waste into sea and river during periods of high rainfall. It’s not nature, stupid, it’s the lack of timely civil engineering projects neglected by an impoverished country. All the more reason why money should be spent on what is in front of us rather than expenditure on gaming the weather.
I feel utterly sorry for the UK people for being screwed over, again and again.
The present course is a spiral to doom.
The UK needs an uprising and a FRENCH REVOLUTION
Throw all the bastards out and elect a new parliament NOT BASED ON PARTIES, BUT ON MERRIT, and a cabinet with competent people,, instead of party hacks
French Revolution, as in “le guillotine?”
Oui!
His take away message is that weather attribution from the outset was deliberately intended for political and media purposes. It was introduced because the IPCC was (able) UNABLE to find any real evidence that weather was actually getting more extreme.
A big typo right there….
Let’s see, a change of 1:10000 CO2 concentration over 100 years causes global climate change. A change of stratospheric water vapor of 1:10 over night has no impact. Did I sum up climastrology correctly?
It has in fact become a social construct.
From the article: “His take away message is that weather attribution from the outset was deliberately intended for political and media purposes. It was introduced because the IPCC was [not] able to find any real evidence that weather was actually getting more extreme.”
You left out “not” in the above quote which completely changes the meaning of the sentence.
Weather attribution is Climate Alarmists substitute for facts and evidence. Climate Alarmists don’t have the evidence to prove that CO2 is doing what they think it is doing, so, in order to keep their jobs going they resort to “Weather Attribution Alchemy”. A perfect description, btw. Weather attribution is something other than science. It’s politics all the way down.
“First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends.”
Agreed. But also, the attribution of reported warming trends on land and in the oceans to incremental concentrations of CO2 has been unsound from the start. The UNFCC and IPCC, with all the subsequent reports and claims, have employed “tactical science” on a slightly longer timescale. The same approach – publishing unreliable attribution research – is now being applied to weather events, which makes the core error more obvious to honest scientists like Pielke, Jr. But it’s all the same manufactured illusion about CO2 and other non-condensing GHGs.
Hindcasting (an interesting way of expressing it) is merely curve fitting. Curve fitting is totally useless for projections, forecasts, and the like.
Hindcasting… is that like putting your ass in a sling?
Pielke is too generous in referring to what WAA does as “tactical science”. It is not science at all but rather just sciency sounding propaganda. You cannot be taken seriously in any science field when you openly declare your bias and then practice confirmation bias in your so-called research. These people are simply con artist preying on the scientific illiteracy and innumeracy of the press, politicians and the general public. Sadly, the careers of many fine and honest scientists who dare to raise questions have been severely harmed by the “cancel culture” response.
Good points.
I “attribute” the Bears losing the game because they didn’t pass enough on first downs..” True or false? It will never be known either way.
Weather is chaotic. Not the the normal distribution we expect.
As a result, extremes are wrongly attributed to “change” when in fact they are to be expected.
This leave attribution wide open to bogus claims. Apply the wrong statistical model and you can get any answer you want.
The misuse of language/words in terms of “weather reporting” is also rampant and feeds the nonsense.
When they spew about “above/below NORMAL” regarding temperature, precipitation or what have you, that is simply incorrect; what is actually being discussed is “above/below AVERAGE.” That average being based on a 30-year span which is meaningless in “climate” terms anyway.
There IS NO ‘NORMAL.’ It’s WEATHER. You get what you get.
If you do not like the weather, hang around for a few minutes for it is bound to change.
Control the language, control the ideas.
— K. Marx
“First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends. This is not my opinion, but has been openly stated on many occasions by the researchers who developed and perform event attribution research. Such research is not always subjected to peer review, and this is often by design as peer-review takes much longer than the news cycle. Instead, event attribution studies are generally promoted via press release.”
***********
I imagine that the report below might qualify as “tactical science” that is intended for the politicians and the media rather than advancing science….
“The Very Fabric Of Life On Earth Is Imperiled,” Says 2024 State Of The Climate Report
https://tinyurl.com/4mvywbp5
“In the annual report published today, an international coalition of scientists provides an update on how Earth is faring against climate change, measuring dozens of categories called “planetary vital signs”. The report states that at least 25 of these 35 vital signs have already reached record extremes.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled,” the study authors write in their introduction.”
***********
Why is the B.S. alarm going off in my head?
Obviously, you are very perceptive.
And intelligent.
Should read “because the IPCC was UNABLE to find any real evidence that weather was actually getting more extreme”
That’s one *major* typo (no pun intended).
I am with the folks who think the paragraph introducing the article is missing “not” or “unable” here where the “x” is :
Sounds like most of this is accomplished by press release. Freedom of the press is not freedom to lie. These mongrels need to be held accountable. Lying is not okay and we need to stop putting up with it.
Well they will always have “climate scientists” who are really climate ACTIVISTS to provide them cover.
BBC last night…
Weather attribution bloke…. ”climate change is making extreme weather worse”
BBC bloke.. ”How confident are you”
Weather attribution bloke… ”We are confident because me did many simulations”
BBC weather bloke… ”I see, it’s very troubling”