Last June, the state-reliant BBC reported that human-caused climate change had made U.S. and Mexico heatwaves “35 times more likely”. Nothing out of the ordinary here in mainstream media with everyone from climate comedy turn ‘Jim’ Dale to UN chief Antonio ‘Boiling’ Guterres making these types of bizarre attributions. But 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”, observes the distinguished science writer Roger Pielke. In a hard-hitting attack on the pseudo-scientific industry of weather attribution, he states: “neither the IPCC nor the underlying scientific literature comes anywhere close to making such strong and certain claims of attribution”.
Pielke argues that the extreme position of attributing individual bad weather events is “roughly aligned” with the far Left. “Climate science is not, or at least should not serve as a proxy for political tribes,” he cautions. But of course it is. The Net Zero fantasy is a collectivist national and supra-national agenda that increasingly relies on demonising bad weather. With global temperatures rising at most only 0.1°C a decade, laughter can only be general and side-splitting when IPCC boss Jim Skea claims that British summers will be 6°C hotter in less than 50 years. Two extended temperature pauses since 2000 have not helped the cause of global boiling. In addition there are increasing doubts about the reliability of temperature recordings by many meteorological organisations that seem unable to properly account for massive urban heat corruptions.
The big problem for ‘far Left’ climate extremists is that event attribution is a form, in Pielke’s words, of “tactical science”. Such science serves legal and political ends and is not always subject to peer review. As the BBC and other media outlets can attest, the work is “generally promoted via press release”. It has been developed in response to the failure of the IPCC to detect and attribute most types of extreme weather including drought, flooding, storms and wildfires to human involvement, notes Pielke. Worse, the IPCC can find little sign of human involvement going forward to 2100.
Scientists cannot answer directly whether particular events are caused by climate change since extremes occur naturally. Meanwhile the IPCC is somewhat dismissive about weather attribution, or as Pielke terms it, “weather attribution alchemy”. It notes: “The usefulness or applicability of available extreme event attribution methods for assessing climate-related risks remains subject to debate.” The IPCC is a biased body full of climate alarmists, but its inability to attribute single events to humans is obviously highly irritating and somewhat inconvenient for activists and their media counterparts.
Dr. Friederike Otto runs World Weather Attribution (WWA) out of Imperial College London and is a frequent presence on the BBC. WWA is behind many of the immediate attributions of bad weather to human causes and its motives are clear. As Dr. Otto has noted: “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” Otto is clear that the main function of such studies, part-funded by Net Zero-supporting billionaires and heavily pushed by aligned mainstream media, is to support lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. She explains this strategy in detail in the interview, ‘From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation‘.
The inability of the IPCC to attribute bad weather to humans has been viewed by climate advocates as “politically problematic”, continues Pielke. He notes the work of climate activists Elizabeth Lloyd and Naomi Oreskes who are worried that the lack of attribution “conveys the impression that we just do not know, which feeds into uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness, and the general tendency of humans to discount threats that are not imminent”.
Perish the thought that there should be uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness in the settled world of climate science. It is of course different from all other branches of science in that all its opinions are right and consequently there is no need for the unhelpful process of constant inquiry and experiment. It need hardly be added that no doubt exists at the BBC, where former Radio 4 Today Editor Sarah Sands wrote the foreword to a WWA guide for journalists. Recalling when the late Nigel Lawson suggested there had been no increase in extreme weather, Sands noted: “I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim.” These days, Sands enthused, attribution studies have given us “significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse”.
For her part, Otto is keen to crack down on the heretics. She was at the forefront of the recent notorious retraction of a paper in a Springer Nature journal that stated there was no evidence that the climate was breaking down. Written by four Italian scientists and led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti, they argued that a climate emergency was not supported by the data. Otto, who had previously worked in the Oxford School of Geography for 10 years, claimed the scientists were not writing in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly saying it should never have been published,” she demanded.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Climate attribution is therefore the same sort of mercenary as “expert witnesses” so beloved by predatory liability lawyers.
I know a so called “expurt witness”.
He turned out to be an utter conman ripping off our whole family on a totally spurious basis for 5 grand+.
Police were NOT interested.
The climate hypers are ripping off the whole of society for far larger sums than that, which is so true of the “Jimmy and Huw” Beeb.
eg “dangerous life threatening hurricanes”, that weren’t,
so loved by the Rowlatt ” Ethical Man, and “Ethical Wife” FFS!
Poynting, Ruggeri, Bennett, Unsworth, the dreaded McGrath and more all in “the brain washing brigade”.
https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/reports/policies/sustainability
WTF!
https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-issues-internal-guidance-on-how-to-report-climate-change/
WTF2!
On day one of my engineering degree the head of the faculty addressed the 400 freshies and at one point stated that an engineer NEVER refers to themselves as ‘an expert’. An ‘EXPERT’ is the combination of two elements , ‘X’, an unknown quantity and ‘SPURT’, ‘a drip under pressure’.
That said, I do feel a bit for the leftard climate monkeys and their fanatical belief in climate catastrophe and associated ideology. The sad evidence is that ideology and reality have never mixed even socially let alone agreed. Something really needs to be done about reality frankly. I know the IPCC are working on it but are still falling frustratingly short….. I mean it just so wrong that we don’t have satellite data going back to at least the last ice age. Its obviously private enterprise that is at fault in that regard either not paying enough tax or worse a fascist conspiracy. Equally wrong is the increased population of humans on earth and all the physical infrastructure built even say just over the last century or so in coastal and other lower level, more fertile areas. It has completely muddied the data record and again the capitalists would not put in place even a comprehensive surface based array of thermometers including on the 70% of earth’s surface covered by seas.
It’s so sad to watch unfold ….. 🙁
Well guess what Climate Activists, even your vaunted IPCC and their proffered Climastrologists CAN’T make the human connection with Climate Change. You MUST accept this as they are YOUR Climastrologists.
No no, they won’t. It’s against their religion.
It is not only “doughts, floods, storms and wildfires” that stubbornly resist these alarmist claims of crisis. Alarmists hang their case heavily on heatwaves.
Sceptical scientists should be ashamed of themselves for letting heatwaves figure. The papers most often quoted to support heatwaves becoming “longer, hotter and more frequent” do not always stand up under scrutiny. Most oft-quoted papers start after 1950, so omit the 1896 Bourke heatwave in Australia that was horrendous and the multiple records set in the dustbowl times of the 1930s in the US, for example.
I have studied the official daily temperature records of more than 100 BOM Australian weather stations. I cannot find support for alarmist heatwave claims. Maybe the IPCC can be more thorough and finally lump heatwaves with storms, wildfires etc as not having a connection to climate change strong enough to bother.
Question is, in which other countries have sceptics bothered enough to do similar heatwave analysis for their own countries? Perhaps there is some research, but my reading has failed to find it. The task of calculating simple heatwave properties is childishly easy, so why not do it?
Here are 128 graphs that summarize 8 significant cities in Australia, chosen primarily for length of weather observation records, which can correlate with population as here they go back to the 1860s. An N-DAY heatwave is simply the hottest average each year of N consecutive Tmax temperatures. For Australia, ACORN-SAT temperatures are those officially adjusted by BOM, while CDO are raw.
Go on, you sceptics who can use Excel, do the analysis and tell the world. You might finally leave the alarmists with no claims for any need for crisis talk if heatwaves are eliminated.
The link here is a long one, so please give it time to download.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx
You may want to take a look at Tony Heller’s website https://realclimatescience.com/#gsc.tab=0
He has done quite a bit of review of US weather records, which are very different than the touted ‘dramatic’ temperature increases reported by the US government.
It was Tony’s work that first helped deprogram my brainwashed mind living all my life here in Wokeachusetts. 🙂
Activists say they are following the Science, well that’s only until it does not say what they want it to say. Trouble is there are enough activists masquerading as scientists to make stuff up for them eg RCP8.5 .
No, they never say they are following the science. They tell you to “follow the science” as if that’s all it takes to get you to believe that they are.
Of course, once you do “follow the science”, you immediately realize that the oceans are not acidifying or boiling, there is no ice free arctic ocean, there is no tropical tropospherical hotspot and that atmospheric CO2 cannot heat ocean water.
That’s 5 claims climate activists make that simply are not a result of “following the science”.
There are more as anyone who can read is well aware.
The IPCC telling the truth? Perhaps the truth has become unavoidable.
Truth has been inconvenient for a long time now.
“the
state-reliantofficial propaganda mouthpiece BBC”They must repent- go to confession- then say 10 Hail Mary’s and 10 Our Fathers and beg God for forgiveness!
From the article: “The big problem for ‘far Left’ climate extremists is that event attribution is a form, in Pielke’s words, of “tactical science”. Such science serves legal and political ends and is not always subject to peer review.”
Such “science” doesn’t deserve to be called science. It’s not science, it is guessing, plain and simple.
Its not even guessing; they cook the books to say what they want the models to say.
re “the failure of the IPCC to detect and attribute most types of extreme weather including drought, flooding, storms and wildfires to human involvement”: I think the IPCC detect them OK[*], it’s just that they can’t be attributed to “climate change”.
[*] ie, they find them in the records – IPCC does not do research.
Fascinating is the ongoing rage whether the US has/can or has not/can not control the weather.
Yet the powers that be believe we can control the climate by eliminating CO2?
Connect the dots! How many lies will it take before we all fall down and genuflect to the gods of the climate religion.
At a current level of 427ppm of atmospheric CO2, the ratio of CO2 to atmosphere is one part CO2 to each 2340 parts of atmosphere. How can such a minor CO2 presence be thought to be a driver of World temperature and climate?
Dr Otto, Fredi to her friends, is a physicist with a doctorate in the philosophy of science. Whilst at Oxford she told ‘Oxford People’
“What were concerns over the impact on (sic) climate change are understood realities, it is costing thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths globally every single year”
“37% of deaths from heatwaves in the last 30 years have been caused by climate change. And that is a conservative estimate”
She believes everything her computer tells her.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/oxford-people/fredi-otto
“it is costing thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths globally every single year”
Or “perhaps” not.
Maybe, maybe not. This is what passes for science among Climate Alarmists.
The GALL of these people to talk that way and then use FF every day, the hypocrisy!
No alternative to the truth
“No alternative to the truth.” That is universally true over time. “One can ignore reality but one cannot ignore the effects of ignoring reality.” [I don’t remember who first said that.]
They can’t handle the truth. (h/t to Jack Nicholson)
Because it’s devastating to their case. (h/t to Jim Carrey)
The inability of the IPCC to attribute bad weather to humans has been viewed by climate advocates as “politically problematic”, continues Pielke.
Given IPCC is a political organization, it is.
From the above article:
“Otto, who had previously worked in the Oxford School of Geography for 10 years, claimed the scientists were not writing in good faith.”
Let’s clarify that a bit. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friederike_Otto ,
she is an Honorary Research Associate of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford. She earned a PhD in philosophy of science from the Free University of Berlin in 2012. “Otto also works with lawyers using WWA research to provide expertise for lawsuits aimed at compelling companies or governments to lower their impact on the environment or even seek compensation for victims.”
As anyone can see, Ms. Otto’s bon fides certainly mean that she is qualified to comment on others “writing in bad faith”. 😳
/sarc
Errr . . . in last sentence make that “bona fides”.
So “Climate Change” is used with a specific definition of “human caused warming” and nothing else.
That, according to the BBC guidance provided in the links.
Of course we don’t know. We may never know. That’s why adaptation is always better than mitigation. We’re good at adapting, but terrible at mitigating nature.
Speaking of “lack of attribution”:
Who among humanity has any real comprehension, let alone understanding, of all of the “forcing factors” and interactions of the “coupled, non-linear, chaotic system” (IPCC words) we call climate, which has interdependencies in the disciplines of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, fluid dynamics, radiation physics, air and ocean chemistries, geology (including plate tectonic movements), oceanography, celestial mechanics, and dynamics of complex non-linear temporal and 3-D spatial variances in a system with poorly characterized non-linear feedback and feed-forward loops, ill-defined capacitances, integral asymptotic limits and distinct possibilities of “tipping points” of instability (e.g., the causes of past, irregular, multi-million-year Ice Ages and subsequent spontaneous recoveries from such).
And beyond this there are the so-called unknown “unknowns”, as in:
“We don’t even know what we don’t know” (about climate).
Your statements “Of course we don’t know. We may never know.” ring so very true.
“Who among humanity has any real comprehension, let alone understanding, of all of the “forcing factors” and interactions of the “coupled, non-linear, chaotic system” (IPCC words) we call climate,” Just ask Micky Mann he’ll tell you he does.
“For her part, Otto is keen to crack down on the heretics.”
Treating your fellow scientists as heretics and thought criminals makes in obvious in the eyes of many that Ms. Otto has joined the climate cult — and never mind sound climate science.
Her treatment of her detractors makes it apparent that she has (to some degree) abandoned standard scientific discourse and perhaps has lost respect for fellow scientists who disagree with her on the climate issue. I say this one more time: One of the worst things about being in a cult is not knowing you are in one.
The WWA is little more than a marketing outlet in pursuit of money, power and control over the world’s economies and the lives of people. Marxism by any other name…..
She would have served well as a juror in the trial of Galileo Galilei:
“Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up.”
Anybody not agreeing with your CliSciFi model-based speculations is not acting out of good faith. In other words, if you don’t agree with me you are evil, not a scientist.
Ross McKitrick argues that most of these attribution analyses are based on a fundamental mathematical error in regression analysis.
He explains it in overview at Judith Curry’s blog here:
https://judithcurry.com/2023/12/18/climate-attribution-method-overstates-fingerprints-of-external-forcing/
The published paper is here:
McKitrick, Ross R. (2023) “TLS bias in climate fingerprinting regressions with heterogeneous noise variances and correlated explanatory variables” Environmetrics https://doi.org/10.1002/env.2835 2023.
Basically they put one pre-determined unvalidated model…
… against a different pre-determine unvalidated model..
… and pretend the difference in probabilities of certain events actually means something.
From a scientific point of view it is worse than Kamal-talk.
At lease with Kamal-talk, there is nothing said, which means nothing that can be false (or true). Nuance.
It’s too bad there was no real discussion of McKitrick’s paper at Judith’s. The comments went off the rails immediately.
Can someone please explain this strange phenomenon?
A mysterious black circle was seen flying over Tampa Bay last night before Hurricane Milton made landfall#hurricane #weatherupdate #florida
Or, that is simple. Milton scared the CO2 right out of the atmosphere.
OK, I found an answer that makes sense….
That phenomenon is most likely what is called a “soliton”, a self-reenforcing wave. The smoke ring variety can be surprisingly stable, larger ring structures especially. It’s caused by the rotation motion of the smoke from the cylindrical jacket on an exploding transformer. They are seen from time to time in various cities across America when a transformer blows.
https://youtu.be/1bi-EtlxW_s