The Carbon Brief (TCB) recently put an interactive web page online titled: Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world. However, the web page gives a false impression that TCB is using actual data showing how climate change is affecting severe weather. It is not. Instead, TCB relies heavily on so-called “attribution studies” which use climate model simulations and estimates. Output from climate models is not the same as actual data, which debunks TCB’s webpage.
TCB’s interactive feature page on attribution studies presents a comprehensive overview of “attribution” research linking climate change to extreme weather events. While the compilation is extensive, it is essential to approach such narratives with a critical eye, especially when considering the broader context of severe weather trends and the methodologies employed in these studies.
Attribution studies aim to determine the extent to which claimed human-induced climate change influences specific weather events. These studies often utilize climate models to compare real-world scenarios with hypothetical situations devoid of the models (modelers) assumed estimates of human impact. The reliability of these models is unverifiable and to the extent their outputs have been tested against real world data and historical events and trends, they have failed. As highlighted by Climate At A Glance, climate models have historically exhibited significant discrepancies when compared to observed temperature data, raising questions about their predictive accuracy.
Contrary to the prevalent narrative, empirical data does not support the claim that severe weather events are becoming more frequent or intense. For instance, Climate Realism points out that despite increased media coverage, data indicates no significant upward trend in the frequency or severity of hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods over the past several decades. As discussed in several Climate at a Glance papers, data shows floods, hurricanes, instances of extreme heat or cold, tornadoes, and wildfires have not increased over the past century, much less over the past 30 years. This strongly suggests that the perception of worsening weather may be more attributable to heightened awareness, reporting, and the mainstream media’s uncritical promotion of attribution studies themselves, rather than actual changes in weather patterns.
The perception of escalating severe weather is often amplified by media coverage and technological advancements. In a 2011 article on Watts Up With That, it was noted that the proliferation of instant communication tools and 24/7 news cycles has led to more immediate and widespread reporting of weather events. A follow up article in 2017, Reporting bias and the “increase” in weather events in the US, noted the same issues.
This increased visibility can create a false impression of rising frequency and severity, even when statistical data demonstrates no such trends.
Attribution studies rely on climate models to simulate scenarios with and without estimates of human influence. However, these models are inherently limited by the assumptions and parameters set by researchers. The main problem is that attribution models, and the studies generated using them, assume what they are attempting to prove. Attribution studies start with the assumption that for any extreme weather event being “modeled,” climate change has affected, impacted, or caused it, the only question being how much influence climate change has had. As discussed on Climate At A Glance, the fallibility of climate models is evident in their inability to accurately replicate observed climate patterns, casting doubt on their utility in attribution studies.
While TCB’s interactive page on attribution studies offers some insights into ongoing climate research, it’s important to discern that what they are presenting is not rooted in actual data, but in computer model output.
Actual empirical data does not support the narrative of increasing numbers of severe weather events or increasing severity of such events, and the methodologies employed in attribution studies have notable failures and bias. Moreover, the amplified media perception of worsening weather is often a byproduct of enhanced reporting capabilities rather than actual climatic changes. As such, TCB does a grave disservice to readers by not addressing these issues and limitations, and by falsely presenting model outcomes as fact.
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Spot on, Anthony. Modelling is OK, as a technique to suggest issues for further evaluation, but it itself is not a scientific fact. This is to say, that the generation of an idea (theory) is only an invitation to find facts and design tests for the idea. I set up and managed a research effort, adapting digital data to mining exploration, for one of the world’s billionaires, and part of the project was to hold, every other week, Reality Check Friday. This was not only a check on adherence to scientific procedures, it was also checking to see if what we were producing was a competitive advantage. In the climate change, we’re doomed, world, there is no reality check, which would be a review of the cost comparison of mitigation versus adaptation. Not going to happen.
I could add, but that would only lessen the quality of your post.
Absolutely true. Model = hypothesis. Unvalidated model = untested hypothesis. Observations = reality.
“Observations = reality.”
Yes and no. Unknown factors can easily taint observations; observer bias (either explicit or implicit), measuring capability and accuracy, etc. Hence we end up with all sorts of “global mean” nonsense.
I agree with your intent but I think you are describing the difference between observations (the objective view of nature that we see) and perceptions (what our brain interprets from the observations. Observations are objective (unbiased), perceptions are anything but.
A chemist at UC Berkely says we gotta use the yellow powder to remove CO2 from the air – we have no option! He says the storms are getting stormier and the air is getting hotter! Time is awaisting!
His name is Omar Yaghi and he sez the wildfires are gettin’ wilder – the yellow powder will save us!
” A typical large tree can suck as much as 40 kilograms of carbon dioxide out of the air over the course of a year. Now scientists at UC Berkeley say they can do the same job with less than half a pound of a fluffy yellow powder.”
Have they showed the “scale up” to the equivalent of taking a million autos of the roads? How many tons of this substance are needed to make a near non-zero difference in “global temperature”? I have a vision: A mile long train of fluffy yellow powder goes off the rails making blotch of yellow that can be seen from the Space Station.
Apparently, this substance is intended to be regenerated, releasing the CO2 and reusing the powder. Then we are still left with the same question as with any other CO2 capturing tech: What do you do with the megatonnes of CO2?
It is good to point out that these “attribution studies” are bogus.
“As highlighted by Climate At A Glance, climate models have historically exhibited significant discrepancies when compared to observed temperature data, raising questions about their predictive accuracy.”
But I would also like to point out that the large-grid, discrete-layer, step-iterated, parameter-tuned-to-history climate models are inherently incapable of predicting future climate states or diagnosing trends of temperature or of any other climate-related metric.
So the presence or absence of discrepancies is not the core reason to doubt the models.
“… large-grid, discrete-layer, step-iterated, parameter-tuned-to-history climate
models are inherently incapable of predicting future climate states…”
_________________________________________________________
Exactly what the IPCC says:
IPCC TAR Chapter 14 Page 771 pdf3
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system,
and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states
is not possible.
‘…climate models are inherently incapable of predicting future climate states…’
The missing words here are ‘accurately’ and/or ‘meaningful’ since the assumed magnitude of the ‘forcing’ by the presumed cause of Earth’s warming is dwarfed by the magnitude of the uncertainty of cloud impacts on energy accumulation.
I think there is a wink wink, nod nod relationship between climate change advocates and the legacy media. Do not ask any embarrassing questions, and take no responsibility for repeating highly dubious claims, and the advocates will continue to furnish fear porn.
Too many parasites and the host dies, hence the problem for the State has always been how to maintain control of the population using the fewest resources. A big part of the solution is a compliant media, which is rewarded for its support by access to ‘information’ in addition to the maintenance of an oligopolistic market environment. The irony is that, as the State descends into tyranny, most of the media in no longer needed, and in fact becomes a danger to the State. Hopefully we never cross that threshold, but if we do, I wish the vast majority of our media ‘talent’ success in their new jobs digging canals.
The legacy media faithfully follow the prescribed leftist approach to their untruths –
To be fair, this is also what Trump does. The difference is, he’s right much more often than they are.
And Trump has a sense of humor. “Low energy Jeb” has got to be the greatest moniker given ever. Damn near put Barbara in her grave.
The beauty of multiple entities doing “attribution studies”, and normal people getting their “news” from a variety of legacy TV, legacy newspapers, and online news, is that EVERY single extreme weather event gets reported as caused by Climate Change!
NYT says Hurricane Helen was a major hurricane due to climate change. CNN says the flooding in Spain was due to climate change. Yahoo News says the current drought in Ethiopia is due to climate change.
For non-scientists, that is a tsunami of “evidence” showing that global warming is the cause of every single bad thing in nature.
I do not know how we can possibly fight such an overwhelming amount of subtle propaganda that cannot be disproved on a case-by-case basis.
It can only be discounted by people that follow the long term data and are capable of understanding the basic science. That is actually a very small group of people.
pillage,
It is quite easy to debunk outlandish claims.
You collect and analyse the official, raw, original data.
For heatwaves, there is a persistent global slogan that heatwaves are getting longer, hotter and more frequent. Sadly, the most quoted studies (including from some emotional, activist, female scientists from Australian universities) start their research about 1950 or later, when there are earlier records of measured heatwaves like in the 1930s US dustbowl era and the 1896 New South Wales event that could be Australia’s longest and hottest.
I have made this file of 128 graphs showing heatwaves of 1, 3, 5 and 10 days, for the six Australian state capitals plus Darwin and Alice Spring for coverage. I show both raw temperature data lus BOM adjusted ACORN-SAT and for clarity I show both the whole number of years of record heatwaves each year plus the Top 40 hottest years, with linear fitted temperature/time trends. My definition of heatwave is simple. For each year, the hottest 5 consecutive days whose average Tmax is highest is the 5-day heatwave chosen for that year, etc. Other authors use home-made definitions of some unnecessary complexity.
The path is open and easy for people in many other countries to do this.
It is rather hard to argue against such data, which in Australia’s case relates to where 80% or so of the population now live or have lived, going back to the 1850s when people were more scattered.
Just do it. Settle the argument once and for all. Give this big file time to download.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx
Thanks Geoff.
Yours is the approach of facts-based rationality.
But what we’re up against is the msm practice of dropping a ‘drive-by’ headline and an unchecked article mostly made up of quotes from climate cranks at their go-to universities and activist groups.
The most blatant example of this that I see are pieces in The Guardian (AUS) by a climate crank called Graham Readfern.
This bloke is a shocker.
Omission of pertinent facts and context is his main technique.
A heat non-wave puts the NEM on a knife-edge.
‘Not enough power to meet peak demand’: TV host slams energy management strategies
Australia may be the first country to have major widespread blackouts due to “going away” from reliable electricity supplies.
We don’t have links to other countries like Germany and the UK do.
These media attributions are very similar to how in Middle Ages any hail, locust, earthquake etc. were undeniable proofs of the imminent Second Advent.
Or witches. (Maybe that was a different time, but same concept.)
Indeed. We are still not winning. This is a global juggernaut powered by global elites, all with the purpose of destroying the West, and implementing their NWO.
The worst thing is that you can’t question it in the mainstream or “fact checkers” will declare misinformation. And here in Australia, our government was trying to put into place mechanisms that would ensure the platforms (eg WordPress) had to censor those views with a threat of massive fines. Thankfully that bill was rejected.
WordPress got tapped as a media outlet?
No, it wasn’t named initially AFAIK. But once the law is put into place, the number of sites would only have increased.
It is impossible to attribute any specific weather event to global warming. Anybody claiming otherwise is either lying or delusional. The entire “science” of climate attribution of weather events is pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo.
climate model
simulationscalculations and estimates.climate models to
simulateprocess scenariosModels and simulations are not the same. Models have assumptions. Simulations do not.
I understand in common conversation that nuanced difference is inconsequential.
However, if we are to combat the ongoing insanities we must strive for precision and accuracy and especially not use the false vocabulary and rhetoric used by the Climate Alarmists.
Some people think that climate model runs show that climate change is an existential crisis. They want to form political policy based only on model results.
The last politician who claimed that was also convinced by pollsters (modelers) that he could not win re-election, so he quit. Then they said his replacement was going to win because their polling (more models of the electorate) showed that.
Some people really like models. My granddaughters like Ken and Barbie.
“Attribution studies aim to determine the extent to which claimed human-induced climate change influences specific weather events.”
This is essentially an impossible task as numerous factors combine to produce the extreme events that are almost always the focus of attribution studies.
And is meaningless because the models used by such “attribution studies” assume the very thing the “studies” purport to provide “evidence” of.
It is all absolute nonsense.
If you were the state of Nevada, you could commission an attribution study to identify the tax revenue change that occurred or will occur due to a casino rule change…say splitting vs. not splitting aces at Blackjack. Because you know or can calculate the odds on a large scale.
But if you try to attribute winnings based on what winners’ nationalities are, or what gamblers had for breakfast, you will quickly find that your “attribution study” produces some interesting p-sifted but false correlations.
When using engineering models like FEA (finite element analysis) you know the value of most inputs. We don’t now the emissivity of CO2 used in models. (It’s almost zero at atmospheric pressure and temperature).
using models output as inputs to models is ludicrous.
Pretending models tell us about the real world is ludicrous.
All they can ever tell us is the outcome of all of their input assumptions, many of which are ourright wrong or the culmination of guesswork.
Quit Conflating Model Based ‘Attribution Study’ Outputs
We know Gaia is most upset – by proxy.
Story tip
Exclusive — Crescent Dunes: Biden DOJ Moved on Election Night to Cover Up Alleged Solar Energy Scandal that Cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Millions
Outgoing President Joe Biden’s Justice Department moved on election night on Nov. 5 to essentially ensure the cover-up of a potentially massive green energy scandal, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
This story has tentacles back through, not just the Biden administration, but all the way back to the Obama administration, and it could be something that jeopardizes the broader green energy agenda and the future of leftist solar projects on federal lands. At least one congresswoman is already formally pressing the DOJ for answers, and more members of Congress are likely to get involved soon. It could even have major implications for the incoming administration’s energy policy.
MORE: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/11/25/exclusive-crescent-dunes-biden-doj-moved-election-night-cover-up-alleged-solar-energy-scandal/
“cover-up” from whom?
I thought the linked article revealed all the sordid details fairly clearly.
As President Trump once observed, climate change is the biggest hoax in history. The hoax is that all of the scary claims come from climate models, not observations. Trends derived from observations aren’t exciting. No one would freak out about observed trends, so they use climate models because they can make them say anything they want. That’s how they perpetrate the hoax.
Interesting article in today’s New York Post concerning the hurricane season that just ended November 30th. Evidently, the season was among the most costly at around $200 Billion. But sprinkled throughout the article is the pondering of whether Climate Change is causing less hurricanes or more intense hurricanes without any definitive answers.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/26/us-news/2024-atlantic-hurricane-season-among-costliest-on-record/
Disasters measured in dollars is a bad metric for historical comparison of disasters.
Disasters measured in dollars is a good metric for inflation or standard of living.
And our propensity to build more “assets” in places prone to bad weather, like coastal areas, flood plains, and wildfire prone areas.
They do love their 2003 French heatwave story when attributing Gaia’s wroth.
Don’t ever hear them talking about the 1911 French heatwave…. 3 months long…. 40,000 dead… CO² ~300ppm.
The problem is that The Carbon Greif is not there to perform any service or report ‘news’ with any integrity.
They exist to promote climate propaganda.
I said this to some bloke on YouTube once. It did not compute…
Weather Attribution = Climate Change Propaganda
Great article. According to Popper’s view of science, even hypothetical models with strong and consistent empirical support cannot be considered to be ‘proven’. They have ‘not yet been refuted’, given that new data may eventually do so. Real science has astonishingly high standards. “Climate science”, on the other hand, has no standards at all and largely consists of finding and using data as foot soldiers in the defence of the castle of theology.