As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently-updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.
In my post, I characterized the authors’ write-up of the methodology of these attribution studies as relying on “logical fallacy,” and as “double-talk and bafflegab.” But I think that I inadequately articulated the nature of the fallacy. So I will try to correct that here.
The heart of the problem is that science is all about hypotheses being subject to empirical test against real world evidence. But the “attribution” studies and their methodology seek to evade that necessary step. Instead these studies claim to validate their attributions by reference to things like “physical understanding” and models that have not been empirically validated. In other words, rather than using empirical evidence to validate a hypothesis, they use one hypothesis supposedly to validate another hypothesis. They have assumed the conclusion they want to reach. This process is sometimes called circular reasoning.
To be fair, when buried in the midst of enough confusing verbiage, circular reasoning can often be difficult to detect. That is not an excuse for the fancily-credentialed pooh-bahs who have signed off on this Manual. If you aren’t up to the job of detecting circular reasoning, you are not qualified to contribute to a Manual like this one.
Here is the central portion of the key language in the new Manual chapter, as quoted from my previous post, with important words highlighted:
[A]ttribution involves sifting through a range of possible causative factors to determine the role of one or more drivers with respect to the detected change. This is typically accomplished by using physical understanding, as well as climate models and/or statistical analysis, to compare how the variable responds when certain drivers are changed or eliminated entirely.
So, to make an “attribution,” we compare the event that just happened against our “physical understanding” and against our “climate models.” Both of those things are our assumptions or hypotheses, not our proof. (The category of “statistical analysis” cannot be evaluated without more information. “Statistical analysis” of what? If it’s statistical analysis of our current hypothesis against our previous assumptions, then it’s another example of circular reasoning.) Thus we have compared our new hypothesis to our pre-existing hypotheses, and they match! Therefore we claim that the new hypothesis must be correct!
The missing piece is some kind of empirical study that establishes a definitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the type of event that you are seeking to blame on CO2 emissions. Remarkably, that does not exist for any form of extreme weather event, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, or anything else. A good compilation of studies failing to show any relationship between global temperatures and extreme weather events can be found in Steven Koonin’s book Unsettled. Anyway, you know that there is no such demonstrated empirical connection, because if there were the “attribution” advocates would cite those studies instead of trying to prove attribution with their own a priori assumptions.
to make an “attribution,” we compare the event that just happened against our “physical understanding” and against our “climate models.”
Hey presto
The rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution found that climate change increased Melissa’s maximum wind speeds by 7% and made the rainfall 16% more intense.
…
Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the WWA research, said the findings of the rapid analysis are in line with existing research about climate change and tropical storms in the Atlantic. “This is completely consistent with our expectation of what’s going to happen in the future,” Dessler said.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/climate-change-boosted-hurricane-melissa-s-destructive-winds-and-rain-analysis-finds/ar-AA1PUssl
It’s completely consistent with their assumptions.
Any time you start with the answer and then justify it with a computer model it’s a rationalization using numeric techniques. There are no falsifiable predictions. We are back to spontaneous generation of fish in a pond that was disproved by Louis Pasteur almost 2 centuries ago.
Can someone please explain the phrase “physical understanding”. Isn’t comprehension a mental process? Are we talking neurophysiology here? Or is he really just saying “what we think we know about how climate works”?
I guess you could say alarmists are somewhat neurodivergent.
I suspect that their physical understanding is informed by their supposedly physics-based yet unvalidated models. I call it recursive circular reasoning.
“our expectations”
In other words: They see what they want/expect to see.
Attribution studies are notoriously bad in almost every field of science, whether it is climate science or medical health science, etc.
A prime example is the attribution study showing 12% of asthma cases are caused by gas stoves.
Well, is it not possible that 12% of asthma sufferers live in houses that use gas stoves?
Correlation is not causation.
Sparta – not sure if your comment was sarc? my apologies if so,
The gas stove cause 12% of asthma cases was an meta study using attribution methodology. I was using it as an example of why attributions studies are notoriously weak. There were other issues in that study that were border line academic fraud, though I was only highlighting the attribution issues
My badly worded post was in fact agreeing with your thoughts.
Poorly worded. My apologies.
The 12% could have a pre-existing asthma condition before moving into homes with gas stoves. That there are asthma sufferers in homes with gas stoves does not even make a valid correlation.
Of the other 88%, how many have gas stoves?
Of people living in homes with gas stoves what is the incidence of asthma versus the population as a whole?
I believe that 100% of heroin addicts were given milk as children.
I might be wrong, of course.
Continuing from your link–
“…….Rapid attribution analyses help fill the need for an explanation about the influence of climate change shortly after a catastrophic weather event occurs, said Dessler. He said such analyses are “very valuable as a quick look” before the scientists are able to do more time-consuming calculations…..” Simple example of blaming a scapegoat.
At least he is not a police detective. A & M is a mess, although it seems to be trying to return some to the days when they educated students like me with the discipline they needed and flunked out the rest, a proper method when you encourage them to come back at a proper time. Like others they had somewhat similar problems in the 1980s.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/meltdown-at-texas-a-m-university/?utm
>> climate change increased Melissa’s maximum wind speeds by 7% and made the rainfall 16% more intense.
what is missing here is any estimate of uncertainty of those results. Without that these numbers are meaningless. The same holds true if that uncertainty estimates are incomplete or example by using rcp 8.5 models, which represent a systematic overestimation of CO2 feedbacks.
How do they establish what the wind speeds and rainfall would have been in the first place? What is the mechanism they use to determine the increase. Not models, but the fundamental physics…I fear a stunned silence
If a ruling is issued by a judge who it can be proven to have read the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence it should be vacated on appeal, for obstruction of justice and judicial misconduct.
18 U.S.C. 1503
Good point! 🙂
Judges understand everything better than anybody else. That includes science and pseudo-sciences, which are legally undistinguishable.
This is an excellent description of the utterly circular nature of attribution of long-term warming to incremental CO2, not to mention the compounded fallacies of event attribution.
I encourage skeptics of climate alarm to discard the “forcing” + “feedback” FRAMING of the investigation of a climate system response to rising concentrations of CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
That framing is what sends the investigator into a circle. NO ONE KNOWS in advance that a minor improvement in IR absorbing power within the circulating atmosphere MUST result in sensible heat gain down here. But that is what is implied at the outset in the semantics of anthropogenic GHG “forcings” to which “feedback” arises as a tuned response in the models. Don’t get me wrong – of course, if absorbed energy trends upward, e.g. from diminishing cloud cover, one expects overall warming of the land and oceans, and vice versa. But for GHGs, which merely tweak the IR coupling of the atmosphere to the surface, and the internal coupling of the atmosphere to itself, including clouds – without directly adding energy to the system – no such assumption is justified.
So what? The use of pre-stabilized, large-grid, discrete-layer, parameter-tuned-to-hindcast, time-step-iterated simulations of the general circulation never had ANY diagnostic or prognostic validity in the investigation, because the application of time-scheduled GHG “forcings” simply produced a baked-in “warming.”
Such models should never have been proposed in the investigation. But here we are, doing laps around the circle.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
P.S. – don’t get me going about the other obvious problem with the models – the unavoidable rapid buildup of uncertainty in the energy state of the climate system as the iteration proceeds.
Thanks for another of your incisive “deep dives” into the irrational prognosticatons of many climate “science” cabals.
Me, I’m still unable to reconcile any climate prognostications that clash with the IPCC’s honest declaration that climate systems are “coupled, non- linear, chaotic” systems.
So am I understanding this situation correctly when I maintain that in order for anyone to make “precise” numerical declarations about the resultant behaviors of particular weather events, they would have to include evidence of how they had solved for all the “coupled, non-linear, chaotic” behaviors?
I don’t see this, so I don’t buy these “attribution” claims.
Equilibrium climate sensitivity.
How? In a multiple coupled non-linear chaotic energy systems there is never equilibrium
Case in point: The earth rotates. The atmosphere rotates with the surface. The amount of solar electromagnetic energy for a slice of planetary surface and the column of atmosphere in direct alignment with the solar EM vector varies picosecond by picosecond.
From the article: “Anyway, you know that there is no such demonstrated empirical connection, because if there were the “attribution” advocates would cite those studies instead of trying to prove attribution with their own a priori assumptions.”
This is the perfect explanation of why Attribution Studies should be rejected as unscientific. The Climate Alarmist Attributionists don’t have any evidence to back up their claims, so they are reduced to making things up out of whole cloth, presenting their opinions as established facts.
As Ross McKitrick pointed out in a recent post here World Weather Attribution are a public relations machine whose aim is to get a lot of attention and they are successful in persuading the gullible.
Fortunately many others in the extreme weather analysis field are more cautious and don’t rush to conclusions like WWA.
Off Topic – Energy Transition (much cheaper green energy) update.
Bank of England Downgrades UK Growth Forecast
Unemployment resulting from tax hikes and the minimum wage hike are to blame…
https://order-order.com/2026/02/05/bank-of-england-downgrades-uk-growth-forecast-to-just-0-9/
oh dear MAD Ed millibrain and his Labour cadres are demonstrating their economic prowess. On the positive side all the illegal migrants will inherit a third world country
“The missing piece is some kind of empirical study that establishes a definitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the type of event that you are seeking to blame on CO2 emissions.”
True, but this missing piece stands after the missing piece of a definite connection between the rising temperatures and the rising CO2 and that is behind definite proof that the rising CO2 is a result of rising human emissions. So the attribution stands separated from its result by at least three layers of assumptions.
RGHE theory founders on two erroneous assumptions.
First error: that near Earth space is cold and the atmosphere/RGHE act as a warming blanket.
That is incorrect.
Near Earth space is hot (400 K, 127 C, 260 F) and the atmosphere/water vapor/albedo act as that cooling reflective panel propped up on the car’s dash.
Second error: Earth’s surface radiates as a near Black Body. USCRN & SURFRAD data are calibrated, i.e. “tweaked“ to conform to that assumption thereby creating “extra” “back” radiation.
That is incorrect.
IR instruments are calibrated to deliver a referenced & relative temperature while power flux is inferred using S-B equation and assuming an emissivity. Assuming 1.0 assumes wrong. TFK_bams09 shows surface emissivity as 0.16 = 63/396 which zeroes out “back” RGHE radiation.
RGHE joins caloric, phlogiston, spontaneous generation, luminiferous ether, et al in science’s dust bin of failed theories.
Add to it, the graphic you show is a FLAT EARTH model.
No, it is not.
It is a spherical average model.
A flat discular 1,368 W/m^2 arrives ToA.
A sphere of r has 4 times the area as a disc of r.
Divide the discular 1,368 by 4 to get the spherical average of 342.
This is Fourier’s model which even Pierrehumbert says is no good.
How about the two points??
Warmer not colder and no BB.
A spherical average model is flat earth.
It is claiming every square meter of the planet gets the same energy regardless of latitude or longitude which is a flat earth model.
The /4 means night and day get the same sunlight.
S = 4 pi r^2. (Surface of a sphere)
A = pi r^2 (area of a circle)
ToA is a circle based on the circumference of the planet at the day night terminator.
Dividing that by the surface area of the planet ignores the effects of absorption and reflection based on angle of incidence on a SPHERE. At 45degrees, the surface area projection to your “flat discular” is 0.707 m^2, not 1 m^2 as it is at the equator.
Your first point I neither agree nor disagree. I have not worked through that.
The second point? Well done. I totally agree.
A sphere is flat. Hmmm.
Well, it’s not a flat Earth model, it’s simply wrong.
Earth is heated on the lit hemisphere and loses heat all around 24/7.
Dividing ISR by 4 is just flat (ha ha) wrong.
Fourier thought there is a cosmic goo that heats everythang equally in all directions. That’s wrong.
TFK_bams09 and all its clones are trash.
Check out my slide.
Remove the Earth’s atmosphere or even just the GHGs and the Earth becomes much like the Moon, no water vapor or clouds, no ice or snow, no oceans, no vegetation, no 30% albedo becoming a barren rock ball, hot^3 (400 K) on the lit side, cold^3 (100 K) on the dark. At Earth’s distance from the Sun space is hot (394 K) not cold (5 K).
That’s NOT what the RGHE theory says.
EVIDENCE:
RGHE theory says “288 K (15 C) w – 255 K (-18 C) w/o = a 33 C colder ice ball Earth.” 255 K assumes w/o case keeps 30% albedo, an assumption akin to criminal fraud. Nobody agrees 288 K is GMST plus it was 15 C in 1896. 288 K is a physical surface measurement. 255 K is a S-B equilibrium calculation at ToA. Apples and potatoes.
Nikolov “Airless Celestial Bodies”
Kramm “Moon as test bed for Earth”
UCLA Diviner lunar mission data
JWST solar shield (391.7 K)
Sky Lab golden awning
ISS HVAC design for lit side of 250 F. (ISS web site)
Astronaut backpack life support w/ AC and cool water tubing underwear. (Space Discovery Center)
“A sphere is flat. Hmmm”.
I did not say that.
I said:
“A spherical average model is flat earth.”
In the context of
“Add to it, the graphic you show is a FLAT EARTH model.”
Which it is.
Where in your graphic is the curve of the planet? Where in your graphic does it show the incident solar energy the equator is different than 45 degree latitude or at the day-night terminator.
Mapping a 3 dimensional object into 2 dimensions is what makes it a flat earth model.
You pointed out that:
“Divide the discular 1,368 by 4 to get the spherical average of 342.
This is Fourier’s model which even Pierrehumbert says is no good.”
It was to that point that I was agreeing with my expression “flat earth model.”
Your newest spherical graphic supports my statement.
“It is simply wrong.”
That it is.
The worst of it is, there is no evidence of electro magnetic fields and waves science applied in the climate models.
Back to your first point.
“Near Earth space is hot (400 K, 127 C, 260 F) and the atmosphere/water vapor/albedo act as that cooling reflective panel propped up on the car’s dash.”
Yes. Water vapor acts as a reflective panel in your car.
What I have not worked through is the 400K near Earth space and how that applies given the temperature through various altitudes is not linear from 127 C to ground level -30 C to +60 C (give or take).
In point of fact, I was agreeing with you.
“Where in your graphic is the curve of the planet?”
Not my graphic, IPCC’s and it, TFK_bams09 & numerous clones are all junk.
As I’ve said in many threads, what is needed is a functional relationship between the independent and dependent variables in order to accurately ascribe attribution values.
Something like,
T = Ax⁴ + By³ + Cz² + Dh + E
This is where the ideal gas law came from, “PV = nRT”. It is the combination of several gas laws such as Boyles Law.
Attribution studies today should forego the claim of validation in any form or fashion. They should be qualified as “we think this, with an error possibility of a large value (500% or more)”.
Q = U A (Tsurf – Ttoa) comes from decades of HVAC experience.
The problem is that “U” is hard to measure on the earth. “U” is internal energy which includes latent heat not just sensible heat.
“Tsurf” should be the soil/SST but soil temps aren’t used, only air 2m above the soil. Do some research and you’ll see that soil/air and SST/air are not necessarily close at all.
HVAC is generally a more isolated system where some of these measurements are meaningful.
U could represent composite thermal conductivity, a composite of the five heat transfer modes.
Yes, I am aware that “surface” is air temp 1.5 m or so above the ground. This is a mistake. Sun heats the soil, soil heats the air. Ground /soil temperature is not commonly represented but it can be found. USCRN and SURFRAD (10 m) both use it. I like USCRN soil temp for La Junta, CO. Comparing soil to air it is obvious that soil/ground is typically warmer than “surface” air. As the day dawns air and ground heat together but after noon or so air cools rapidly and ground holds the heat.
Had to find the file and convert.
“I think, therefore I am” is inaccurate.
“I think, therefore I think I think” is correct.
that’s what I thought 🙂
No doubt.
There is always doubt.
No doubt about that.
…
It is time to drop semantics in favour of more measurements placed in a valid interpretation of known and validated physics, chemistry, maths, etc., with the required estimations of uncertainty. That is the basis of the advancement of science.
Geoff S
I think you should find employment as an AI. 🙂
You would be better than anything offered now or in the foreseeable lifespans of all of us.
Climate models assumption #1: CO2 is a climate “forcing function” that affects atmospheric and therefore global temperatures.
The models change the CO2 as an input to prove how temperatures change.
Bogus.
Expert opinion is not science. It is anti science.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” ~ Richard P. Feynman
Even if…
How does one convert faster wind to a dollar value?
If wind speed was +5% then:
Pay 5% of everything destroyed?
Pay 100% damage of only destroyed things that would have survived without the +5%?
Pay 5% of everything whether or not it was destroyed because it has been weakened?
As somebody once said, if there was one paper that proved the link between human produced CO2 and global warming we would all know its name – there isn’t so we don’t.
That’s right!
The Climate Alarmists don’t have any evidence that CO2 does anything they claim it does to Earth’s climate or weather.
All Climate Alarmists have is speculation, and assumptions about CO2. They don’t have one shred of evidence connecting CO2 to Earth’s climate or weather. And this, after over 50 years of looking at the issue.
There is no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.