Climate modellers claim to be able to prove weather is getting worse than ever before. They seem to have a method problem.
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A recent article at Phys.org, originally published by the Chicago Tribune, says that climate change is behind the recent atmospheric river events in California, as well as an alleged increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes.
This is false, says Linnea Lueken @ Climate Change Dispatch.
Atmospheric rivers are a natural part of the West coast’s climate, and neither historic data nor recent trend data indicate that the frequency or severity of those events is increasing.
Likewise, there has been no increase in major hurricanes over the past hundred years of global warming.
In “Climate change is fueling extreme weather. How do we make a difference?”, writer Barbara Willard makes several false claims regarding climate change and extreme weather, the most immediately egregious being that recent atmospheric rivers are being fueled by climate change, and that deadly hurricanes are becoming more common.
Single weather events, or even seasons of bad weather, can’t be used to measure climate change, which is measured as at least a 30-year trend of regional weather.
Willard gives credit to “extreme event attribution” science by the National Academy of Sciences for promoting the narrative that weather is worsened by climate change, but she misses the reason why this is a poor scientific standard.
Attribution scientists begin with the assumption that carbon dioxide has a significant impact on climate, and that the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years is fueling, at least in part, extreme weather.
It is a paradigm example of confirmation bias. They run multiple computer models, some that are fictional recreations of what they assume the climate might be if humans didn’t exist on the planet, and some scenarios including humans but based on flawed emissions and temperature assumptions.
The misleading nature of attribution science has been pointed out multiple times at Climate Realism [see source for details], as the accuracy of computer models is only as accurate as the input of data and the assumptions concerning interactions and feedback mechanisms built into the models.
None of these models have been confirmed to accurately portray recorded climate conditions.
Since we can’t tap into a parallel universe where a storm was more or less extreme, there is inherent uncertainty that makes these kinds of computer models interesting from a theoretical perspective, but not much more.
Real-world weather data is available and improving, so the prognostications of attribution modelers can be checked over time.
So far, when actual data is compared to computer model projections, the evidence undermines the “climate catastrophe” theory.
Full article here.
phys-org is a dog’s breakfast of anything the cat drags in. I have occasionally found some nuggets among the rubbish though.
In this case the article in question was taken by phys.org from the Chicago Tribune.
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CCD also says:
A senior hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles told a Los Angeles Times reporter that the recent atmospheric river events were “nothing as big as what we’ve gone through before.”
Indeed, there is a long history, both recorded by humans and indicated by paleontological proxy data, of major swings between drought and deluge in California.
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Of course the media loves a weather story, and pointing the finger at humans is an added bonus. Never mind the *long history*.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Heat energy travelling through gases cannot affect them because they are different forms of energy and vice versa like radio vs pressure
“Climate Scientists” don’t need no stinkin’ data!
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
~ Prof. Chris Folland ~ (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)