Opinion by Kip Hansen — July 16, 2024 — 1700 words/6 minutes
Over the past decade or so, there have been growing efforts to link every strong or unusual weather event, no matter how local, to global climate change. This need stems from the inability of the IPCC and its thousands of contributors to actually detect (their word is “detect”) the real-world negative impacts of climate change, despite countless dire predictions for more than 40 years.
You've probably seen this before, but I'll take it as evidence of the above:
Some notes on Table 12.12 in Chapter 12 of AR6 WG1:
1. Only the middle column represents the real message: “The historical period has already occurred.” This means that the IPCC has not even been able to detection All other increases/decreases climate impact drivers (See definition at end of article) There are white boxes in this column. You must ignore “emerging…”. Column – Both read “At least for RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5”, a climate scenario that many believe is now impossible. (and here).
2. Darker colors in the “Occurred” column indicate that climate impact drivers have been detected with high confidence – but any number in the box is a warning about where. For example, “cold snaps” are only found in “most of Australia, Africa, and northern South America.” Decreases in “lake, river and sea ice” were detected only in Arctic sea ice.
3. It is interesting to read the following list (white boxes in all three columns) Still not up to expectations even in 2100 RCP8.5 Dystopia. Even under RCP8.5, most climate impact drivers (19 out of 33) are not expected to “appear” by 2100. Yet almost every day there are media reports telling us that this is already happening and is “caused by climate change” or “exacerbated or worsened by climate change”, contrary to the IPCC’s AR6.
So, today I ask:
question: “Why do we read that scientists have determined [some weather event] cause or produce XX% worse Climate change?
answer: Storyline attribution.
What could that be, you might ask? Well, I think storyline attribution is just a “that's all……” Climate groups use stories about weather, tying each weather story to global climate change in some way.
That's the story — “A speculative story or explanation of dubious or unproven validity proposed to explain the origin of something when no verifiable explanation is known”
Pierke Jr. wrote last week, Climate fuels extreme weather, Part 2::
“Over the past decade, the rise of so-called storyline attribution now dominates discussion of every extreme weather event.
A storyline provides a putative causal explanation for the occurrence of a particular extreme event that just occurred, and explains why the event would have been worse than it would have been without human influence.
For example, last week:
- The ocean is warming due to human impacts, particularly increases in greenhouse gases and decreases in aerosols;
- Ocean warming is associated with stronger hurricanes.
- Hurricane Beryl was an unusually strong hurricane in July;
- Cyclone Beryl is therefore an example of how climate change is leading to an increasing number of severe hurricanes.
Recent floods? More moisture is available. That drought? Less moisture is available. Floods in one place and drought in another? Wave rapids. Well. Just connect the dots.
It's easy to create a plausible storyline for each event. I say “seems to” because the storyline approach gives you the freedom to discount parts of the story that don't advance the narrative, change the story event by event, and ignore events that don't happen or don't become extreme. storyline is storynot science.“
What kind of story? A story that's just that… Specifically: “A speculative story or explain Validity is questionable or cannot be proven proposed to explain the origin of something (such as a biological characteristic) When there is no verifiable explanation“.
In these cases, That's the story About the origins, causes, and likelihood of specific weather events, whether mild or extreme. In Pierke Jr.'s quote above, four points in sequence form the attribution of the storyline.
Now, to be fair, there is allegedly a Science Edition Storyline attribution. The United States Congress titled “Is this climate change? The Science of Attribution of Extreme Events” [.pdf]. This is what they said:
“Storyline attribution analysis
Research using storyline attribution is an analysis of why:
it [the Storyline Approach] It is a framework based on the analysis of physical processes, similar to accident investigation…. Start by identifying the causal chain that led to the event and evaluate the role of each factor.
Researchers used models and observational data to analyze atmospheric circulation and weather patterns to try to determine the factors that caused the event. This analysis involves identifying connections between factors. For example, circulation patterns may cause extreme precipitation in the study area, and increases in water vapor in the air carried by circulation may be associated with areas of warmer sea surface temperatures.
The next step is to estimate the impact of anthropogenic climate on the causes associated with the event, such as the extent to which human impacts may affect sea surface temperatures that, in turn, lead to increased precipitation during extreme events. Attributional claims can then be made regarding the degree of human influence on the cause of the event.
Taking the real world example of this “scientific” storyline attribution, how does this play out in the real world? The Congressional Research Service provides an example storyline (failure to detect human impact):
“Researchers studying Texas' record drought/heat wave in 2011 combined observational data and climate model simulations to examine specific factors that may have affected the severity of the event. The researchers found that the “primary physical process” that caused the drought/heat wave was last winter and spring. An extreme and persistent lack of seasonal rainfall. This lack of rainfall is in turn related to changes in sea surface temperatures. The researchers found no evidence of human influence in their analysis of this extreme event because the associated sea surface temperatures were within the natural range of variability. [Oops…-kh]
[The analysis referred to in the above paragraph is M. Hoerling et al., “Anatomy of an Extreme Event,” Journal of Climate, vol. 26, no. 9 (2013). Hoerling is a full analysis, and not just a storyline attribution. It is what a proper attribution study should be, but not what is presented to the media by weather attribution groups today.]
As Pileke Jr. points out, the typical storyline attribution presented to the media is more like an article about Hurricane Beryl from climate crisis advocacy organization Inside Climate News:
“The hurricane is expected to intensify, and he [Kerry Emanuel] said that as greenhouse gas emissions warm the atmosphere and oceans, evaporation and heat transfer are intensified in a warmer atmosphere that already contains more moisture.
“The demonstrable greenhouse gas effect is the proportion of Category 3 or Category 4 hurricanes,” Emanuel said.
When Hurricane Beryl formed in the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles off the Texas coast in early July, it reached Category 4 status, the earliest Category 4 storm ever recorded. Record warm temperatures in the Atlantic this year have led to predictions of a highly active hurricane season.
There is no scientific analysis at all in the storyline attribution that the public sees and hears every day, just a storyline…just a story…a Just So story. [see real hurricane data detailed, for instance, here.]
The root of all good publicity is a good story that’s believable—believable because it’s built around a bit of truth. You can count those little nuggets in the storyline above:
1. “Hurricanees are expected to intensify” – A meme for climate crisis predictions, so yes, they “expect it”
2. Omnipresent, “A warmer atmosphere…holds more moisture. A trivial true scientific fact.
3. The fact that it was the “earliest Category 4 storm on record” [this is as “as far as we know…”-type fact] and correlates with predictions of a highly active hurricane season.
The actual event was Hurricane Beryl, a Category 1 hurricane, which was about to make landfall in Houston, Texas. storyline description The event was “intensified” due to warming air/warming seawater and impacts in some areas [non-existent] The proportion of Category 3 and Category 4 hurricanes caused by greenhouse gases continues to increase.
That's how it is, they say, that's all…
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Author comments:
Storyline Attribution of weather events is ubiquitous in the news stream: Even your sports-minded neighbor can tell you why we're getting “such crazy weather.” He hears this in the weather report every night – cute little thing, easy to remember”that's all“The story explained it all to him, and it had no scientific basis at all. Your children are taught the same types of storylines every day in school…
story plot, that's all Storylines are common in science today. Biology is full of these, and so is theoretical physics. Soft science may be only The storyline is that simple. Please feel free to suggest examples…
thanks for reading.
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notes: Opinion articles, sometimes called op-eds, express the author's views. The views of the newspaper, news agency, radio station or their owners are not expressed; in this case, the views of WUWT as an entity, its owner Anthony Watts or any of its associated employees and/or other contributors are not expressed. This opinion piece was written by Kip Hansen and I am happy to accept these opinions in full.
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As promised, here it is Definition of climate impact drivers From IPCC AR6, the subject of the chart above:
FAQ 12.1 | What are Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs)?
Climate impact drivers are natural climate conditions that directly affect a society or ecosystem. Climate impact drivers may represent long-term average conditions (such as average winter temperatures that affect indoor heating needs), common events (such as frost that kills warm-season plants), or extreme events (such as coastal flooding that destroys homes). A single climate impact driver may adversely affect one part of society while benefiting another, while other parts are not affected at all. Therefore, a climate impact driver (or its changes caused by climate change) is not universally harmful or beneficial, but when experts determine that it is harmful to a specific system, we call it a “hazard.”
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