not many people know
Paul Homewood
Roger Pielke Jr discusses the science (or lack thereof!) behind attribution of extreme weather:
After many high-profile extreme weather events, we see the following headlines:
For those who follow climate science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments closely, such headlines may be difficult to understand, as neither the IPCC nor the basic scientific literature makes such strong and conclusive claims.
So what are we to make of such a compelling claim?
Read his full analysis here.
He concluded that weather attribution was intentional from the outset for political and media purposes. This was brought up because the IPCC was able to find any real evidence that the weather was actually becoming more extreme.
He pointed out:
First, event attribution research is a tactical science ——Research conducted explicitly to serve legal and political purposes. This is not my opinion, but has been stated publicly on numerous occasions by researchers who develop and conduct event attribution studies.2 Such studies are not always peer-reviewed; usually by design Because peer review takes much longer than the news cycle. In contrast, event attribution research is typically promoted through press releases.
For example, the researchers behind the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project explain One of their main motivations for conducting such research is to “increase the 'immediacy' of climate change and thereby increase support for mitigation measures.” Chief Scientist, WWA Friedrich Otto explains”, “Unlike other branches of climate science, or science in general, event attribution was actually originally proposed with the courts in mind. Another scientist often cited for performing rapid attribution analysis, Michael Weinersummarizing their importance (emphasis in original) – “The most important information in this (and previous) analysis is”Dangerous climate change is already here!“
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It was undoubtedly successful in its goals. I can personally confirm that the BBC not only regularly makes headlines by presenting attribution claims as fact, but even uses them to reject my complaints, even when the actual data shows they are wrong. For them, attributional claims and facts are interchangeable.
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