That’s the question NPR delves into. Unsurprisingly, the answer seems to be “always” and “whenever it’s convenient”
(NPR) Nowadays, when there’s a killer heat wave or serious drought somewhere, people wonder: Is this climate change at work? It’s a question scientists have struggled with for years. And now there’s a new field of research that’s providing some answers. It’s called “attribution science”— a set of principles that allows scientists to determine when it’s a change in climate that’s altering weather events … and when it isn’t.
The principles start with the premise that, as almost all climate scientists expect, there will be more “extreme” weather events if the planet warms up much more: heat waves, droughts, huge storms.
Got that? They start out with a premise based on wishful thinking and prognostication. Too bad extreme weather isn’t cooperating.
But then, there have always been periodic bouts of extreme weather on Earth, long before climate change. How do you tell the difference between normal variation in weather — including these rare extremes — and what climate change is doing?
That sort of discernment is difficult, so scientists have had a rule, a kind of mantra: You can’t attribute any single weather event to climate change. It could just be weird weather.
Then they took a close at last year’s heat wave in Australia.
And, of course, as we all know, they’re blaming that heat wave on Mankind, because it can’t possibly be what happens during a Holocene warm period, which, incidentily, has seen an statistically significant warming in a generation.
Too many people are deeply invested in man caused Hotcoldwetdry, so they simply can’t say “yeah, these things happen”. It has to be mankind at fault, else, how do they effect political change to a completely leftist political, social, and economic system ?
