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A freak heat wave doesn’t prove global warming any more than a freak blizzard disproves it. I hate that people do this every time. You might be right, but tryin

A freak heat wave doesn’t prove global warming any more than a freak blizzard disproves it. I hate that people do this every time. You might be right, but trying to claim this type of “proof by one data point” is just asking for a “certain political party” to do the same with a different single data point.

wiz21c 5y ago
Here (20000km from Canada) on the radio climate specialist says "we don't know for sure if it's climate change at work, models don't agree". My gut feeling is that if it is exceptionally high then model will hardly predict it. Anyone here knows ?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  The proximal cause of this heatwave is an omega block in the jet stream. Atmospheric models predict that these types of events should be less common as the world warms. At least that is what I was able to read about it a couple of days ago when I was worrying about this same question.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The problem is that for now, it's still a statistical anomaly, like the snow in Brazil is; it's uncommon, but if it's only a few days, it's going to be a blip on the radar and only a few tenths of a degree in annual statistics. The temperature at the moment is weather; annual and multi-year statistics is climate. Another commenter posted https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1410157638109872134?s=19 https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1410157638109872134?s=19, which shows this is a statistical anomaly; only when this kind of weather happens year on year, and when the averages go up, can you speak of climate change. (disclaimer: just being devil's advocate, climate change is real and "freak weather events" are becoming so common now that you can't deny it being a trend and the direct effect of global climate change)
jussij 5y ago
Except when these "freak heat waves" start becoming common place. In recent years many places around the would appear to be setting new temperature records on a rather regular basis.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  Are they more common? Summers and winters don't feel any different to me than what they were when I was a child, they just get talked about a LOT more (my specific geographic location is probably a factor).
  - blackbrokkoli 5y ago
    Take any region, country or city, look up heat highs or averages. You will inadvertently find that around half a dozen extreme events happened in the last two decades. Since a giant political movement seems to be based on the unwillingness to read more than ~24 characters at a time, here is a beautiful chart that really shows this: [0]. It does not even have text! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes#/media/File:20181204_Warming_stripes_(global,_WMO,_1850-2018)_-_Climate_Lab_Book_(Ed_Hawkins).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes#/media/File:20...
    - swader999 5y ago
      This is false. USGCRP Climate Science Special Assessment: Volume 1: Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ Scroll down to figure 6.3. You can see that the 1920's to 1940's had more extreme heat events than any time since. Figure 6.4 is also useful to look at.
    - jussij 5y ago
      This page lists the highest temperatures from around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records The nice thing about that page is when you scroll down to the continent/country table data there is an option to sort by date column. Sorting by date shows most of these records were set in the 21 century. More worryingly many of those records were set in the last half decade. While this might be coincidence, it could also be a trend and if it is the later then things are starting to look rather ominous. Time will tell.
candu 5y ago
...except, really, when people use this argument, they're often not using that one data point in isolation. This is just one data point, true, but it's one _more_ data point on top of an increasingly long list of "freak" weather events. 500-year floods, 100-year storms, 100-year heat waves, etc. are becoming almost annual / decennial events. We absolutely should be willing to change our prior probability that global warming is A Real Thing from "very high" to "very, very high" for one more data point; that's how Bayesian inference works.
- sneak 5y ago
  500-year floods happening twice in a lifespan, or the same with 100-year storms or heat waves doesn't actually prove or disprove anthropocentric climate change either. It's entirely plausible that it's related, but the fact that these things are happening more often in a 5 or 10 year period is not sufficient evidence alone. Your comment reads like a hammer looking for a nail, like freak weather is obviously a natural consequence of rising global temperatures. I'm not sure that it is. You should probably examine your assumptions a little bit more closely, and look for a testable link rather than a confirmation of an existing belief.
  - wins32767 5y ago
    Unfortunately we don't have a control Earth to use.
  - JeremyBanks 5y ago
    You need to be either mentally deficient, or (more common) severely mentally impaired by politics to still doubt this. Get your head out of your ass, you absolute useless turd.
    - sneak 5y ago
      I encourage you to read my comment again, the second time more carefully.
  - Workaccount2 5y ago
BeniBoy 5y ago
That's why we use the term "Climate Change". A freak heat wave and a freak blizzard both show that climate is changing, and not for the best. Two sides of the same coin, we're fucking up our climate.
- z0ltan 5y ago
  And how is that related to human activities? Such events have been going on since earth's inception. The problem is that people try to add the "human factor" subtext on without directly mentioning it, and that's where the problem is. There is no definitive proof that human activities are increasing/decreasing earth's own natural processes. That's it.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I think part of what makes people skeptical is that even if there was no anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, there would still be these so-called "freak events". There were big hurricanes in the US's Revolutionary War era, for example, that had huge impacts on naval forces in the Caribbean. If climate change truly was a total hoax, believers could still point at a myriad of extreme weather events and say "look, climate change is real".
- itsoktocry 5y ago
  >A freak heat wave and a freak blizzard both show that climate is changing, and not for the best. Freak events don't show anything, that's why they are freak events.
  - 0xTJ 5y ago
    Yes, they do show things. When freak events happen over and over, year after year, that's a bad sign, and shows that things are changing.
kergonath 5y ago
One six on a dice is chance. Two sixes in a row are a fluke. Nine sixes are a loaded dice. The trends are clear for anyone interested in discussing facts rather than ideology.
codingdave 5y ago
This is exactly the type of thinking that allows people to deny the reality of climate change. Dismissing "one data point", but doing it to all the thousands of data points. At some point, you have to look at all the data points and acknowledge that there is a distinct trend.

wiz21c 5y ago

Here (20000km from Canada) on the radio climate specialist says "we don't know for sure if it's climate change at work, models don't agree". My gut feeling is that if it is exceptionally high then model will hardly predict it. Anyone here knows ?

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
The proximal cause of this heatwave is an omega block in the jet stream. Atmospheric models predict that these types of events should be less common as the world warms. At least that is what I was able to read about it a couple of days ago when I was worrying about this same question.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
The problem is that for now, it's still a statistical anomaly, like the snow in Brazil is; it's uncommon, but if it's only a few days, it's going to be a blip on the radar and only a few tenths of a degree in annual statistics. The temperature at the moment is weather; annual and multi-year statistics is climate. Another commenter posted https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1410157638109872134?s=19 https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1410157638109872134?s=19, which shows this is a statistical anomaly; only when this kind of weather happens year on year, and when the averages go up, can you speak of climate change. (disclaimer: just being devil's advocate, climate change is real and "freak weather events" are becoming so common now that you can't deny it being a trend and the direct effect of global climate change)

jussij 5y ago

Except when these "freak heat waves" start becoming common place. In recent years many places around the would appear to be setting new temperature records on a rather regular basis.

TheFreim 5y ago
Are they more common? Summers and winters don't feel any different to me than what they were when I was a child, they just get talked about a LOT more (my specific geographic location is probably a factor).
- blackbrokkoli 5y ago
  Take any region, country or city, look up heat highs or averages. You will inadvertently find that around half a dozen extreme events happened in the last two decades. Since a giant political movement seems to be based on the unwillingness to read more than ~24 characters at a time, here is a beautiful chart that really shows this: [0]. It does not even have text! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes#/media/File:20181204_Warming_stripes_(global,_WMO,_1850-2018)_-_Climate_Lab_Book_(Ed_Hawkins).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes#/media/File:20...
  - swader999 5y ago
    This is false. USGCRP Climate Science Special Assessment: Volume 1: Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ Scroll down to figure 6.3. You can see that the 1920's to 1940's had more extreme heat events than any time since. Figure 6.4 is also useful to look at.
  - jussij 5y ago
    This page lists the highest temperatures from around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records The nice thing about that page is when you scroll down to the continent/country table data there is an option to sort by date column. Sorting by date shows most of these records were set in the 21 century. More worryingly many of those records were set in the last half decade. While this might be coincidence, it could also be a trend and if it is the later then things are starting to look rather ominous. Time will tell.

candu 5y ago

...except, really, when people use this argument, they're often not using that one data point in isolation. This is just one data point, true, but it's one _more_ data point on top of an increasingly long list of "freak" weather events. 500-year floods, 100-year storms, 100-year heat waves, etc. are becoming almost annual / decennial events. We absolutely should be willing to change our prior probability that global warming is A Real Thing from "very high" to "very, very high" for one more data point; that's how Bayesian inference works.

sneak 5y ago
500-year floods happening twice in a lifespan, or the same with 100-year storms or heat waves doesn't actually prove or disprove anthropocentric climate change either. It's entirely plausible that it's related, but the fact that these things are happening more often in a 5 or 10 year period is not sufficient evidence alone. Your comment reads like a hammer looking for a nail, like freak weather is obviously a natural consequence of rising global temperatures. I'm not sure that it is. You should probably examine your assumptions a little bit more closely, and look for a testable link rather than a confirmation of an existing belief.
- wins32767 5y ago
  Unfortunately we don't have a control Earth to use.
- JeremyBanks 5y ago
  You need to be either mentally deficient, or (more common) severely mentally impaired by politics to still doubt this. Get your head out of your ass, you absolute useless turd.
  - sneak 5y ago
    I encourage you to read my comment again, the second time more carefully.
- Workaccount2 5y ago

BeniBoy 5y ago

That's why we use the term "Climate Change". A freak heat wave and a freak blizzard both show that climate is changing, and not for the best. Two sides of the same coin, we're fucking up our climate.

z0ltan 5y ago
And how is that related to human activities? Such events have been going on since earth's inception. The problem is that people try to add the "human factor" subtext on without directly mentioning it, and that's where the problem is. There is no definitive proof that human activities are increasing/decreasing earth's own natural processes. That's it.
thehappypm 5y ago
I think part of what makes people skeptical is that even if there was no anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, there would still be these so-called "freak events". There were big hurricanes in the US's Revolutionary War era, for example, that had huge impacts on naval forces in the Caribbean. If climate change truly was a total hoax, believers could still point at a myriad of extreme weather events and say "look, climate change is real".
itsoktocry 5y ago
>A freak heat wave and a freak blizzard both show that climate is changing, and not for the best. Freak events don't show anything, that's why they are freak events.
- 0xTJ 5y ago
  Yes, they do show things. When freak events happen over and over, year after year, that's a bad sign, and shows that things are changing.

kergonath 5y ago

One six on a dice is chance. Two sixes in a row are a fluke. Nine sixes are a loaded dice. The trends are clear for anyone interested in discussing facts rather than ideology.

codingdave 5y ago

This is exactly the type of thinking that allows people to deny the reality of climate change. Dismissing "one data point", but doing it to all the thousands of data points. At some point, you have to look at all the data points and acknowledge that there is a distinct trend.