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> beating the previous national high temperature mark by more than 4C in one go, as happened in Canada last week, is virtually unprecedented. This event should

> beating the previous national high temperature mark by more than 4C in one go, as happened in Canada last week, is virtually unprecedented. This event should be a warning call to all people who believe that a global warming of only 2 degrees Celsius will be barely noticeable. One positive effect is that scientists have collected a lot of data that will help them improve climate models.

aww_dang 5y ago
On the other hand, proponents of climate apocalypse frequently make a distinction between weather and climate.
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  There is a causal arrow from climate to weather. It just isn't as crude as "warm planet equals warm weather". It would be closer to the truth to say "warm planet equals more unsettled weather, averaging warmer over the large scale, but including unseasonal cold as (for example) wind patterns distort".
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    I appreciate that. From the perspective of the skeptic the Popper quote comes to mind. Karl Popper — 'A theory that explains everything, explains nothing'
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      Indeed. It goes both ways, I think of people saying "Well, if you admitted your theory can't explain this one particular thing, that shows that it's useless, and can't possibly be explaining the things you claim it does explain! If there's something it can't explain, that means it's unlikely to be valid!" An argument beloved by both covid and climate deniers. Nope.
    - syops 5y ago
      Why does that come to mind? The explanation provided does not explain everything even within the confines of climate science. When massive amounts of energy are added to a dynamical system there will be chaos before a new equilibrium is obtained. This is not controversial. It’s settled science. The heat dome in question is not just a bunch of new local high temps. That’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s a large high pressure mass doing things that the equilibrium established before the industrial revolution largely prevented.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        Perhaps it is a bit unfair to more nuanced proponents of climate apocalypse, but in popular discourse, every weather event is attributed to climate change. There is no observation of weather which cannot be construed as a result of anthropogenic climate change. If the conclusion opposes impending doom the popular refrain, "weather is not climate" is employed. >massive amounts of energy are added... Yes, but the claim (as presented in pop culture) rests upon the premise that the current climatic system is the standard which must be adhered to. The Earth's climate has varied throughout humanity's existence and before. Additionally, human emitted CO2 is narrowly focused upon as the sole culprit. Other potential mechanisms are dismissed or downplayed. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is for more governance. Issuance of carbon-credits as a permission slip to consume energy. Whereas before the petrodollar has been backed by the US military. Nonviolent Solutions like reforestation are downplayed. Instead forests are mismanaged and allowed to burn. Carbon could be captured as usable wood products. Not only are there problems with the observations and questions about the premises, but the conclusions are inconsistent as well. "Settled science" was used to buttress cannabis prohibition. Today CBD is touted as a miracle cure. Pick any topic where large institutions fund research. You'll frequently (not always) find something rotten when results correlate with policy proposals.
        syops 5y ago
        There are lots of examples of where science has gotten it wrong. So what do we do, philosophically, with this fact? It is possible that the 97+% of climate scientists are wrong in their beliefs. Let us ponder this possibility and assign it an unknown probability of X. Let us now ponder the following two facts. Every known example of where science has gotten it wrong is also an example of where science has corrected itself. The overwhelming majority of the people most knowledgeable about climate science believe the massive amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution are largely responsible for the disruption of the weather system. Is X sufficiently high to discount the previous two facts? Scientists are studying perturbations of Earth’s orbit to see the effect that has on climate. Some study the effects of solar dynamics on Earth’s climate. It’s not that CO2 is the sole culprit. It’s that CO2 is the one we can control. It’s not that climate doesn’t change it’s that we are changing it faster than nature can change. It’s changing fast enough that there will be dire consequences to the current world political system. Of course more governance is needed. The free rider problem mandates that the solution be enforced by government.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      But it isn't a theory that explains everything. It isn't like this work is just a one sentence paper reading "climate change means more swingy weather, QED". There are cases of extreme weather where the methodology used in this sort of research does not implicate climate change.
    - orwin 5y ago
      Or you know, the refutability criterion. The denialist theory is that CO2 have no impact on temperature. So let's build two closed of greenhouses with the same sun exposition, fill one of them with old ambiant air with 450 ppm of CO2 and one with current/predicted ambiant air (750 ppm of CO2), same humidity (or rather, a bassin with the same quantity of water). After a day under the sun, check the temperature of both greenhouses (well, actually, the energy contain in the air of both greenhouses would be better). If one of them have more energy than the second, this "CO2 have no impact on the climate" theory should die and his proponents shut up.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        There's a wide gulf between, "CO2 has no impact" and, "Humanity is responsible for climate and weather". Your experiment would be better formulated as such: 1) Establishing the optimal climate and weather. 2) Create two entire solar systems. 3) Place humans on the Earth of one solar system* 4) Observe the climate of both Earths 5) Decide which one best meets your standard of the ideal climate As with any scientific experiment, you would want to conduct it multiple times to ensure the results are reproducible. Measure the deviation of each climate and count the number of experiments to determine your degree of certainty. *3. Make sure humans don't appear (naturally?) on your non-human bearing earth. The question of if humans are a part of nature and therefore part of the ecosystem will arise. If humans are part of nature, you may then ask if any changes they may or may not contribute are therefore natural.
    - JulianMorrison 5y ago
      The averaged temperature anomaly, relative to pre-industrial temperatures (or even relative to a few decades ago), as measured by various scientific means, is hot and getting hotter. That isn't an explains-everything theory. That's prediction and confirmation.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Let's say alcohol didn't exist. Then, one day it gets invented... Traffic deaths would rise because people would increasingly drive under the influence. In this situation you could say: "This crazy unusual number of traffic deaths near this bar is obviously the result of drunk driving." In this situation you could not say: "My town had the lowest number of traffic deaths ever recorded last year, so alcohol has not increased accident rates."
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    Why? Both are just equating correlation with causation. Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statemens.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      > Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statements. And we know that climate change causes more drastic heat waves. If that weren't the case, you'd be correct, but alas.
      - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
        Climate change produces heat waves by definition. If we're going to take a heat wave as hard proof for climate change, then climate change is a valid theory by definition, and that's not exactly scientific. > If that weren't the case, you'd be correct, but alas. Why so snarky?
        BobbyJo 5y ago
        Wasn't trying to be snarky. And you're inverting my statements. I'm saying, precisely, that heat waves are not definitive evidence of climate change, the same way colder than average weather is not hard evidence against it. The evidence in my analogy would be blood alcohol tests of the people who crashed, and the evidence in the case of climate change is the measured/calculating heat trapping ability of the atmosphere. My point is, we have evidence enough that is is valid to say the former, and that is what differentiates it from the latter.
ALLTaken 5y ago
Wasn't the Trump administration in effect ordering the deletion of all climate data [1]? I remember there was a very hefty reaction amongst scientists. I was also furious about that, even as a european. That data was gold. - [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-web-pages-erased-and-obscured-under-trump/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-web-pages... I'm sorry, I really don't touch politic topics and don't want to limit my thinking to binary left/right leafs of thinking, so regardless who ordered this, it was a fatally wrong and inhuman decision.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It was mostly a political change rather than really impacting data collection and actual science, but it was still a hugely wrong decision by the right.
  - ALLTaken 5y ago
    I wasn't there and could inform myself only through media. So no climate data wasn't actually deleted? That'd be a big relief =)
dghughes 5y ago
It's the high above freezing temperatures at the 3300m level that's even more concerning it's so hot so high up!

aww_dang 5y ago

On the other hand, proponents of climate apocalypse frequently make a distinction between weather and climate.

JulianMorrison 5y ago
There is a causal arrow from climate to weather. It just isn't as crude as "warm planet equals warm weather". It would be closer to the truth to say "warm planet equals more unsettled weather, averaging warmer over the large scale, but including unseasonal cold as (for example) wind patterns distort".
- aww_dang 5y ago
  I appreciate that. From the perspective of the skeptic the Popper quote comes to mind. Karl Popper — 'A theory that explains everything, explains nothing'
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Indeed. It goes both ways, I think of people saying "Well, if you admitted your theory can't explain this one particular thing, that shows that it's useless, and can't possibly be explaining the things you claim it does explain! If there's something it can't explain, that means it's unlikely to be valid!" An argument beloved by both covid and climate deniers. Nope.
  - syops 5y ago
    Why does that come to mind? The explanation provided does not explain everything even within the confines of climate science. When massive amounts of energy are added to a dynamical system there will be chaos before a new equilibrium is obtained. This is not controversial. It’s settled science. The heat dome in question is not just a bunch of new local high temps. That’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s a large high pressure mass doing things that the equilibrium established before the industrial revolution largely prevented.
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      Perhaps it is a bit unfair to more nuanced proponents of climate apocalypse, but in popular discourse, every weather event is attributed to climate change. There is no observation of weather which cannot be construed as a result of anthropogenic climate change. If the conclusion opposes impending doom the popular refrain, "weather is not climate" is employed. >massive amounts of energy are added... Yes, but the claim (as presented in pop culture) rests upon the premise that the current climatic system is the standard which must be adhered to. The Earth's climate has varied throughout humanity's existence and before. Additionally, human emitted CO2 is narrowly focused upon as the sole culprit. Other potential mechanisms are dismissed or downplayed. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is for more governance. Issuance of carbon-credits as a permission slip to consume energy. Whereas before the petrodollar has been backed by the US military. Nonviolent Solutions like reforestation are downplayed. Instead forests are mismanaged and allowed to burn. Carbon could be captured as usable wood products. Not only are there problems with the observations and questions about the premises, but the conclusions are inconsistent as well. "Settled science" was used to buttress cannabis prohibition. Today CBD is touted as a miracle cure. Pick any topic where large institutions fund research. You'll frequently (not always) find something rotten when results correlate with policy proposals.
      - syops 5y ago
        There are lots of examples of where science has gotten it wrong. So what do we do, philosophically, with this fact? It is possible that the 97+% of climate scientists are wrong in their beliefs. Let us ponder this possibility and assign it an unknown probability of X. Let us now ponder the following two facts. Every known example of where science has gotten it wrong is also an example of where science has corrected itself. The overwhelming majority of the people most knowledgeable about climate science believe the massive amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution are largely responsible for the disruption of the weather system. Is X sufficiently high to discount the previous two facts? Scientists are studying perturbations of Earth’s orbit to see the effect that has on climate. Some study the effects of solar dynamics on Earth’s climate. It’s not that CO2 is the sole culprit. It’s that CO2 is the one we can control. It’s not that climate doesn’t change it’s that we are changing it faster than nature can change. It’s changing fast enough that there will be dire consequences to the current world political system. Of course more governance is needed. The free rider problem mandates that the solution be enforced by government.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    But it isn't a theory that explains everything. It isn't like this work is just a one sentence paper reading "climate change means more swingy weather, QED". There are cases of extreme weather where the methodology used in this sort of research does not implicate climate change.
  - orwin 5y ago
    Or you know, the refutability criterion. The denialist theory is that CO2 have no impact on temperature. So let's build two closed of greenhouses with the same sun exposition, fill one of them with old ambiant air with 450 ppm of CO2 and one with current/predicted ambiant air (750 ppm of CO2), same humidity (or rather, a bassin with the same quantity of water). After a day under the sun, check the temperature of both greenhouses (well, actually, the energy contain in the air of both greenhouses would be better). If one of them have more energy than the second, this "CO2 have no impact on the climate" theory should die and his proponents shut up.
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      There's a wide gulf between, "CO2 has no impact" and, "Humanity is responsible for climate and weather". Your experiment would be better formulated as such: 1) Establishing the optimal climate and weather. 2) Create two entire solar systems. 3) Place humans on the Earth of one solar system* 4) Observe the climate of both Earths 5) Decide which one best meets your standard of the ideal climate As with any scientific experiment, you would want to conduct it multiple times to ensure the results are reproducible. Measure the deviation of each climate and count the number of experiments to determine your degree of certainty. *3. Make sure humans don't appear (naturally?) on your non-human bearing earth. The question of if humans are a part of nature and therefore part of the ecosystem will arise. If humans are part of nature, you may then ask if any changes they may or may not contribute are therefore natural.
  - JulianMorrison 5y ago
    The averaged temperature anomaly, relative to pre-industrial temperatures (or even relative to a few decades ago), as measured by various scientific means, is hot and getting hotter. That isn't an explains-everything theory. That's prediction and confirmation.
BobbyJo 5y ago
Let's say alcohol didn't exist. Then, one day it gets invented... Traffic deaths would rise because people would increasingly drive under the influence. In this situation you could say: "This crazy unusual number of traffic deaths near this bar is obviously the result of drunk driving." In this situation you could not say: "My town had the lowest number of traffic deaths ever recorded last year, so alcohol has not increased accident rates."
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  Why? Both are just equating correlation with causation. Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statemens.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    > Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statements. And we know that climate change causes more drastic heat waves. If that weren't the case, you'd be correct, but alas.
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      Climate change produces heat waves by definition. If we're going to take a heat wave as hard proof for climate change, then climate change is a valid theory by definition, and that's not exactly scientific. > If that weren't the case, you'd be correct, but alas. Why so snarky?
      - BobbyJo 5y ago
        Wasn't trying to be snarky. And you're inverting my statements. I'm saying, precisely, that heat waves are not definitive evidence of climate change, the same way colder than average weather is not hard evidence against it. The evidence in my analogy would be blood alcohol tests of the people who crashed, and the evidence in the case of climate change is the measured/calculating heat trapping ability of the atmosphere. My point is, we have evidence enough that is is valid to say the former, and that is what differentiates it from the latter.

ALLTaken 5y ago

Wasn't the Trump administration in effect ordering the deletion of all climate data [1]? I remember there was a very hefty reaction amongst scientists. I was also furious about that, even as a european. That data was gold. - [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-web-pages-erased-and-obscured-under-trump/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-web-pages... I'm sorry, I really don't touch politic topics and don't want to limit my thinking to binary left/right leafs of thinking, so regardless who ordered this, it was a fatally wrong and inhuman decision.

pjc50 5y ago
It was mostly a political change rather than really impacting data collection and actual science, but it was still a hugely wrong decision by the right.
- ALLTaken 5y ago
  I wasn't there and could inform myself only through media. So no climate data wasn't actually deleted? That'd be a big relief =)

dghughes 5y ago

It's the high above freezing temperatures at the 3300m level that's even more concerning it's so hot so high up!