Climate scientists say that our recent heat wave was almost certainly a result of global warming:
Temperatures were so extreme — including readings of 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Ore., and a Canadian record of 121 in British Columbia — that the researchers had difficulty saying just how rare the heat wave was. But they estimated that in any given year there was only a 0.1 percent chance of such an intense heat wave occurring.
“Although it was a rare event, it would have been virtually impossible without climate change,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who conducted the study with 26 other scientists, part of a collaborative group called World Weather Attribution.
Climate change is a lot like loading the dice in a game of chance. If you throw a die 60 times, you'd expect each number to come up about ten times. But what if you got this result instead?
This result isn't impossible. But it's so unlikely that anybody with a lick of common sense would demand a fresh set of dice.
This is what climate change does. It loads the weather dice to make extreme events not just possible, but common. We need a fresh set of dice if we want to avoid a future of extreme weather events that leave thousands of dead bodies in their wake.
That isn't how weather patterns work. The heat wave was caused by the EPR flexing farther East than expected. Likewise, the WAR has had a tendency this summer to flex farther west than usual into the east coast, driven by tropical forcing.
Yeah! And there's no way that anything like a massive increase in the amount of energy in a global system as interlinked and chaotic could EVER cause ANYTHING like moderate flexing of highly approximate weather regions. And also, um, sunspots!
You should write a letter to the World Attribution Network explaining your findings. They would get a big kick out of it.
Spades, you have a wonderful mastery of the technical arcana of meteorology. For meteorologists who have to predict tomorrow's weather hour by hour, that's pretty important, I know.
But I'm guessing you probably have difficulty with macroeconomics too, right?
OK, that describes the immediate weather, but not the cause of the variation in the extent of those regions. How many standard deviations east is the EPR and how many standard deviations west is the WAR and what is the distribution of these events occurring at the same time. If both of these are independent and are 3 standard deviations off then the probablity of that occurring is (approximately) .3% * .3% = .09% or 1 in 1000. Which, shockingly, is the number in the quoted text.
"... .3% * .3% = .09% .."
That's not how it works. %*% = .01%.
You're right on the arithmetic, but it should really be 1-(.997*.997) = .006 / 2 = .003, where .997 is the proportion within 3 std deviations and we divide by 2 because we only want to look at the 1/2 of that in the direction we care about.
The Sun is over the yardarm somewhere, so bottom's up, Shootie! Say hi to the worm for me.
Yes! And pigs can’t fly because the ratio of their mass to their aerodynamic lifting area is too large. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact they don’t have wings!
To continue your analogy:
Climate change deniers insist that because:
Sometimes you still roll a one (Inhofe's snowball), and
You can't prove any individual roll of a six was caused by die loading,
then die loading / anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.
You think climate change is causing spikes in extreme weather events? Blame the left.
If climate change is real, that spells the end of consumerism and global capitalism, which is how we know that constantly bringing up climate change is part of the Democrats' socialist agenda. /s
What about if it is real, but we just stick our heads in the ground like Republicans and pretend it isn’t real?
"Progressives" are heavily atheist, which by itself is no problem for me, but only if they're rational. That's not the case. Having discarded one set of doctrines, but not having adopted rationality, you merely have invented a new religion. LOL.
Science is one of the most (if not the most) rational of human endeavors. Unlike religion, it is self correcting in the long term. Today’s Republicans reject most science, ergo they are irrational. The fact you cannot discriminate between science and religion indicates you are also irrational. People like you make me fill like crying out loud.
You know nothing about the science, and are too lazy, stupid, fearful, and dishonest to try. You are a European peasant, c 1400, holding a flaming torch against the heretics because your priest told you to. LOL
Just for your information, I do have a PhD in Nuclear Physics. And yes I don’t expect you to believe me.
You are living evidence that there are stupid, lazy "PhDs."
I just retired after a long successful career. I have a great house with a water view and plenty of money to do anything I want. If that’s stupid and lazy, I will take it.
I had the opportunity to sit in on a graduate course in climate change a few years ago. If I had to sum up the effect of climate change, as taught by a distinguished and varied group of guest lecturers, in five words it would be, "More extreme weather, more frequently."
Extreme on both sides. Blizzards AND heatwaves!
(Bothsidesing the effects of climate change may be the best way to get it discussed on Meet the Press, This Week, & FOXnews Sunday.)
masscommons, that corresponds with what I've seen in other places and also makes basic sense, in that rising global temps = rising energy in the system, and that isn't a recipe for equilibrium.
Back when polar vortices were more in the news, it was explained that the circumpolar winds that keep Arctic air masses more or less penned up have been weakening, hence the winter polar vortex phenomenon. What I wonder about is whether there's any relation between these recent heat patterns and what's happening with the polar winds.
This latest heat wave was a heat dome - which is not uncommon in the summertime. What was unprecedented (according to a June 29 article in the Washington Post) was the strength of this dome in the Pacific Northwest. According to the article - "It has blown away records based on measurements from three miles high in the sky down to the ground."
Other factors contributed - there was a tropical storm in the Pacific that interacted with the jet stream, and the timing of the event near the summer solstice meant extra daylight to increase temperatures within the dome.
But it's highly unlikely all of those factors would have created that big and hot a dome normally. Not impossible, but very unlikely. This is a common theme with climate change - you can't say that any specific extreme event "was caused by" global warming, but when the frequency of extreme events starts going up enough - you can say, "that's why".
The normal affect of weakening the polar vortex is to push a section of the jet stream farther South than normal on one "lobe", taking cold air with it, and allow warm air further north on the adjacent lobes - a sinusoidal pattern circling the northern (and southern) hemispheres. So you'll see several areas get very cold, and the alternate areas get warm. Global warming makes this weakening and breakout more likely to occur - the cold in the arctic helps hold the vortex closer in - when the pole warms (a relative term) the breakout occurs.
Thanks, DButch, sinusoidal pattern helps picture it.
Similar unprecedented high temps in either northern Scandinavia or Siberia recently too, iirc.
Um, Germany just had its coldest winter in 150 years, and much of South America is seeing temps way below average. Oops, facts don't fit the Party Line, so ignore 'em. LOL
I was wondering the same thing, is it right to call this heat dome event the summer version of the polar vortex effect?
I loved the "polar vortex." Great name for the Canadian cold fronts that have happened forever. LOL
Well, we probably could have done something to address global warming 20-30 years ago, but apparently it was more fun to call Al Gore fat and trick out our "Rolling Coal" pickups to own the libs.
This is looking at probabilities the wrong way. The reality of global warming (that is the temperature increase, not the cause) is established by the mass of temperature measurements and some cumulative things like ice-cap changes, not individual events such as heat waves or hurricans (the heat waves go into the aggregate temperature measurements).
A heat wave like the current one in the Pacific NW has low probability but that probability is not possible to determine accurately without many, many years of observations which we don't have. We do have long-time overall temperature measurements from things like measurements on ice cores. Saying that such heat waves could not occur without warming is just not justified on the basis of probabilities.
The message should not be that these events prove global warming - it has already been proven. The message should be that such events will only be more probable in the future. Also increasing will be the destruction caused by events like Hurricane Sandy as sea level rises, not to mention many other consequences of sea-level rise.
It's fun to see comments from "progressives" who don't know the first thing about the scientific method. But who needs any of that when you're in thrall to a religious cult? LOL
Of course, climate deniers are the worst, but most scientists are not helpful when they frame their answers in terms of statistical probability when the underlying phenomenon is not stochastic.
Consider the following analogy:
A 12-year-old boy is 5 foot 4. Then 4 years pass, and he's 5 foot 10. Did the passage of time have anything to do with his increased height? Of course! But a statistical analysis could lead one to say that it may or may not have affected his height because statistically those heights fall within the range of heights for 16-year-old boys. So it's statistically POSSIBLE that getting older had nothing to do with his increased height.
Of course, this is ridiculous. We know that as 12-year-old boys get older, they generally get taller. It's an established fact of nature. And although there could be some cases where a 12-year-old boy gets no taller, or even gets shorter (in the case of some rare biological condition), this is not up for debate.
Human-caused global warming is the same: it's an established fact of nature. The underlying, foundational phenomenon is that the planet is accumulating more of the sun's energy because of greenhouse gas buildup, and this phenomenon is going only in ONE direction: up.
So there is no hedging required when asked if climate change is responsible for a record-breaking heat wave. The answer is YES. Every year the earth has accumulated more energy, and naturally that will make heat waves hotter.
Great example! It should be simple enough for most Americans to understand, and we all know how Dems love to give long-form answers. Sadly, do Americans have a long enough attention span to hear it? And will it fit into a 30-sec ad -- or on a bumper sticker? (sigh)
You don't even know the basics of the scientific method. This is actually perfect, because "progressives" are at their lecturing best when they are laughably ignorant. Next up, you can tell me that my guns will escape from the safe and kill George Floyd again. LOL
He's baaaack. Under a different nom de guerre, of course.
GQP: We would like to call Kevin Hart to testify.
Idiot, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Junior high school. Blithering "progressive" idiot, you must have been dreaming about your new "gender" rather than listening to your science teacher's explanation of the first law of thermoynamics.
Next up, you will tell us that the world's running out of water. Really, if you're going to be a moron, try not to be quite that obvious about it. LOL
The "climate" is getting warmer but keep in mind that climate is measured over centuries, not seasons.
Yes we are getting warmer and we are seeing both extremes. We are having hotter summers and in some cases colder winters. But we are talking GLOBAL temperature changes and taken as a whole the earth is getting warmer. It is happening slowly but climate change is a TREND not an isolated event or a decades long shift.
I remember as a much younger man wondering what would happen when the Arctic Ice finally melted. It has and nothing BIG has happened. The changes are very very small but in an ecosystem such as the earths these small changes when added up point to a disturbing future.
Of course the Arctic Ice melt is not such a big problem anyway because it is SEA ice, not land ice. But Antarctica and Greenland's ice are different. Their melt has a much bigger impact on sea level rise.........
If we are to take climate change and sea level rise seriously then the government of the U.S. needs to take some steps to make everyone pay MORE attention. AS I have stated before we should plan, pay for and implement the move of Wall St and the Federal Reserve of New York out of Manhattan. move them inland - you could keep them in NY but move them. At the same time harden their systems against ransomware attack so that our financial system is stable.
Show the folks how important this is. Most folks do not understand the science - but they would sit up and take notice when the government does something like that.
Um, child, given that the 4-day heat wave hit the Pacific NW, might it be appropriate to note that the number of 99+ degree days in the region is unchanged in 100 years; that droughts have not increased; that the warmest day of the year averaged higher between 1901 and 1960 than it has since 1986?
Nah, those would be facts, and "progressives" HATE facts almost as much as you hate this country's guts. Facts scare your kind as much as Gallileo scared the pope.
Curious how you are full of facts, but never list any sources. At best you are cherry picking, at worst just making it all up.
He is certainly making it all up.
Here goes, liar. LOL. I'm sure you'll keep right on with your pathetic stupidity and laziness so typical of your neo-religious kind. Facts scare you. Always have, always will.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/was-global-warming-cause-of-great.html
Great. Cliff mass is a meteorologist, not a climatologist. Interesting guy but well known as a bit of a climate change sceptic. It is interesting that so many meteorologists are out and out denialist given their training is in short term weather forecasting, not long term climate change. The argument between meteorologist and climatologist is hardly unique; I was struck how so many 911 denialists were architects, but not one structural engineer that I am aware of.
"Interesting guy but well known as a bit of a climate change sceptic."
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... says the "progressive" who's either too lazy to read the article, or (more) likely just cannot help lying because it's all it knows. LOL
There's no such thing as a "climatologist." The earth's climate is studied by specialists in a number of disciplines. But I do like your comment, because it's powerful evidence for an Iron Law: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single thing. They think they know everything, and that they are better and smarter than mere human beings."
Imagine dismissing the scholarship of one of the most eminent professors of meteorolgical science. You are not only lazy, arrogant, and stupid, but you didn't even read the guy's article. Who needs to read when you're in a religious fervor? LOL
Wow. A bit angry aren’t we. I’ve read numerous Cliff mass articles, listened to his pieces on the radio (he was fired from KOUW, but picked up by then KPLU, now KNKX) even met him a couple of times. I am simply find him unconvincing on climate change, as do most climate change specialists.
Actually, I am laughing at you and your ignorance, along with the rampant stupidity from the other "progressives" here, who like you, know nothing about science.
There is no such thing as a "climate change specialist," but you are a "progressive," so you will keep lying about that too.
Yours truly,
The Latinx LOL
You don't know the difference between mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, or heteroskedasticity, do you?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a right-winger in possession of an internet connection, will quickly demonstrate their want of any quantitative aptitude.
Actually, I do. And actually, you are too stupid and lazy to read the guy's article. Your religious fervor is enough. LOL
No, you don't. The mean number of days over 99 ° F in a given year hasn't changed much over the last century is proof that the effects of AGW have been greatly exaggerated? Even if the same is not true of the variance? You're an idiot. And that's granting for the sake of argument your unsourced, uncited claim.
And -- the cherry on top -- you think your guy actually made an evidence-based argument despite the lack of any quantitative analysis on his part. And in a frickin' blog post where he couldn't even be arsed to cite o link to any primary unreduced numerical data sources.
There's a reason why only six percent of all scientists self-identify as Republican, as you've just amply demonstrated 😉
Keep right on lying. You are a "progressive," and it's what you and your kind do. LOL
If I am reading https://www.quora.com/A-fair-six-sided-die-is-rolled-20-times-What-is-the-probability-that-there-will-be-exactly-four-6s correctly, we aught to be able to compute just how unlikely it is.
If Kevin would only wait until Rupert Murdoch's Fox Weather channel get sup and running, and watches it, he will soon realize that there is no global warming.
Greedy climate scientists, eager to cash in with lucrative research money, are falsely proclaiming that global warming poses a threat to the planet. But they don't stand a chance in Australia where the Murdoch press has already gotten much of the country to dismiss climate change and, instead, support even more coal mining.
https://gizmodo.com/climate-supervillain-creating-new-tv-channel-to-report-1847236993
The chance of rolling a six 20 times in 60 rolls of the dice is 7.8 x 10^-4 or almost 1 in a 1000, pretty unlikely, but I wouldn't call it astronomically small.
Always fun to see the science-free "progressives" lying about this subject again. It's your religion. LOL
I thought the first post from jakejj was a Poe, but , no, he really is that dumb.
How's that TV you looted working for you, antifette? LOL
This goof doesn't read the news, just looks at the pictures, that way it could be anything.
Nah, I'm a Latinx, because the "progressive" racists are right about my first language being inferior to USA English. LOL
No one you've ever met has ever believed one word you've ever said except the word 'inferior', which is plainly projection.
Always good to meet another smug, ignorant, arrogant, racist white trust-fund "progressive" that thinks it's better than everyone else. And then you wonder why your wonderfullness is laughed at.
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
You've tried a hundred times but you still can't get your dad's gun safe open? You should focus on how that's a good thing. It's a really good thing, and it's a good thing even for you.
This is society doing you a solid.
If you think I can't open my gun safe, maybe you should wander on by and try to take mine. LOL
Changing the climate results in the shifting of the entire bell curve of temperatures. In the case of anthropogenic climate change, we're shifting the bell curve to the right (warmer).
... says a "progressive" who knows nothing, because it wasn't covered in its Transgender Art of the 15th Century program at that Eastern finishing school. LOL
I'm just going to say this one time. I ignore trolling comments. Have a good day.
You too, communista! LOL