Years ago Climate Central, the government and foundation funded media shop providing visuals to increasingly cash strapped TV stations, advertised 2 positions for their "TV Mets" project to pressure local weather forecasters and "leverage the power of trusted messengers" by attributing any adverse local weather to "global warming" to "help a nationwide media network connect global climate change to local audiences in ways that matter" as it is now labelled. Sometimes as subtle as substituting the word "normal" for the previous "seasonal average temperature" is enough to reinforce continuous underlying unease.
This was a step up from trade journals for "Environmental Journalists" advice to abandon objectivity and simply "go with your gut" in the service of the cause as medium term predictions of arctic ice disappearance and polar bear extinction failed to happen on cue and a narrowed time focus to frame the message was needed.
Canada's government which has ridden a "science based" rationale image for its political and economic agenda to a historic low levels in citizen approval, is now cranking "extreme weather" fear to the max with any heavy rain or wind storm getting flashing red "Extreme" warnings from "Environment and Climate Change Canada", ("Environment Canada" before 2015, Meteorological Service of Canada before 1971) into news broadcasts.
If you missed the message beforehand, we now have the "rapid extreme weather event attribution system" to explain in days why you yourself are responsible for "heat waves, floods, and wildfires" damage, not bad planning or government mismanagement.
"While the analysis is limited by the fact that not all the meteorological data is even available yet, by several measures, climate change made aspects of Milton significantly more likely."
Who else remembers 2005 when Katrina then Rita hit the Gulf coast? The same attribution claims were made and the exact same predictions about the new normal of more and stronger storms. Who else remembers what happened next? Yes, the longest major landfalling hurricane drought in the entire historical record. Never once did i hear any accounting made for these grossly inaccurate predictions. Accountability for failed predictions is one of the tenets of actual science. Until you have Accountability for failed predictions i guarantee you that science is not being practiced
I recently read an article written in The Atlantic about hurricaine Milton. The article offers insights by Edward Richards, a professor emeritus at Louisiana State University Law School. I am assuming that the professor has an interest in climate science like myself, but has no formal training in the discipline. Nonetheless, he attributes the intensity of Milton to climate change and predicts more intense and major floods in the future. I think this is quite typical of the media today when it comes to climate change as you assert. Also, I often read in the legacy media how the warming oceans increase the intensity of hurricanes and other tropical storms. I would be interested in your opinion regarding this. Thanks for your erudition professor.
At least from a cursory review if IPCCs claims on heat waves, supporting studies rely on cherry picking durations, primarily starting from the 1960s, which in the US (where a disproportionate amount of data comes from), missing the extremes of the 1930’s.
Appreciate this article. I only wish newscaster and copy wrighters would, along with reporting targeted change summaries, report that they are not peer reviewed nor confirmed by the IPCC.
Similarly to other posts (including your recent weaponizing-peer-review one) you build your arguments by cherry-picking quotes, sometimes (as in the peer review one) actively or inadvertently mischaracterize them for whatever reason, and generalize them to make out an issue that is far larger than it actually is (at least you don't give any evidence otherwise).
For example, your claim here of "First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends.". By this, you paint an entire research field with one brush. It's unclear whether you a) do not know much, or anything about the field, b) you deliberately make such broad-brush statements to serve your own needs - be it narrative, political, financial clickbait-related or other. Whatever it is, it isn't 'honest brokering', and it certainly isn't adhering to any of the high integrity standards you lament others to deviate from.
The researchers doing event attribution (eg, WWA) have not been shy about the fact that their main motivations are to support lawsuits and win the daily media cycle.
There will be plenty things to debate and discuss as this series evolves, but event attribution as tactical science shouldn’t be among those things. 👍🙏
Event attribution is not WWA, the field is continually growing, the motivations of some researchers involved in the field are certainly not the same as those of others etc. Extrapolating from quotes from hand-picked researchers to not even an entire group of researchers, but a research topic/field itself, is off course problematic at best.
Also, your response that 'event attribution as tactical science shouldn't be debated' is a bit odd, for multiple reasons.
Thanks DC ... we will simply agree to disagree on this one.
Sure there are excellent scholars like Stott, Hoerling, Shepherd, Frame (among others) who contribute good research to the event attribution literature, and are not engaged in tactical research and there is no accusation here that they are.
That said, there is little doubt that this field and surrounding public discourse is dominated by WWA which has an explicit advocacy agenda -- which they are very open about. I've provided very specific examples of researchers who admit they are engaged in tactical research -- not to "extrapolate" to anyone unnamed but to share what these specific researchers have said.
As this series goes forward I will take a close look at specific analyses and methods and these too will be specific to my focus. As we proceed I invite you to share examples of specific event attribution studies that you think are good science, and I'm happy to discuss those as well.
Yes, we disagree, but likely not on the same thing. Your broad-brush statements (above example now softened from the definitive "event attribution research IS tactical science" to "this field...is dominated by WWA") are not accurate, far from single occurrence. Words matter. Accuracy matters. Not least in politicized topics where there's enough hyperbole to begin - or if you wish to establish credibility for anyone else than the preaching-to-the-choir crowd.
First, good to see Kevin is still at it. I know he has had some health issues. In the Climategate emails Kevin was found to have prevented one of our papers from being cited by the IPCC -- after he had tried to intervene in the peer review process to prevent its publication. His views have long been contrary to the IPCC, and that is fine. This is a bit of score settling from two decades ago. I'd say stick with IPCC and NOAA.
"First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends."
Attribution research could also be in the service of sheer curiousity about mankinds role in influencing it's surroundings?
" Otto and others have been very forthright that the main function of such studies is to create a defensible scientific basis in support of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies — She explains the strategy in detail in this interview, From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation."
This, I haven't understood for 30 years. Perhaps it's my contrarian nature. Analytical, scrutinized attribution science is a separate issue from pollution, direct harm. There are secondary, tertiary effects of many industrial processes, that harm soil. water, people. This evidence should be differentiated in enviornmental law. It's an entirely different tactic if you will for remediation, policy change. Activist researchers fail to see the forest through the trees. These small wins add up to real policy, lifestyle changes without fear mongering and maintaining integrity. Just in the human rights real alone there is so much work to be done, land appropriation, just compensation....Define your role - policy, law or science?
"I expect that there is to come a significant collision between those researchers who support the conventional IPCC approach to detection and attribution and those of a more activist inclination who favor single event attribution." I'm sorry to hear that
Roger - we welcome this new series! BUT ... let's not call this corruption tactical "science." It's advocacy pure and simple, cloaked in a technocratic cape. You're out of academia, no need to be nice to the un-nice!
Wicked problem: The extreme variability of weather makes attribution virtually impossible over the timelines for which we have data- the signal in the noise problem. And no, unfortunately, another 25 years will not change this.
People and politicians want answers. The media wants headlines. Academia, government departments, and NGOs all want funding. Entrepreneurs want profits. Attribution claims, exaggeration, and clickbait promote these goals.
Almost no one reads beyond the IPCC "Summary for Policymakers' which itself is government parsed tactical science.
The precautionary principle, cost-benefit analysis, and other reasonable approaches to understanding and action are drowned in a tsunami of self-interest and motivated reasoning.
If I am paid to do some research with a predetermined outcome (e.g. yes, hurricane xzy was made X times more likely by human use of fossil fuels) in the knowledge that there will be no peer review and the detailed research data will be available only to non-scientists (mainly lawyers), then I guarantee that my 'research' will produce the required result. The term for this used to be bullshit baffles brains.
I enjoyed your recent posts and thank you. A comment:
Students t-test shows how very difficult it is to detect a change in the mean of a white-noise stationary process with a large variance. A red-noise process with non-stationary variance is even more difficult. What to do? Use ensemble runs of a physically based GCM model? But when all the GCM models (with one exception) have systematic error, running far too hot etc , must we not conclude that ‘we simply don’t know if climate stats have changed’; but as you say (?) ‘absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence’ a very weak conclusion.
Years ago Climate Central, the government and foundation funded media shop providing visuals to increasingly cash strapped TV stations, advertised 2 positions for their "TV Mets" project to pressure local weather forecasters and "leverage the power of trusted messengers" by attributing any adverse local weather to "global warming" to "help a nationwide media network connect global climate change to local audiences in ways that matter" as it is now labelled. Sometimes as subtle as substituting the word "normal" for the previous "seasonal average temperature" is enough to reinforce continuous underlying unease.
This was a step up from trade journals for "Environmental Journalists" advice to abandon objectivity and simply "go with your gut" in the service of the cause as medium term predictions of arctic ice disappearance and polar bear extinction failed to happen on cue and a narrowed time focus to frame the message was needed.
Canada's government which has ridden a "science based" rationale image for its political and economic agenda to a historic low levels in citizen approval, is now cranking "extreme weather" fear to the max with any heavy rain or wind storm getting flashing red "Extreme" warnings from "Environment and Climate Change Canada", ("Environment Canada" before 2015, Meteorological Service of Canada before 1971) into news broadcasts.
If you missed the message beforehand, we now have the "rapid extreme weather event attribution system" to explain in days why you yourself are responsible for "heat waves, floods, and wildfires" damage, not bad planning or government mismanagement.
And here's another one:
"While the analysis is limited by the fact that not all the meteorological data is even available yet, by several measures, climate change made aspects of Milton significantly more likely."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/climate-change-boosted-miltons-landfall-strength-from-category-2-to-3/
Who else remembers 2005 when Katrina then Rita hit the Gulf coast? The same attribution claims were made and the exact same predictions about the new normal of more and stronger storms. Who else remembers what happened next? Yes, the longest major landfalling hurricane drought in the entire historical record. Never once did i hear any accounting made for these grossly inaccurate predictions. Accountability for failed predictions is one of the tenets of actual science. Until you have Accountability for failed predictions i guarantee you that science is not being practiced
I recently read an article written in The Atlantic about hurricaine Milton. The article offers insights by Edward Richards, a professor emeritus at Louisiana State University Law School. I am assuming that the professor has an interest in climate science like myself, but has no formal training in the discipline. Nonetheless, he attributes the intensity of Milton to climate change and predicts more intense and major floods in the future. I think this is quite typical of the media today when it comes to climate change as you assert. Also, I often read in the legacy media how the warming oceans increase the intensity of hurricanes and other tropical storms. I would be interested in your opinion regarding this. Thanks for your erudition professor.
Published on the website ArsTechnica today:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/helenes-carolina-rainfall-made-70-percent-more-likely-by-climate-change/
At least from a cursory review if IPCCs claims on heat waves, supporting studies rely on cherry picking durations, primarily starting from the 1960s, which in the US (where a disproportionate amount of data comes from), missing the extremes of the 1930’s.
As I recall, in 2023 the prediction was 65% chance of elevated hurricane season, 25% average, 10% below average.
As it was a well below average season the model had a 1 in 10 chance of being correct.
However when the single hurricane did hit the USa (Ian?) the alchemists quickly attributed 10 % more rain to it from human impact.
And people actually wonder why we mock them
Appreciate this article. I only wish newscaster and copy wrighters would, along with reporting targeted change summaries, report that they are not peer reviewed nor confirmed by the IPCC.
Similarly to other posts (including your recent weaponizing-peer-review one) you build your arguments by cherry-picking quotes, sometimes (as in the peer review one) actively or inadvertently mischaracterize them for whatever reason, and generalize them to make out an issue that is far larger than it actually is (at least you don't give any evidence otherwise).
For example, your claim here of "First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends.". By this, you paint an entire research field with one brush. It's unclear whether you a) do not know much, or anything about the field, b) you deliberately make such broad-brush statements to serve your own needs - be it narrative, political, financial clickbait-related or other. Whatever it is, it isn't 'honest brokering', and it certainly isn't adhering to any of the high integrity standards you lament others to deviate from.
Thanks DC
The researchers doing event attribution (eg, WWA) have not been shy about the fact that their main motivations are to support lawsuits and win the daily media cycle.
There will be plenty things to debate and discuss as this series evolves, but event attribution as tactical science shouldn’t be among those things. 👍🙏
Event attribution is not WWA, the field is continually growing, the motivations of some researchers involved in the field are certainly not the same as those of others etc. Extrapolating from quotes from hand-picked researchers to not even an entire group of researchers, but a research topic/field itself, is off course problematic at best.
Also, your response that 'event attribution as tactical science shouldn't be debated' is a bit odd, for multiple reasons.
Thanks DC ... we will simply agree to disagree on this one.
Sure there are excellent scholars like Stott, Hoerling, Shepherd, Frame (among others) who contribute good research to the event attribution literature, and are not engaged in tactical research and there is no accusation here that they are.
That said, there is little doubt that this field and surrounding public discourse is dominated by WWA which has an explicit advocacy agenda -- which they are very open about. I've provided very specific examples of researchers who admit they are engaged in tactical research -- not to "extrapolate" to anyone unnamed but to share what these specific researchers have said.
As this series goes forward I will take a close look at specific analyses and methods and these too will be specific to my focus. As we proceed I invite you to share examples of specific event attribution studies that you think are good science, and I'm happy to discuss those as well.
Yes, we disagree, but likely not on the same thing. Your broad-brush statements (above example now softened from the definitive "event attribution research IS tactical science" to "this field...is dominated by WWA") are not accurate, far from single occurrence. Words matter. Accuracy matters. Not least in politicized topics where there's enough hyperbole to begin - or if you wish to establish credibility for anyone else than the preaching-to-the-choir crowd.
Narrative control is angry today.
Roger,
Could you comment on this:
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-have-hurricanes-gone-crazy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1593097&post_id=149967599&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8ylpe&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I am asking the author to comment on this one of yours, too.
First, good to see Kevin is still at it. I know he has had some health issues. In the Climategate emails Kevin was found to have prevented one of our papers from being cited by the IPCC -- after he had tried to intervene in the peer review process to prevent its publication. His views have long been contrary to the IPCC, and that is fine. This is a bit of score settling from two decades ago. I'd say stick with IPCC and NOAA.
My goodness there is so much here.
"First, event attribution research is a form of tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends."
Attribution research could also be in the service of sheer curiousity about mankinds role in influencing it's surroundings?
" Otto and others have been very forthright that the main function of such studies is to create a defensible scientific basis in support of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies — She explains the strategy in detail in this interview, From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation."
This, I haven't understood for 30 years. Perhaps it's my contrarian nature. Analytical, scrutinized attribution science is a separate issue from pollution, direct harm. There are secondary, tertiary effects of many industrial processes, that harm soil. water, people. This evidence should be differentiated in enviornmental law. It's an entirely different tactic if you will for remediation, policy change. Activist researchers fail to see the forest through the trees. These small wins add up to real policy, lifestyle changes without fear mongering and maintaining integrity. Just in the human rights real alone there is so much work to be done, land appropriation, just compensation....Define your role - policy, law or science?
"I expect that there is to come a significant collision between those researchers who support the conventional IPCC approach to detection and attribution and those of a more activist inclination who favor single event attribution." I'm sorry to hear that
Roger - we welcome this new series! BUT ... let's not call this corruption tactical "science." It's advocacy pure and simple, cloaked in a technocratic cape. You're out of academia, no need to be nice to the un-nice!
Wicked problem: The extreme variability of weather makes attribution virtually impossible over the timelines for which we have data- the signal in the noise problem. And no, unfortunately, another 25 years will not change this.
People and politicians want answers. The media wants headlines. Academia, government departments, and NGOs all want funding. Entrepreneurs want profits. Attribution claims, exaggeration, and clickbait promote these goals.
Almost no one reads beyond the IPCC "Summary for Policymakers' which itself is government parsed tactical science.
The precautionary principle, cost-benefit analysis, and other reasonable approaches to understanding and action are drowned in a tsunami of self-interest and motivated reasoning.
If I am paid to do some research with a predetermined outcome (e.g. yes, hurricane xzy was made X times more likely by human use of fossil fuels) in the knowledge that there will be no peer review and the detailed research data will be available only to non-scientists (mainly lawyers), then I guarantee that my 'research' will produce the required result. The term for this used to be bullshit baffles brains.
Decision based evidence making
“...conveys the impression that we just do not know..." That's because they just don't know.
Dear Professor Pielke,
I enjoyed your recent posts and thank you. A comment:
Students t-test shows how very difficult it is to detect a change in the mean of a white-noise stationary process with a large variance. A red-noise process with non-stationary variance is even more difficult. What to do? Use ensemble runs of a physically based GCM model? But when all the GCM models (with one exception) have systematic error, running far too hot etc , must we not conclude that ‘we simply don’t know if climate stats have changed’; but as you say (?) ‘absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence’ a very weak conclusion.