Last June, the state-reliant BBC reported that human-caused climate change had made U.S. and Mexico heatwaves “35 times more likely”. Nothing out of the ordinary here in mainstream media with everyone from climate comedy turn ‘Jim’ Dale to UN chief Antonio ‘Boiling’ Guterres making these types of bizarre attributions. But for those who closely follow climate science and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “such headlines can be difficult to make sense of”, observes the distinguished science writer Roger Pielke. In a hard-hitting attack on the pseudo-scientific industry of weather attribution, he states: “neither the IPCC nor the underlying scientific literature comes anywhere close to making such strong and certain claims of attribution”.
Pielke argues that the extreme position of attributing individual bad weather events is “roughly aligned” with the far Left. “Climate science is not, or at least should not serve as a proxy for political tribes,” he cautions. But of course it is. The Net Zero fantasy is a collectivist national and supra-national agenda that increasingly relies on demonising bad weather. With global temperatures rising at most only 0.1°C a decade, laughter can only be general and side-splitting when IPCC boss Jim Skea claims that British summers will be 6°C hotter in less than 50 years. Two extended temperature pauses since 2000 have not helped the cause of global boiling. In addition there are increasing doubts about the reliability of temperature recordings by many meteorological organisations that seem unable to properly account for massive urban heat corruptions.
The big problem for ‘far Left’ climate extremists is that event attribution is a form, in Pielke’s words, of “tactical science”. Such science serves legal and political ends and is not always subject to peer review. As the BBC and other media outlets can attest, the work is “generally promoted via press release”. It has been developed in response to the failure of the IPCC to detect and attribute most types of extreme weather including drought, flooding, storms and wildfires to human involvement, notes Pielke. Worse, the IPCC can find little sign of human involvement going forward to 2100.
Scientists cannot answer directly whether particular events are caused by climate change since extremes occur naturally. Meanwhile the IPCC is somewhat dismissive about weather attribution, or as Pielke terms it, “weather attribution alchemy”. It notes: “The usefulness or applicability of available extreme event attribution methods for assessing climate-related risks remains subject to debate.” The IPCC is a biased body full of climate alarmists, but its inability to attribute single events to humans is obviously highly irritating and somewhat inconvenient for activists and their media counterparts.
Dr. Friederike Otto runs World Weather Attribution (WWA) out of Imperial College London and is a frequent presence on the BBC. WWA is behind many of the immediate attributions of bad weather to human causes and its motives are clear. As Dr. Otto has noted: “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” Otto is clear that the main function of such studies, part-funded by Net Zero-supporting billionaires and heavily pushed by aligned mainstream media, is to support lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. She explains this strategy in detail in the interview, ‘From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation‘.
The inability of the IPCC to attribute bad weather to humans has been viewed by climate advocates as “politically problematic”, continues Pielke. He notes the work of climate activists Elizabeth Lloyd and Naomi Oreskes who are worried that the lack of attribution “conveys the impression that we just do not know, which feeds into uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness, and the general tendency of humans to discount threats that are not imminent”.
Perish the thought that there should be uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness in the settled world of climate science. It is of course different from all other branches of science in that all its opinions are right and consequently there is no need for the unhelpful process of constant inquiry and experiment. It need hardly be added that no doubt exists at the BBC, where former Radio 4 Today Editor Sarah Sands wrote the foreword to a WWA guide for journalists. Recalling when the late Nigel Lawson suggested there had been no increase in extreme weather, Sands noted: “I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim.” These days, Sands enthused, attribution studies have given us “significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse”.
For her part, Otto is keen to crack down on the heretics. She was at the forefront of the recent notorious retraction of a paper in a Springer Nature journal that stated there was no evidence that the climate was breaking down. Written by four Italian scientists and led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti, they argued that a climate emergency was not supported by the data. Otto, who had previously worked in the Oxford School of Geography for 10 years, claimed the scientists were not writing in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly saying it should never have been published,” she demanded.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Good to see that Imperial College are still involved in services for enabling communism in the name of $cience.
Chris——I hope to see you soon on GB news again. —–Preferably at the same time as the rabid climate activist Jim Dale. ——–But only weeks ago the IPCC itself announced that its worst case scenario’s from climate models are extremely unlikely to occur, so that removes the word “crisis” out of the “climate crisis” equation, leaving only “climate”
—So how is that all of these activists in government and media get away with their evidence free climate activism, when even the IPCC cannot back any of it up? How is that non-compliant scientists and ordinary people having looked at data can clearly see no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event, yet Government and alarmist bought and paid for media can? —–Western Governments (except Trump) need a “climate crisis”. If there isn’t one, their whole eco socialist agenda collapses. That is why all of them from Guterres to Miliband to BBC to Jim Dale need to conjure one up. It is a Manufactured Crisis.
I watched part of the C5 documentary on the 1968 floods in Somerset. Jim Dale featured. Most of the time he talked pseudo-scientific gibberish and the contrast with a professional hydrologist was stark.
Yet this blithering idiot is often the go to person on GB news in any discussion of weather and climate. He is a rabid activist that is like a hammer seeing everything as a nail.
Thank you for informing me that my decision not to watch it was the correct one.
I can’t abide Jim Dale and am driven to mute the volume when ever he appears. He’s a ringer for the late Barry Chuckle, and his equal regarding ‘climate change’ info.
I always listen because it is important to know why you disagree with idiots.
He sings from the same hymn-sheet every time. He’s predictably tiresome on the ear.
Fortunately GB news have others not singing from that sheet on their channel, like Ross Clark, Andrew Montford and more recently Chris Morrison.
Jim Dale in old terms English is a fraud. In modern day English he is a firkin liar and a thief. End of.
well said HP
Same here; one of those zealots I never listen to.
On GBN they got the snake oil salesman from the Climate party, and he seems to never get a mention. Saw an interview on UK Column with Lord Deben on another topic, but when the subject of climate come up he went off on one. Check out around 29 minutes into the video.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/extradition-a-most-one-sided-affair-with-lord-deben
Science like medicine is now politicised, science is about debate, testing theories, exploring, it is not a rigid set of beliefs that are set, that’s whst a religion is.
You would think so.
Only where the issue is political eg climate covid etc. ——You never hear that “97% of scientists agree that black holes are real and happening now”
Hmm. It depends on what you mean by ‘now’.
(Sorry. h/t Einstein)
Yep Funny—-It depends on where you are how you are moving. I am familiar with my Einstein.
Happening then and visible now. I love that the visible universe is a time machine.
You know an article will be about lies when you see two or three things: Met Office, Imperial College, Jim Dale and almost always with any of them you will see BBC. None of them are capable of telling the truth any more. The Met even admitted it falsified the data it proclaims twice!
Extreme weather is more likely to be due to Dr Strangeloves in the US with their weather modification programmes than the life giving gas CO2.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/10/08/hurricane-milton-is-so-unusual-that-it-does-not-seem-natural/
“Weather attribution alchemy” is another witch hunt. Just like “Reds under the bed” or various spasms of (mostly) Left Wing political enthusiasms.
Some people are only happy if they are hyped up, carrying burning torches and pitchforks, and rampaging in the street, only too happy to kill some alleged “witch” and do a little recreational looting. Whether the “witches” exist or not.
And then when the witchhunter generals are found to be making a nice living leading the gullible it all collapses. Until the next cause.
Perish the thought that there should be uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness in the settled world of climate science. It is of course different from all
otherbranches of science in that all its opinions are right and consequently there is no need for the unhelpful process of constant inquiry and experiment.FTFY
Oh dear—–The facts don’t fit the theory. —But still our Eco Imperialist Governments base energy policy that destroys our Industrial Base and impoverishes us all on this junk science. ——Which is the whole purpose of the Sustainable Development Agenda that Miliband has now got his grubby hands on.
One of the best comments yesterday came from the lovely Bev Turner just after the GB News Senior Political Commentator the rabid leftie tosser Nigel Nelson had been on. Somebody had emailed in their thoughts on Nelson and Bev commented how funny it was to watch all the lefties they are forced to have on struggling to deal with the shitshow that is the Labour government after all their moaning about the Tories. Some speccy bloke and former Labour advisor called Matthew used to be quite jolly and tolerable but now hit sits there scowling as he fights a losing battle.
She’s wearing a Dale Vince scarf. But if these wonderful climate catastrophists think we’ve got Global Boiling, why are they always wearing such big scarves? Can someone please explain?
“… human-caused climate change had made U.S. and Mexico heatwaves “35 times more likely”
Like the newly develop car tyre that had 35 times more stopping power… than a banana skin.
The immediate question always is: compared to what?
These weather conditions are a prelude to something far nastier than climate change. No human intervention possible. It is just a coward’s response. The floods that are occuring now are completely devastating. October is the month it always has been. 12960 years ago it happened in late October a time when we pass through a meteor stream. Some of those people are still with us in the earth and they are alarmed by how close we on the surface are coming to complete annihilation.