- Record high temperature shattered in France this June......meteorologist fails... Archived Message
Posted by John Monro
on June 29, 2019, 1:11 am
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..to say it as it is. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/28/what-is-causing-the-european-heatwave This is climate change, global warming, climate dislocation, climate emergency, call it what you will - this is what it looks like, the water's already receded and the tidal wave is approaching, global warming is indeed wrapping its foetid air around a country near you. But I get so angry with meteorologists and climate scientists who continue to obfuscate to meet some impossible scientific certainty, when the keep repeating the mantra "well, you can't say whether this one event is due to climate change but ......blah, blah, blah." This is the BBC today: "Is climate change to blame? Linking a single event to global warming is complicated". No, it jolly well isn't, climate change iss hitting your in the face with the blast of steam from a boiling kettle. Or this from a lady meteorologist "It is too soon to definitely attribute Europe's current blistering heatwave to climate change but it is "absolutely consistent" with extremes linked to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations agency said. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48795264 In fact, to high degree of certainty you can exactly say this - that this heatwave is due to global warming, there is literally no other logical or scientific explanation, and that's what these scientists should be shouting out loud. In medicine, we do drug trials, or research other treatment modalities, and if the result reaches a statistical significance of 95% (that's about 2 standard deviations), it is accepted that the treatment is useful. Higher degrees of significance even more so. Now what we know about this record is that no temperature in France this high has ever been recorded in the last 150 years, so on its own that's a 99.3% unusual event, a 99.3% significance, a 99.3% certainty that something is going on. Scientist regularly make statements about observations and theories with much lower levels of certainty than this. But this one record does not exist in isolation, and it's profoundly illogical and unscientific to try to treat it as such, as this meteorologist seems to be. It was just 16 years ago that the last all time 150 year record was set in France, of 44.1 deg in August, and this new record has exceeded the old one by a staggering 1.8 deg C (and earlier in the day, the old record was exceeded two other times in different places) These sorts of deviation from normal are something like 4 standard deviations (99.994%), and are generally unheard of in any scientific measurement, and to have a record broken in June is also unheard of. So that's two 150 year events in less than 20 years. The chances of these two records being some random climatological even must be about one in ten thousand. So If this meteorologist were to say, "Yes, this is what global warming looks like, this is global warming visiting Europe in a dramatic and frightening way, this is exactly what we've been predicting for years, and yet so few people in positions of authority taking any notice which is like seeing a train wreck with everybody just standing and watching and us climate scientists are tearing our hair out in frustration, and this is just the start and it's going to get worse and worse and worse" so taking these two records together, which is perfectly sound science, there's a 0.01% probability that she'd be wrong. So what useless and dangerous scientific perfectionism is holding these people back? Only a few scientists will come out and say it is as it is, eg Jim Hansen, Prof. Mann etc. I'm losing faith that anyone, anywhere has any power to do anything. My brother-in-law is almost suicidal with the angst that global warming is causing him. Yet he lives in NZ, has a couple of acres of land, solar power and trying to live an independent lifestyle, and NZ's a country, if it isn't overrun by refugees, might manage a bit better than some grossly overpopulated country like England, or a country already suffering overweening heat like our neighbour Australia? Surely by now, making itself every more urgent in the hearts of large numbers of people, there is a deepening dread of our future. I certainly share it. |