#hyperobjects

since you cited zero of these "think pieces", it sure feels like a strawman argument. What's the point of this post?

What is the point of this post? It seems like concern trolling. We know that climate change will increase the severity and frequency of tropical storms. This isn't arguable. I feel like you are trying to make a distinction between that fact and being able to say with certainty that any one storm was made worse specifically. I'm not sure if this level of nuance matters in a country so completely ill informed about climate change is useful at doing anything other than giving my relatives something to throw in my face when they deny climate change completely.

I wish you could just make your point simply so I could figure out what it is and if it matters.

Jesus, we are swimming in coverage about hurricanes and their links to climate change

This is largely not true for most Americans.

"A recent survey by progressive watchdog Public Citizen (9/12/17) on the media’s coverage of hurricanes Harvey and Irma confirms what’s long been known: Corporate media are indifferent to the causal relationship between climate change and extreme weather, and by far the worst offenders are the Rupert Murdoch–owned Fox News, Wall Street Journal and New York Post.[..]
Public Citizen’s survey found that climate coverage in the context of Harvey and Irma was concentrated in four outlets—the Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, New York Times and CNN, which together produced 72 percent of the pieces that mentioned climate change."

In other words, most media outlets (including abc, nbc, cbs) didn't connect the hurricanes to climate change.

"The severity and size of tropical storms are connected to climate change"

So what's the problem with telling people how it is? It is probably the best option we have to debunk those trying to pin specific storms on climate change.

Can you explain how what you wrote in any way justifies the headline? This seems like a pretty big claim backed up by nothing more than wild speculation.

I think Clif Mass is dating exactly what you're saying.

@5, @6, @7

Your confusion is understandable; the words Sarah chose to put in bold are directly contradicted by the last sentence in her post.

in the '80s Kerry Emmanuel and others introduced the hypothesis that anthropogenic global warming should increase the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, and perhaps certain other types of storm that form over oceans, like the atmospheric rivers we're so familiar with in the pacific northwest. The reasoning was simple: surface sea temperatures are a known driver of storm formation and intensification, global warming is increasing surface sea temperatures, hence global warming should produce more and stronger storms.

In the '90s and '00s many climate researchers built computer models to demonstrate this hypothesis, and the popular press picked up the idea and conveyed it to the public. The hypothesis had everything going for it, except for one thing: the data collected to date simply doesn't support it.

The data instead shows storm frequency decreasing on average across ocean basins, and intensity increasing slightly, but not with enough statistical confidence to support the hypothesis. More troublingly, the correlation breaks down when examining individual ocean basins-- storm intensity decreased in some basins where surface sea temperature increased, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, in other areas of climate research, strong real-world evidence has been piling up for many other predicted effects of human-induced climate change. The reality of human-generated global warming is now indisputable if you look at all of these other areas-- but storms are not getting more frequent, and getting stronger only very slightly, and arguably not to any statistically meaningful degree.

Sarah acknowledges all of this in the last sentence in her post.

This is why she tells us that continuing to bring up the connection hypothesized decades ago is doing more harm than good-- the data simply can't back it up. She doesn't cite any support for this old hypothesis simply because what data there is does not convincingly support the prediction.

Which leaves us to wonder about those words in bold. Perhaps she means them in a spiritual sense-- that we know in our hearts that there is a connection between human-generated climate change and hurricanes. Perhaps she means them as a statement of faith-- that she is completely confident that some day in the future, observational data will support the storm frequency/severity hypothesis. I can respect either of those; even a scientist can and should have some convictions without ironclad data to support them.

For the time being, though, her suggestion is probably a good one-- when you're talking to your recalcitrant relatives, leave the storm frequency/severity hypothesis behind; don't let yourself get bogged down by fact-checkers who only want to argue the evidence for that single, isolated idea*. Stick to the assertions that do have convincing data to back them up. There are so many of these! Mountain glaciers are retreating. Oceans are acidifying, and coral reefs are dying. Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing. Rainfall is increasing (and not just in storms formed over oceans). Heat spells are getting longer, hotter, and deadlier. Low-lying islands are vanishing. Coastal areas are experiencing heavier and more frequent flooding. The Northwest Passage is even opening up during the summer!

The evidence is overwhelming, but only when you stick to the evidence.

 

* and maybe avoid wildfires for now, too-- longer dry spells and higher temperatures do contribute to what the rangers call adverse "fuel conditions" (there's an extensive scientific literature on forest fire "fuel") but there's a lot of evidence that at present land development and forest mismanagement (ironically, these are also anthropogenic environmental changes, but global warming is the only thing anyone wants to talk about in these debates) are playing a much bigger role than climate change in increasing the frequency and size of fires in the US.

The last paragraph doesn't make any sense. What does "driving a wedge between public health and public safety" mean? Are these two things somehow pitted against each other? In what way?
And how does calling for more data and better science bring this about? The rest of the paragraph simply contradicts itself: it's misleading to tell the public that we don't have enough data because that's a false message; however, we don't have enough data.

I didn't think this piece was so hard to understand. Gosh, I wonder what characteristics of the reader correlate with finding it Just So Unclear.

Ok, I'm 62 yo and I have lived in this area all my life. My subjective impression is that the climate has definitely changed and that change is accelerating. Witness the severity of this past summer and 2015 droughts and the appearance of smoke from wildfires. Never anything like that in my youth. So I feel a sense of urgency to communicate that to young people who have less a frame of reference to evaluate such things. The objective data bears it out, the subjective anecdotal accounts reinforce it. Leave the timidity to those who need to preserve their professional reputations, the rest of us need to speak up. This planet is sick and getting sicker, biodiversity is nosediving, the quantity and quality of all the charismatic flora and fauna is nosediving. Our forests are sick, our fisheries are sick, rainfall patterns and distribution have shifted, but lets not connect the dots. Lets just allow the Cliff Mass's of the world silence us into cowed submission to their priestly authority.

This is such an unfortunate note. Getting beyond the obscure writing, why does Sarah Myhre have to attack folks personally (me!) when she disagrees with them. And her words show a lack of understanding of the scientific process and a willingness to push advocacy without scientific facts. Read her last paragraph:

"When we use uncertainty around attributing individual weather events to climate change to call for "more data" or “better climate science" (think of Cliff Mass) we are driving a wedge between public health and public safety. We mislead the public because the message we send is: We don’t know what’s happening. This simply isn’t true; we do know what is happening. However, in some cases, we lack high-quality time series data to statistically detect the signal of climate from the noise of weather."

Yes, I am pushing for more data and better climate science. So should Sarah Myhre---that is OUR OCCUPATION AS SCIENTISTS. We need to be careful about attributing individual events to climate change because we can only find the fingerprint of climate change in statistical trends and long-term changes. Sarah should know that. I am so concerned about future climate change that I am working on high-resolution models to determine the local impacts and examining long-term trends (such as in snowpack). And my work is published in the scientific literature.

Sarah Myhre says "we know what is happening." Fine, let her do the research to document it and publish her work in refereed journals. That is what I do. But her last sentence implies that she "knows" things without evidence. That she understands climate change impacts even though "we lack high-quality time series data to statistically detect the signal of climate from the noise of weather." This is not science, but advocacy based on belief. More like religion. And scientists don't work that way. Hopefully, one day Sarah will understand that.

This is such an unfortunate note. Getting beyond the obscure writing, why does Sarah Myhre have to attack folks personally (me!) when she disagrees with them. And her words show a lack of understanding of the scientific process and a willingness to push advocacy without scientific facts. Read her last paragraph:

"When we use uncertainty around attributing individual weather events to climate change to call for "more data" or “better climate science" (think of Cliff Mass) we are driving a wedge between public health and public safety. We mislead the public because the message we send is: We don’t know what’s happening. This simply isn’t true; we do know what is happening. However, in some cases, we lack high-quality time series data to statistically detect the signal of climate from the noise of weather."

Yes, I am pushing for more data and better climate science. So should Sarah Myhre---that is OUR OCCUPATION AS SCIENTISTS. We need to be careful about attributing individual events to climate change because we can only find the fingerprint of climate change in statistical trends and long-term changes. Sarah should know that. I am so concerned about future climate change that I am working on high-resolution models to determine the local impacts and examining long-term trends (such as in snowpack). And my work is published in the scientific literature.

Sarah Myhre says "we know what is happening." Fine, let her do the research to document it and publish her work in refereed journals. That is what I do. But her last sentence implies that she "knows" things without evidence. That she understands climate change impacts even though "we lack high-quality time series data to statistically detect the signal of climate from the noise of weather." This is not science, but advocacy based on belief. More like religion. And scientists don't work that way. Hopefully, one day Sarah will understand that.

Kallipugos,
Our forests are sick because we have mismanaged them and suppressed a critical natural process: fire. Our fisheries are in trouble because of the hydro dams and polluted waters. The rainfall patterns have NOT shifted (I work on this issue...give me a single paper that says this). Facts matter...really...cliff mass

Our priestly professor is not only expert in matters of meteorology but forestry and fisheries as well. Rapidly accumulating anomalous events are...anomalous events. Our droughts the past two of three summers are outliers. We will soon have a regression to the mean. Ok, professor, got it. You can argue from authority, you have access to the priestly database of "papers" to reinforce any argument you choose to make and define the terms and limits of that debate. My subjective impression has no value to you.
In that case, in order to evaluate the relative strength of your argument, one would need to evaluate your professional reputation within the field you claim to be authority on.
You have feet of clay, particularly when you venture outside of your (limited) area of expertise.

Clifford Mass claims media is alarmist about climate change but all surveys I have ever seen point to the opposite. The most recent survey shows that in fact almost all media didn't even mention the connection between Harvey and climate change. Then cliff Mass turns around and does exactly what he accuses alarmists of doing: he waves his hands outside of peer-reviewed literature to assert that Harvey had little to no connection to climate change.

@9 data is globally not consistent (why should it be?) but there is virtual certainty that the intensity of strong tropical storms in the Atlantic has increased. Much data also indicate that some areas have seen increased, more intense precipitations, which leaves no doubt that some area see more intense storms (unless one has an odd understanding of storm intensity). That some area show no trend or decreased precipitation is not inconsistent with the notion that climate change is causing more intense storms in other places.

As for fires, there are many fire experts who say that climate change has a greater impact on fire intensity (as in megafires) than forest management.

" we lack high-quality time series data to statistically detect the signal of climate from the noise of weather."

It's also possible that there is no amount of data at present that will shrink the noise of weather to detect any signal of climate that might be within it.

@18

Cite the published, peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting your assertions. I'm quite willing to read them.

@20 In other words, you have nothing to rebut the evidence for stronger storms in some regions.

Why didn't you provide refs for your own assertions, jackass.

Folks....lets get this back to science. A good place to start is the excellent summary of the relationship between hurricanes and global warming by NOAA/GFDL--a U.S. government entity with top scientists that have been researching this issue for decades:

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming…

The name calling (e.g., anon1256) is entirely inappropriate in a civil forum...cliff mass