The energy imbalance at top of atmosphere is caused by increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Certain!
As a result the oceans are warming year after year and the air above the oceans are warmer and moister (relative humidity remains about the same).
The results is increased atmospheric activity. This is where the complexity arises, because wrt hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones (TCs) it might be manifested as:
increased numbers
increased intensity
increased lifetime
increased size
increased rainfall.
The increase in intensity is directly related to increased moisture. The numbers are instead expected to drop overall because of changes in atmospheric structure (increased stability). This is complex because although true for increased dry static stability (changes in lapse rate of temperature), it is the reverse for CAPE: convective available potential energy) when moisture is accounted for. CAPE increases and so more activity. But even this is complex because strong activity in one area necessarily creates changes in large-scale overturning (like monsoons) and while increased convection occurs in one region decreases occur elsewhere due to changes in subsiding air and wind shear (which can blow incipient vortices apart).
There are very poor or no decent stats on lifetime or size.
An example:
One somewhat unpredictable aspect of TCs is the eyewall formation and replacement. Because of the strong winds around the eye of the storm, the spiral arm bands wrap around and can shut off the flow of moisture into the original eyewall, causing it to die, and a new eyewall forms farther from the center. In the past, this process often led to the demise of the storm (e.g. Katrina), but nowadays the TC often recovers as a bigger storm and it spins up again. So it lasts longer and is bigger. Irma in 2017, underwent several eyewall replacements and got bigger and bigger and straddled Florida, and had a long life. It cost over $100M.
Should this count as one storm or 5? Numbers are meaningless without duration and intensity.
(See Trenberth, K. E., L. Cheng, P. Jacobs, Y. Zhang, and J. Fasullo, 2018: Hurricane Harvey links to ocean heat content. Earth’s Future, 6, 730-744, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000825 .
Here is another non-sensical argument I saw for the first time today: “climate disaster costs are rising at a rate slower than GDP so it isn’t a problem.”
Set aside for a moment whether or not the statement is factually true, and you are left with we can “afford the cost” of climate disasters so what’s the problem?
People who do not want to see the elephant either because they deliberately close their eyes or are so short-sighted all they see is grey, will refuse to believe there is in fact an elephant in the room.
The obvious response, of course, is "climate disaster costs are rising compared to what they would be without global warming. How high do they need to get before you'll vote for collective action to cap the warming?"
I suggested that this individual find some beachfront property in Florida… after one good faith response linking to the insurance industry report on the future risks of climate fuelled disasters.
A better response would be "climate disaster costs are rising because there's more property, and more expensive property, in disaster areas." This would suggest more prudent development to keep expensive development out of flood zones, which would be technically much simpler to implement than decarbonization. Although maybe the political difficulties would be comparable.
What is it with bringing up "expensive development"? We're talking about a PLANET here. You know, plants, animals, coral reefs, Bangladesh, Mediterranean Sea, mountain glaciers, small islands?
What about the many long-established coastal communities that never had to deal with "high tide flooding" before?
What about municipal wells that are failing to salt water intrusion?
What about the floods from record rainfall (like places in Louisiana not considered a "flood zone" before flooding in 2016)?
What about the shifting of rain belts away from places (people, ecosystems) that relied on that precipitation?
What about the increase in forest crown fires putting nasty wildfire smoke in our lungs?
What about "tornado alley" shifting eastward to more highly populated areas?
What about the measurably slowing AMOC?
What about the homes of millions of Bangladeshis slipping into the Bay of Benghal?
And just *where* are people who live in places that are no longer livable going to move?
I was referring specifically to the conditions raised in this article - flood damage in the US. Much of US development is built in areas with flood hazards (both river and coastal); this building would generally not be done without government flood insurance programs. If the flood insurance were cancelled, to discourage building in these areas, there would be a lot less development, and a lot less losses to floods.
If you think the other problems are caused by climate change, you should be advocating for development of better ways to deal with them. Emissions will continue, and there's nothing the US can do to stop it. Whatever climate change comes will come.
The tired practice of downplaying the increase in catastrophic weather events because in the US we have been building more expensive property on the coasts (and, yes, with risk subsidized by the Federal Government and the Army Corps of Engineers) is not an argument against the real increase in weather disasters we're suffering due to global warming. It's the rhetorical games of lobbyists which give cover to the profitable fossil fuel companies and other GHG-producing industries.
It's the repeated and more frequent breaking of WEATHER records that are the metric of the disasters. In the US, major cities on the Atlantic coast that have survived just fine for centuries are now at major risk from both sea level rise (higher than the global average) and more powerful storms. Many places are experiencing the increasing record downpours that result in DIRECT LOCAL UNPRECEDENTED FLOODING (not "flood plains"). Indian Ocean tropical cyclones are setting records, displacing people who don't show up in the insurance tables (so do they matter?).
But the evidence of increasing catastrophic weather events is weak to nonexistent, according to the IPCC. Aside from temperatures, what records have been broken? You say floods, but where? The recent Texas floods were not unprecedented.
You say that US cities have survived just fine for centuries, but they've had occasional hurricanes for centuries. To take New York City, there are records of hurricanes in 1278 (that one is only detectable from a sediment layer from the storm surge), 1634, 1693, and 1821 (https://nyartlife.com/nycs-hurricane-history-past-tempests-future-fears/) There's no evidence that storms are becoming more frequent or more violent, but resulting damage is going down, due to better flood protection, better building, more robust infrastructure, and better warning. And none of that would have been possible without the energy that comes from fossil fuels.
You mention the Indian Ocean. I don't have time to research the topic, but the IPCC says "the link [between increased TC heat potential] and changes in the frequency of TCs is not robust". (6.5.2 at https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-6/) In any event, you don't see Indian or Bangladeshi leaders calling for net zero, because their people want to escape from poverty which makes their lives miserable and short, and kills their children. To do this, they need more access to energy. Any resulting problems are much lower priority.
You decide what to believe when you decide who to believe. You don't have any particular reason to believe me, except for the facts and arguments I offer. I also provide sources for key facts, which you can investigate for yourself. If I were in your position, I'd start to ask "What's the actual source for the claims I believe? Do the sources support the claims? Are there equally (or more) valid claims in the other direction? What would be the evidence over the next 10 or 20 years that would strengthen or weaken my beliefs?"
Brian, why is that a "better" response? I know what RPJr says. What part of "climate disaster costs are rising *compared to what they would be without climate change*" do you not understand? Smarter people than you or me have estimated the costs quantitatively attributable to climate change to date. I'm guessing you haven't read recent peer-reviewed estimates, e.g. "The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Those authors conclude:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
If you contest those numbers, argue with the authors. Do you think the net cost of climate change to date, in money and grief, is actually zero? Or is it just not high enough to motivate your cooperation with collective decarbonization yet?
Technically, they are not the same thing. Whatever the past costs, the questioning is, what investments should be made to reduce costs of future emissions?
It's a better response because it has some possibility of being implemented, at least in some places. Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes, unless it turns out that we reach the saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase.
...and saying "Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes" requires you to possess second sight. I dare say we've seen no evidence of that!
It doesn't require second sight to say humans aren't going to stop climate change in our lifetimes if you understand human behavior and count the increasing number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending each annual COP.
Wealthier governments are more inclined to spend on adaptation (protecting *their* turf) than decarbonization where the benefit is spread across the planet. The same goes for wealthier people as a whole. Does the owner of the expensively fortified house that survived the storm surge drive an SUV?
No second sight required - only observation of actions to date. Despite 30 years of pledges, no country is close to actions that will plausibly lead to Net Zero on any time scale. And even if all the "cool kid" countries were to achieve Net Zero, the poor countries that don't want to stay poor will continue to increase their fossil fuel use.
Ahh, you place your trust in some undiscovered "saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase". My turn to ask, "Can you point me to the studies you referenced?" The ones I've seen find no such saturation point, only an ascent of the IR escape altitude as added CO2 mixes into the air column. Is there any point in linking to RealClimate.org? How about "A Saturated Gassy Argument" (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/)?
One approach would be "We'll pay one more time for each property. If the building is destroyed, we'll pay in accordance with the policy, but will not insure a replacement building on the site."
Edit: On further thought, I think a broader answer is appropriate. For beachfront homes, I would reply as above. For critical infrastructure that can't be moved, like the city of New Orleans, better flood protection is necessary. The mouth of the Mississippi River is a terrible place for a city - the water table is high in the best of times, the soil is unstable, and flooding from the river is frequent. Add the risks of hurricanes, and no one in his right mind would put a city there. But the US needs a port there - something like 40% of all US exports, and over 60% of agricultural exports, go through the port. And we need a city to house the people who operate the port. So we need much better flood protection for the city. We've known that for decades, and we haven't built it. But this has nothing to do with climate change.
While it's true that the IPCC finds no evidence for flood trends, this is mainly about seasonal flooding, like when snowpack melts in the spring. A close look shows that there are trends.... more flooding in wet regions, less in dry regions, net no trend but the usual business of the water cycle being intensified. More important, there IS a distinct global trend in extreme downpours, which is what we're dealing with here. Maybe not a statistically significant increase in Texas, but that's a tiny part of the globe; overall the trend is clear.
Rodell, Matthew, and Bailing Li. "Changing Intensity of Hydroclimatic Extreme Events Revealed by GRACE AND GRACE-FO." Nature Water 1, no. 3 (2023/03/01 2023): 241–48 [https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00040-5]
Zhang, Shulei, Liming Zhou, Lu Zhang, Yuting Yang, Zhongwang Wei, and et al. "Reconciling Disagreement on Global River Flood Changes in a Warming Climate." Nature Climate Change 12 (2022): 1160–67 [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01539-7]
Westra, Seth, Lisa V. Alexander, and Francis W. Zwiers. "Global Increasing Trends in Annual Maximum Daily Precipitation." Journal of Climate 26 (2013): 3904–18 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI–D–12–00502.1].
Yes, if by river flooding you mean long-duration flooding--as opposed to downpour floods that come from one storm or a burst of storms from a short-lived weather pattern. There's other work on long-duration floods but it's not worth pursuing here, trends depend on land-use changes (like deforestation), levee building and so forth as well as climate change. The argument for climate change impacts works only for downpours like the ones in recent years in Texas, Europe and Vermont and from cyclonic storms (where, as in e.g. Sandy, sea-level rise contributed along with enhanced precipitation).
Dude, you have access to all the data ChatGPT does. After it gives you a preliminary response to a quoted comment, you can type "show sources" in the input box, like I did above. You don't have to take its word, or mine. But I'll say it again: if generative AI generates the same answer I would from my own knowledge, I'm not going to waste my time typing.
The contribution of carbon dioxide from human activity to the gross amount of that benign and life-giving gas in our atmosphere is statistically minimal. So we know the climate changes. We've had times in Earth's history where global temperatures have been both warmer than they are now and colder than they are now. So, we expect this up and down trend to continue and should not be surprised by it in the least. What we should not do is allow for fear-mongering of the human populace over the ethereal and made up notion that there is such a thing as man-made global warming.
The reality is, the causes of the continuous change in global temperatures throughout history are so complex that all we can do is make our best guess as to the amount of change possibly caused by humans, versus the amount of change actually caused by nature. Fortunately, there is an abundance of guesswork specialists at our universities making an attempt.
Except that just because our contribution is quantitatively tiny, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a significant effect. Tiny amounts can have large effects.
In addition, most of the CO2 released by nature gets absorbed by nature. Adding human CO2 upsets this balance, and adds CO2 in the atmosphere that is mostly not absorbed.
The main concern is also not the mere magnitude of the change, but the rate of change. The fact that the Earth was warmer say 100 million years ago doesn’t mean sea level isn’t rising, or that the rise is large enough to be concerning.
There is empirically and qualitatively no difference in the carbon dioxide that is expelled from human activity as opposed to the carbon dioxide that is expelled by nature. It is the same molecular compound that is mostly in gaseous form in nature at room temperature. The opinion that you have just given lacks all objective merit whatsoever.
The human contribution to the collective amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is statistically minimal. This means that any greenhouse effect that is caused by the collective amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is fed more by sources in nature than anything else.
We also know is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in terms of causing a collective greenhouse effect for the planet does not scale linearly. What this means is that once you get over a certain concentration of CO2, then the greenhouse effect is not increased anymore after that concentration is reached. Here's an article that speaks specifically to the statement that I have just made.
Yeah, you’re right. Wind speeds in the Texas flood weren’t anywhere close to those. It was never designated a hurricane. How about rainfall? Does rainfall figure in the explanation of floods? Does changing the jet stream pick up any more warm water than it did before? Does increasing water temperature increase evaporation into the atmosphere when the jet stream comes by?
No, the scientists are not saying that hurricanes follow a trend. The chart doesn’t include any of the hurricanes that never struck the Continental US. The correlations the scientists draw are sea-level temperature, air temperature, moisture content, air pressure, and other factors.
"Imagine there’s a fatal accident caused by a driver running a red light. Someone says the driver was texting, causing the crash. But another person counters, “Traffic fatalities aren’t rising, even though texting is increasing, so texting couldn’t have caused this accident.”
This is literally the argument that climate misinformers are making and I hope you can intuitively tell how dumb it is."
I'm sorry, but that example destroys your argument and supports the argument you are objecting to. Here's why:
===
Texting while driving is a major contributor to distracted driving, which in turn plays a significant role in U.S. traffic fatalities. Here are the key findings based on the most recent data available:
• Annual Distracted Driving Fatalities: About 3,300 to 3,300 people are killed each year in the U.S. in crashes involving distracted drivers, with cellphones—including texting—being a factor in about 12% of these deaths [1] [2] [3] [4].
• Recent Trends: Distracted driving fatalities—of which texting is a part—increased by nearly 14% from 2018 to 2022 [2].
• Magnitude of Texting Risk: Texting while driving increases the risk of crashing by as much as 23 times compared to undistracted driving. In fact, one in four car accidents reportedly involves texting and driving [5] [6].
• Proportion of Fatal Crashes: In 2022, distracted driving caused 8% of all traffic deaths in the U.S.; texting is the 5th leading cause of traffic deaths, especially impacting younger drivers [1] [7].
• Effect of Anti-Texting Laws: States that have implemented and enforced bans on texting while driving have seen small but significant reductions (about 3%) in traffic fatalities [8].
Conclusion:
Texting remains a serious risk—statistically, both fatal crashes and total crash counts are rising alongside persistent and often underreported texting behaviors. Enforcement and prevention efforts have shown some positive effect but texting behind the wheel continues to pose a growing public health threat [9] [2] [3].
IF "global warming" caused or exacerbated the flood, it would have been revealed by an increase over time in Texas flooding. The globe has been warming, in fits and starts, since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1700.
If more warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
Given that indisputable fact … just what was the point of his analogy that I "missed"?
(1) The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon.
(2) Based on the Milankovitch cycles alone, our planet should naturally be cycling back into a period of glaciation. Instead it is getting warmer.
(3) The decades of recent warming has been *despite* the fact that the solar cycles (representing total insolation) have been lower in the past couple of decades.
(4) While the troposphere (lower atmosphere) has been warming, the stratosphere (upper atmosphere) has been cooling. This was a predicted result of the greenhouse gas effect: GHGs have been stopping radiation from reaching the stratosphere.
Your careful avoidance of understanding the basic physics of greenhouse gases has you regurgitating Points Refuted A Thousand Times (PRATTs).
Willis is a tar baby. He's been trying to obstruct collective decarbonization for years. He's glib, but his arguments haven't changed, and they're still wrong. He's nonetheless unfazed by laborious rebuttals. Like a creationist!
Unfortunately, NONE of this even begins to address my main point. I'll repeat it, to give you another shot at it. Here is my main point.
=====
If global warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, since it has been warming for the last century, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
=====
Think about that long and hard, and then tell me why it's wrong. Note that my point has NOTHING to do with solar changes, the LIA, whether we should be in a period of glaciation, or whether the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming. NOTHING.
So I invite you to start over and falsify my actual claim, not your ideas about my claim.
"If global warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, since it has been warming for the last century, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding."
----
Andrew: "The main argument making the rounds goes something like this: The IPCC says there's no trend in floods, therefore we cannot claim that climate change enhanced the flood."
↑↑↑ IS THIS THE ARGUMENT THAT YOU ARE MAKING? ↑↑↑
(1) Andrew was talking about this specific flooding event.
Do you have a problem with #1?
(2) Andrew mentioned that no prior measured trend is required to establish whether →this event← could be tied to global warming.
Do you have a problem with #2?
(3) Global warming is causing an increase in RECORD MASS RAIN EVENTS. (This larger event added more than 490 million metric tons of water to Lake Travis alone.) As the capacity for the atmosphere to hold more water and delivery of more water from local warming water bodies increases, rain is falling in more intense downpours.
Do you have a problem with #3?
(4) Inland flooding is at best an indirect connection to climate change, since flooding and record crests depend on past weather in the area, soil condition, vegetation, pavement, upstream capacity for bank storage, burn scars and whether the storm is centered over a single watershed.
Do you have a problem with #4?
(5) As with so many other physical systems, both the increasing rate and sporadicity of the warming over the past several decades will necessarily trigger non-linear responses. I don't follow the assertion that Texas recent past of warming would have shown up as a recognizable signal yet (especially since the rate of global warming has gone up over the past decade, and it's hard to tease a notable signal out of the background noise), and also considering Texas' own erratic history of dams and flood management.
Apparently there is some shiny IPCC factoid about "lack of established trends" that is itself being used as an argument against a →specific event← being tied to climate change. I don't follow the assertion that Texas recent past of warning would have shown up as a recognizable signal yet (especially since global warming has been accelerating, and it's hard to tease a notable signal out of the background noise). Also consider Texas' own erratic history of dams and flood management.
Andrew's argument is that the lack of any long-term trend in Texas floods is meaningless, because in some mysterious way, the slow long-term warming of the last century has affected just this one flood but no other floods during the last 100 years.
Next, point (3). The IPCC itself says there has been no global anthropogenically-driven increase in mean rainfall, river floods, or heavy precipitation and pluvial floods. So you'll have to take up point (3) with the IPCC. See IPCC AR6 WGI Table 12.12. It's available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-12/
Your points under (4) seem to be arguing against your previous points. They say it is extremely difficult to tie any individual event to global temperature change. Yes, it is. In fact, at present it's not possible.
Point (5) is that the response to global warming is "non-linear". But what Andrew and you are arguing is that there was NO effect of 100 years of warming (no trend) but somehow you can assert that this one event is a result of the warming. That's not "non-linear". That's magical thinking. Where is your evidence to back up that claim?
That area of Texas has been flooding since forever. It's a result of the local meteorology intersecting with the local geology. Just exactly what PROOF do you have that somehow, after a century of global warming making no discernible difference in the strength or frequency of the flooding in that location, suddenly it's affected just this one event?
"(3) The decades of recent warming has been *despite* the fact that the solar cycles (representing total insolation) have been lower in the past couple of decades."
The change in solar insolation is trivially small. Since 1900, ASR (absorbed solar radiation) has only varied by about 0.2 W/m2. Total surface downwelling radiation (LW + SW) is on the order of half a kilowatt.
So that represents a trough-to-peak percentage variation of 0.2/500 * 100 = 0.04%. It's not clear why you think this should make the slightest difference. I certainly don't think that.
It's a holdover from earlier dealings with greenhouse effect deniers who kept pushing alternative explanations for the additional heating, like increased insolation. And a lot of them don't understand or know about how Milankovitch cycles have affected climates over millennial time scales.
[BTW, 0.2 W/m2 is still a lot considering the m2 we're dealing with.]
"(2) Based on the Milankovitch cycles alone, our planet should naturally be cycling back into a period of glaciation. Instead it is getting warmer."
True. But instead, after the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1700, the world began warming, and has warmed in fits and starts for the three centuries since.
So … your question is good. Why didn't continue the cooling that led up to the LIA and cycle back into glaciation? The first two centuries of the warming cannot be from CO2.
"The first two centuries of the warming cannot be from CO2."
----
Yeah, so?
While CO2 has been the dominant knob for total planetary warming over geologic eras, by now anyone participating in AGW/CC discussions should know that changes in aerosols, insolation, albedo, etc., are also warming/cooling mechanisms.
NS, I fear my point wasn't clear. Let me expand on it a bit.
Nobody knows why it cooled for about 700 years from the MWP to the LIA.
Nobody knows why, rather than descending into another glaciation, the cooling stopped around 1700.
Nobody knows why, instead of just staying cool, the Earth warmed up, in fits and starts, for 200 years following the LIA.
Given that colossal lack of understanding of what drives global temperature variations, the hubris and egotism of declaring that the current warming is 100% driven by humans is … well … sadly typical of humans. We tend to believe we're at the center of everything.
Thanks, NSAlito. Let me take this one at at time, First, you say:
(1) The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon.
Sorry, not true.
The Little Ice Age (LIA) refers to a period of cooler climate generally recognized as spanning from roughly the 14th to the 19th centuries. Historically, this interval has been most strongly documented in Europe and North America, but the question of whether it was truly global in scope has been extensively studied using paleoclimatic proxies from around the world.
General Facts
• The LIA is characterized by a series of multiple cold intervals interspersed with brief warming episodes rather than a single, continuous cold period. This variability is reflected in many regional climate records [National Research Council, 2006].
• Primary evidence for the LIA comes from glacier advances in Europe, documented tree rings, and historical accounts of colder temperatures, as well as increased frequency of harsh winters, frozen rivers, and crop failures [Mann et al., 2009].
• Ice cores, tree rings, sediments, corals, and other proxy records have been used to reconstruct temperature and precipitation changes across the globe for the LIA [IPCC AR6, 2021].
High-Level Points of Importance
• Northern Hemisphere: Extensive evidence exists for LIA cooling, particularly in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, seen in glacier advances, tree ring data, and historic observations [Bradley & Jones, 1992].
• Southern Hemisphere: Evidence is more variable, but studies of glacier movements in the Andes, New Zealand, and Patagonia indicate periods of colder conditions roughly coincident with the LIA timeframe [Neukom et al., 2014].
• Tropics and Oceans: Coral records, lake sediments, and speleothems (cave deposits) show climatic variability and, in several cases, cooling episodes aligned with the LIA period, although the magnitude and timing of changes may differ from the Northern Hemisphere [Trouet et al., 2009].
• Global Signals: Multiproxy studies suggest that a general cooling episode did occur during the LIA, but with significant differences in onset, duration, and intensity between hemispheres and regions. This suggests the LIA was a globally detectable event, but not completely synchronous or uniform [Mann et al., 2009]; [PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013].
Willis, now I don't have to rebut Andrew's analogy-you did it for me, thanks. I was also going to add that if perchance deaths due to texting didn't significantly factor in to total MVA deaths then texting while driving deaths would therefore be largely irrelevant because the number is to small to make a difference. Just like deaths by lightning may have increased by 200% year over year but no change in overall weather related deaths, makes deaths by lightning way to small to have any relevance in what is being measured.
I could go on about how bad the analogy is, but alas, the echo chambers that surround the common University halls have grown far too loud to let anyone dare question the "consensus". So I no longer try to engage Andrew substantively. I'm glad to see someone else doing that for me. I do enjoy coming here now and again for comedic relief though...I hope they keep it up.
It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting? Willis, you know and I know that there is no way, no how that either Andrew, Mal, NSAlito et. al. will EVER engage you or I in a public debate. It would just be too darn embarrassing for them. Of course they'll come in with all their hand-waving but no references at all to back them up. Sad, yet hilarious at the same time.
OK. Tell me exactly where and how I am misunderstanding the results of the article. Then tell me exactly where and how I am cherry picking. I review dozens of medical articles per week. I'm not a novice.
Premise: Global warming is not so bad because more people die of cold than heat.
[Obvious caveat: This is a paper about temperature effects on cardiovascular mortality of humans, and says nothing about crops, livestock, wildlife, soils and other forms of life on the planet.]
The key is the shape of the T vs. mortality curve. If you shift to higher temperatures, fewer people die from cold! Isn't that great? Except that the total number of deaths per degree warmer climbs much faster than the deaths from cold drops.
(I have Raynaud's Disease, so I appreciate that taking time-release nifedipine can address some of those symptoms when it's cold, and it's useful for people with other general cardiovascular problems, but when the body overheats, there's no pharmacological or physiological fix aside from cooling off the body itself. If your livelihood depends on working outside, you're SOL.)
"It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting?"
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That's non sequitur.
If weather related deaths are plummeting, ask why are they plummeting? Do you conclude that weather has been getting *nicer* over time, or could there be more factors at play?
Could it be that there are other reasons why death rates have been higher in the past, when there were no weather satellites and homes were more more flammable or poorly built? How did people call for help before telephones? Did governments always fund emergency services or swift-water rescue?
And who counted those global weather related deaths back then, yellow journalists?
Oh, you mean adaptation is at play? Shhhhhh, be quiet! You may be accused of being a climate realist, and nobody wants that on this blog.
Don't forget the narrative NS--the earth and it's inhabitants are far too fragile, far too stupid and far too helpless to adapt to a gradually warming climate around them.
Ecological adaptation depends on the time scale, and the globe is warming faster than we can adapt. The PT "extinction" happened over tens of thousands of years. Catastrophic climate change is occurring over decades.
Coral reefs (the "nurseries of the sea") are being killed by the increased ocean temperatures. Many megafauna species with long generational cycles won't be able to survive in the wild. Pollinators can't keep up with changing bloom times.
Of course there will be winners, like rats, pigeons, sea gulls, jellyfish and cockroaches.
"Another equally curmudgeonly senior colleague3 said that, because the 1-day rainfall from a 1-in-100 year event in this region had increased around 10-15% in this region over the last 40 years, his best guess was that climate change increased the rainfall by about that amount, give or take."
Are you calling him a curmudgeon because his answer was tautological*? If we estimate the contribution of climate change to a single event by drawing from the observed trend for the population, isn't the partial attribution of that event's rainfall amount to climate change identical to the statistical trend line at that rainfall volume? I'm probably missing something here.
* "Listen up. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club." -R. Munroe
To be as fair to these people as possible, though, they're using the only data available to them to draw a conclusion. In other words, if global warming can/would increase downpours, and global warming is happening, then downpours should be becoming more intense or frequent. If they don't see any such trend in the data, it's rational for them to conclude there is no effect. Isn't that how scientists would do it if they didn't understanding the underlying causality? I think climate scientists do need to explain why, if climate change increases downpours (which must be true if it increased any single actual downpour), there is no trend. Until they do so, the lack of a trend will continue to convince people there's no effect, or at the very least that there's no consistent effect. It could be, for instance, that some other effect (direct or indirect) is reducing the intensity/frequency to at least the same degree, so that there's in the end there's no change, which is what matters to people. In the end, the fact that global warming strengthened any rain event will be an entirely meaningless bit of trivia to 99% of people if there's no trend to be concerned about.
Dessler is convinced that “climate change made the Texas floods worse”. The historical record of floods in that region, however, does not show a trend corresponding to global temperature changes. This would seem to disprove his assertion, but Dessler is undeterred, saying “the absence of a trend in flooding does not mean there is not a trend In flooding.” He is forever hopeful. He then concludes that “trends are not the most relevant information…you need to look at the individual event,” as though a universal truth might be proven by a single data point. His belief is that increased global temperature must add some unit of heat energy during the formation of the Texas storm, thus amplifying its intensity. What he fails to recognize is that the historical record shows that if it did, the amount is so insignificantly small, it is inconsequential. Climate change is an interesting field of study, no need to make it seem more important than it is.
This discussion deals with a well defined, relatively small rural area in the Hill Country region of Texas for which the in-situ flash flood related conditions have had little variability over several decades. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that each flash flood event of record for this region is a valid representation of the associated rainfall, thus the lack of a tread line in these flood data is highly pertinent information.
"...for which the in-situ flash flood related conditions have had little variability over several decades."
----
Little variability over →decades←?!
The conditions vary from month to month, from rainstorm to rainstorm. The storms don't move in the same directions or park in the same place over watersheds. Do you have any idea what happened in 2011? Is that "variable" enough for you?
Our hydrogeology professor (2002) took us into the Canyon Lake flood site that showed how flood water can rip up and move limestone slabs that we had to clamber over.
I get why you're all fixated on the *flooding* rather than the *rain event*: Floods kill people. Floods move houses and make better news footage. But it's the *rain* that's the relevant metric with respect to climate.
I know you both have your hands full dealing with the fallout from the contrarian climate assessment. I hope at some point you have the time to address the issue here that go beyond the sound bites for the press.
A relevant paper that was published prior to the release that has not gotten a lot of attention is this paper/commentary by Scott Saleska et al., What Is Endangered Now? Climate Science at the Crossroads ; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025AV001808 .
I know their key points align with your thinking:
The US EPA's greenhouse gas endangerment finding is itself now endangered by the current Presidential Administration
Scientists had a key role in bringing about the endangerment finding
The science supporting the finding has only gotten stronger in the 16 years since the endangerment finding.
Many folks look at the issues surrounding extreme weather, flood draught, record busting heat domes. It is troubling though that many even somewhat scientists refer to the reason for these extremes, now no longer anomalies, as climate change.
The result of human manipulations to natural rythms, and mostly other human intended or unintended impacts can be lumped into the causing of climate change .
Lets get this right and not forget: Climate change is a direct result of mostly human impacts with some naturally occurring phenomena. Again climate change is the result of particular significant human impacts.
Climate change is not I repeat not the cause of this problem! it is the result of several human impacts? And, Are we 100%certain that we know which impacts are the most significant and troubling impacts we need to address?
Lately there is a lot of talk about moving away from all the carbon theories that science seems to be fixated on. And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount.
there is literally no talk among anyone with functioning brain cells to move away from "carbon theories". the mainstream theory as described by the IPCC explains (almost) everything we see — no other theory does.
"And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount."
Uh - there's your original dogged interest in the planets hydrological cycle. And this is far from the beginning of casting doubt on the climate-science consensus, as represented by the IPCC: a thriving for-profit disinformation industry has matured from its origins in the tobacco wars of the last century (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). By 'we' you are over-pluralizing: I'm afraid you're late to the discussion, at best. It's already led to a consensus. It discounts your claims because the economically-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere is more than quantitatively sufficient to account for the global heat accumulation of the last century and a half. There's no residual unknown forcing that would accommodate your proposal, which means some already verified CO2 radiative forcing would have to be somehow explained away. You're up against Occam's Razor. Deal.
Yes I did make a wrong statement carbon certainly has and is a factor. Unfortunately there are other much more localized factors, ongoin g and occurring in highly climate sensitive regions to anmy human impacts. These cryological ,atmospherical, and thermal hydrologicals are not factored into the climate models and need to be. These factors, impacts, now going on for over 60 years, increasing every year. are very significant
If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. We have very current discharge data from former rivers, now impounded sea-size bodies, current severe water vapor wind vectors from Northeastern Quebec carried by predominant winds over to Southern Greenland. If interested we can provide all the data and studies you might want to look at.
Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time.
"If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. "
No we couldn't. Neither of us is a professional climate scientist. Scientific debates are carried out among specialist peers. Until you publish your claims and data in a legitimate peer-reviewed venue, you'll get nowhere. Your reviewers get first shot!
"Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time."
Snort! Humility is recognizing that your ideas are guilty until proven innocent. If you can't convince at least a significant minority of trained, mutually-disciplined professional skeptics, then you're almost certainly fooling yourself. Perseverating in the face of massive professional disinterest is a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect: the arrogant presumption that when a large majority of genuine experts disagree with you, they're the ones fooling themselves.
Speaking of the wrong questions, the relevant questions here should be "Did recent warming make the (rain, flood) more likely? By how much? How could we demonstrate that there is a change in the distribution of (number, intensity) of storms?"
Attribution studies that use models to calculate that some event was 25% more likely, or 25% more destructive, aren't definitive unless actual data can demonstrate the change. For this level of probability on very infrequent events, it takes a very long time (many decades) to accumulate enough data to demonstrate a change in the distribution. And even then, it doesn't demonstrate a change from long-term baselines.
You mentioned hurricanes - hurricanes have famously increased in frequency over the past 50 years. It's easy to demonstrate that hurricanes became more frequent in the 2000s than in the 1970s, but as you noted, there's no trend in the longer term data. For years, there have been modelers and advocates claiming that hurricane trends are up, and that it's caused by warming. But actual data doesn't support this claim.
Thanks. That was the post I was thinking of. You cite models that cyclones will have more rainfall, and the IPCC claims high confidence that TC rainfall was increased by warming. But there's no claim that TC rainfall has increased over any particular timeframe.
You claim that hurricanes will become more destructive because rising sea levels will cause more frequent overwhelming of storm surge protections, but it would be very hard to find examples. You don't explain why you don't have confidence in improved flood protection as a mitigation measure.
You note that the IPCC finds it "likely" that the proportion of Category 3-5 cyclones has increased over the past 40 years, but you don't note that the number of Category 3-5 cyclones has not increased - the increase in proportion is due to fewer lower-category storms.
I respect the model-builders and their efforts to forecast changes in climate. I'd appreciate some effort to turn the model outputs into concise predictions, and then gathering data to support or refute the model outputs.
Brian, the IPCC’s “high confidence” on TC rainfall comes from both models and observed attribution studies showing increases in the heaviest rain rates, especially in intense storms. Sea-level rise makes storm surge flooding more frequent by simple physics, already seen in places like Miami and New York — even with protections, cost and engineering limits mean adaptation often lags. An increased share of Cat 3–5 storms matters because they cause most damage, and in some basins their absolute numbers are up too. Models are tested against observations; that’s exactly how IPCC confidence levels are set.
Thanks! I'll read through it. At first glance, it looks like the report claims 3% (modeled) and 7% (observed) increase in "Annual maximum 1 day precipitation" since 1950 (p. 458). Do I have that right? Are there enough data points to have high confidence in that finding?
Separately, I've found NOAA data on rainfall in Kerrville, Texas, going back to 1900. At first glance, it looks like there were at least as many heavy precipitation days before 1950 as since, but I'm still working on filling in missing data points. I know Kerrville is on the parts of the Guadalupe River that flooded, which means the floods were fed by rainfall upstream from Kerrville, but it doesn't look like NOAA has any stations in the Guadalupe basin upstream from Kerrville. Are you aware of any observational data that rainfall has increased (either in total or maximum 1 to 3 days) in the Texas hill country?
A comment on TCs.
The energy imbalance at top of atmosphere is caused by increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Certain!
As a result the oceans are warming year after year and the air above the oceans are warmer and moister (relative humidity remains about the same).
The results is increased atmospheric activity. This is where the complexity arises, because wrt hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones (TCs) it might be manifested as:
increased numbers
increased intensity
increased lifetime
increased size
increased rainfall.
The increase in intensity is directly related to increased moisture. The numbers are instead expected to drop overall because of changes in atmospheric structure (increased stability). This is complex because although true for increased dry static stability (changes in lapse rate of temperature), it is the reverse for CAPE: convective available potential energy) when moisture is accounted for. CAPE increases and so more activity. But even this is complex because strong activity in one area necessarily creates changes in large-scale overturning (like monsoons) and while increased convection occurs in one region decreases occur elsewhere due to changes in subsiding air and wind shear (which can blow incipient vortices apart).
There are very poor or no decent stats on lifetime or size.
An example:
One somewhat unpredictable aspect of TCs is the eyewall formation and replacement. Because of the strong winds around the eye of the storm, the spiral arm bands wrap around and can shut off the flow of moisture into the original eyewall, causing it to die, and a new eyewall forms farther from the center. In the past, this process often led to the demise of the storm (e.g. Katrina), but nowadays the TC often recovers as a bigger storm and it spins up again. So it lasts longer and is bigger. Irma in 2017, underwent several eyewall replacements and got bigger and bigger and straddled Florida, and had a long life. It cost over $100M.
Should this count as one storm or 5? Numbers are meaningless without duration and intensity.
(See Trenberth, K. E., L. Cheng, P. Jacobs, Y. Zhang, and J. Fasullo, 2018: Hurricane Harvey links to ocean heat content. Earth’s Future, 6, 730-744, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000825 .
Thanks for this comment, Kevin.
Here is another non-sensical argument I saw for the first time today: “climate disaster costs are rising at a rate slower than GDP so it isn’t a problem.”
Set aside for a moment whether or not the statement is factually true, and you are left with we can “afford the cost” of climate disasters so what’s the problem?
People who do not want to see the elephant either because they deliberately close their eyes or are so short-sighted all they see is grey, will refuse to believe there is in fact an elephant in the room.
The obvious response, of course, is "climate disaster costs are rising compared to what they would be without global warming. How high do they need to get before you'll vote for collective action to cap the warming?"
I suggested that this individual find some beachfront property in Florida… after one good faith response linking to the insurance industry report on the future risks of climate fuelled disasters.
A better response would be "climate disaster costs are rising because there's more property, and more expensive property, in disaster areas." This would suggest more prudent development to keep expensive development out of flood zones, which would be technically much simpler to implement than decarbonization. Although maybe the political difficulties would be comparable.
What is it with bringing up "expensive development"? We're talking about a PLANET here. You know, plants, animals, coral reefs, Bangladesh, Mediterranean Sea, mountain glaciers, small islands?
What about the many long-established coastal communities that never had to deal with "high tide flooding" before?
What about municipal wells that are failing to salt water intrusion?
What about the floods from record rainfall (like places in Louisiana not considered a "flood zone" before flooding in 2016)?
What about the shifting of rain belts away from places (people, ecosystems) that relied on that precipitation?
What about the increase in forest crown fires putting nasty wildfire smoke in our lungs?
What about "tornado alley" shifting eastward to more highly populated areas?
What about the measurably slowing AMOC?
What about the homes of millions of Bangladeshis slipping into the Bay of Benghal?
And just *where* are people who live in places that are no longer livable going to move?
I hear your passion.
I was referring specifically to the conditions raised in this article - flood damage in the US. Much of US development is built in areas with flood hazards (both river and coastal); this building would generally not be done without government flood insurance programs. If the flood insurance were cancelled, to discourage building in these areas, there would be a lot less development, and a lot less losses to floods.
If you think the other problems are caused by climate change, you should be advocating for development of better ways to deal with them. Emissions will continue, and there's nothing the US can do to stop it. Whatever climate change comes will come.
It was less passion, and more disgust.
The tired practice of downplaying the increase in catastrophic weather events because in the US we have been building more expensive property on the coasts (and, yes, with risk subsidized by the Federal Government and the Army Corps of Engineers) is not an argument against the real increase in weather disasters we're suffering due to global warming. It's the rhetorical games of lobbyists which give cover to the profitable fossil fuel companies and other GHG-producing industries.
It's the repeated and more frequent breaking of WEATHER records that are the metric of the disasters. In the US, major cities on the Atlantic coast that have survived just fine for centuries are now at major risk from both sea level rise (higher than the global average) and more powerful storms. Many places are experiencing the increasing record downpours that result in DIRECT LOCAL UNPRECEDENTED FLOODING (not "flood plains"). Indian Ocean tropical cyclones are setting records, displacing people who don't show up in the insurance tables (so do they matter?).
But the evidence of increasing catastrophic weather events is weak to nonexistent, according to the IPCC. Aside from temperatures, what records have been broken? You say floods, but where? The recent Texas floods were not unprecedented.
You say that US cities have survived just fine for centuries, but they've had occasional hurricanes for centuries. To take New York City, there are records of hurricanes in 1278 (that one is only detectable from a sediment layer from the storm surge), 1634, 1693, and 1821 (https://nyartlife.com/nycs-hurricane-history-past-tempests-future-fears/) There's no evidence that storms are becoming more frequent or more violent, but resulting damage is going down, due to better flood protection, better building, more robust infrastructure, and better warning. And none of that would have been possible without the energy that comes from fossil fuels.
You mention the Indian Ocean. I don't have time to research the topic, but the IPCC says "the link [between increased TC heat potential] and changes in the frequency of TCs is not robust". (6.5.2 at https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-6/) In any event, you don't see Indian or Bangladeshi leaders calling for net zero, because their people want to escape from poverty which makes their lives miserable and short, and kills their children. To do this, they need more access to energy. Any resulting problems are much lower priority.
You decide what to believe when you decide who to believe. You don't have any particular reason to believe me, except for the facts and arguments I offer. I also provide sources for key facts, which you can investigate for yourself. If I were in your position, I'd start to ask "What's the actual source for the claims I believe? Do the sources support the claims? Are there equally (or more) valid claims in the other direction? What would be the evidence over the next 10 or 20 years that would strengthen or weaken my beliefs?"
It should not be either or. We should invest in adapting to the CO2 already emitted AND invest in avoiding further CO2 emissions.
Brian, why is that a "better" response? I know what RPJr says. What part of "climate disaster costs are rising *compared to what they would be without climate change*" do you not understand? Smarter people than you or me have estimated the costs quantitatively attributable to climate change to date. I'm guessing you haven't read recent peer-reviewed estimates, e.g. "The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Those authors conclude:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
If you contest those numbers, argue with the authors. Do you think the net cost of climate change to date, in money and grief, is actually zero? Or is it just not high enough to motivate your cooperation with collective decarbonization yet?
Technically, they are not the same thing. Whatever the past costs, the questioning is, what investments should be made to reduce costs of future emissions?
It's a better response because it has some possibility of being implemented, at least in some places. Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes, unless it turns out that we reach the saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase.
...and saying "Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes" requires you to possess second sight. I dare say we've seen no evidence of that!
It doesn't require second sight to say humans aren't going to stop climate change in our lifetimes if you understand human behavior and count the increasing number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending each annual COP.
Wealthier governments are more inclined to spend on adaptation (protecting *their* turf) than decarbonization where the benefit is spread across the planet. The same goes for wealthier people as a whole. Does the owner of the expensively fortified house that survived the storm surge drive an SUV?
No second sight required - only observation of actions to date. Despite 30 years of pledges, no country is close to actions that will plausibly lead to Net Zero on any time scale. And even if all the "cool kid" countries were to achieve Net Zero, the poor countries that don't want to stay poor will continue to increase their fossil fuel use.
Ahh, you place your trust in some undiscovered "saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase". My turn to ask, "Can you point me to the studies you referenced?" The ones I've seen find no such saturation point, only an ascent of the IR escape altitude as added CO2 mixes into the air column. Is there any point in linking to RealClimate.org? How about "A Saturated Gassy Argument" (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/)?
That response ignores the question of what to do about old EXISTING properties on the future new flood plains. New York city, Boston, etc..
One approach would be "We'll pay one more time for each property. If the building is destroyed, we'll pay in accordance with the policy, but will not insure a replacement building on the site."
Edit: On further thought, I think a broader answer is appropriate. For beachfront homes, I would reply as above. For critical infrastructure that can't be moved, like the city of New Orleans, better flood protection is necessary. The mouth of the Mississippi River is a terrible place for a city - the water table is high in the best of times, the soil is unstable, and flooding from the river is frequent. Add the risks of hurricanes, and no one in his right mind would put a city there. But the US needs a port there - something like 40% of all US exports, and over 60% of agricultural exports, go through the port. And we need a city to house the people who operate the port. So we need much better flood protection for the city. We've known that for decades, and we haven't built it. But this has nothing to do with climate change.
While it's true that the IPCC finds no evidence for flood trends, this is mainly about seasonal flooding, like when snowpack melts in the spring. A close look shows that there are trends.... more flooding in wet regions, less in dry regions, net no trend but the usual business of the water cycle being intensified. More important, there IS a distinct global trend in extreme downpours, which is what we're dealing with here. Maybe not a statistically significant increase in Texas, but that's a tiny part of the globe; overall the trend is clear.
Thanks for that note. Can you point me to the studies you referenced?
Rodell, Matthew, and Bailing Li. "Changing Intensity of Hydroclimatic Extreme Events Revealed by GRACE AND GRACE-FO." Nature Water 1, no. 3 (2023/03/01 2023): 241–48 [https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00040-5]
Zhang, Shulei, Liming Zhou, Lu Zhang, Yuting Yang, Zhongwang Wei, and et al. "Reconciling Disagreement on Global River Flood Changes in a Warming Climate." Nature Climate Change 12 (2022): 1160–67 [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01539-7]
Westra, Seth, Lisa V. Alexander, and Francis W. Zwiers. "Global Increasing Trends in Annual Maximum Daily Precipitation." Journal of Climate 26 (2013): 3904–18 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI–D–12–00502.1].
Thanks! I'll take a look. It looks like only one of these articles (Zhang, Zhou, et al) addresses river flooding - do I have that right?
Yes, if by river flooding you mean long-duration flooding--as opposed to downpour floods that come from one storm or a burst of storms from a short-lived weather pattern. There's other work on long-duration floods but it's not worth pursuing here, trends depend on land-use changes (like deforestation), levee building and so forth as well as climate change. The argument for climate change impacts works only for downpours like the ones in recent years in Texas, Europe and Vermont and from cyclonic storms (where, as in e.g. Sandy, sea-level rise contributed along with enhanced precipitation).
And do check the IPCC reports as noted by our AI pals. ... here, it took me one minute to look at IPCC AR6, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_FullReport.pdf
search for "precipitation event"
ChatGPT to your aid: https://chatgpt.com/share/68880b44-de44-8013-a6ca-5826796cd852
Again with ChatGPT as the expert? Does it claim more flooding in wet regions and less in dry regions?
Dude, you have access to all the data ChatGPT does. After it gives you a preliminary response to a quoted comment, you can type "show sources" in the input box, like I did above. You don't have to take its word, or mine. But I'll say it again: if generative AI generates the same answer I would from my own knowledge, I'm not going to waste my time typing.
The contribution of carbon dioxide from human activity to the gross amount of that benign and life-giving gas in our atmosphere is statistically minimal. So we know the climate changes. We've had times in Earth's history where global temperatures have been both warmer than they are now and colder than they are now. So, we expect this up and down trend to continue and should not be surprised by it in the least. What we should not do is allow for fear-mongering of the human populace over the ethereal and made up notion that there is such a thing as man-made global warming.
The reality is, the causes of the continuous change in global temperatures throughout history are so complex that all we can do is make our best guess as to the amount of change possibly caused by humans, versus the amount of change actually caused by nature. Fortunately, there is an abundance of guesswork specialists at our universities making an attempt.
Except that just because our contribution is quantitatively tiny, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a significant effect. Tiny amounts can have large effects.
In addition, most of the CO2 released by nature gets absorbed by nature. Adding human CO2 upsets this balance, and adds CO2 in the atmosphere that is mostly not absorbed.
The main concern is also not the mere magnitude of the change, but the rate of change. The fact that the Earth was warmer say 100 million years ago doesn’t mean sea level isn’t rising, or that the rise is large enough to be concerning.
There is empirically and qualitatively no difference in the carbon dioxide that is expelled from human activity as opposed to the carbon dioxide that is expelled by nature. It is the same molecular compound that is mostly in gaseous form in nature at room temperature. The opinion that you have just given lacks all objective merit whatsoever.
The human contribution to the collective amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is statistically minimal. This means that any greenhouse effect that is caused by the collective amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is fed more by sources in nature than anything else.
We also know is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in terms of causing a collective greenhouse effect for the planet does not scale linearly. What this means is that once you get over a certain concentration of CO2, then the greenhouse effect is not increased anymore after that concentration is reached. Here's an article that speaks specifically to the statement that I have just made.
https://co2coalition.org/facts/the-warming-effect-of-each-molecule-of-co2-declines-as-its-concentration-increases/
Yeah, you’re right. Wind speeds in the Texas flood weren’t anywhere close to those. It was never designated a hurricane. How about rainfall? Does rainfall figure in the explanation of floods? Does changing the jet stream pick up any more warm water than it did before? Does increasing water temperature increase evaporation into the atmosphere when the jet stream comes by?
No, the scientists are not saying that hurricanes follow a trend. The chart doesn’t include any of the hurricanes that never struck the Continental US. The correlations the scientists draw are sea-level temperature, air temperature, moisture content, air pressure, and other factors.
You are missing the point. Extra CO2 in the atmosphere means more water in the atmosphere which means on average every single rain event is worse
Huh?
Thanks, Andrew. You say:
"Imagine there’s a fatal accident caused by a driver running a red light. Someone says the driver was texting, causing the crash. But another person counters, “Traffic fatalities aren’t rising, even though texting is increasing, so texting couldn’t have caused this accident.”
This is literally the argument that climate misinformers are making and I hope you can intuitively tell how dumb it is."
I'm sorry, but that example destroys your argument and supports the argument you are objecting to. Here's why:
===
Texting while driving is a major contributor to distracted driving, which in turn plays a significant role in U.S. traffic fatalities. Here are the key findings based on the most recent data available:
• Annual Distracted Driving Fatalities: About 3,300 to 3,300 people are killed each year in the U.S. in crashes involving distracted drivers, with cellphones—including texting—being a factor in about 12% of these deaths [1] [2] [3] [4].
• Recent Trends: Distracted driving fatalities—of which texting is a part—increased by nearly 14% from 2018 to 2022 [2].
• Magnitude of Texting Risk: Texting while driving increases the risk of crashing by as much as 23 times compared to undistracted driving. In fact, one in four car accidents reportedly involves texting and driving [5] [6].
• Proportion of Fatal Crashes: In 2022, distracted driving caused 8% of all traffic deaths in the U.S.; texting is the 5th leading cause of traffic deaths, especially impacting younger drivers [1] [7].
• Effect of Anti-Texting Laws: States that have implemented and enforced bans on texting while driving have seen small but significant reductions (about 3%) in traffic fatalities [8].
Conclusion:
Texting remains a serious risk—statistically, both fatal crashes and total crash counts are rising alongside persistent and often underreported texting behaviors. Enforcement and prevention efforts have shown some positive effect but texting behind the wheel continues to pose a growing public health threat [9] [2] [3].
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/distracted-driving-statistics/
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/distracted-driving-statistics/
[2] https://baderlaw.com/research/distracted-driving-in-america-2025/
[3] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/distracted-driving/
[4] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/distracted-driving-statistics/
[5] https://jminjurylawyer.com/car-accidents/which-states-have-most-distracted-driving-accidents-in-2025/
[6] https://www.forthepeople.com/blog/dangers-texting-and-driving-real-life-stories-and-statistics/
[7] https://www.coloradolaw.net/practice-area/auto-accidents/auto-accidents-texting-and-driving-statistics/
[8] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4103220/
[9] https://www.millerandzois.com/car-accidents/more-accident-types-valuing-accidents/texting-and-driving-accident-and-death-statistics-2023-updated/
===
So … given that your underlying example is 100% wrong, I fear everything that follows after that is wrong as well.
Look, if climate change were making Texas floods worse, it would absolutely show up as a trend in the flood data … but it hasn't.
You do the math.
My best to you and yours,
w.
*cough*
I think you missed the point of his analogy.
Thanks, NSAlito.
IF "global warming" caused or exacerbated the flood, it would have been revealed by an increase over time in Texas flooding. The globe has been warming, in fits and starts, since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1700.
If more warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
Given that indisputable fact … just what was the point of his analogy that I "missed"?
Best to you and yours,
w.
(1) The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon.
(2) Based on the Milankovitch cycles alone, our planet should naturally be cycling back into a period of glaciation. Instead it is getting warmer.
(3) The decades of recent warming has been *despite* the fact that the solar cycles (representing total insolation) have been lower in the past couple of decades.
(4) While the troposphere (lower atmosphere) has been warming, the stratosphere (upper atmosphere) has been cooling. This was a predicted result of the greenhouse gas effect: GHGs have been stopping radiation from reaching the stratosphere.
Your careful avoidance of understanding the basic physics of greenhouse gases has you regurgitating Points Refuted A Thousand Times (PRATTs).
Willis is a tar baby. He's been trying to obstruct collective decarbonization for years. He's glib, but his arguments haven't changed, and they're still wrong. He's nonetheless unfazed by laborious rebuttals. Like a creationist!
"I do it for the lurkers." 😉
Unfortunately, NONE of this even begins to address my main point. I'll repeat it, to give you another shot at it. Here is my main point.
=====
If global warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, since it has been warming for the last century, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
=====
Think about that long and hard, and then tell me why it's wrong. Note that my point has NOTHING to do with solar changes, the LIA, whether we should be in a period of glaciation, or whether the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming. NOTHING.
So I invite you to start over and falsify my actual claim, not your ideas about my claim.
My best to you and yours,
w.
"If global warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, since it has been warming for the last century, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding."
----
Andrew: "The main argument making the rounds goes something like this: The IPCC says there's no trend in floods, therefore we cannot claim that climate change enhanced the flood."
↑↑↑ IS THIS THE ARGUMENT THAT YOU ARE MAKING? ↑↑↑
(1) Andrew was talking about this specific flooding event.
Do you have a problem with #1?
(2) Andrew mentioned that no prior measured trend is required to establish whether →this event← could be tied to global warming.
Do you have a problem with #2?
(3) Global warming is causing an increase in RECORD MASS RAIN EVENTS. (This larger event added more than 490 million metric tons of water to Lake Travis alone.) As the capacity for the atmosphere to hold more water and delivery of more water from local warming water bodies increases, rain is falling in more intense downpours.
Do you have a problem with #3?
(4) Inland flooding is at best an indirect connection to climate change, since flooding and record crests depend on past weather in the area, soil condition, vegetation, pavement, upstream capacity for bank storage, burn scars and whether the storm is centered over a single watershed.
Do you have a problem with #4?
(5) As with so many other physical systems, both the increasing rate and sporadicity of the warming over the past several decades will necessarily trigger non-linear responses. I don't follow the assertion that Texas recent past of warming would have shown up as a recognizable signal yet (especially since the rate of global warming has gone up over the past decade, and it's hard to tease a notable signal out of the background noise), and also considering Texas' own erratic history of dams and flood management.
Apparently there is some shiny IPCC factoid about "lack of established trends" that is itself being used as an argument against a →specific event← being tied to climate change. I don't follow the assertion that Texas recent past of warning would have shown up as a recognizable signal yet (especially since global warming has been accelerating, and it's hard to tease a notable signal out of the background noise). Also consider Texas' own erratic history of dams and flood management.
Thanks, NS. To your points.
Andrew's argument is that the lack of any long-term trend in Texas floods is meaningless, because in some mysterious way, the slow long-term warming of the last century has affected just this one flood but no other floods during the last 100 years.
That makes sense to you?
I'm sorry, but at least at present, there is absolutely no way to determine whether a single meteorological event is affected by the slow warming. See e.g. https://judithcurry.com/2021/08/18/the-ipccs-attribution-methodology-is-fundamentally-flawed/
Next, point (3). The IPCC itself says there has been no global anthropogenically-driven increase in mean rainfall, river floods, or heavy precipitation and pluvial floods. So you'll have to take up point (3) with the IPCC. See IPCC AR6 WGI Table 12.12. It's available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-12/
Your points under (4) seem to be arguing against your previous points. They say it is extremely difficult to tie any individual event to global temperature change. Yes, it is. In fact, at present it's not possible.
Point (5) is that the response to global warming is "non-linear". But what Andrew and you are arguing is that there was NO effect of 100 years of warming (no trend) but somehow you can assert that this one event is a result of the warming. That's not "non-linear". That's magical thinking. Where is your evidence to back up that claim?
That area of Texas has been flooding since forever. It's a result of the local meteorology intersecting with the local geology. Just exactly what PROOF do you have that somehow, after a century of global warming making no discernible difference in the strength or frequency of the flooding in that location, suddenly it's affected just this one event?
Best regards,
w.
NSAlito, you also say:
"(3) The decades of recent warming has been *despite* the fact that the solar cycles (representing total insolation) have been lower in the past couple of decades."
The change in solar insolation is trivially small. Since 1900, ASR (absorbed solar radiation) has only varied by about 0.2 W/m2. Total surface downwelling radiation (LW + SW) is on the order of half a kilowatt.
So that represents a trough-to-peak percentage variation of 0.2/500 * 100 = 0.04%. It's not clear why you think this should make the slightest difference. I certainly don't think that.
w.
It's a holdover from earlier dealings with greenhouse effect deniers who kept pushing alternative explanations for the additional heating, like increased insolation. And a lot of them don't understand or know about how Milankovitch cycles have affected climates over millennial time scales.
[BTW, 0.2 W/m2 is still a lot considering the m2 we're dealing with.]
NSAlito, next, you say:
"(2) Based on the Milankovitch cycles alone, our planet should naturally be cycling back into a period of glaciation. Instead it is getting warmer."
True. But instead, after the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1700, the world began warming, and has warmed in fits and starts for the three centuries since.
So … your question is good. Why didn't continue the cooling that led up to the LIA and cycle back into glaciation? The first two centuries of the warming cannot be from CO2.
"The first two centuries of the warming cannot be from CO2."
----
Yeah, so?
While CO2 has been the dominant knob for total planetary warming over geologic eras, by now anyone participating in AGW/CC discussions should know that changes in aerosols, insolation, albedo, etc., are also warming/cooling mechanisms.
NS, I fear my point wasn't clear. Let me expand on it a bit.
Nobody knows why it cooled for about 700 years from the MWP to the LIA.
Nobody knows why, rather than descending into another glaciation, the cooling stopped around 1700.
Nobody knows why, instead of just staying cool, the Earth warmed up, in fits and starts, for 200 years following the LIA.
Given that colossal lack of understanding of what drives global temperature variations, the hubris and egotism of declaring that the current warming is 100% driven by humans is … well … sadly typical of humans. We tend to believe we're at the center of everything.
My best to you,
w.
Thanks, NSAlito. Let me take this one at at time, First, you say:
(1) The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon.
Sorry, not true.
The Little Ice Age (LIA) refers to a period of cooler climate generally recognized as spanning from roughly the 14th to the 19th centuries. Historically, this interval has been most strongly documented in Europe and North America, but the question of whether it was truly global in scope has been extensively studied using paleoclimatic proxies from around the world.
General Facts
• The LIA is characterized by a series of multiple cold intervals interspersed with brief warming episodes rather than a single, continuous cold period. This variability is reflected in many regional climate records [National Research Council, 2006].
• Primary evidence for the LIA comes from glacier advances in Europe, documented tree rings, and historical accounts of colder temperatures, as well as increased frequency of harsh winters, frozen rivers, and crop failures [Mann et al., 2009].
• Ice cores, tree rings, sediments, corals, and other proxy records have been used to reconstruct temperature and precipitation changes across the globe for the LIA [IPCC AR6, 2021].
High-Level Points of Importance
• Northern Hemisphere: Extensive evidence exists for LIA cooling, particularly in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, seen in glacier advances, tree ring data, and historic observations [Bradley & Jones, 1992].
• Southern Hemisphere: Evidence is more variable, but studies of glacier movements in the Andes, New Zealand, and Patagonia indicate periods of colder conditions roughly coincident with the LIA timeframe [Neukom et al., 2014].
• Tropics and Oceans: Coral records, lake sediments, and speleothems (cave deposits) show climatic variability and, in several cases, cooling episodes aligned with the LIA period, although the magnitude and timing of changes may differ from the Northern Hemisphere [Trouet et al., 2009].
• Global Signals: Multiproxy studies suggest that a general cooling episode did occur during the LIA, but with significant differences in onset, duration, and intensity between hemispheres and regions. This suggests the LIA was a globally detectable event, but not completely synchronous or uniform [Mann et al., 2009]; [PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013].
Nah, I think he got the point. That's the point of his point.
Willis, now I don't have to rebut Andrew's analogy-you did it for me, thanks. I was also going to add that if perchance deaths due to texting didn't significantly factor in to total MVA deaths then texting while driving deaths would therefore be largely irrelevant because the number is to small to make a difference. Just like deaths by lightning may have increased by 200% year over year but no change in overall weather related deaths, makes deaths by lightning way to small to have any relevance in what is being measured.
I could go on about how bad the analogy is, but alas, the echo chambers that surround the common University halls have grown far too loud to let anyone dare question the "consensus". So I no longer try to engage Andrew substantively. I'm glad to see someone else doing that for me. I do enjoy coming here now and again for comedic relief though...I hope they keep it up.
It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting? Willis, you know and I know that there is no way, no how that either Andrew, Mal, NSAlito et. al. will EVER engage you or I in a public debate. It would just be too darn embarrassing for them. Of course they'll come in with all their hand-waving but no references at all to back them up. Sad, yet hilarious at the same time.
Pop quiz, open book:
1. What was the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the 1980s?
2. Which weather-related deaths increased substantially starting in the 2000s?
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8df884dbd4e849c89d4b1128fa5dc1d6
1. Drought.
2. Extreme weather. With extreme cold weather (8.5%) causing roughly 9X more deaths than heat (0.9%).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(25)00054-3/fulltext
Your point?
If you read the Lancet article, you didn't understand it. It's just convenient cherry picking for rhetorical game playing.
I recommend everyone else here read that article with the intent of understanding it.
ETA: Don't forget the appendices.
https://www.thelancet.com/cms/10.1016/S2542-5196(25)00054-3/attachment/7704f2b0-b365-4fb6-9964-de202a8b41fa/mmc1.pdf
OK. Tell me exactly where and how I am misunderstanding the results of the article. Then tell me exactly where and how I am cherry picking. I review dozens of medical articles per week. I'm not a novice.
Good.
Premise: Global warming is not so bad because more people die of cold than heat.
[Obvious caveat: This is a paper about temperature effects on cardiovascular mortality of humans, and says nothing about crops, livestock, wildlife, soils and other forms of life on the planet.]
The key is the shape of the T vs. mortality curve. If you shift to higher temperatures, fewer people die from cold! Isn't that great? Except that the total number of deaths per degree warmer climbs much faster than the deaths from cold drops.
(I have Raynaud's Disease, so I appreciate that taking time-release nifedipine can address some of those symptoms when it's cold, and it's useful for people with other general cardiovascular problems, but when the body overheats, there's no pharmacological or physiological fix aside from cooling off the body itself. If your livelihood depends on working outside, you're SOL.)
And regarding weather events:
https://bioenergyigert.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/7h8ev.gif
"It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting?"
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That's non sequitur.
If weather related deaths are plummeting, ask why are they plummeting? Do you conclude that weather has been getting *nicer* over time, or could there be more factors at play?
Could it be that there are other reasons why death rates have been higher in the past, when there were no weather satellites and homes were more more flammable or poorly built? How did people call for help before telephones? Did governments always fund emergency services or swift-water rescue?
And who counted those global weather related deaths back then, yellow journalists?
Oh, you mean adaptation is at play? Shhhhhh, be quiet! You may be accused of being a climate realist, and nobody wants that on this blog.
Don't forget the narrative NS--the earth and it's inhabitants are far too fragile, far too stupid and far too helpless to adapt to a gradually warming climate around them.
"...Don't forget the narrative..."
Scratch a denialist, expose a paranoid conspiracist.
Ecological adaptation depends on the time scale, and the globe is warming faster than we can adapt. The PT "extinction" happened over tens of thousands of years. Catastrophic climate change is occurring over decades.
Coral reefs (the "nurseries of the sea") are being killed by the increased ocean temperatures. Many megafauna species with long generational cycles won't be able to survive in the wild. Pollinators can't keep up with changing bloom times.
Of course there will be winners, like rats, pigeons, sea gulls, jellyfish and cockroaches.
Another factor to consider - climate change is exacerbating drought, making soil drier, and decreasing its ability to absorb the floodwaters.
"Another equally curmudgeonly senior colleague3 said that, because the 1-day rainfall from a 1-in-100 year event in this region had increased around 10-15% in this region over the last 40 years, his best guess was that climate change increased the rainfall by about that amount, give or take."
Are you calling him a curmudgeon because his answer was tautological*? If we estimate the contribution of climate change to a single event by drawing from the observed trend for the population, isn't the partial attribution of that event's rainfall amount to climate change identical to the statistical trend line at that rainfall volume? I'm probably missing something here.
* "Listen up. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club." -R. Munroe
Curmudgeonliness is a factor of the attitude, not the facts.
Also age: I anticipate transitioning to curmudgeonhood within the next decade.
To be as fair to these people as possible, though, they're using the only data available to them to draw a conclusion. In other words, if global warming can/would increase downpours, and global warming is happening, then downpours should be becoming more intense or frequent. If they don't see any such trend in the data, it's rational for them to conclude there is no effect. Isn't that how scientists would do it if they didn't understanding the underlying causality? I think climate scientists do need to explain why, if climate change increases downpours (which must be true if it increased any single actual downpour), there is no trend. Until they do so, the lack of a trend will continue to convince people there's no effect, or at the very least that there's no consistent effect. It could be, for instance, that some other effect (direct or indirect) is reducing the intensity/frequency to at least the same degree, so that there's in the end there's no change, which is what matters to people. In the end, the fact that global warming strengthened any rain event will be an entirely meaningless bit of trivia to 99% of people if there's no trend to be concerned about.
Dessler is convinced that “climate change made the Texas floods worse”. The historical record of floods in that region, however, does not show a trend corresponding to global temperature changes. This would seem to disprove his assertion, but Dessler is undeterred, saying “the absence of a trend in flooding does not mean there is not a trend In flooding.” He is forever hopeful. He then concludes that “trends are not the most relevant information…you need to look at the individual event,” as though a universal truth might be proven by a single data point. His belief is that increased global temperature must add some unit of heat energy during the formation of the Texas storm, thus amplifying its intensity. What he fails to recognize is that the historical record shows that if it did, the amount is so insignificantly small, it is inconsequential. Climate change is an interesting field of study, no need to make it seem more important than it is.
"The historical record of floods in that region, however, does not show a trend corresponding to global temperature changes."
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IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FLOODS, IT'S ABOUT THE RAINFALL EVENTS.
Factors that influence the chance of flooding and peak crests:
- where the downpours happen with respect to different watersheds
- vegetation levels
- how absorbent soil levels are
- increase in upstream pavement
- burn scars
- debris (or lack thereof) in streams
- poorly designed drainage systems
This discussion deals with a well defined, relatively small rural area in the Hill Country region of Texas for which the in-situ flash flood related conditions have had little variability over several decades. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that each flash flood event of record for this region is a valid representation of the associated rainfall, thus the lack of a tread line in these flood data is highly pertinent information.
"...for which the in-situ flash flood related conditions have had little variability over several decades."
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Little variability over →decades←?!
The conditions vary from month to month, from rainstorm to rainstorm. The storms don't move in the same directions or park in the same place over watersheds. Do you have any idea what happened in 2011? Is that "variable" enough for you?
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/png/20110816/20110816_tx_trd.png
Our hydrogeology professor (2002) took us into the Canyon Lake flood site that showed how flood water can rip up and move limestone slabs that we had to clamber over.
I get why you're all fixated on the *flooding* rather than the *rain event*: Floods kill people. Floods move houses and make better news footage. But it's the *rain* that's the relevant metric with respect to climate.
If we don't change now, it's THE END for humanity on Earth.
I know you both have your hands full dealing with the fallout from the contrarian climate assessment. I hope at some point you have the time to address the issue here that go beyond the sound bites for the press.
A relevant paper that was published prior to the release that has not gotten a lot of attention is this paper/commentary by Scott Saleska et al., What Is Endangered Now? Climate Science at the Crossroads ; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025AV001808 .
I know their key points align with your thinking:
The US EPA's greenhouse gas endangerment finding is itself now endangered by the current Presidential Administration
Scientists had a key role in bringing about the endangerment finding
The science supporting the finding has only gotten stronger in the 16 years since the endangerment finding.
Many folks look at the issues surrounding extreme weather, flood draught, record busting heat domes. It is troubling though that many even somewhat scientists refer to the reason for these extremes, now no longer anomalies, as climate change.
The result of human manipulations to natural rythms, and mostly other human intended or unintended impacts can be lumped into the causing of climate change .
Lets get this right and not forget: Climate change is a direct result of mostly human impacts with some naturally occurring phenomena. Again climate change is the result of particular significant human impacts.
Climate change is not I repeat not the cause of this problem! it is the result of several human impacts? And, Are we 100%certain that we know which impacts are the most significant and troubling impacts we need to address?
Lately there is a lot of talk about moving away from all the carbon theories that science seems to be fixated on. And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount.
there is literally no talk among anyone with functioning brain cells to move away from "carbon theories". the mainstream theory as described by the IPCC explains (almost) everything we see — no other theory does.
"And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount."
Uh - there's your original dogged interest in the planets hydrological cycle. And this is far from the beginning of casting doubt on the climate-science consensus, as represented by the IPCC: a thriving for-profit disinformation industry has matured from its origins in the tobacco wars of the last century (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). By 'we' you are over-pluralizing: I'm afraid you're late to the discussion, at best. It's already led to a consensus. It discounts your claims because the economically-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere is more than quantitatively sufficient to account for the global heat accumulation of the last century and a half. There's no residual unknown forcing that would accommodate your proposal, which means some already verified CO2 radiative forcing would have to be somehow explained away. You're up against Occam's Razor. Deal.
Yes I did make a wrong statement carbon certainly has and is a factor. Unfortunately there are other much more localized factors, ongoin g and occurring in highly climate sensitive regions to anmy human impacts. These cryological ,atmospherical, and thermal hydrologicals are not factored into the climate models and need to be. These factors, impacts, now going on for over 60 years, increasing every year. are very significant
If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. We have very current discharge data from former rivers, now impounded sea-size bodies, current severe water vapor wind vectors from Northeastern Quebec carried by predominant winds over to Southern Greenland. If interested we can provide all the data and studies you might want to look at.
Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time.
"If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. "
No we couldn't. Neither of us is a professional climate scientist. Scientific debates are carried out among specialist peers. Until you publish your claims and data in a legitimate peer-reviewed venue, you'll get nowhere. Your reviewers get first shot!
"Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time."
Snort! Humility is recognizing that your ideas are guilty until proven innocent. If you can't convince at least a significant minority of trained, mutually-disciplined professional skeptics, then you're almost certainly fooling yourself. Perseverating in the face of massive professional disinterest is a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect: the arrogant presumption that when a large majority of genuine experts disagree with you, they're the ones fooling themselves.
Speaking of the wrong questions, the relevant questions here should be "Did recent warming make the (rain, flood) more likely? By how much? How could we demonstrate that there is a change in the distribution of (number, intensity) of storms?"
Attribution studies that use models to calculate that some event was 25% more likely, or 25% more destructive, aren't definitive unless actual data can demonstrate the change. For this level of probability on very infrequent events, it takes a very long time (many decades) to accumulate enough data to demonstrate a change in the distribution. And even then, it doesn't demonstrate a change from long-term baselines.
You mentioned hurricanes - hurricanes have famously increased in frequency over the past 50 years. It's easy to demonstrate that hurricanes became more frequent in the 2000s than in the 1970s, but as you noted, there's no trend in the longer term data. For years, there have been modelers and advocates claiming that hurricane trends are up, and that it's caused by warming. But actual data doesn't support this claim.
I've covered that here: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/climate-change-is-making-hurricanes-caf
Thanks. That was the post I was thinking of. You cite models that cyclones will have more rainfall, and the IPCC claims high confidence that TC rainfall was increased by warming. But there's no claim that TC rainfall has increased over any particular timeframe.
You claim that hurricanes will become more destructive because rising sea levels will cause more frequent overwhelming of storm surge protections, but it would be very hard to find examples. You don't explain why you don't have confidence in improved flood protection as a mitigation measure.
You note that the IPCC finds it "likely" that the proportion of Category 3-5 cyclones has increased over the past 40 years, but you don't note that the number of Category 3-5 cyclones has not increased - the increase in proportion is due to fewer lower-category storms.
I respect the model-builders and their efforts to forecast changes in climate. I'd appreciate some effort to turn the model outputs into concise predictions, and then gathering data to support or refute the model outputs.
Brian, the IPCC’s “high confidence” on TC rainfall comes from both models and observed attribution studies showing increases in the heaviest rain rates, especially in intense storms. Sea-level rise makes storm surge flooding more frequent by simple physics, already seen in places like Miami and New York — even with protections, cost and engineering limits mean adaptation often lags. An increased share of Cat 3–5 storms matters because they cause most damage, and in some basins their absolute numbers are up too. Models are tested against observations; that’s exactly how IPCC confidence levels are set.
Thanks for the response. Can you point me to the section of the IPCC AR that goes into this? It's a long document, and rather hard to search.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/
if you look at the index, you can find whatever extreme you're interested in
Thanks! I'll read through it. At first glance, it looks like the report claims 3% (modeled) and 7% (observed) increase in "Annual maximum 1 day precipitation" since 1950 (p. 458). Do I have that right? Are there enough data points to have high confidence in that finding?
Separately, I've found NOAA data on rainfall in Kerrville, Texas, going back to 1900. At first glance, it looks like there were at least as many heavy precipitation days before 1950 as since, but I'm still working on filling in missing data points. I know Kerrville is on the parts of the Guadalupe River that flooded, which means the floods were fed by rainfall upstream from Kerrville, but it doesn't look like NOAA has any stations in the Guadalupe basin upstream from Kerrville. Are you aware of any observational data that rainfall has increased (either in total or maximum 1 to 3 days) in the Texas hill country?