Monday, March 18, 2019

ClimateFeedback.org Fact Check - dancing to the contrarian's flute.


This morning I came across another example of dancing to the contrarian script -  this time it was ClimateFeedback.org Fact Checkers.

Rather than dog-chasing-tail words, we need to strive to clarify what’s unfolding upon our planet on a realistic gut level.

Moral of the story stop focusing on tiny uncertainties - redirect the dialogue back to the known certainties - because they certainly tell us enough.
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This is what appeared (click image for better view):
Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Mar 8, 2019     {hat tip to skepticalscience.com} 
CLAIM
"The science is clear, climate change is making extreme weather events, including tornadoes, worse.”        SOURCE: Bernie Sanders, Facebook, 4 March 2019   
ClimateFeedback.org's fact checking verdict was misleading 
Overstates scientific confidence: Research clearly shows that certain types of weather extremes are increasing as a result of climate change, but it is not clear how tornadoes are responding to a warming climate.
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ClimateFeedback misses the point. 

It’s not about tornadoes and score keeping, it’s about learning to appreciate how our climate engine operates.

Take back the narrative !

Research clearly shows us that our global heat and moisture distribution engine has accumulated a degree Centigrade worth of extra heat since the advent of the steam engine.

Weather's job is to circulate this heat (and moisture) from the broiling equator to the poles.

This warming also increases the moisture holding capacity of air.

Physics tells us this added energy gets circulated throughout the global weather system. 

This extra heat is now available to be released through various destructive forms, not limited to tornadoes, consider destructive macrobursts, microbursts, downbursts, derechos, bomb cyclones, hurricanes and others.  

It doesn’t much matter which particular meteorological conditions come together, the point is when they do, they now have increasingly more energy, heat and moisture available, meaning more intense events must to be expected.  

It’s elementary.  It's physics.  It's certain as people can be about anything.

It’s about establishing an appreciation for what’s happening within our global heat and moisture distribution engine.  Well that and learning to appreciate the fragility of the biosphere upon who's health we all depend on for everything.
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ClimateFeedback.org continues digging its hole:

Human-caused climate change is known to be having an influence on some types of weather extremes, including heat waves and intense rainstorms. 

Please, think about what human-caused global warming means geophysically?  There is no storm today that can be independent of the warming global system from which it spawned! 

However, scientists aren't certain about certain other types of weather, either because historical data are insufficient to detect trends or because it's unclear how those weather patterns will respond to warming. 

Instead of getting lost in gibberish that no one follows, this would be a good time to tackle the Map vs Territory Problem.*  Science will never offer certain answers, so we need to connect some of the dots for ourselves.

It is not currently clear how climate change affects tornadoes. 

This shouldn’t be about playing gotcha games with tornado statistics.  

This it is supposed to be about honestly learning to appreciate how our climate engine operates ! ! !  

* . . . this is about recognizing the Map v. Territory Problem and the need for more effective communication than laying out a series of facts, as though they were a stamp collection.  

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We live in the Territory and simply because scientists dedicated to the data and nothing but, have a hard time acknowledging connections doesn’t mean those connections aren’t there! 

Our living breathing physical Earth is not a mental construct.  Our changing biosphere doesn’t care about how much of the details we understand or not.  

It is our obligation to understand her and part of that is filling in the missing pieces with honest rational conclusions based on our excellent grasp of this planet’s fundamental geophysics along with honest good-faith logic.  Instead, what we find is people in the audience using every flimsy childish excuse to downplay the reality of the situation we’ve created for ourselves.  Or folks who are plain confused at all the words and shut it out.

These days articles are being written about the importance of story telling in conveying big ideas to people.  The narrative needs to have a visceral connection with its audience.

What about our global heat and moisture distribution engine with its atmosphere providing an insulation layer between living Earth and the frigid black of space, and so on and so forth?   (https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2017/12/exploring-map-territory-problem.html)

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Damaging Winds Basics
Severe Weather 101:
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The five most extreme weather events of 2018 in the United States
By Ian Livingston  |  December 31, 2018
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Extreme weather - winds and tornadoes - New Zealand

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How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters
BY NICOLA JONES JANUARY 26, 2017



Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth’s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed.


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