It you are interested in peer reviewed literature on costs from weather events, then you should become familiar with the work of Roger Pielke Jr. . Remember the Jr.. Sr. is his father and he is a climate scientist. I found this confusing until I figured out they were two different.
I think we’re mostly on the same page on climate change, at least with regard to the science. What I get annoyed with, is sometimes people who I mostly agree with on an issue (for example I mostly believe scientific consensus on things like climate change) will leap to conclusions that the real scientists aren’t really making.
It’s one thing to accept published reports on climate change.
It’s another thing to make the slight jump from “influencing” to “causing.” It’s absolutely true there are very few scientists who are saying “human carbon emissions are causing more destructive storm seasons and natural disasters.” Of the reputable stuff I’ve seen on it, some scientists quoted in a non-scientific journal will make very qualified statements like “it’s definitely possible that a change in global temperature could impact weather systems and create more frequent and serious hurricanes.” But that is basically a “clean pass” that a “doomsayer” will run with and say “human caused global warming will lead to mega hurricanes to end the world.”
I work at an insurance company. People here are eager to blame anything other than their own incompetence for our falling stock market index. It really is as simple as that. Well, that and desiring something external to blame when policyholders bitch about rate increases.
Even if the doomsday scenario is true, I doubt that there would be any event which anyone could point to and say “climate change caused that.” But that means that an extreme denier can use this to deny that climate change is even indirectly responsible for increased numbers of severe events. It is a kind of subtlety easy to reject, just the way tobacco companies denied the link between smoking and cancer for so long.
Exactly. The way to beat deniers here is the way science eventually beat the tobacco companies: with falsifiable predictions that leave no wiggle room.
Obviously, as for other extreme weather events, they will follow the science, which is increasingly linking recent cold/snowy winters across much of the Northern Hemisphere to record Arctic sea ice loss (for this winter, in the Barents Sea area, which has been previously linked to cold European winters; the link isn’t surprising when you ponder the effects of a significant part of the Arctic being dozens of degrees above average for months on end):
Current climate science is increasingly on determining links between climate change and extreme weather, as opposed to climate change itself (many scientists are starting to openly state that recent increases in extreme weather are due to climate change). Also, I see that references to the likes of Pielke, et al have been made upthread; their claims are mostly baseless (see example here).
I myself follow weather/climate news and am always seeing headlines like “all-time record…”, “unprecedented”, “worst ever” (sometimes months after the previous worst) etc, including records that were decades old or more, especially as of late, much more than one might expect (e.g. did Australia expect to see a repeat of their record 2010-2011 flooding so soon; did the U.S., especially considering much improved warnings and a falling trend in tornado deaths (until recently), a tornado outbreak much bigger than the 1974 super tornado outbreak (which would have been much deadlier had it occurred back then)?). Note also that increases in population can’t explain the increase in weather/climate disasters simply because non-climate disasters haven’t increased as much.
FWIW, saying that climate change will produce events (especially those which are physically impossible, like in Hollywood sci-fi flicks) like super-hurricanes and the like is more like what the deniers claim that “alarmists” say.
So you are saying that with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, we can expect colder and snowier winters in the Northern Hemisphere and therefore more and bigger claims for damage resulting from snow, ice, and cold?
Can you give me 3 examples of this from the past year or two? TIA
What happened to “only peer-reviewed articles by respected climate scientists in world-famous publications”?
This is one of those situations where the veil of ignorance would’ve been great. I would’ve love to see what the answer to “Insurers are claiming an effect (positive or negative) on GW in their claims?”
Not indefinitely; eventually Arctic ice loss will become great enough so that a different circulation pattern will be favored. Of course, natural variability will always be in play; compared to the previous winters, the U.S. had a very mild winter because the Arctic Oscillation was in a different phase (but Europe still saw extreme cold, but then it wasn’t cold all winter, just some major cold outbreaks). For example:
In other words, the pattern favors colder winters initially but then eventually it reverts to warmer winters. Now, we can’t be absolutely sure that this is what will happen, but due to obvious impacts, a lot of research is being done in this area and they pretty much show the same general picture. Note also that this is referring to regional cooling (which influences public opinion far more than it should), even as it warms overall; in this case, high positive temperature anomalies over the Arctic are (mostly, since it is warmer than average overall) offset by negative anomalies elsewhere.
As for the latter, if you follow Jeff Master’s blog on Weather Underground, he posts plenty of examples of extreme weather events and usually tells how they are/aren’t related to climate change (or may be influenced by such), as does Joe Romm on Climate Progress (with scientific explanations; some people claim that links to blogs like these are invalid but since they mention and link to scientific articles they should be reliable; heck, I have even seen claims that links to RealClimate, from the scientists themselves, are invalid!).
One thing to keep in mind is that Climate Science is a wide and complex field where most scientists only work in one specialized area and may be no more than a intelligent layman in other areas. It would be sort of like having an ENT comment on a brain tumor. As far as I know, there is a no scientist that has a wall to wall in depth understanding how all climate science works. This is one of the reasons that the IPCC job is so difficult. You have 1000s of scientists who often can barely communicate with each other and you are trying to create a continuous narrative when what you really have is a bunch of guys that really know their little piece of the puzzle works, but the can’t really synthesize a complete picture.
The point I’m trying to make is that when you read something by a climate scientist, you need to check his background and make sure he has actual expertise in the particular area he is talking about.
That’s not an answer to the question. Insurance companies need to assess probabilities and set rates accordingly. Let’s suppose you are an underwriter at an insurance company and the boss asks you to make a recommendation for raising or lowering rates to take into account changed probabilities of loss due to snow, ice, and cold. If you insisted on giving those sorts of evasive non-answers, you would get fired.
Of course, these kinds of shenanigans are symptomatic of the problems Waldo was complaining about. CAGW predicts more snow and ice – except when it predicts less snow and ice. CAGW predicts warming – except when it predicts cooling. A hypothesis which doesn’t make specific predictions is not a hypothesis at all. It’s garbage.
Sorry, but I’m not your research assistant. It’s not my responsibility to go searching for specific examples of the generalizations you make. You asserted that you are “always” seeing headlines concerning unprecedented events. It should be very easy to describe and link to three of them.
Yep, even this guy does understand that the argument was a “tails scientists win, heads deniers lose”, unfortunately that is not what scientists are saying, claiming that the scientists are contradicting themselves is just a straw man, unless they can deny (and typically deniers will never drop these kindergarten arguments) that seasons still take place and not all areas of the earth have the same climate, this point of ignoring local conditions to claim that scientists are contradicting themselves is really silly.
In other areas and on places with rainy seasons then another mechanism, the increase in water vapor (that is not evenly distributed over land masses) influences the precipitation of snow and rain to make them more severe.
It’s not what I’m saying either – and I’m not sure it’s what he’s saying about me.
Sure, he’s right that I’m saying you and yours have made an exceedingly modest prediction that’s correct regardless of whether snowfall increases or decreases, and regardless of whether it gets warmer or colder for a good stretch of time. But I want to again emphasize that your prediction can be falsified if that predicted tenth-of-a-degree change from 2007 to 2017 doesn’t show up.
I think brazil84 knows that, and invite him to correct you on that point.
I’m not talking about “local conditions”, and I’m not sure brazil84 is either. I’m talking about temperature – and, at that, snow and ice – on a global level. I believe you’re predicting that next year may well be cooler than this one (which may well be cooler than the previous one, which in turn was cooler than the previous one) as a matter of global average temperature. I believe you’re predicting that tenth-of-a-degree change as a matter of global, not local, average temperature (which, in turn, may well occur even if both are cooler than the global '98-'05-'10 mark – but that’s irrelevant to falsifying your claim or proving it true).
So much for where I stand. Where does brazil84 stand? Did you have both of our positions wrong, or just mine? Let’s find out.
My position is that if we want to know what insurers believe, we need to see what they are willing to give discounts for. Any insurance company can jack up rates (or ask for a rate increase from regulators) and blame it on global warming. But if they really believe in global warming, they will offer discounts for insuring risks which can be expected to go down as a result of CAGW.
Of course, it’s remotely possible that CAGW will increase every last risk – the risk of damage from snow; from ice; from cold; from fire; from hail; from locusts; from frogs falling from the sky. But this is not very credible to me.
It’s also remotely possible that CAGW will not affect any risks at all. But this runs into the falsifiability problem you keep raising. Probably I overstated my case when I said that such a hypothesis is “garbage,” but it is a big problem.
And I apologize if I’ve been unclear: I raised the falsifiability problem in other threads to get a perfectly good prediction from GIGO – and when it became increasingly likely it wouldn’t come to pass, he moved the goalposts, prompting me to raise the problem again until GIGO came up with another perfectly good one – and when he again moved the goalposts, I again raised the problem until GIGO came up with another perfectly good one.
But I want to stress that it is a perfectly good one, just like its predecessors: it predicts that, while temperature declined from '98 to '99, and remained cooler through '99 and '00 and '01 and '02 and '03 and '04 before returning to the plateau in '05 before cooling off again for '06 and '07 and '08 and '09 before returning to the plateau in '10 before cooling off again for '11 – and may, in fact, for decades yet to come, keep doing likewise – it’ll rise by maybe a tenth of a degree from '07 to '17; that’s entirely falsifiable, and so I in no way see it as garbage.
The idea from brazil84 is the one that is garbage, and at the kindergarten level, what I notice from the recent reply is that now there is a “lets bat our eyes” look innocent and pretend that "CAGW predicts more snow and ice – except when it predicts less snow and ice. CAGW predicts warming – except when it predicts cooling. A hypothesis which doesn’t make specific predictions is not a hypothesis at all. " was not said.
The intention is clear, declare that the scientists are being contradictory, and as pointed before, this is possible only by ignoring and misrepresenting what the scientists are really saying. One has to think globally and act locally, locations will not be affected the same by the global change.
Ok, well I gave up a long time ago on trying to figure out what GIGOBuster’s position is. My comments were not directed to him. I’m simply discussing the problem of figuring out what insurance companies believe.
That reply was dealing with the kindergarden level “I still have a chip on my shoulder” compaint against me, as me and TOWP agreed before that the IPCC reports and predictions should be what we agreed upon, this idea that my positions are relevant is also a very silly idea to still have after all this time and discussions. As I do agree with what most of the experts and researchers report, it is indeed with them and the evidence that you should have your childish beefs with.
It merely goes a long way to explaining why – as he’d said – I apparently keep raising the falsifiability problem; if you’d skipped straight to the IPCC’s tenth-of-a-degree prediction back when, I wouldn’t have made all those posts asking for a second goalpost after you backed away from the first one, and I wouldn’t have spent all those posts asking for a third one after you backed away from the second. I wouldn’t have, because I couldn’t have.
Instead, I’d just be the guy who asked a question that got answered – and I probably wouldn’t have become at all memorable as, y’know, The Falsifiability Guy. I simply wish to note that my objections persisted until you supplied the tenth-of-a-degree-per-decade claim and declared yourself for it; to the exact extent that you could have done so sooner, my objections would have dwindled in direct proportion.
And while I suppose I can see why you might figure I’d have a chip on my shoulder for all the unnecessary time and effort, such a conclusion would be incorrect; I eventually got the answer I wanted, and it was entirely worth the wait, which is why I find your position both relevant and satisfactory.