Warmist Kerry Emanuel Wonders If Climate Scientists Are Too Cautious In Their Insanity

Well, I added the insanity part. Emanuel wants climate scientists to become more forceful in their predictions and talking points, and brings the #Fail

(Foreign Policy) Conventional wisdom about climate change may have begun to gel in the aftermath of Sandy, but did global warming really cause the vicious hybrid storm that devastated much of the eastern seaboard last week? The short answer is no. Attributing Sandy or any other single event to long-term climate trends is rather like blaming El Niño for a car accident on the Santa Monica Freeway. But that’s hardly an excuse for policymakers to keep kicking the climate can down the road. Science actually doesn’t tell us much about that kind of causality, so it’s time to stop acting like it does.

So, Sandy wasn’t anthropogenic global warming, but, hey, policymakers should Do Something anyhow. Why? Well, researchers like Emanuel love that sweet, sweet federal research money.

At its best, climate science deals in probabilities. This means that under ideal conditions, scientists can estimate how a given climate signal alters the chances of a particular event. For example, we can now begin to estimate how global warming changes the probability of destructive hurricane landfalls. But in the case of hybrid storms like Sandy, which combine hurricane and winter storm characteristics, science hasn’t even progressed to the point of assessing probabilities.

Science hasn’t progressed to the point where they can tell us with certainty that any of their unhinged climate predictions will come about. “Might” is not a probability. Saying my Giants might win this season’s Super Bowl doesn’t assign probability, just wishful thinking.

The same can be said of climate change policy. The world has suffered an extraordinary string of weather disasters over the past decade, ranging from crippling droughts and floods, to severe tornado and hail outbreaks, to highly destructive hurricanes. Insurance industry statistics reflect a substantial increase in damages from these events, but in only a few cases can scientists confidently attribute them to climate change. (For example, increased incidence of droughts, floods, and high category hurricanes may be partly pinned on climate change.)

As Tom Nelson points out “Hey Kerry: Please specify one decade in human history that didn’t include plenty of weather disasters of every type that you mentioned.” And there’s the rub: weather happens. Some decades will be worse than others. When we talk about the top 10 deadliest cyclones, all but 2 of them occurred during cool periods. There were more wars, more starvation, more crop failures, more weather related deaths, more droughts, and more big storms during the Little Ice Age than during this warm period. But, there are more people on the planet now, and more people building in areas that are prone to natural disasters. Why? Because society tends to be pretty darned good during warm periods.

We’re still waiting for all you Warmists to give up your big carbon lives to show us the way forward.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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