On Wed, 12 Oct 2016 09:40:10 +0100
"Anne B" wrote:

What they tend to point out is that a single event cannot
ever be
said to have been directly caused by climate change (as if
would
never have happened at all without it), which of course you
can
never prove.

Well if you accept the concept of climate change then you
must accept
that /every/ weather event is caused by it, on the grounds
that the
weather would have been completely different had there been
none.


You are kidding, right?
So every death from lung cancer is caused by
cigarette-smoking?
Every heart attack is caused by cigarette-smoking?
Every case of thrombosis is caused by cigarette-smoking?
Every road accident is caused by drink-driving?
etc. . .
Graham P Davis

That's entirely different. You are extrapolating from the
particular to the general, and Alan (quite correctly IMO) is
extrapolating from the general to the particular.

Anne



So saying that every weather event is caused by Global Warming is the
opposite to saying that every pulmonary and circulatory illness is
caused by smoking? Really?

If Alan had used 'affected' instead of 'caused' then that would have
been OK. To say that _every_ weather event is _caused_ by global
warming is obviously false. If it were true it would mean that before
Global Warming there could have been no weather.

Has every Atlantic hurricane this season been _caused_ by global
warming? Of course not. Have they been affected by Global Warming?
Quite probably, in that higher than normal sea temperatures would have
increased the intensity of them. It's also possible that Global Warming
has affected the vertical temperature structure of the atmosphere in
such a way as to reduce the numbers of tropical storms. [Greater
heating of upper troposphere in the Tropics increases stability]


--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks. [Retd meteorologist/programmer]
My web-site: http://www.scarlet-jade.com/
Posted with Claws: http://www.claws-mail.org/