Cause or Effect?
10 hours ago Kip Hansen 73 Comments
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 9 July 2024
The newspapers and newscasts are full of this phrase: “caused by climate change”. The web searching apps reveal this with endless links to web pages and stories containing that phrase (and more here). This phrase is so ubiquitous that in certain quarters it is used as a joke punchline. It seems almost anything you can think of has been claimed to be “caused by climate change”. Of course, it used to be “caused by global warming” and that was a joke too: “10 feet of snow? Yep, must be global warming!”; “Wife pregnant again?” “Yeah, you know, climate change.”
For amusement, readers can supply links to online lists of all the crazy things that have been blamed on global warming/climate change.
The very effective climate communicator, who veers closer and closer to the Climate Realist viewpoint with every passing month, Roger Pielke Jr. recently posted a substack post : Climate Fueled Extreme Weather (at The Honest Broker, to which you should subscribe). Here is an illustration from that post (h/t Pielke Sr, and the National Research Council):
Here’s the home-run quote:
“Let’s correct one pervasive and pathological misunderstanding endemic across the media and in policy, and sometimes spotted seeping into peer-reviewed scientific research:
Neither climate nor climate change cause, fuel, or influence weather.
Yes, you read that right.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/08/cause-or-effect/
