Climate and climate change do not cause or influence weather

 It is now a ubiquitous cultural ritual to blame any and every weather event on climate change. Those hot days? Climate change. That hurricane? Climate change. The flood somewhere that I saw on social media? Climate change.

With today’s post, the first in a series, I go beyond the cartoonish media caricatures of climate change, which I expect are here to stay, and explore the actual science of extreme events – how they may or may not be changing, and how we think we know what we know, and what we simply cannot know.

Quite apart from the outsized and oversimplified role of climate-fuelled extreme weather in culture and politics, climate is fascinating and important – and worth understanding as more than a meme. This post lays the groundwork for this new The Honest Broker (“TBH”) series, starting with some important definitions and a quantitative thought experiment....<<<Read More>>>..