- Author: Carole Hom
Bill Blakemore, a blogger at the ABC news website, recently posted a column about global climate change and extreme weather. He observed that scientists sometimes confuse the public with statements that carefully qualify cause and effect. Blakemore wrote,
Is manmade global warming responsible for the surge in severe heat events we’re seeing in recent years around the globe?
The world’s climate scientists have a clear answer:
Yes. It is.
“It’s about as solid as science ever gets,” climatologist James Hansen tells ABC News.
But climate scientists often add a different and sometimes confusing answer to a slightly different question:
Is manmade global warming to blame for any one of those extreme weather events?
No, they say — or rather, that’s a somewhat meaningless question if you mean that too literally, since nothing ever happens for any one reason — not anywhere, not ever, though there are of course “main causes” or “triggering events,” factors that may increase the probability of any one event happening; but any one event still happens only because various conditions are right at the same time, so you can’t say, exactly, that any one event is “caused by” manmade global warming — or any other single cause — not exactly…
Huh. Clear as mud.
Blakemore then presented four "scientist-approved" explanations -- and a few one-line explanations -- that pass the middle-school-kid test: middle schoolers understand them in a flash and give you an eyeroll.
Check them out and see if you agree.