> Today, scientists still generally agree that it's impossible to attribute any individual weather phenomenon solely to climate change
Seems the actual science is the direct opposite of the headline once you read through the article.
Seems the actual science is the direct opposite of the headline once you read through the article.
I don't see how the article contradicts the title at all. Certainly not 'direct opposite' as it even calls out specific scientists and specific papers that are in fact doing exactly what the headline says. It's not like the article headline says "All scientists now agree: Harvey caused by climate change" or something like that. The headline is very clear and very specific. It is fine.
There are two parts to that title:
1) "can now" implies that something significant in scientific understanding has changed 2) "blame individual natural disasters on climate change" is clear
#2 is flat out wrong because, see my quote above, the article makes it clear that the scientific consensus is still that individual events cannot be directly attributed to climate change.
#1 is wrong because nothing has changed.
Scientists can predict that the probability of extreme events in general is rising due to climate change but that is not proof that any specific event is attributable to climate change. That is not new. Nothing has changed in the consensus scientific position.
Scientific consensus doesn't make something true. Climate change is true because we measure it, not because most scientists say it is. This is an active area of research, a brand-new area in fact, and making claims like "Storms cannot be blamed on climate change" is absolutely incorrect. We're still finding out the answers to those kinds of questions, and just now it's become potentially feasible to actually do it (blame climate change for a specific event).
> #1 is wrong because nothing has changed.
What? Of course things have changed. That's what this whole article is about. The methods are maturing and data access is growing - the nature of publishing a peer reviewed paper that blames all or part of an event on climate change is now an accepted practice and it wasn't before. This is change.
I still see no issue at all with the headline. It is a perfect fit for the article and is not wrong in any way.
Edit: I've been banned from HN for a while I guess, unable to comment any more. I'll respond quickly to the comment below:
> > Scientific consensus doesn't make something true
> This is the same argument the denialist use. I am not sure how it is relevant to anything.
You cut up my paragraph and removed the context from my comment in order to make me look like a climate change denier. I'm not. Why did you do that?
> > making claims like "Storms cannot be blamed on climate change" is absolutely incorrect
> Nobody made that claim.
I never said they did.
This is the same argument the denialist use. I am not sure how it is relevant to anything.
> making claims like "Storms cannot be blamed on climate change" is absolutely incorrect
Nobody made that claim.
There is an actual scientifically supportable position in between the two extremes you are proposing which is that in general the risk of extreme weather events is increasing due to climate change but no individual extreme weather event can be specifically attributed to climate change.
We ban accounts that repeatedly violate the site guidelines, so please read them and abide by them when commenting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Basically, both the headline and quote can easily be true at the same time.
Also, my main account, cryptoz, is now temporarily? banned from posting on HN due to me defending the correctness of this headline. I wish it had not been changed. I have lost this battle.
cryptoz is rate limited, but not for anything to do with this. We rate limit accounts when they either post too many low-quality-for-HN comments too quickly and/or have gotten into flamewars. We're happy to un-rate-limit accounts, and do so all the time, as long as we get a commitment from the user to abide by the intention of the site in the future. But it's best to email hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to do that. Same goes for any user of course.