U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again

I feel like everyones making different assumptions when building their climate models, so you end up with a model that show more intense A & B but not C, and than another model showing more intense A & C but no change in B, and a third mentions only a change in B and something about D, but by the time it makes it to the general populace the only thing anyone sees is that climate change is causing A, B, C, D, E, and F. Not to their fault, but with complex models like climate, a small change can butterfly wildly.

Are you trying to imply that global warming isn't happening?

One of the other things that scares me is weather is chaotic. Patterns repeat year over year. But global warming could cause those patterns to change. Possibly permanently as far as human civilization goes.

Even as far back as 1970, climate predictions in papers were overwhelmingly for warming, not cooling. And those which predicted cooling were focused on the effects of smog. However smog has largely disappeared thanks to environmental regulations enforced by organizations such as the EPA, and with it its localized cooling effects. By 1980, predictions of cooling were essentially gone from the scientific literature.

However every last report that can be found of someone predicting cooling in any context (eg nuclear winter) gets press along with the message that those darned scientists were wrong again. The fact that they were always a minority view doesn't.

Yes, AGW which was observed and predicted to get worse in 1980 and even earlier has come to pass largely as predicted.

The catastrophic effects of ozome depletion didn't occur because of massive steps to counteract it, like banning CFCs. So that can't be what you are talking about.

You are probably trying to reference the fringe theory of an impending ice age which got a lot of popular media attention despite being (or perhaps precisely because it was) a fringe theory, but... that's a broken analogy for obvious reasons.

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

"[Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program]...says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000...governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control...The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years,"

June 29, 1989

There is a big difference between 1 degree in 30 years (slightly above what has been observed, mostly beneficial) and 7 degrees in 30 years (catastrophe).

Note that the "10-year window" (and often shorter times) has been repeatedly invoked and repeatedly blown past throughout the 30 years. As Douglas Adams says — 'I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.' This has come from scientists (Peter Wadhams Arctic ice free by 2016), UN IPCC (Himalayan glaciers by 2035), political figures (Al Gore 10 years/12 years, Ocasio-Cortez 12-years), and celebrities (Prince Charles!? 96-months).

James Hansen speculated (1988/1989) that "West Side Highway...will be underwater" - about 20 foot sea level rise, but sea level rise has remained constant at about a foot per century. Also droughts (have to ask for water), increased crime, and boarded up windows because of wind speed. Note that this was reported as "in 20 years" - so 2009 - by Salon https://www.salon.com/2001/10/23/weather/ reporting the 1988/1989 interview, but after this article was highlighted by skeptics, Hansen corrected the numbers saying it was for 40 years and with a doubling of CO2 (which would be really fast and outside the bounds of even the extreme scenarios) - http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_Singing...

Hansen also predicted (1988) strengthening hurricanes (no trend observed, despite warming, media attention, and increased observation) https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/07/us/ferocious-storms-and-d...

Both sides tend to exaggerate their positions and ignore contrary evidence. Both skeptics and advocates tend to focus on "Scenario A" - the extreme, unrealistic worst-case scenario - rather than the more realistic moderate emissions, moderate warming scenarios.

I wish both AGW proponents and skeptics would call out inaccuracies - even from "their own side". For instance, the IPCC's "Himalayan glaciers gone by 2035" was initially defended and widely publicized before being forced to be acknowledged as an error years later https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-him... The exaggerated sea-level rise predictions in the Salon article above stood uncorrected for years until it was called out by skeptics, then Hansen clarified the "40 years and doubled CO2".

We understand the greenhouse effect small scale very well. And we know very well, that we humans burned up many things in a short time that were underground before ... so we know there are much more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the data matches the predictions so far.

So no. Nobody knows for sure and nobody is claiming to know, what the temperature in 50 years will be. But we know that the current models predict bad things. And we know that we burned that oil. Regardles of the sun cycle, you are probably refering to.

I feel like sometimes weather records are given higher significance than they really are in the grand scheme of things. Not saying this is one of them, but just trying to look at things in a balanced way.

Weather forecasting is more about interpreting the results than writing the code for the model, and, realistically there are only the British and American weather supercomputers. Everyone else is borrowing the GRIB data and then doing their own interpretations.

As for that interpretation, a surprising amount of forecasters operate much like how gamblers work.

Think of a horse racing scene, the horses and the riders have form, i.e. how they have performed in the past. Then there is the course, this may or may not suit a given horse/rider combo. Weather, time of day and other factors come into it. Not to mention the prize money and the competition.

A gambler looks at the form, the weather and works with their niche of specialist knowledge, similar with weather forecasting.

The 'bet' might be what the weather is going to be in Dudley tomorrow or in Barnstaple, or anywhere else. The goal of the forecaster is to get it right. The observations are the key to it and the GRIB forecast data is not to be considered strictly accurate. Even if it is accurate it still needs interpretation. Even with the data and an eye on the metosat images it is incredibly hard to get the likelihood of rain right.

Sometimes a step outside is needed too - with a local forecast.

The resolution of the GRIB is not that good, so if you have a town at the foot of a mountain and next to a lake, it might not have a realistic prediction. The GRIB data might be for the top of the mountain or the middle of the lake. You need an expert to actually do an educated guess as to what temperature it will be there in the morning.

Forecasters actually understand some things that are going on in the now, so a storm off Africa that goes across to the U.S seaboard as some tropical storm will come back across to the British Isles as rain. Forecasters don't tell you that there is a queue of storms heading across the Atlantic on the way to the U.S. and inevitably going to bring rain to the UK after that. But that information could inform your holiday plans for a few weeks ahead. The computer and the meteosat images might show all this but they won't interpret it for you.

Then, when you get down to it, forecasting can often be done with horse betting mentality, like a gambling addiction.

What would be cool is to have a consumer grade version of the software the weather forecasters use, where you can go forward and back in time layering up different types of data at different altitudes. But weather forecasting is like its own magic circle and it would be betrayal of sorts to share the tricks and the props with the audience.

Personal anecdote: my grandmother is capable of predicting rain 1-2 days ahead of time based on smell and just "a feeling." Granted, we probably don't remember all of the times that she was wrong.