"The U.S. just had it's wettest 12 months on record"
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-us-just-had-its-wettest-12-...
Meanwhile blaming every weather anamoly on climate change is rather tiresome. The climate has never ever been static, period.
Not nearly as tiresome as disregarding the clear and ongoing increase in the frequency and intensity of these anomalous weather events, where every record set just the previous year being toppled yet again is somehow another mere "weather anomaly", only to be considered in isolation.
We seem to have rather a lot of these anomalies, though, don't we? They also seem to be getting more extreme. Perhaps those are data points we might consider. When a class of anomaly becomes less anomalous in frequency (that is, they happen more often, perhaps even becoming the norm), but more anomalous in intensity (read: are bigger), mightn't that suggest something beyond mere fluctuation in a dynamic system?
I wonder what might be dumping all kinds of extra energy into the system, such that it behaves like we're observing...
EDIT: Phrasing
Except, there is a second-order effect that nearly swamps this first-order weather effect, with respect to farmers' profits. It isn't enough to judge the weather correctly and produce a bumper crop. One also needs other farmers to fail. It is impossible for all farmers in a given commodity to succeed. If they all have good production, the price will crater so much that most will struggle to pay the interest their loans. Just look at the markets for corn and soybeans. They've been too low for profits for years. That's why so much is in long-term storage, on the forlorn hope that prices will rise. This year all of the Missouri River flooding inspired unaffected farmers to plant more in order to take advantage of expected lower numbers. Only, they bulked up so much that production actually increased! Elevators are still full, outdoor storage is still slowly decomposing, and sensible politicians still threaten to shut off the ethanol tap.
It has been this way in North America for a long time; rural population has been dropping since 1890. Ag tech has continued to improve, and so capital has continued to eat farmers. This process may only be reversed by de-commodifying, which only works in limited numbers in particular markets. Some consumers will spend more for organic or higher quality or better-marketed ("genuine Angus", etc.). Most will not.
NOAA, one of the leading world institutions in climate science, predicted in October 2018 that the U.S. would have a warm winter and the West's drought would continue.
October 2018 prediction: https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/winter-outlook-favors-war...
March 2019 retroanalysis: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/winter-outl...
They were way off. They can't predict the next six months with a high degree of accuracy, much less the next century.
And it has nothing to do with NOAA's inability to accurately predict six months out.
"More and bigger" are relative terms. Pegged to what date in history?
It has everything to do with NOAA's ability to predict 6 months out because uncertainty for predictions increases as a function of time. If you can't predict 6 months accurately, you have even less of a claim to predict 60 years accurately. That's how predictions work.
You do realize that climate change is a long term trend?
So if you see the number of records increasing over time (modulo new data sources), then something interesting is happening. Either the center point is moving, or things are getting more extreme. If you see more records of both ends (hot and cold, say), then you can say that yes, things are getting more extreme. If you see more records on both ends, but more records for heat, then you can say that things are getting both hotter and more extreme.
I don't have to have a quantifiable prediction of what the temperature will be in order to make that observation. If it were to be cast as a prediction, it might be something like "among weather stations that have existed for at least 30 years, there will be more temperature records set next year than there were 10 years ago".
Whatever, the reason that's interesting is that an increase in the frequency and severity of "anomalous" weather events is, in point of fact, one of the chief falsifiable predictions of the climate scientists whose work you dismiss.
Everyone always points to the hyper-specific, obviously catastrophic, missed predictions for which, e.g., Al Gore is probably most infamous as a failure of the models [0], when one of the main things they actually, specifically, said would (would, not could) happen, as more energy was added to the atmosphere ... is happening.
[0] The thing about those predictions, which I think the people watching in good faith assumed (on the basis that they were, you know, explicitly thusly disclaimed) is that they were known worst-case, hypothetical for illustrative purposes kinds of deals — which, yes, was a terribly dumb move, given how those predictions were taken, and have been pilloried since.
EDIT: Footnote and phrasing.
When you discuss and learn about a complex scientific topic (such as climate change), do you seek to understand it on a deep level, or do you seek to over-simplify things? Do you accept that you could be wrong about your hypothesis about how the world works? Do you accept that even experts are often wrong about complex systems, such as nutrition, psychology, gravitational physics, etc. That's what the null hypothesis of the scientific method is all about.
So framing someone as a denier is pretty loaded and has an air of righteousness that betrays the spirit of science in general, would you agree? You could be wrong. I could be wrong.
Science is messy. Sometimes a centuries old theory is overturned by new revelations. Climate science is far from settled and far from mature.
The climate is a complex, multivariate system. The earth's climate is affected by axial tilt, precession, solar magnetic activity (which itself is influenced by complex internal double dynamo thermal activity), cosmic ray activity (which itself varies in relation to where our solar system is in the galaxy), low cloud cover albedo, snow cap albedo, earth-sun distance, total solar irradiance, 6 greenhouse gases of varying composition (the most important one being H2O), ocean-atmospheric interaction, trade winds, El Nino and La Nina oscillations, volcanic activity and aerosol content (driven by volcanic activity and exacerbated by cosmic rays which can cause cloud condensation nuclei to form in the low atmosphere and cool). The sun goes through solar cycles with periods of 8-11 years, 22 years, and long minimums sometimes lasting decades with little to no magnetic activity, happening every couple of centuries.
We still don't know how all of those variables (and that list is by no means exhaustive) interplay to create the climate. But to pluck out CO2, a trace gas of quantity roughly 0.04% of the atmosphere, and to over-exaggerate its effect on the system and to alarm people into believing that the planet is in danger as a result, is quite an extraordinary claim that does not align with the actual data. My hypothesis (and others) is that the solar cycles and the interplay between clouds, ocean, sun, and cosmic rays have much more to do with the resulting climate than anthropogenic CO2. Of course, I could be wrong. But then again, so could you. The framing of someone as a denier comes from a place of insecurity...not from a place of truth-seeking.
"Whatever, the thing is, an increase in the frequency and severity of "anomalous" weather events is, in point of fact, one of the chief falsifiable predictions of the climate scientists whose work you dismiss."
Which specific predictions? Because the IPCC predictions have been off for the past two decades, as far as global temps go. The closest model to predicting the pause in temps over the roughly 2000-2014 years was the INM-CM4. Droughts aren't new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl), hurricanes aren't new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Bahamas_hurricane), and we've only had satellite observations of the planet since the 60s, and weather data didn't really advance until beginning in the 70s (which was the coldest decade in the 20th century).
Yes, we have warming since the 70s, that much is true. We also have been going through a solar modern maximum that is just now beginning to decrease. What percentage of the CO2 is anthropogenic and what percentage of CO2 is natural, being exhaled by the oceans as the planet warms? What amount of IR energy can CO2 retain and how does it compare the complex cooling and warming effects of H2O on the atmosphere? This we still don't know. We still have a high degree of uncertainty about the climate system. The true denier is the one who fails to admit that.