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Tim Palmer, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., has published a somewhat controversial Perspective piece in the journal Science. In it, he theorizes that heavy thunderstorms in the western tropical Pacific (due to global warming) this past winter caused changes to the flow pattern of the jet stream, which resulted in the "polar vortex" that chilled the northern part of North America for the first four months of 2014. The winter of 2014 was cold in the U.S., of that there was no doubt. Subzero temperatures became the norm and heating bills skyrocketed. At the time, very few who experienced it were blaming it on global warming, but that may very well have been the cause anyway, Palmer suggests--despite the fact that global temperatures haven't been rising lately.
The abstract (and link to paywalled journal article) can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/803
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:15PM
There is no single weather event that contributes much evidence either way to help us assess the theory of human-induced climate change. What does contribute is long-term patterns of weather. The latter is documented in the report I already linked to.
Once we have good evidence for the accuracy of a theory, it is very reasonable for us to start applying that theory to specific situations. When someone does this, do not mistake that for them necessarily suggesting that the specific situation in question can be taken as useful evidence in favour of the accuracy of the theory. That is why I asked, "is Tim Palmer saying the polar vortex is evidence of climate change, or does he blame it on climate change?"
Is still think the gravity analogy is quite good. Theories of gravity have been developed over centuries, with increasingly good evidence. We are now at the point where I am completely entitled to use these theories as part of my explanation for both the falling of a rock I just dropped and the floating of a helium balloon I just released.
If you are saying the theory of human-induced climate change is not falsifiable, well, that's discussed in the "How can we falsify the CAGW theory?" comments below. But I would answer it by simply saying that actually yes, of course it is falsifiable. Again I come back to the report of long-term trends that I linked to previously. There is no single weather event that contributes much evidence either way to help us assess the theory of human-induced climate change, but if the long-term trends had been going in the opposite direction to what is documented in the report, that would surely disprove the theory.
Regards,
Open4D [soylentnews.org]
(Posting anon because I modded your first comment "Interesting" before replying to it, and I'm currently getting [soylentnews.org] "If you continue to post this comment, all moderations done to this discussion will be undone!".)