And then there’s this from meteorologist Jeff Masters -

We’ve now had six countries in Asia and Africa that have beaten their all-time hottest temperature record during the past two months. As I discussed in my blog about Pakistan’s May 26 record, Southeast Asia also had its all-time hottest temperature in May, when the mercury hit 47°C (116.6°F) in Myinmu, Myanmar on May 12. All of these records are unofficial, and will need to be certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). According to Chris Burt, author of Extreme Weather, setting four national heat records in one month is not unprecedented–in August 2003, five countries (the UK, France, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) all broke their all-time heat records during that year’s notorious summer heat wave. Fortunately, the residents of the countries affected by this week’s heat wave are more adapted to extreme high temperatures, and we are not seeing the kind of death tolls experienced during the 2003 European heat wave (30,000 killed.) This week’s heat wave in Africa and the Middle East is partially a consequence of the fact that Earth has now seen three straight months with its warmest temperatures on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. It will be interesting to see if the demise of El Niño in May will keep June from becoming the globe’s fourth straight warmest month on record.

I found this in the context of Joe Romm’s latest post on the distribution of extreme weather events in the US. (Guess which way they’ve headed!)

I’ve also just been reading the opening chapter of McKibben’s Eaarth – which takes the reader through a genuinely horrible litany of just such instances of ‘extreme’ becoming the new ‘normal’. His argument that we now live on Earth 2.0, having left the more benign and familiar Earth 1 behind, only seems to gained more weight since publication.

So, come on, Pollyannas, the Cassandras are beating you hands down! What can you offer to counter all this? Anything? Beyond some benighted commitment to the centrality of doubt and the conservation of some economic ideology ranking above the conservation of the planet itself? Failing to act is starting the look like straight maladaptation, isn’t it – the ultimate sin any species can commit?

To borrow an idea from another blog posting I saw recently – I apologise for not recalling where – it’s like some cosmic villain has lashed the planet to the railroad tracks, and you guys just want to debate the rail timetable!

And while hypothesis Y predicts this increase in frequency of X, almost all of the other predictions of Y are being borne out before our eyes, and hypothesis Y also predicts an uncomfortable future for species H and planet Z generally, we are to understand that these uncertainties – unknowables, in fact – counsel only persistent inaction!

Is there a way in your world view, do you think, that anyone could gain sufficient information to justify pulling out of the trajectory that we’re currently locked in to? Or determine that the potential consequences of it are simply too dire to run the risk of proceeding? Because I don’t think there is. Of course you’ll say ‘yes’, but no level of actual evidence will ever meet that standard.

And it doesn’t strike you that it’s a teensy-weensy bit inconsistent to cite ‘history’ as our ‘control Earth’ – so we can doubtlessly be warmly confident this has all happened some time before and hence can’t be threatening – at the same time as insisting that the fact that we don’t (and actually cannot ) know all of what has happened before justifies persistent inaction?

Sorry but we do have a control earth, its called history. And not just the last 100 years. Even if hurricanes have been increasing over the last 100 years (which is a debate I don’t want to get into in this thread), that does not prove that they haven’t gone through the same pattern from natural variation. Our understanding of weather 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago and 140,000 years ago is unfortunatly not strong enough at this point in time to conclude that the weather of the last 2 weeks is extrodinary.

Storms are often classed as a 1000 year event, but there are no records or evidence to support such a classification.

It is not that I don’t understand, it is that when someone tells me that this is a 1000 year event I want to see the records for the last 3000 to 5000 years. Given the relative lack of data for most of the world, there simply is no basis for declaring extremes if by extremes you mean events in the 1 percentile. As you well know, it may be improbable but certainly possible to have two or more events in the 1 percentile sequentially and then see many hundreds of events without another occurrence.

To the original point, when everything observable is evidence supporting a theory, what could go wrong?

I will point out that Trenberth talks specifically about an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events i the US, particularly since 1970, and the other article neither you nor Girma can apparently bother to actually read refers to an increase in intensity in Hurricanes over the 20th Century. So on information that CAN be known, yet again, the case apparently isn’t running your way!

You could always lower your high standards – as evidenced in strategically retreating during the Easterbrook fiasco; don’t think we’ve forgotten – and see if any data that can be known contradicts the ‘warmist’ hypothesis.

I assume #45 is an objection to censure? (I doubt it’s situationism!) No doubt this will confirm,yet again, that it’s all a religion; and that you, like Girma, are oppressed by those who would deny The Truth. It’s not that you routinely behave like a boor on another person’s blog where you’re actually a guest, is it, Steve?