Prediction is hard
Powerline chuckles at the latest strike of the "Al Gore Effect," which is the juxtaposition of record-cold temperatures in Minnesota with a "March for Science" dominated by climate alarmists. He notes, of course, that these days HotColdWetDry is as eager to explain record cold as record heat by pointing to catastrophic climate something or other. Whatever we just experienced, it was somehow linked to original climate sin. I like his conclusion: "I will be more impressed with the alarmists’ models when they predict something before it happens."
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Was that a Yogi Berra quote? "Predictions are hard, especially when they're about the future."
I actually did manage to get someone to think about climate change a bit more skeptically when I asked "so colder temperatures are evidence of climate change?" Of course, was the answer. "And warmer temperatures are evidence of climate change?" Certainly. "Then how on earth will you ever know if we're able to reverse climate change that it's actually working?"
They didn't really have an answer for that.
The most recent argument seems to be that the problem isn't warming or cooling but an increase in volatility. Unfortunately, volatility is a heck of a lot harder to assign units to that anyone you talk to on the street has any feel for. If someone reads that the climate is more volatile, it's hard to persuade him that the statement is empty or opportunistic, mere politics dressed up in mathy language.
I have a lot of neighbors who are convinced by every kind of weather, nearly every day, that this sort of thing has never happened before. I think they honestly don't remember its happening before. Whatever is happening now, if it feels important, also feels like it's the very first time; that's just how intuitive memory works. And if someone can't be made to believe that the weather here at home is really more volatile than it's ever been, he can be persuaded that experts have detected a worldwide increase in volatility. It fits a narrative that makes the world make sense, which in many people insulates it from any bloodless analysis.
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