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Earth United Kingdom Science

Climate Change Worsened Britain's Heat Wave, Scientists Find (nytimes.com) 155

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The heat that demolished records in Britain last week, bringing temperatures as high as 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit to a country unaccustomed to scorching summers, would have been "extremely unlikely" without the influence of human-caused climate change, a new scientific report issued Thursday has found. From a report: Heat of last week's intensity is still highly unusual for Britain, even at current levels of global warming, said Mariam Zachariah, a research associate at Imperial College London and lead author of the new report. The chances of seeing the daytime highs that some parts of the country recorded last week were 1-in-1,000 in any given year, she and her colleagues found.

Still, Dr. Zachariah said, those temperatures were at least 10 times as likely as they would have been in a world without greenhouse-gas emissions, and at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. "It's still a rare event today," said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and another author of the report. "It would have been an extremely unlikely event without climate change." Severe heat has become more frequent and intense across most regions of the world, and scientists have little doubt that global warming is a key driver. As the burning of fossil fuels causes average global temperatures to rise, the range of possible temperatures shifts upward, too, making blistering highs more likely. This means every heat wave is now made worse, to some extent, by changes in planetary chemistry caused by greenhouse-gas emissions.
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Climate Change Worsened Britain's Heat Wave, Scientists Find More

Climate Change Worsened Britain's Heat Wave, Scientists Find

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  • Scientists find what they already knew. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @09:03AM (#62744108) Homepage Journal

    Scientists find what they have been predicting for decades.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It hasn't been a scientific problem for decades, it's been a political one.

      In the case of the UK the main obstacle to tackling climate change is the Tory government. Unless something make them or their donors money, they aren't going to do it.

      • Unless something make them or their donors money, they aren't going to do it.

        Where's the contradiction between making money and lowering CO2 emissions? If lowering CO2 emissions costs money then we can't sustain lowering CO2 emissions for long, at some point we'd all run out of money. So, find a way to make money while lowering CO2 emissions and there's no reason anyone would oppose efforts to lower CO2 emissions.

        This doesn't sound like a political problem to me, it sounds like an economic problem. People can't keep paying higher and higher energy costs to get to lower CO2 emissi

        • If lowering CO2 emissions costs money then we can't sustain lowering CO2 emissions for long, at some point we'd all run out of money.

          Funny thing, there's always taxpayer money for bailouts and handouts to multi-billion dollar internantional companies. There's always money to give to the 1%.

          Perhaps, instead of wasting money on these freeloaders, that money could be directed toward something useful such as reducing CO2 emissions.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by MacMann ( 7518492 )

            Funny thing, there's always taxpayer money for bailouts and handouts to multi-billion dollar internantional companies. There's always money to give to the 1%.

            Perhaps, instead of wasting money on these freeloaders, that money could be directed toward something useful such as reducing CO2 emissions.

            The politicians have a tendency to act on lowering CO2 emissions by giving money to the multi-billion dollar international corporations. We just saw US Congress debate a bill that would subsidize cars made by Tesla, Ford, Honda, GM, and so many other large international companies. This bill also includes money for oil and gas companies to drill in Alaska, and money for oil and gas pipelines to be built. But Congress likes to talk about the first part, where we bailout the 1% with government money to make

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sensor1 ( 7491256 )

          No mod points, so I thought I'd add some thoughts here.

          The good news for this situation is that the low CO2 options (renewables) are cheaper, even with storage factored in, and not costing in traditional generators carbon pollution. Even before the current spike in the price of hydrocarbons, renewables were crushing it on overnight cost alone. In the long run transitioning to renewables will improve our economies by making the cost of energy lower.

          To show you what I mean, we can convert the sunlight that hi

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by MacMann ( 7518492 )

            In a country with popular elections the only way to get lower CO2 emissions is with the free market. I'm being perhaps a bit liberal with the concept of a free market as I include the free market of ideas. Even if we don't put freedom of expression in the idea of a free market it is still the free market offering a "better" product that people are willing to buy. It's just that "better" has to include lower CO2 emissions with lower price, greater convenience, improved comfort, or whatever else sells a pr

            • Hey, thanks for disagreeing without feeling the need to shout at me - that doesn't happen so much on /. these days.

              I remember an energy ROI argument being touted about when everyone was concerned about peak oil, and the infamous 100 to 1 payoff (unit of energy in to get units of oil energy out). Always seems suspicious that it was such a round number, and certainly the price you pay for the energy (a litre of gasoline) doesn't seem to reflect that 100 to 1 story.

              Seems current thinking is we are getting arou

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      TL;DR: "Climate scientists point to event as proof that they need more funding".

    • Have they really? I remember from the 80s-early 2000s climate forecasts strongly suggesting that Great Britain and Europe could become as cold as nothern Canada because global warming might shut down the Gulf Stream. Mabye I didn't read the right scientific perodicals or watch the correct science shows.

      I'm sure every individual wacky climate event that has occured over the past ten years was predicted by some scientist decades ago. In retrospect, it's easy to find a prophet and his prophecy when hindsi

  • "I'm not listening!"

  • Problem is the people you're trying to convince (Score:4, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @09:19AM (#62744132)
    will hear "worsened" and think "so there was going to be a heat wave anyway, so climate change isn't so bad and I don't need to do anything". Basically anything that introduces the slightest doubt or confusion and they're done. You lost them.

    What we really need to do is teach more critical thinking in schools so that folks stop falling for propaganda. But the folks spewing the propaganda know an educated population with critical thinking skills doesn't fall for it, so they branded it "woke" and went hard against it. Heck, in Texas a certain right wing political party that shall not be named put explicit opposition to critical thinking in it's party platform before they took it out because we're not quite that bad (yet)...

    • They though it was critical race. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Heck, in Texas a certain right wing political party that shall not be named put explicit opposition to critical thinking in it's party platform before they took it out because we're not quite that bad (yet)...

      They though it was critical race. You can't expect these people to read all the words.

      • Critical Race Theory is literally about critical thinking. Looking with fresh eyes at the world and trying to be objective rather than going along with centuries of tradition and history without question.

        • Critical Race Theory is literally about critical thinking. Looking with fresh eyes at the world and trying to be objective rather than going along with centuries of tradition and history without question.

          Well yes, to you, me and a lot of people it is.
          But what are Republicans told to think it means?

          Solving the problems caused by racism "is racist" to people like that.
          The same way that fixing a flat tyre is "unfair" to all the tyres that aren't flat.

        • Funny how your definition fails to include the word "race".

    • And rest assured, the same assholes will then, when the shit hits their fan for a change, blame some "liberal" government for not warning them or doing anything about it.

      The sooner they die of heat death, the better. Fortunately they're mostly sitting in those states that are hit the worst by the climate change, so... I can't say I have any sympathy.

    • What we really need to do is teach more critical thinking in schools so that folks stop falling for propaganda.

      Public schools can't teach that because if they did then people would stop sending their kids to public schools to get their heads filled with propaganda.

      In a modern history course while at university we were taught how before World War Two that the socialists in control of Germany at the time were filling the heads of children with propaganda. They'd get antisemitic lessons in history, and even math problems where they'd calculate how much it cost the government to feed and house the mentally ill. The pr

      • If you want propaganda out of the schools then you need the government out of the schools. Public schools aren't going to teach critical thinking because if they did then these children will likely grow up into adults that don't like the idea of public schools. That university professor wanted to teach how public schools are good because he worked for a public university. It was in his interest to teach how public schools are good. He failed in this because to make public schools an unquestionable good means defending the actions of the government in Germany from the 1920s until the end of World War Two.

        What nonsense.

        If you teach kids critical thinking they can work out for themselves if public schools are good or not. They will understand the propaganda, whatever the source.
        If they grow up and want religions propaganda schools for their kids instead of public critical thinking schools. Well the critical thinking didn't take. But at least they had the chance.

        In your example (see bolded bit) he specifically wasn't teaching critical thinking but selfish propaganda. And would have done so in whatever system

        • You did not explain how public schools are any better in teaching critical thinking than private schools. All you did was claim that private schools will teach a different kind of propaganda.

          There is no guarantee that any school will teach critical thinking. There's a higher probability for this in private schools because a private school can only exist long term if they produce successful adults that can be convinced to send their children there generation after generation. Student lacking critical thin

          • I guess you've never come across the term it's not what you know but who you know.

            Private schools will do fine teaching exactly the same identical things as public schools. No need for them to teach better (It's nice if they do but not required). They provide advantages in other ways.

            There is no guarantee that any school will teach critical thinking. There's a higher probability for this in private schools because a private school can only exist long term if they produce successful adults that can be convinced to send their children there generation after generation.

            Already show above that's not necessarily true. Advertising, nostalgia and peer pressure can also sell a lot of things that have questionable or no benefits. You're assuming a lot without much evidence. Nothing about private sc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Budenny ( 888916 )

      There was going to be a heat wave anyway!

      There would still have been a high pressure ridge and a south-west low, which would have brought hot air up from the Sahara.

      Its a well known, infrequent, weather phenomenon, it has happened since forever and will continue to happen regardless if average global temps rise or fall by a couple of degrees. It causes most if not all of the UK summer heat waves.

  • "Extremely unlikely" events occur all the time.

    If there were no agw, there would have still been a heat wave. Perhaps a few tenths of a degree cooler, perhaps a day or so shorter, but it would have still happened and it would have still been bad.

    What I find absolutely astounding is the degree to which scientists who get quoted in the media are much more trigger-happy than they were 15 or 20 years ago to go along with the narrative that whenever bad weather happens, it is perfectly reasonable to not only bla

    • To criticize the politics don't attack the science (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @10:22AM (#62744322) Homepage

      "Extremely unlikely" events occur all the time.

      If an extremely unlikely event occurs once, it's chance. When extremely unlikely events occur routinely, then they are part of a pattern.

      What I find absolutely astounding is the degree to which scientists who get quoted in the media are much more trigger-happy than they were 15 or 20 years ago

      They know a lot more than they did 15 or 20 years ago. They have 15 or 20 more years of measurements. And, we've had 15 or twenty years more greenhouse-effect induced warming.

      to go along with the narrative that whenever bad weather happens, it is perfectly reasonable to not only blame it on agw,

      Occasional extreme events here or there are random. Routine extreme events at multiple locations around the globe are a pattern.

      Is that actually hard to understand?

      but to also imply that passing $climate_change_law will ameliorate or outright prevent the next one.

      A non-sequitur and a change of subject. What we choose to do about climate change has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether climate change is causing extreme weather events. The argument "I disagree about the proposed solutions so I'll attack the science," is actually saying "I don't know or care anything about the science."

      Back in the day, people were much more careful in issuing prognostications and prescriptions about chaotic systems whose behavior could rightly be analyzed in stochastic terms.

      "Back in the day" people knew less than they knew now, the models were less well verified, and the global warming was less.

      But I guess that caution is out the window and it's okay to put the scientific stamp of approval on (objectively absurd) statements like there won't be anymore blizzards or hurricanes or wildfires or heatwaves if we all start driving teslas and put solar panels on our roofs tomorrow.

      NOBODY SAID ANY OF THESE THINGS.

      Read the damn article [nytimes.com] we're discussing.

      • Oh bullshit. I turn on npr or open up nyt and that's all they're saying.

        They're being somewhat cagey about it in that what they're literally doing is prefacing stories about "climate change" legislation with factoids about heatwaves and prefacing stories about heatwaves with factoids about the paris agreement, but the implication is being made that if you vote for their guys the heatwaves will disappear.

        Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining

        • Oh bullshit. I turn on npr or open up nyt and that's all they're saying. They're being somewhat cagey about it

          Wait a second... what does that mean, "they're being somewhat cagey about it"?? Are they saying it, or not saying it?

          What you just told me is "well, that's not what they actually said, but I can use my right-wing nut job power to interpret what they said and decode it to say something else entirely.

          No. Here's the article we're discussing. [nytimes.com] Show me where it says, hints, or implies "if you vote for their guys the heatwaves will disappear."

          • You can't be a right wing nut job without completely making up grievances so cut parent some slack!

            It doesn't matter that the legislation just takes the foot off the accelerator, in their mind it has to bring the whole thing to a stop or you might as well keep accelerating towards the cliff.

    • Re:May be true, may not be true (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Admiral Krunch ( 6177530 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @11:09AM (#62744474)

      Yes, yes, strange how 15 to 20 years of correct predictions makes people more confident in their predictions.

      Must seem weird to someone like you, who always has 100% confidence in any bullshit you spew out. No matter how many times it's proven to be wrong.

  • ...of the scientists &/or journalists to convert the temperature measurements from the international scientific standard to the archaic units that the wilfully ignorant insist upon.

    • The centigrade scale is just as arbitrary as the Fahrenheit scale, and there are good arguments why Fahrenheit is better.

      What really deserves criticism is the ".5" in "104.5". That is the stupidity of converting a rounded Centigrade number like 40C, into a meaninglessly precise Fahrenheit number. Right in that category is the standard conversion of 37C to 98.6F. .6? Idiocy. Centigrade degrees are big.

      • The continuum of boiling & freezing points of water at 1 bar divided by 100 sounds fairly reasonable to me. For anything on a universal scale, we have Kelvin. Why would we need a 3rd which is a poor substitute for either of the two?

      • Both are not arbitrary.

        Centigrade is based on: freezing point of water = 0C, boiling point of water is 100C
        Fahrenheit is based on: 0F is the lowest temperature you can fabricate in a water-ice-salt solution, and 100F is "normal" human body temperature.

        Fahrenheit is completely meaningless for an ordinary human, and celsius makes sense, unless you are an idiot.

        On the other hand: you are accustomed to the "numbers" you grow up with. Hence American idiots think Fahrenheit is a superior measurement - while they

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by twosat ( 1414337 )

          It's quite easy for someone used to the Fahrenheit scale to convert 0-100 degrees Celsius to the Fahrenheit scale: it's simply the percentage between the water freezing point and boiling point range for Fahrenheit. Also, -40 degrees is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

  • Some scientists, anyway.

  • I understand that kind of mangled English had some value, back when headlines were written on printed paper. It is far past time to abandon it as an obsolete grotesquery.

  • They happen, always have, and the phenomenon itself has nothing to do with global warming, its a common and well known weather phenomenon.

    What happens is a blocking high develops (in this case a high pressure ridge), and at the same time there is a strong south west low.

    This low brings hot air up from the Sahara. How hot it gets depends on how warm the UK was immediately before the phenomenon developed, how hot it is in the Sahara at the time, how strong the low is, and how long the high and the low remain

  • Incidentally you will find the usual suspects in the UK claiming that the heat wave shows there is an ongoing climate emergency and that the thing the UK must immediately do is get to Net Zero.

    A bit like Tuvalu saying there is a climate emergency, its causing sea level rises, so Tuvalu must immediately ban fossil fuel use and eliminate its emissions to save itself from going under water.

  • Seriously. The _only_ finding can be one the emphasizes that climate change is a) real and b) making life worse.

    Anything else, including 'no appreciable effect', would have been dismissed summarily. That's just the way it is.

  • I thought 'short term' events were weather, not climate?
    At least, that's what I'm told every time it's colder than usual.

    I think it's amusing that UK's meteorologists complained about the social media abuse they have been taking, and 'somehow noticed' it always happened to coincide with when they linked the weather to climate change.(https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62323048)

    Yes, you're a weatherman, report the weather. The moment you start linking it to climate change, you're not reporting the weather anymore,

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