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Comment by hkai | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm. Imagine for a moment that someone argued: "this is such a cold winter! See, I told you global warming is a hoax!"

That would be laughable. Yet people have no concerns about cherry picking anecdotal evidence when they say "see, it's so hot today, that means global warming".

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Your mistake, or shall I say, intentional misreading, is assuming that the existence of global warming is something that needs to be proven in the year 2021.

We have already established that AGW is real. Nobody in their right minds are asking "Does this unprecedented heat wave prove the existence of global warming?"

They are asking "Now that we know global warming is happening and that we're experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, is it likely that they are linked and we'll likely see more such events in the coming years?"

What? The headline literally says “this heatwave is caused by global warming”.

That’s the claim that spurious and unproven.

And yes, it’s not different than having a cold snap and saying “this cold snap is making people question if global warming is happening”.

Both are just cherry picked anecdotes.

If I dump a bunch of wasps in your house, and I say, “hey, watch out for the wasps”, and then you get stung by some wasps — well, it’s pretty damn obvious what’s happening. Can you prove it? Eventually, maybe. And often times these extreme weather events do get properly studied and officially linked to Climate Change. Years later, after people make the same tired points about how you can’t prove this is linked to climate, yada yada yada.

That’s a terrible analogy.

More like “if you were a bee keeper and got bit between 3 and 5 times a day and I introduced a more aggressive bee and you got bit 5 times two days in a row it proves it was due to the more aggressive bee”.

It's not anecdotal to point out that so many places have and continue to have record breaking temps for a record breaking number of days. That's not cherry picking anything.

It was 96 in 1955 in on June 9th in Seattle.

Looking at the last 50 years of data and it's pretty clear Seattle is warming up: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/WA/Seattl...

Whether this is due to climate change, urban development or something else entirely could certainly be explained in more depth, but the trend is there.

That link is better than the headline because it is averaging hundreds of days for each data point.

A four day heat wave is not very compelling data on its own.

Going back further, you can find 100 degrees in mid July of 1941: https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WA/Seattle...

Though, that was before Sea-Tac was the official weather station: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/heres-why-s...

For years you take the train to work every day, at the same time. But you began to notice, that, recently the train has been late a lot. You begin to wonder whether this is due to some change to the train infrastructure.

But behind you someone shouts “the train was 10 minutes late on one day 20 years ago”. Do you dismiss your hypothesis?

Of course not.

The phrase "global warming" doesn't appear anywhere in this article. You're moving the goalposts. Both unusually cold winters and hot summers can be attributed to climate change. Things aren't so simple as "the world is supposedly warming so it should always be warm!"

The fact is that throughout the world there has been an increase in unprecedented weather patterns. Right now in Argentina they're having record snowfalls, and that is just as concerning as the unheard-of 43C weather today in British Columbia.

You're burying your head in the sand.

anecdotal? Seattle has had 100F+ maybe a few times in the last century. Now we had 3 days in a row of 100F+ with today hitting 110F. It's not even funny.

Portland, OR has seen 115F.

Most houses in PNW do not have AC. Do you know why? Because up to 10-15 years ago you did not need it. The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year.

Yes, this is totally cherry-picking.

That is exactly the definition of cherry picking. You’re claiming that one phenomenon is causally linked to a particular event. That evidence is not present in this article or your comment or anywhere else to my knowledge. Three days of high temperatures are all caused by the same single event, a southeasterly flow of air from the Cascades (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/showtime-temperatures...) coinciding with other seasonal factors driving high temperatures to create a particular set of extreme conditions. So how are you able to prove that this is exclusively caused by climate change?

Here. let me write this again:

Most houses in PNW do not have AC. Do you know why? Because up to 10-15 years ago you did not need it. The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year.

10-15 years ago you did not need AC. Today every summer you're in danger of a heatstroke if you don't have it. This is not cherry-picking

Here. From the national weather service:

284

SXUS76 KSEW 290128

RERSEW

RECORD EVENT REPORT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE

628 PM PDT MON JUN 28 2021

...RECORD HIGHS FOR TODAY, JUNE AND ALL-TIME AS OF 6 PM...

LOCATION TODAY RECORD / YEAR

SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 91 2008*

OLYMPIA 110 92 2008*

QUILLAYUTE 110 92 1995

HOQUIAM 95 86 2008

BELLINGHAM 99 84 1995

NWS SEATTLE 107 89 2000

LOCATION TODAY JUNE RECORD / DATE

SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 104 27/2021

OLYMPIA 110 105 27/2021

QUILLAYUTE 110 92 24/2017*

HOQUIAM 95 103 27/2021

BELLINGHAM 99 95 27/2021*

NWS SEATTLE 107 101 27/2021

LOCATION TODAY ALL-TIME RECORD / DATE

SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 104 6/27/2021

OLYMPIA 110 105 6/27/2021

QUILLAYUTE 110 99 8/9/1981

HOQUIAM 95 103 6/27/2021

BELLINGHAM 99 96 7/29/2009

NWS SEATTLE 107 105 7/29/2009

* RECORDS SET ON MULTIPLE DATES; LATEST SHOWN

That’s not statistical proof of causality. Again, how do you know this isn’t just a once in a thousand years event independent of climate change?

> The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year.

There are numerous years, going back decades, with highs higher than the numbers you claim. See https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WA/Seattle...

what kind of statistical proof are you looking for?

Can statistics ever proof causality? At what point do you draw the line?

The numbers are not the numbers I claim. Those are the numbers the national weather service is reporting. I call BS on numerous years with numbers higher than I claim.

The numbers recorded now are the highest on record since we started keeping track. Show me where else you see 110 for Seattle being recorded. Ever.

> Can statistics ever proof causality?

Yes, this is an entire field of study. It’s what spawned phrases like “statistical significance”.

> I call BS on numerous years with numbers higher than I claim.

You said in your two earlier comments, “The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year.” I shared evidence that Seattle regularly surpassed that level historically. You’re now moving the goal post by asking me to show a higher temperature than today. That question doesn’t matter since it still isn’t evidence that the record high is caused by climate change.

I think you may have missed the only portion of their argument that wasn't cherry picking:

"10-15 years ago you did not need AC. Today every summer you're in danger of a heatstroke if you don't have it."

I would count this as a decently statistical argument, anecdotal as it is, because it's an economic observation, that if true, signals that the market is lagging behind some environmental change.

Also, PDX did record 117F, by far the highest record in recorded history, by like 10F.

> The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year.

When I moved to Seattle nine years ago, I was happy that we had only one week that would hit 80+. Annoying to have those hot days without AC, but whatever - it was much better than the Midwest. We'd do just fine for those few days.

But it's been warming up. And while I wouldn't use this one week alone as evidence of a trend, the fact that it was >110°F today is wholly in-line (IMHO) of what we've been seeing. I read the other day that this is "a once in a millennium" event. How long until we have another such event? I'm guessing it'll be before my teenagers graduate from high school.

> “Heatwaves across the contiguous United States have occurred more often and lasted longer since the 1960s, which is consistent with a warming climate due to climate change.”

Climate change is causing this trend. It is not an isolated event. There are expert that study climate.

It is a false equivalence to call "cherry picking" the result of many years of study and confirmed trends with what an TV anchor says to appeal to their audience.

What part of the evidence in this article do you consider "anecdotal?"

This is worth a read:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-no...

“ Using a climate model, the researchers compared simulations accounting for climate change with scenarios in which human-caused global warming did not exist. They found that the influence of climate change roughly doubled the risk of an individual heat wave. The key to the breakthrough was framing the question in the right way—not asking whether climate change "caused" the event, but how much it might have affected the risk of it occurring at all.”

Tangent: is this a “breakthrough” or standard issue causal inference?

I mean you're right, on some level. The heat wave is only evidence for global warming, just as a cold snap would be evidence against, but we can actually look at global average temperatures which have been climbing since we've been able to to track them. Lots of reasons you could argue that is happening and you can argue about why it's happening, but heat waves are one of the things it will lead to

Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday, "In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record." He added: "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"

https://www.foxnews.com/science/trump-says-east-could-use-so...

Close enough?

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