Global Warming Did Not Cause That Tornado

I am not a global warming denier, although at times it can seem as if I am. I often refute claims made by global warming enthusiasts, for the mere fact that they are false. If you’ve followed my blog, by now you probably know that I value reality over bullshit, even in cases where it hurts — and I’m sorry my fellow liberals, but we tend to spout a lot of bullshit about global warming.

Any given week, tune into one of my favorite TV shows, Real Time With Bill Maher, and you may well see a celebrity like Tim Robbins or Janeane Garafolo or Ellen Page (or, most annoyingly, Maher himself) declaring that the latest monster tornado or hurricane was “caused by global warming.” It is presented not as opinion but as fact, citing the argument that because a warmer climate puts more water in the atmosphere, weather patterns are getting more extreme; therefore, all extreme events are the result of global warming.

Wrong! False! Complete, total, and utter bullshit!

Part of the argument is correct: Warmer air results in more evaporation and transpiration by plants, increasing the water-vapor content of the atmosphere. Water vapor and heat contribute to weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes. But that is where the facts end. To take the argument further and declare that climate change is therefore “the cause” of any individual event is, dare I say it, taking a leap of faith. The claim of direct causality is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, nearly as ridiculous as attributing a tornado to God’s wrath over gay marriage (with the obvious difference that there is evidence for global warming). A better analogy would be losing several thousand dollars on a one-day stock trade, and then blaming the loss on the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Index had been generally declining for the past year.

Here’s what can be truthfully said in these situations: Global warming is associated with a statistical increase in the gross number of (arbitrarily “extreme”) weather events, which are influenced by heat and water vapor. Similarly, a declining Dow is associated with a statistical increase in the number of declines of individual stocks over the period in which the Dow declines. That is the extent to which we can ascribe causality in these cases. To go further and attempt to single out “the cause” is a reductionist oversimplification — and if there’s one thing human brains like to do, it’s reducing and oversimplifying complex issues to the point that they’re so easy to understand, it’s downright stupid.

When someone is advancing their progressive policy agenda, it seems effective to declare, “The tornado was caused by global warming!” It is not particularly effective to say what’s actually true: “Although the atmosphere is a complex system and we cannot attribute causality of a single event to any one factor, global warming increased the likelihood of that particular tornado in the broadest statistical sense.” But the problem is, oversimplified bullshit begets even more oversimplified bullshit. A false reductionist argument makes it all the easier for the opposing side to say, “It’s cold today! Where’s your global warming now?” Or, more subtly, “If there’s more water in the atmosphere, then why is Texas experiencing a drought? Checkmate!” In other words, no debate will get closer to the truth if one or both sides are citing falsehoods and fallacies. Just because one side thinks/knows that they are right, that doesn’t give them license to leave logic and basic truths at the door when arguing their position.

Of course, this extends to other controversies besides the effects of global warming. For example, there’s the debate over whether the Stimulus Program “saved” the U.S. economy. Liberals: “It kept us out of a second Great Depression!” Conservatives: “It was a waste of money and didn’t create the jobs it was supposed to!” Hey, guess what? Both of these positions are completely unfalsifiable. They are made-up opinions, not arguments supportable by clear evidence, and certainly not facts. Without an alternate universe that we can observe as an experimental control, it’s anyone’s guess how an alternate scenario would have actually played out. It’s like in sports, when the TV announcer says, “If the double play hadn’t cleared the bases, three would have scored on that home run, and this team would be ahead right now.” Really? And you know this how?

Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible. But not one bit simpler.” Remember, people are idiots, and idiots like to simplify the world and make it easier to grasp. Then, when they think they’ve grasped it, they start spouting reductionist bullshit — and in doing so, their idiocy becomes all the more apparent.

Don’t be an idiot.

What Are You Doing Here? (7/5/2009)

This was originally posted on a horrible site called Myspace. When Myspace underwent a redesign in Fall 2010, hundreds of insightful reader comments that had been left over the years were lost. I have since deleted my account there.

Several months ago I came across a quote from the geneticist and author Richard Dawkins that I found incredibly profound: "Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once." (New Yorker magazine, 9/9/96)

Think about this for a second. Assuming that you believe life really did evolve over millions of years (and I think we're pretty sure it did), what does that mean? It means that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even -- indeed, many tens of millions of generations IN A ROW absolutely, positively must have survived at least to reproductive age in order for you to be here today reading this blog.

Have you ever watched a nature program? It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Sea-turtle eggs hatch in the sand, and the young crawl toward the water, only to be snatched up in large numbers by waiting gulls. And it wasn't that different for our distant ancestors. By any stretch of the imagination, it's an unfathomable, freakish "accident" for any given person to exist. Think of the odds: Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak of 56 consecutive games may never be broken -- and decent players have something like a 70% chance of getting at least one hit in each game. How does one of the greatest feats in sports stack up to the odds of tens of millions of consecutive surviving generations preceding you, me, and billions of other people on the planet?

A religious person (who doesn't reject evolution) might say this proves that a loving God had a plan to bring you into this world. It's a good argument, as theistic arguments go, although of course it ignores the 99.99999+% of lineages that didn't make it. Instead, this incredible "accident" only shows how silly it is to argue that Earth must have been set up by God to be a fertile place for life, that the favorable conditions are too much of a coincidence. Whatever the odds are that a planet would have water, moderate temperatures, a protective magnetic field, oxygen (eventually), etc. -- I'm sorry, but all of that is much, much more likely to occur than for tens of millions of consecutive generations of animal ancestors to dodge eons' worth of predators, diseases, and hazards (no healthcare, ever, mind you) and survive to maturity. And yet, we're all here, aren't we?

Another argument a theist might make: How did all of those species survive, through millions of years of evolution and countless extinctions (including several massive ones), such that the human lineage as a whole is around today? And an atheist would counter by pointing out that if they didn't, we wouldn't be around to notice that we didn't make it (see: the anthropic principle).