Record-breaking hot years almost impossible without humans - and Anthony Watts' conspiracy theory

Recent record hot years are almost impossible in the absence of human-induced forcings, a new study shows once again.  A multi-national team of scientists led by Andrew King from the University of Melbourne did a study of hot weather years, and found human influences on heat extremes going back to the 1930s globally, and earlier in some places. The new paper has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Anthony Watts, a climate conspiracy blogger at WUWT, didn't read the paper, but he decided it made unfounded claims (archived here). Anthony decided, in his foolishness, that the team, led by a University of Melbourne scientist, and including other researchers from Universities in Melbourne, South Korea, Switzerland, Oxford UK, New Zealand and the New South Wales, must be wrong because Professor Chris Turney (not an author) led an expedition on a ship that got caught in the ice in Antarctica a couple of years ago. Need I say more about the weirdness of science deniers?

Record hot years influenced by human activity - going back to the 1930s globally

The authors weren't looking at heatwaves (a duration of days), they restricted their study to timescales of at least a month. They performed an analysis of hot years looking at the globe as a whole and selected regions. They found that by using the technique knows as Fractional Attributable Risk (FAR), they could determine years in which there was a detectable anthropogenic influence on especially hot years globally and in different regions of the world.

Eric Worrall and WUWT with telltale techniques - No. 3: Impossible expectations No: 2 Logical Fallacy

The third of five telltale techniques of climate science denial is that of setting impossible expectations. The second is logical fallacies. Today Anthony Watts has put up another article by Eric Worrall (archived here). His article has both featured, and more. This article is about a special report of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS): Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective.

The report itself, like the ones about extreme events in 2011, 2012 and 2013, describes a number of extreme weather events from around the world in the context of human-caused climate change. There's a short explanation on the contents web page, my paras, dot points and emphasis:

More extreme weather shows up the irrelevance of deniers at WUWT

Say a prayer everyone in south Texas. This is an overpass of Interstate 35 in New Braunfels. #TexasFlood https://t.co/QL6AaXpyQF

— Fort Worth Police OA (@FWPOA) October 31, 2015

Over 10 inches of rain S/SW #austinweather #TexasFlood pic.twitter.com/Ae2RHGP5kl

— Rebecca Stevenson (@Rebecca_Weather) October 31, 2015

This past month (and year) has highlighted the irrelevance of science denying blogs like WUWT. Just this past week, the following have and still are being reported in the media:

• Hurricane Patricia - the most intense cyclone ever recorded in the western hemisphere
• Record almost unbelievable rainfall pelting down on Texas causing record flood levels in places, deaths, and sending someone 20 feet up a "nice little tree"
• A rare Category 4 Cyclone Chapala in the Arabian Sea
• The hottest October day ever recorded anywhere at 48.4 °C, , in South Africa
• A record hottest October in Australia
• A rare heavy hailstorm in Chinchilla, Queensland
• Record rain reaching as far as London, Ontario in the wake of Hurricane Patricia. [Note: the rain was heavy, but turns out it wasn't a record for October, let alone for the year, as Cam explained in the comments - Sou 2 November 2015]

This is the same month that saw:

• The most cyclones above Cat 3 ever recorded in the northern hemisphere in a year
• The hottest temperature in Indonesia in 2006 was equaled
• The most southerly major hurricane ever observed in the Eastern Pacific, Olaf
• Typhoon Koppu causing massive flooding  and at least 41 deaths in the Philippines
• Hurricane Joaquin, which emerged in late September, fueled by very hot seas
• Record heat across southern California and up in Newfoundland
• Catastrophic 1,000 year flooding in South Carolina - have these records already been broken in Texas?
• Huge flash floods in the Riviera, claiming 20 lives

And that was just a sample from this October. September has more than its share of extreme weather, too, in this soon-to-be record-breaking hottest year on record.

Denier weirdness from Philip Lloyd: An extreme rainfall event is a year in the making?

Deniers are weird people. Anthony Watts has another article from science denier Philip Lloyd, who's not unknown at HotWhopper. He's not a climate scientist, that's for sure. Philip decided to look at annual rainfall in England and Wales to see if extreme rainfall events have increased or not.

What's that?

No, I don't think it's a joke article. You can see for yourself.

Willis Eschenbach thinks most people are suckers

...and doesn't "believe" there is a free market for insurance

I've just read an article by Willis Eschenbach on WUWT (that's Wondering Willis of Remote Airports fame).  His article appears to be based on the premise that there is no such thing as a free market for insurance.

It's an interesting thought to appear on an ideologically-driven denier website of the free-market persuasion.

Willis main lie is:

... there is no evidence that  extreme weather events are increasing. 

Willis is trying to claim that one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, Munich Re is making stuff up when it produces charts like this one (discussed by Tamino). (Click any chart to enlarge it.)

And this updated one, from a more recent Munich Re report: Topics Geo – Natural catastrophes 2012

Willis' whole argument seems to be founded on the false premise that climate change isn't bringing more weather disasters.  He makes the following unstated assumptions:

1. people who pay more for insurance as companies raise their rates as risk increases, are wasting their money because floods, fires, storms etc won't get worse with climate change.
2. no insurance company will try to grab a bigger share of the market by offering lower rates than the industry norm.  There won't be a company that will back Willis' notion that weather disasters won't continue to increase.

In other words, people are stupid for paying higher rates.  I'm not so surprised by that first assumption.  Anyone who doesn't stray far from the realm of denier-land can't be expected to know that there are people in the world who are not quite as stupid as those they come across on places like WUWT.

The second assumption is more odd, because free market ideology is what motivates a lot of deniers to adopt their denialist stance. Willis is assuming the insurance market isn't a free market.  It is not competitive. There will be no company that will offer lower rates. Seems a bit of an odd position for someone on WUWT to take.

Insurance companies offer all sorts of things and compete with each other in my experience.  But like any business, if they make too many bad choices they may go under.  If an insurance company doesn't pay out for damages it insures against it will lose customers or worse.  If an insurer wrongly assumes risks are lower than they really are and it does pay up when disasters hit, it may well run out of funds and fold.

Wondering Willis is wrong - again

Going back to Willis and his big hot whopper:

...there is no evidence that  extreme weather events are increasing. Even the IPCC has been dragged kicking and screaming to admit this. The land has been warming for a couple hundred years, but nowhere in there are any thermal catastrophes, or any increase in the extremes of wind, water, and weather.

As we've seen there is evidence being stacked up that certain deleterious weather events are increasing.  Most extreme events are rare, otherwise they would not be called extreme they'd be called 'normal'.  That's not all. The IPCC itself reports certain extreme events are increasing in either or both magnitude and frequency, including heavy precipitation, heat waves and warm spells in various regions.  Extreme events associated with cold are decreasing.

The most common of the recurring extreme events are arguably extreme heat and extreme precipitation.  The weather in most places is pushing against the upper boundaries of "climate".  There are disasters associated with these extremes - fire, drought and flash floods.

This IPCC report is devoted to extreme events and disasters and, contrary to what Willis tries to claim, it does document an observed increase in some extreme events.  Already.  And we've got a lot more to look forward to as climate change kicks in more strongly this century.

If rising insurance costs are a concern, I'd suggest moving to an area that is less likely to be affected by fire, flood, sea surges, hurricanes and other disasters.  Insurance costs aren't going to drop from lowering climate risks, but you can still find companies that assess risk at the local level and will charge less where there is less risk exposure.