[mikeash]

This is a false equivalence. The reasons they’re being linked are important too. When Trump and others point to cold snaps as evidence against climate change, they’re just drawing a straight line from one to the other with no rationale or explanation in between. When extreme events like this are linked to climate change, they’re presented as illustrative of a well studied phenomenon that definitely causes this sort of thing to happen.

It’s like if I take the Lord’s name in vain and then get sick and you tell me this shows that I shouldn’t swear. Then you lick a handle on the subway and get sick and I tell you this shows how disease is transmitted by germs. The two may look superficially similar, but the underlying reasoning is important.

[notdonspaulding]

I don't think the main thrust of your argument is wrong, however, your sickness example is also a false equivalence.

There's nothing logically or philosophically or scientifically preventing both explanations for why we each got sick from being simultaneously true. You're attempting to draw a dividing line between "religious thinking" and "rational, scientific thinking". No such division existed throughout history. Even today many "scientists" think along religious terms while many religions are evidence-obsessed. Counter-examples abound.

[mikeash]

It’s not about one explanation being logically impossible. It’s about one explanation being factually untrue.