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by MichaelBurge 1655 days ago
Can scientists definitively pin the Kentucky tornado on global warming? That is, is it conclusively known that "If emissions were curtailed by X% 20 years ago, the count of tornadoes with a strength of at least Y that passed through Kentucky would've been reduced by at least 1"?

My impression is, that assignment of blame seems much more precise than other predictions from weather forecasts that I've seen.

1 comments

Why would any hypothetical scientist have to entertain your fancy? Actual scientists are telling us what's going on as precisely as can be computed. There is no doubt anymore. You will however be able to ask for more precision for as long as no other more pressing thing becomes what you're asking for, most likely because of what climate change will inflict.
I was thinking the EPA or NWS might have a document describing exactly how the tornado originated, so no effort would be needed beyond linking to it.

It sounds like you've talked to scientists somewhere and there is no such document, though.

This is the problem: if you blame every extreme weather event on global warming, global warming could be totally made up!
Indeed. Presumably extreme weather events were in existence before humans were here to experience them, and they will continue to exist so long as the Earth's surface is heated unevenly by the Sun. But which events would have happened anyway, and which are the result of some new element(s) accounted for by the theory in question? In fact - if we are unable to distinguish the former from the latter - is the theory in question refutable by any conceivable event?

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7434469-a-theory-which-is-n...

There was such a bad hurricane season during the Revolutionary War that the French navy sailed back home in tatters, refusing to port there again in that time of year.

If you argue a modern tornado proves global warming, then extreme hurricanes in the 1700s (by extension) disproves it.