Scientists agree; climate change did not cause the Maui fires
Saying climate change is to blame is a strawman fallacy
I agree, the Maui fires response and reporting is so fishy it STINKS. Blaming ‘natural’ climate change is a deliberate set up for a fall. Climate change cannot cause fires, it is a factor that contributes to them.
Scientists pointed out that climate change cannot be blamed for any wildfires. It is not the cause. It can only contribute to them because it contributes to all weather.
From Heated ‘ It distorted the concern scientists and activists actually have about climate change and extreme weather, which is that climate change worsens disasters; not that it causes them.
By Tuesday, it appeared ABC had heard these concerns loud and clear. Both the headline and first sentence were changed to reflect the critiques scientists were making. Where the article used to read: “Why climate change can’t be blamed” for the wildfires, it now read: “Why climate change can’t be blamed entirely.”
In sum, the scientists explained that the headline was technically incorrect. Climate change absolutely can be partially blamed for the severity of the Maui disaster because climate change worsens wildfires, and climate change plays a role in literally all weather events. We just don’t yet know how much blame, because we don’t yet have attribution studies that can tell us that sort of thing.
But more importantly, the article’s framing was a straw man fallacy.
It was literally in 2014 that I wrote my first article explaining that climate change is never to blame for extreme weather, but that it creates the conditions for extreme weather to become even worse. That was the first time I ever used this quote from climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, which I’ve tried to use again and again over the years: “The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer than it used to be.”’
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