The Independent needs its environmental credentials to be taken away

Between electronic “smog” and their incessant bleating that every weather event is due to global warming, I have come to the conclusion that the Independent, with stories like this one, are trying to bring down the science of global warming from the inside.

It’s official: the heavier rainfall in Britain is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will reveal this week, as the country reels from summer downpours of unprecedented ferocity.

More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time ­ an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved.

The study’s findings will be all the more dramatic for being disclosed as Britain struggles to recover from the phenomenal drenching of the past few days, during which more than a month’s worth of rain fell in a few hours in some places, and floods forced thousands from their homes.

I feel like Mooney said it best in what I quoted in his book review this morning:

At the outset, let me offer a critical point of clarification: Global warming did not cause Hurricane Katrina, or any other weather disaster. Or to put it more precisely, we just can’t say scientifically that global warming either does or not “cause” individual weather events.

Exactly! Will somebody please tell the independent this? Climate change is about increasing probability of certain types of weather. It is not possible or responsible to attribute specific weather events as evidence for or against climate change. These ridiculous assertions from the Independent are just as annoying as those coming from anti-GW cranks like Tim Blair who rejoice in every cold-snap. Climate is not the same as weather!

What is even more amazing is that in the same article they include this statement:

The new study, carried out jointly by several national climate research institutes using their supercomputer climate models, including the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, does not prove that any one event, including the rain of the past few days in Britain, is climate-change related.

So why did you just write 10 paragraphs about how it is?

Jackasses.