Thread by @Pinboard

There was a tornado outbreak with a 219 mile ground track in 1925. Was that climate change? I know no one ever thinks they're spreading disinformation, but that's what you're doing when you assert a causal link without evidence between an extreme weather event and climate change

https://twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/1469822951054790660

The explanatory mechanism is different, but otherwise this is the same mental process as arguing that God is sending storms to punish us for being bad, or voting for the wrong people, or whatever.

Global warming doesn't mean worse weather all the time everywhere, until people who don't share our political opinions repent. (I'm writing this thread in anger because I saw some ghoul this morning tweeting about how Kentucky should sit back and think about who they voted for.)

I think part of this mindset is an attempt to rescue a sense of agency. What's within our reach now is changing total warming within our lifetime by a few tenths of a degree in either direction. How much more satisfying to think we have the power to toggle the killer tornadoes.

So if we can't ascribe extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change, how can we ever know that our actions have angered the heavens? Easy: comets. The more comets we see, the angrier we'll know the heavens are.