Newspaper writes story about extreme weather events. Commenter says “it’s to do with climate change”. Someone (in this case someone who is “@SoAnnoyed”) says “natural cycles/normal variation” or some such theoretically plausible tosh. Other commenters pile in with supplementary information, pwning him. Happens all the time. Happening now on the Grauniad around the flooding. Thought I’d share a couple of the comments wi’y’all…

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/20236920

@SoAnnoyed –
How can heavy rain in England be considered climate ‘change’, pray tell?

If you are genuinely interested there are several excellent climate related websites that are currently discussing the causes of the extraordinary recent weather in various parts of the world.
There is mounting evidence that the loss of 70% of Arctic Ice volume since the 80’s and the shocking record decline of last year has led to a southern-ward shift in the weather patterns.
There has been an increasing tendency for high pressure areas to form over Greenland when they used to form over the (now melted) Arctic Ice.
This is turn is directing deep depressions, that would normally pass nearer to The Shetland Isles, a thousand miles south of their previous normal route.
It can also be clearly seen that the ‘Gulf Stream’ is now continuing much farther north than it used to just a couple of decades ago.

Of course it could all be just a fantastic coincidence that the increases in extremes of drought and then floods that the climate scientists have been projecting for decades are happening right here, right now.

and this

“If I had to pick one particular issue, I think the flooding issue is the most dominant,” Professor Sir Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser at Defra, told reporters.

“The climate projections show, especially in winter, significantly more precipitation but also more heavy precipitation and less light precipitation. And over the very long term you would also get sea level rise for coastal flooding. Flooding is something that we believe will become increasingly more severe almost immediately.”