The Narrative Fallacy in Weather

Looking back at my most recent posts on rainfall I note that they were motivated at a reaction to what Nassim Taleb describes as the Narrative Fallacy, the desire people have to make a post-hoc story to so all events relate with a strict cause and effect. Journalists (amongsts others) love to try and join dots and so are typical propagators of this nonsense. Recently they have been keen to link everything weather related like the drought, to global warming.

Should I worry about this though? Ultimately I think we should be acting to mitigate AGW, so is it best for us not to be criticising our “side”? I think that this kind of partisanship is amongst the worst things that can be done. Claims that are unsupported by evidence will ultimately undermine the very case they are trying to support. They are in effect crying wolf.

The stupidity of course isn’t limited to AGW alarmists, with many if not more of the skeptics running the its a cold day, it can’t be warming line. Some of these are taking the piss but not all of them. Some seem to believe its a refutation.

Ultimately it would do well if people were to remember that a particular instance is usually not a good representation of the average. Its ridiculous to ascribe meaning to every single occurrence, and even a couple of years don’t really do much to hundred year trends. Climate is long term average weather. Year to year it varies, and we are looking at long term trends not day to day heatwaves or even year to year droughts.