Comments - Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report?

This just seems like a dispute about definitions. I don’t see the error.

In the context of section 8, which is where the quote came from, they clearly define attribution to mean emergence in the sense that you and the IPCC define it: large enough to be differentiated from natural variability.

Here’s a couple of quotes to illustrate the point:

“Nonetheless a striking feature of that summary table is how few CIDs exhibit an anthropogenic signal sufficient to distinguish them from natural variability.”

And, commenting on Table 12.12, which is their Table 8.1, the full quote is:

“Table 8.1 makes the related point that it is not currently possible to attribute changes in most extreme weather types to human influences. Taking wind as an example, the IPCC claims that an anthropogenic signal has not emerged in average wind speeds, severe windstorms, tropical cyclones or sand and dust storms, nor is one expected to emerge this century even under an extreme emissions scenario. The same applies to drought and fire weather.”

They clearly understand the conceptual difference between what you define as attribution versus emergence, because they use chapter 6 to discuss the attribution evidence from the IPCC report (in your sense of the word) and then they argue against it. The quote you took is from their chapter 8 however.