General Discussion

of these events in our thinking.

There are, indeed unquestionably, increasing trends in global warming (as well as related correlates in other measurables). My point here is when you put 2 weeks of record temps into a 20 year dataset, the impact will be real, but not anywhere near as dramatic as what the extreme weather events represent.

Curve fitting, even to non-linear models IS impacted by the mass of data involved. Television and the media see things as patterns across DAYS, climate is measured against data from thousands of days.

Avoiding the most hypeventilating news is the point. The numbers will soon be in on how these days actually bent the existing "fitted curve" of climate data. Even small bends that wouldn't bother an average person without climate training eye-balling the differences, are still important.

I'm not saying that climate change isn't real. I'm not saying that a period of record temps won't bend the curve very much. I'm saying that tbending won't look like the kind of thing that has NBC news readers pushing dramatic pictures of extremes.