According to the news, "Detroit is drowning ... and global warming's to blame."
The former may be true, but the latter isn't.
It is trivial to dismiss any causative linkage between global warming and the large amount of rain that fell in the Motor City last week. The following three plots will suffice.
Since records began for the city back in 1874, there are absolutely no hints of any significant trends in maximum daily precipitation or the number of days per year with greater than one or two inches of precipitation. So-called "extreme" precipitation events of this nature are not becoming any more common or severe in Detroit over the past 140 years.
The same applies for just the month of August. No sign that extreme daily precipitation events are becoming more common or severe here, either.
The activists can keep making explicit or loose associations between these types of events and anthropogenic climate change, but they continue to fail to meet basic criteria for establishing a causal link -- a fact which otherwebsites have also noted.
Sierra Rayne holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and writes regularly on environment, energy, and national security topics. He can be found on Twitter at @srayne_ca
