> Still, I don't remember anyone saying that it was daft to attribute the Paris heatwave or the Australian outback fires to global warming. The distinction between 'weather' and 'climate' seemed to get a bit lost then, too.
It would have been silly if people were arguing the bushfires in themselves were evidence of climate change. What in fact scientists have argued is that given the warming trend, events like the bushfires have become likely to happen more frequently, and the frequency is likely to increase.
A freak cold snap, on the other hand, runs against the trend. So people 'attributing' the bushfires to climate change were right, so long as the 'attribution' was couched in the language of statistical probability, while anybody saying the DC blizzard suggests climate change is not happening would just be kidding themselves.
A recent CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, i.e. public sector) study is here:
http://www.csiro.au/science/Climate-Change-Fire-Weather.html
"Researchers assessed potential changes associated with climate change to these influences on fire-weather risk. The study, entitled Climate change impacts on fire-weather in south-east Australia, was completed by Kevin Hennessy from CSIRO and co-authors from the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology....
"The combined frequencies of days with very high and extreme Forest Fire Danger Index ratings are likely to increase in south-east Australia by: 4–25 per cent by 2020; 15–70 per cent by 2050."
Mike Beggs