Every time a hurricane makes landfall, a wildfire burns, or torrential rain causes flooding, the headlines follow a familiar script. We are told that climate change made the event “twice as likely,” “35 times more likely,” or “virtually impossible without human influence.” These figures are repeated by politicians, journalists, and activists as though they were direct scientific observations.

They are not. They are the output of computer models.

This distinction matters because modern climate policy is increasingly being built not upon observed evidence, but upon simulated realities generated by mathematical models. The growing field of “extreme weather attribution” illustrates this transformation perfectly. Rather than simply studying weather events after they occur, attribution studies attempt to calculate how much more likely an event supposedly became because of human emissions of CO2. The numbers appear precise and authoritative, yet they rest upon assumptions that deserve far greater scrutiny than they usually receive.

Extreme weather attribution did not emerge in isolation. It represents the next stage of the same modelling paradigm that produced speculative emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5. Once those scenarios were accepted as plausible descriptions of the future, it became possible to use similar modelling techniques to attribute individual weather events to human emissions with apparently precise numerical confidence. In other words, attribution science is not a departure from the climate modelling enterprise—it is its logical extension.

Most people assume these studies compare today’s weather with historical observations. In reality, they compare the present world with a hypothetical world that never existed—a computer-generated version of Earth’s climate in which industrial carbon dioxide emissions never occurred. The difference between the two simulations is then presented as the human contribution to the event[1].

When headlines claimed that the 2024 heatwave across the US Southwest, Mexico and Central America was “35 times more likely” because of climate change, most readers assumed this figure came from direct observations. It did not. The estimate was derived from ensembles of climate models that compared today’s climate with a simulated pre-industrial world.

That sounds scientific until one asks a simple question: how do we know the model accurately represents a climate that no one has ever observed?

Climate models have long struggled to reproduce observed temperature records accurately, with many projections diverging significantly from other observational datasets[2]. They have difficulty reproducing important regional climate patterns, and one of their most important tests—hindcasting, or reproducing known historical climate changes—remains problematic. If a model cannot reliably reproduce the past, confidence in its simulation of an imaginary pre-industrial climate should naturally be limited. Yet attribution studies depend precisely upon this capability.

The growing reliance on attribution studies reflects a broader pattern within modern climate science. For years, speculative emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 shaped thousands of climate-impact studies, policy reports and media narratives, despite repeated criticism that they did not represent realistic future pathways. More recently, the scientists responsible for designing the next generation of climate scenarios acknowledged that these highest-emissions pathways had become implausible. Yet projections derived from them had already influenced climate litigation, net-zero policies and public perceptions worldwide. Attribution science extends this same modelling paradigm by using simulated climates to assign numerical probabilities to individual weather events. The question is not whether computer models have scientific value, but whether increasingly speculative model outputs are being treated as empirical evidence rather than as hypotheses open to testing and revision.

In a recent article I examined how unrealistic emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 have been repeatedly presented as plausible futures despite criticism from numerous scientists. Yet the modelling problem goes much deeper. Today, the new branch of climate science—known as extreme weather attribution—claims it can determine how much more likely an individual flood, wildfire, drought or hurricane became because of human emissions of CO₂. These claims now dominate media coverage of extreme weather, but they rely upon many of the same modelling assumptions that have already proven controversial.

The much larger question is whether carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of climate, as claimed by the IPCC, and whether current climate models are capable of isolating its influence with the extraordinary precision implied by modern attribution studies. If the models themselves remain highly uncertain, then the confidence attached to attribution claims becomes equally questionable.

Many highly qualified scientists argue that CO2 is not the dominant driver of climate and that natural variability plays a far greater role than is commonly acknowledged.

Another problem is that weather itself is extraordinarily variable. Floods, droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires have always occurred. Long historical records often reveal cycles, clusters and natural fluctuations extending over centuries. In many cases, the evidence does not show the simple upward trends portrayed in media coverage. Historical datasets presented during recent research on attribution science show little or no long-term increase in many categories of extreme weather, while some records even display declining trends over the periods examined.

This does not mean that climate never changes. Of course it does. Earth’s climate has always changed. The question is whether modern attribution studies can confidently separate natural variability from human influence to the extraordinary degree claimed.

Consider how attribution studies are reported. A study may conclude that an event became “twice as likely” because of climate change. The media almost never explain that this conclusion depends upon dozens of climate models, numerous assumptions about historical temperatures, statistical methods, and confidence intervals that may span a wide range of possible outcomes. Instead, the public receives a single dramatic number stripped of its uncertainty.

This creates the illusion of certainty where considerable uncertainty still exists.

Perhaps even more revealing is how attribution science has come to play an increasingly prominent role in climate policy, public discourse, and litigation. The discipline did not emerge simply from scientific curiosity about individual storms. As attribution studies became more sophisticated, they also acquired significant political, regulatory, and legal importance. If specific weather events could be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, then litigation against fossil fuel energy companies would acquire an apparently scientific foundation. Establishing causation is central to liability, and attribution studies attempt to provide precisely that link[3].

Beyond the legal implications, attribution studies also reinforce a broader technocratic agenda. International organisations, governments and regulatory bodies increasingly justify far-reaching energy, financial, industrial and social policies by appealing to climate models that are presented as settled science rather than as evolving scientific hypotheses open to testing, revision and debate.

Whether such lawsuits ultimately succeed is almost beside the point. Once the public is repeatedly told that every wildfire, flood or hurricane carries a measurable carbon fingerprint, the political narrative begins to reinforce itself. Governments demand more intervention. Journalists report increasingly alarming conclusions. Research funding follows the same direction. A feedback loop develops in which models generate headlines, headlines generate policy, and policy demands further modelling.

This pattern extends well beyond climate research. We increasingly inhabit a world governed by computer simulations. Economic models shape monetary policy. Epidemiological models justified unprecedented lockdowns during the COVID era. Artificial intelligence systems increasingly guide hiring, lending, policing and even medical diagnosis. Everywhere, mathematical models are beginning to replace direct observation and human judgment.

History repeatedly teaches the opposite lesson. Scientific progress depends upon challenging models whenever observations contradict them. Models must remain servants of evidence, never its master.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson of the current debate over extreme weather attribution. Public policy affecting trillions of dollars and billions of lives increasingly rests upon simulations of hypothetical worlds that cannot be directly observed or experimentally verified. Such models deserve careful examination, open criticism and continual testing—not unquestioning acceptance simply because they produce impressive-looking numbers.

Real science advances through observation, replication and scepticism. It welcomes uncertainty because uncertainty is the engine of discovery. Pseudoscience, by contrast, often presents confidence that exceeds the available evidence while discouraging dissent.

As climate policy continues to reshape energy systems, economies and individual freedoms, the burden of proof should remain where it has always belonged: on those making the extraordinary claims.

Computer models are valuable scientific tools. But they remain tools, not evidence in themselves. Public policy should be guided first by empirical observation and only second by simulation. When models acquire greater authority than the reality they seek to represent, science risks becoming ideology rather than inquiry.

Readers interested in a more detailed examination of climate modelling, emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5, extreme weather attribution, and the scientific evidence discussed here will find a fuller treatment in the newly updated 2026 edition of my book Climate CO₂ Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Real Environment Movement. This revised edition includes a new chapter examining the quiet retreat from RCP 8.5, the rise of climate attribution science, and recent challenges to the measurement of global ocean heat content. Its purpose is to distinguish genuine environmental concerns from claims that, in my view, are not supported by robust empirical evidence.

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Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-computer-models-replacing-observation/5932435

It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region

Kagan clearly says that the outcome of the war can never be reversed, that Washington’s status quo has been permanently damaged. In other words, there is no turning back:

Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started

The New York Times recently published an article ‘President Trump Lost this War’ which also admits the obvious:

Since the war began, he has said the United States would achieve “total and complete victory” and that Iran must agree to “unconditional surrender.” He suggested that regime change would occur. He said that Iran would be permitted “no enrichment” of uranium and that “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried” near-bomb-grade nuclear material that it already holds.

None of this appears to be true. Iran’s hard-line government remains in place. The specifics of the nuclear agreement will apparently be negotiated over the next two months, but the terms seem likely to resemble those of a 2015 deal that President Barack Obama negotiated and that Mr. Trump canceled in 2018

The mainstream media still manages to downplay Iran’s military capabilities when it can. It is true that Iran has suffered losses of its navy (which is not a major part of its military), army, air force and military-industrial production plants that manufactures their lethal missiles and drones, but they still have military capabilities that can counter any attack and cause considerable damage to both the US and Israeli militaries. In fact, Iran still has a standing army, navy and air force and enough missiles that can last for at least a decade or more despite their losses:

On balance, Iran emerges the strategic winner of the four-month war. It did suffer substantial losses, including much of its navy, air force, military-industrial capacity and political leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, who was killed on the war’s first day

In fact, The New York Times had to admit the reality of Iran’s true capacity, ‘U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities’, Iran has rebuilt 30 out of 33 missile facilities and more than 90 percent of its underground storage facilities, in other words, Iran is prepared for an endless war with the US and Israel:

The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.

Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway

With missile sites already rebuilt, Iran still has more than 70 percent of their mobile launchers and its most advanced missiles intact, “Iran still fields about 70 percent of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, according to the assessments.” So, Iran has most of its mobile launchers and missiles, and on top of that, they still have about 90 percent of its underground missile storage facilities. Various reports from multiple intelligence sources and satellite images that were analyzed say

“that Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be “partially or fully operational.”

Once again, The Atlantic published another article by Jonathan Lemire admitting that the US lost the war against Iran with severe consequences, in ‘Trump in Defeat’ it says that

“The United States is left weaker, diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally” and that “The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset.”

[…]

Trump literally allowed Netanyahu to convince him to attack Iran, setting himself up for a trap that he would not be able to get himself out of:

Trump won’t admit to any of this. He has spent recent days furiously spinning the tentative deal as a clear win and has seethed at unflattering comparisons with the deal that President Obama struck with Iran more than a decade ago, aides and outside advisers told me. Trump, they said, has privately denounced Iran hawks, some of whom are among his closest allies in the Republican Party, for questioning the strength of the agreement. Within the administration, there is a divide on the deal, but Trump sided with those advocating for the war to wind down, no matter the terms, as fears mount about the economic toll on Americans and the political costs for Republicans in the midterms

The End of US Dominance in the Middle East: US Military Bases have been Destroyed

More than 20 US bases and other military sites used for ‘Black Ops’ by the CIA and other intelligence agencies have been destroyed with hundreds, possibly thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have been killed, but Washington is not releasing the real numbers despite claims that Trump made that there “only” has been 13 US soldiers killed in action.

According to the ‘BBC Verify’ who investigated the extent of the damages inflicted by Iran, and confirmed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has destroyed more than 20 US military sites by verifying satellite images and various videos.

“Iran has damaged 20 US military sites since the start of the war, satellite images and videos analyzed by BBC Verify show, suggesting the attacks are more extensive than publicly acknowledged.”

It further went on to say that

“Tehran has targeted both US bases and shared military facilities in retaliation to the US-Israeli strikes across Iran and Lebanon over the past three months. The Pentagon says it has hit more than 13,000 targets in Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury.”

All US military bases in the Middle East will eventually have to shut down permanently since Iran’s defensive capabilities proved that the US military cannot protect the Gulf monarchies. The New York Times, ‘Gulf Countries Confront Questions About Relying on U.S. for Protection’ interviewed Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House said that, “The U.S. security guarantee is no longer reliable in the way they thought it was.” Why?  well, Iran did considerable damage to US military bases and at the same time, they gained complete control over the Strait of Hormuz:

During almost four months of war, Iran and its allies struck military bases, energy facilities, and hotels in countries throughout the region and shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway for oil and gas shipments. The preliminary deal, Gulf leaders hope, will allow their countries to resume exporting oil and gas without Iranian interference, and permit their residents to return to daily life without fear of Iranian missile and drone attacks.

Some Iranian drones were able to evade American defense systems, and the U.S. government and military appeared unprepared for Iran’s closure of the strait

Unprepared indeed, now that the Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian control, the Trump Regime is in a bind that they cannot get out of. This alone proves that the US was defeated on the world stage militarily.

The Memorandum of Understanding is Just a Piece of Paper Because History Tells Us So

Does the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) guarantee peace in the Middle East? No, not at all, it’s just a piece of paper and the Iranians know this. It does not mean anything. It is sort of like the 368 Treaties the US signed with Indigenous nations between 1778 and 1871 to establish a so-called “peace” by recognizing their sovereignty that defined their borders, but with westward expansionist policies, the U.S. government constantly violated or simply ignored those same treaties that resulted in massive land losses which led to forced relocations.

A trail of broken treaties, peace deals or MOUs is in the US government’s DNA. Washington’s main ally, Israel has violated numerous UN resolutions regarding illegal settlements and military conduct that has resulted in numerous war crimes. In this point in time, who could be surprised that the US has already violated the MOU?

As the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) was signed by both Iran and the United States, Israel continues its genocide on Gaza and Lebanon making the MOU meaningless. The first point of the memorandum is clear which does call for an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon” obviously, that part has been ignored by Israel since they recently declared that they will not leave southern Lebanon, “The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph” but since Trump signed off on the MOU, the US military and Israel has violated Lebanon and Iran’s borders numerous times. Now Israel is trying to permanently occupy Lebanon’s southern sphere as part of the Greater Israel Project. 

Press TV reported on a statement released by the IRCG who said that the

“attacks carried out by the enemy against five Iranian coastal outposts earlier in the day” and that “the aggressor enemy, whose very nature is characterized by breaking commitments and violating agreements, attacked five coastal outposts of the Islamic Republic in the early hours of today under the pretext of responding to the IRGC Navy’s confronting a trespassing vessel [in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The MOU is clearly a way for Washington and Tel Aviv to buy time in an effort to prepare for another attack on Iran. The Trump Regime, Washington’s political establishment and Israel will not accept a defeat although Iran has destroyed more than 13 major US military bases and several other military and intelligence installations who now controls the Strait of Hormuz which is a major transit point for 20 percent of the world’s oil; however, the US and Israel will continue to attack Iran even though thousands of US soldiers, sailors and marines will be sacrificed by a five-time draft dodger who still claims in his delusional world that he is the “peace president.”

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-lost-war-iran-american-influence-military-bases-middle-east-ended/5932565