article_snippet.sent: California, and southwestern North America, indeed saw worse "megadroughts" in the pre-Columbian past, long before any humans burned fossil fuels.
article_snippet.sent: At the same time, the latest projections are that the odds of such megadroughts are increasing with warming.
article_snippet.sent: So we're left with a complex picture, one typical of many extreme weather events.
article_snippet.sent: we know that human-induced climate change is increasing the risk that an event such as this will happen, while at the same time we can't strongly blame climate change for the specific event happening right now.
article_snippet.sent: Extreme weather events make people aware that we are all vulnerable to people, and media coverage can draw attention to the scientific evidence that climate change is increasing the risks.
article_snippet.sent: But being able to blame climate change for a specific extreme weather event shouldn't be the only thing to spur action on reducing greenhouse gases.
article_snippet.sent: Whether we're talking about a drought in California, a hurricane on the East Coast, a flood in the Midwest or a tornado outbreak on the Plains, the connection of a single event to climate change is likely to be the subject of legitimate scientific controversy.
article_snippet.sent: The reality and seriousness of human-caused global warming, however, isn't.
article_snippet.sent: The scientific case that human emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the climate, and that these changes pose serious risks to humans and other species, doesn't rest on single-event attribution, but rather on the statistics of large sets of weather events.
article_snippet.sent: And when it comes to us getting better prepared for the degree of climate change that is inevitable, in many cases it matters even less to what extent a given weather event was human-induced vs. natural.
article_snippet.sent: Because really extreme events are by definition rare, most places haven't seen the worst nature can deliver, even without climate change, in most places recent histories.
highlights_snippet.sent: Tying climate change to weather doesn't rest on single extreme event, Adam Sobel says .
  