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Extreme heat, fires and smoke across Canada and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere this summer have killed people, driven others out of homes, and hurt businesses.

The human suffering is a stark reminder that climate change is about so much more than the environment.

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Climate change is about us. It is about our legacy. We are seeing the legacy of past greenhouse gas emissions in this summer’s heat and human suffering.

Yet when you ask a climate scientist the popular question — “Is this heat wave (or drought, or fire, or flood) caused by climate change?” — you often get some variation of the same evasive-sounding answer: “It is not possible to attribute a single heat wave to climate change, but heat waves like this are what we expect to happen more often on a warmer planet.”

The main problem is the question.

Doctors know with high certainty that cigarette smoking causes cancer, just as climate scientists know with high certainty that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming. Yet you would not ask your doctor “Will smoking cause me to develop cancer in the lower lobe of my left lung on Aug. 28, 2023?” The question asks for an unrealistically precise diagnosis given the complexity of the system and the multitude of possible factors at play.