Last week, I was sitting on my in-laws porch in coastal Georgia, watching the rain and

wind and lightning pummel the beach in front of us.

It was part of Tropical Storm Elsa, and as we were watching it, my husband and I started

talking about the strength of this storm, about the likelihood of more, about the heat

that was roasting the Pacific Northwest, and Colorado, and California.

And I wanted to know whether all these extreme events were caused by climate change.

It's a natural question, but it's also what climate scientists like Daniel Swain think

is the wrong one.

My reaction to the question of, did climate change cause this, say, extreme weather event

of some kind in some specific place, is actually frustration with the way the question is being

framed?

Swain studies the intersection of climate and weather at UCLA.

And he says that when you pose the question, the way I did, you almost always get a preordained

no, because no one thing causes any one weather event.

And so the real answer I think that people are looking for is actually to the slightly

different question of, did climate change affect the likelihood or the severity of the

thing I just experienced?

And the answer to that lately is yes.

It's not like California has never seen wildfires before, or the West has never seen drought

before, or New York City has never seen summer thunderstorms and downpours before.

The question really is a matter of degrees, literally.

Today on the show, Daniel teaches us how to ask the right questions about climate change,

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