Link:Tornado activity hits 60-year low
Instead, the incidence of tornados, hurricanes, wind storms is way down. Why is this happeniong (as “Global Warming” increases)? I thought we were in for an era of terrible storms (as Al Gore predicted in his boffo hit “An Inconvenient Truth”).
Should the assumptions made by Al Gore be challenged? Or “is the science indisputable”…as climate expert Gore stated?
Cite?
Do you have any broader evidence or data supporting your assertion here, because the article you linked to is about tornadoes, and is a fairly small sample, both in terms of time and geography.
Unless you have some more, then you’re just doing the “Global warming is false, because it was cold today” thing.
What **Mangetout **said.
And I’d like to point out that one of the main points of the movie, which you clearly never saw (but I’m sure you have very strong feelings about it), was that Gore *wasn’t *a “climate expert”.
You need to be open minded about this stuff. The Earth’s climate is a very complex system. Humans have only invented the technology to observe and record climate over the past 300 years - on a planet 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore the really intense information gathering has only been possible for 30 years and computing power just about copes with the data.
Yes, 10 years ago the physics said that more energy in the planet’s atmosphere would lead to bigger and more violent storms. Instead it now seems that storm bands spread out (widen) in both hemispheres rather than concentrating in historical systems. I have no idea why. Decreased ice around the North Pole? Increased sun spots?
Whatever. What is indisputable is that air water and soil is being polluted to poisonous levels by 7 billion humans. Anything we can do to reverse this can only be good for our neighbours and our children.
Take a look at this:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html
Granted, this is just one facet of a much larger situation, but for the record:
Since 1851 most years have had 12 or fewer named storms.
In 1887 there were 19 named storms, 15 in 1916, 21 in 1933, 16 in 1936, 13 each in 1949 and 1950, 14 in 1953, 18 in 1969, 13 in 1971, 13 in 1984 and 14 in 1990. All pretty spread out, right? Just usual variations in weather.
Since 1990:
19 in 1995, 13 in 1996, 14 in 1998, 15 in 2000, 15 in 2001, 16 in 2003, 15 in 2004, 28 in 2005, 15 in 2007, 16 in 2008, 19 in 2010 and 19 in 2011. The stats for 2012 aren’t in yet, but we did have Sandy.
Now having fewer than 15 major storms a year is the aberration.
That’s why they don’t call it “Global Warming” anymore. The beauty of “Climate Change” is that it doesn’t matter if your prediction was wrong. The climate is going to change somehow, enabling you to blame that change on human actions.
No, they don’t call it “global warming” because morons will argue that because not everywhere on the globe is warming, it isn’t happening. The globe as a whole is still warming and that is utterly indisputable.
and from the National Climatic Data Center of NOAA:
**Independent Evidence Confirms Global Warming in Instrument Record **http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/independent-evidence-confirms-global-warming-instrument-record
Quote:
In addition to their shared long-term trend, many smaller-scale features also appear in both the paleoclimate and instrument temperature records. For example, the warm interval of the 1940s in the global surface temperature record also appears in the paleoclimate record. **Both records also show that the global warming in the last 15 years of the record (1980–1995) is significantly faster than that of the long-term trend (1880–1995). **
Umm… you do know that the term “Climate Change” was developed by Frank Luntz who was then working for the Bush administration, right? Climate Change was invented by Republicans to make make it sound less scary than Global Warming. It wasn’t changed by the scientists or by the Democrats. Global Warming is still used regularly.
That is the beauty of being a Republican. You can change the name of something. And when that doesn’t work, you blame the other side for the name change and imply nefarious motivations for it.
From what I’ve read the number of storms are declining but their intensity is increasing.
But you see Al Gore, AL GORE, made a movie and has a big house.
ISTR hearing a climatologist on NPR a month or so ago, who said that the number of hurricanes has remained the same, or else declined over the past few decades – but the ones we have now are more severe on average than in the past.
Quoting Johnny L.A.:
ISTR hearing a climatologist on NPR a month or so ago, who said that the number of hurricanes has remained the same, or else declined over the past few decades – but the ones we have now are more severe on average than in the past.
That’s really debatable:
http://www.wunderground.com/education/webster.asp
So a good number of scientists indicate that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes have recently increased by 80%, and a sizeable number of respected scientists, who don’t necessarily dismiss manmade climate change, dispute that.
As I showed above, the number of major (named) storms has increased substantially since 1995.
What he said wasn’t specifically political - and since both sides have varying views on the subject - no matter the name, your response is unwarranted and borders on being an attack.
Data and speculation from The Heartland Institute. They also dispute the link between secondhand tobacco smoke and health problems.
In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway wrote that the Heartland Institute was known “for its persistent questioning of climate science, for its promotion of ‘experts’ who have done little, if any, peer-reviewed climate research, and for its sponsorship of a conference in New York City in 2008 alleging that the scientific community’s work on global warming is fake.” (from Wiki)
I disagree that the OP is necessarily doing that. Maybe maybe not.
Anyone that understands the complexity of our environment and the limits of our data, understanding and computing power immediately realizes that predictions about the number and strength of storms in the future is going to be a very difficult thing to get right.
I view the OP as correctly pointing out that storm predictions shouldn’t even be made until we can properly model the entire system - which we certainly can’t do today.
I disagree with you.
No, it was a direct, head-on response to a previous post, demonstrating that the Republicans are using familiar propaganda techniques to shift the frame of the debate. Sorry if it burst your balloons so completely.
The science isn’t really in on how climate change will effect severe weather but here are some points to keep in mind.
It seems likely that a warmer climate will cause more and stronger storms. However (this is from months old memory, this stuff could have changed since then), it also seems that wind shear may be weaker in a warmer climate and tornadoes need wind shear, so climate change may actually reduce tornadoes.
Tropical depressions, on the other hand, hate wind shear so they may form more readily, but will still depend on other factors to become hurricanes. Some think the only change we may see with hurricanes is that there will be a higher number of strong ones. But the numbers fluctuate every year so the only way we’ll really know is if we wait and compare long term trends.
All numbers of storms and severe weather have gone up because our detection and reporting is getting much better than in the past. People in the field take that into account, but the average Joe may look at the numbers and see that there’s a lot more tornadoes now than 50 years ago and not realize that it’s probably because there were a lot that weren’t reported or detected in the past.