Whenever there is an unusual weather pattern, members of the Holy Church of Global Warming Moonbats start spreading new scare-tactics. Usually it sounds something like:
This planet is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of Gilligan’s Island Re-runs! Earthquakes, volcanoes, another Rocky Movie rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner living together… mass hysteria!
And just as common is the fact that scientists dispute their contention. It happened when both Time and Newsweek blamed this spring’s tornado activity on Global Warming (contradicting earlier claims by the Magazines which blamed tornadoes on Global Cooling) and it’s happening now when Salon is blaming the extremely hot temperatures in the American West:
Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It’s happening right here, right now.
…Nonetheless, we have been experiencing a historic drought for about a decade in significant parts of the region. As topsoil dries out, microbial dynamics change and native plants either die or move uphill toward cooler temperatures and more moisture. Wildlife that depends on the seeds, nuts, leaves, shade, and shelter follows the plants — if it can.
….Global warming, global weirding, climate change — whatever you prefer to call it — is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It’s here now.
The seas have warmed, ice caps are melting, and the old reliable ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams are jumping their tracks. The harbingers of a warming planet and the abruptly shifting weather patterns that result vary across the American landscape. Along the vast Mississippi River drainage in the heartland of America, epic floods, like our wildfires in the West, are becoming more frequent. In the Gulf states, it’s monster hurricanes and in the Midwest, swarms of killer tornadoes signal that things have changed. In the East it’s those killer heat waves and record-breaking blizzards.
Gee, they left out the Giligan’s Island runs and the New Rocky movie. Maybe its because what Salon is saying above is totally fraudulent.
Lets start with the western drought/hot weather claim. This is what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says about it:
This comes hard on the heels of some of the worst droughts on record across the globe, from Texas to China.
While global warming is an obvious suspect, there’s no evidence that it is to blame. Though climate change models predict extended droughts and periods of intense rainfall for the end of the 21st century, they don’t explain the current droughts, says Martin Hoerling at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “A lot of these extreme conditions are natural variations of the climate. Extremes happen, heat waves happen, heavy rains happen,” he says.
Drought across the southern US – and heavy rains across the north of the country – are a result of La Niña, says Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An extended holding pattern in the jet stream, the same type of “blocking event” that caused last summer’s heat wave in Russia, is responsible for this year’s European droughts, says Michael Blackburn of the University of Reading, UK. As for the apparent convergence of droughts worldwide, Mark Saunders of University College London says current conditions aren’t that unusual …
How about those horrible tornadoes this past spring? This claim is just as fraudulent, Fox News reported:
Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said warming trends do create more of the fuel that tornadoes require, such as moisture, but that they also deprive tornadoes of another essential ingredient: wind shear.
“We know we have a warming going on,” Carbin told Fox News in an interview Thursday, but added: “There really is no scientific consensus or connection [between global warming and tornadic activity]….Jumping from a large-scale event like global warming to relatively small-scale events like tornadoes is a huge leap across a variety of scales.”
Asked if climate change should be “acquitted” in a jury trial where it stood charged with responsibility for tornadoes, Carbin replied: “I would say that is the right verdict, yes.” Because there is no direct connection as yet established between the two? “That’s correct,” Carbin replied.
According to Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University:
“If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase,”he said .
“It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often,” Dixon said.
But he said it would be “a terrible mistake” to relate the up-tick to climate change.
Salon is naming Global Warming as the reason many of us in the Northeastern US had to spend so much time shoveling snow during the past two winters. After last year’s snow-filled winter the NOAA issued a report in March 2010 which said:
They [NOAA investigators] found no evidence — no human “fingerprints” — to implicate our involvement in the snowstorms. If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find a gradual increase in heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region as temperatures rose during the past century. But historical analysis revealed no such increase in snowfall. Nor did the CSI team find any indication of an upward trend in winter precipitation along the eastern seaboard…..
….The CSI Team found abundant historical evidence of heavy mid-Atlantic snowstorms whenever an El Niño and a negative NAO acted in concert, further supporting their conclusion that the record-setting snowstorms were the result of natural causes. But could global warming have elevated the potency of this dynamic duo? Again, the CSI Team didn’t find a connection.
Some of you may be thinking “well that was last year,” and you would be totally justified except for the fact that two weeks ago the NOAA said, just like last year, this year’s snow has nothing to do with man.
I would never make the claim that I am a scientist, or a science expert of any kind, but I can read. Based in that ability I would make the simple proposal to the people at Salon that, before they make claims about global warming, climate change or whatever the moonbats are calling it this week, maybe they should try to gain proficiency at the reading thing. Because if someone like me, who’s science training consists of watching Mr. Wizard on a 19 inch black and white television 40 years ago can find scientific information which proves their claim to be nothing but hype and lies they could do the same thing. And while I appreciate the material (especially now that Anthony Weiner resigned) sending out false alarms to the public is usually not the best tactic for a self-described, “award-winning online news and entertainment Web site.”