From Storms to Droughts, Devastating Extreme Weather Linked to Human-Caused Climate Change

Democracy Now by Amy Goodman, Bill McKibben | May. 26, 2011 (Interview)

(Multimedia) 2011 has already become the deadliest year for tornado outbreaks in the United States since 1953, with more than 500 people killed. Extreme weather has made headlines across the world, as well, with megafloods occurring in Colombia, Vietnam, Pakistan and Australia, even as the Amazon just faced its second hundred-year drought in the past five years. News audiences are seeing the warning "severe weather" increasingly flash across TV screens, but little ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu - via Patrick McDermott (t)

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Related Comments: Climate Change (9)

2.1

by Walter Cox - May. 28, 2011

A series of groundless assertions with no scientific evidence whatever. "Correlation does not equal causation," especially when the two correlates are as disconnected and indeterminate as these: First correlate: Some scientists assert that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere will cause catastrophic global warming. Second correlate: We have had some severe weather this year. Bone-headed conclusion: Global warming must be causing "epic levels" of severe weather (thunderstorms, droughts, flooding, tornados, hurricanes). This conclusion is particularly surprising since losses due to severe and unusual weather have NOT, on average, been particularly high during the past decade. Empty speculation ... More »

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4.1

by Randy Morrow - May. 26, 2011

Warm air holds more water vapor than cold. On average, the earth’s atmosphere is about four percent wetter than it was 30 years ago, which is an astonishingly large ... More »

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4.2

by Dwight Rousu - May. 26, 2011

Dwight posted this story.

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4.0

by Gerald Zuckier - May. 27, 2011

It's a bit sketchy; a quicky interview, intended more to connect a couple of dots for the undecided than to convince anybody. But as far as it goes it does a pretty factual job.

I find that most people have no idea of the actual amount of energy the increased CO2 adds to the atmosphere. It's about 1.6 petajoules per second. By coincidence, that's slightly greater than the energy produced by one of our current nuclear weapons.So the energy we are putting into the atmosphere, is like firing off an H bomb every second, 24/7, for decades and decades. That's plenty to move some water vapor around, I would say.

it’s like Lysenko in the old Soviet Union or something, when there are too many people willing to believe that their ideology can trump physics and chemistry. That is a ... More »

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Roland F. Hirsch – May. 28, 2011 - 11:01 AM

Sir, You are totally confused. McKibben is the “Lysenko” on the issue of global climate. He makes wild assertions that contradict the scientific knowledge about climate and insists that everyone has to follow his ideology about the issue.

Your statement “Every critique by a “global warming skeptic” has to include the reasoning that anthropogenic climate change cannot be real” is totally wrong. Rather, skeptics maintain that we do not know enough about climate to judge how significant human additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are.

Skeptics point out that it was hotter during the Roman Warm Period than it is now, and probably during the Medieval Warm Period as well.

Skeptics point out that the “urgent” actions promoted by global warming advocates generally will have little effect and often are promoted to make money for the advocates (Al Gore being an obvious case in point).

Skeptics include many leading scientists, such as Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, Will Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, and Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Spencer points out an obvious scientific fact that McKibben refuses to recognize: there are more tornadoes in COOLER years. 2011 thus far has been much cooler than the first four months of 2010 (the data for May are obviously incomplete as of today).

Spencer states on his blog in a post on the tornado-temperature issue “…I have never claimed AGW greenhouse gases “do absolutely nothing”. I agree there should be some warming…it is the level of warming that is in dispute.” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/05/the-tornado-pacific-decadal-oscillation-connection. I hope this will convince you that your assertion is incorrect.

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Roland F. Hirsch – Jun. 9, 2011 - 06:17 PM

I wish that were so, but the warmists like McKibben are vicious in criticizing Spencer, Curry, Lindzen, et al. Lindzen has a blog post (just today I believe) about how PNAS sabotaged the review of an article he submitted directly (which members still can do) because it was not in line with the warmest views.

No scientist doubts that it has warmed since the end of the little ice age in the 19th century. However the explanations are very uncertain. The CRU and UAH data sets agree that it has cooled since 1998, but the Mauna Loa atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements have continued to rise significantly during the 12 years of cooling. A similar dramatic divergence of cooling temperatures and rising CO2 occurred from the early 1950s to the mid 1970s.

This means that something other than carbon dioxide has to be influencing temperatures worldwide. And that throws the UN climate body “under the bus” since their charge is to deal only with carbon dioxide. It also makes cap-and-trade nonsensical.

In fact for the past several years it has been much cooler worldwide than the lowest temperature projection line for each year made by the IPCC in 1990, just 20 years ago.

It would have been journalism if the interviewers had challenged McKibben with these facts. He has a minimal background in the science of climate change (since he does not list the subject of his Harvard degree on any of his web biographical sites, it most likely is not in the sciences) and has a record of distorting science to fit his ideology. But they apparently had done no preparation and so did not ask any serious questions, not even about the faux pas of claiming that there will be more tornadoes in warmer years.

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1.0

by Roland F. Hirsch - May. 26, 2011

This opinion piece has no journalistic content. The authors interview one of the most forceful anti-science advocates in the U.S. and do not question a single one of his assertions. The science can be summarized in one simple fact: 2011 has thus far been significantly cooler than the majority of the years in the past decade. In fact there has been a cooling trend since April 2010. So "warming" does not explain any of the weather items covering in the piece.

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