"Expert" predictions, especially those associated with climate change, fail more often than not.
The climate change consensus has long been predicting that global warming will bring more flooding to river regions.
"...freshwater flooding is "the most impacting natural disaster in terms of number of people affected and economic damages," adding that "some studies in the literature (e.g. IPCC, 2013; Stern Review, 2007) seem to indicate that flood damages are expected to increase in the near future as a consequence of a global climate change," citing the additional studies of Hall et al. (2005) and de Moel et al. (2011)."
So, several scientists decided to actually analyse the available climate data for the Po River region of Italy to determine if the IPCC and other predictors had any merit.
As always, they found the predictions counter to reality:
"...analyses revealed there was a significant increase in residential growth in and around the Po river, particularly near levees and dykes, which increased the exposure of persons and property to flood risk over the period of study. However, meteorologically speaking, Domeneghetti et al. report flood events have not increased. "Consistent with previous analyses (see e.g. Montanari, 2012; Zanchettini et al., 2008)," they write, "our trend detection analysis, which we carried out on long historical series observed for the Po river, does not detect any evidence of a statistically significant change in the flood hazard along the Po river and supports the stationarity of the hydrological series during the period of interest (i.e., last five decades)."
This week is the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald during a Lake Superior gale. It was a huge Great Lakes iron-ore freighter known as the Titanic of the Great Lakes with a workhorse record; and only 17-years of service at the time of her plunge to the bottom of the lake.
She went down in the deep waters of Lake Superior in the early evening hours of November 10, 1975 with 29 lives. Her fast sinking was so exceptional for a huge ship that it was subsequently celebrated by a very popular song.
That unexpected and violent storm is now forever known for sinking the largest ship ever, on the Great Lakes.
One could certainly surmise that the low CO2 levels (less than 350ppm) during that time may have contributed to this tragedy. She was battered by both 35-foot waves and near hurricane level winds - an extreme, rare weather event that suggests low-CO2 climate change at work.
No other gigantic ship has sunk on the Great Lakes since those low CO2 levels, doncha know.
The decade of the 70's were exceptional for its extreme and severe weather events that plagued the globe during the regime of low atmospheric CO2. Climate scientists and other experts at the time debated as to the causes, but the science remained unsettled as to why the weather extremes had become so violent and frequent during that specific decade.
Climate change extreme weather events due to low CO2 (1970-79):
Government-funded scientists, the Green's anti-CO2 activists and the mainstream media-alarmists have all claimed that the current drought being suffered by the US west coast is the extreme climate change Americans have never experienced before.
They claim it is due to human CO2 emissions of the modern industrial and consumer civilization.
Yet severe droughts have been part and parcel of the world's climate since humans started recording severe weather events. Across the globe, and the US, there is no shortage of historical drought reports and other extreme climate conditions.
More specifically, as the images below attest, drought extremes in the US have been extensively documented by NOAA since the 1900s, with most taking place well before the global 350ppm CO2 atmospheric level was commonplace.
For a perspective, the October 2015 drought conditions (top-left image) have often been exceeded by some kick-ass October drought conditions in the past. (click on any image to enlarge)
Simply put, the climate has always been changing, impacting large geographical regions at any given time. As the scientific empirical evidence makes clear, a changing climate is not unusual, and most definitely is not solely due to human CO2 emissions.
For someone to claim otherwise is literally anti-scientific.
Note: Source of images from this NOAA site. During 1988, global CO2 emissions first cracked the 350ppm CO2 level. NOAA reports that the October 1988 reading was 349.08.
As the site 'Not A Lot of People Know That' reports, extreme and severe rainfall (i.e. precipitation) trend has not increased in Holland, when viewed from a decadal perspective.
The adjacent chart depicts the distribution of the top 50 DeBilt, Holland rainfall events while atmospheric CO2 levels increased over the decades. (Go here to view maximum hourly precipitation incidents versus global cumulative CO2 emission tonnes since 1950.)
For the record, on any given hour during any given day, someplace in the world is likely to be experiencing an extreme weather event. But as this Holland dataset confirms, the actual empirical global and regional trends of a climatic shift of ever more severe weather events do not support the alarmists' predictions; the irrational fears of more frequent/larger weather disasters as a result of CO2 or global/regional "warming" is unjustified, per the scientific evidence.
And it is indisputable that hundreds of media outlets have extensively documentedover the past century that weather catastrophes have always been a normal climate occurrence, regardless of greenhouse gas emissions.
Note: 'C3' used monthly CO2 levels from NOAA and superimposed the CO2 curve on the above chart.
The climate doomsday-cult promoters at the Huffington Post and Climate Nexus did their usual thing, trying to convince the American public that Hurricane Joaquin was the result of global warming.
Of course, when the alarmists uttered these claims, they were based on the hurricane computer models that forecast Joaquin's path would strike the East Coast of the U.S. Fortunately for the coastal residents, the climate change doomsters were wrong, spectacularly.
Instead, as the adjacent chart clearly documents, those ocean waters have cooled since 1940, not warmed as predicted. Another case of 'those stubborn facts'.
In summary, the empirical evidence again confirms that climate simulations and computer models are very suspect regarding their capabilities at both short and long-term predictions/forecasts. Governing elites, bureaucrats and the public should absolutely not base any expensive policy-making decisions on these research tools.
Article: Since 1980s, the Australian region has experienced a tropical cyclone trend that would send shivers down the spine of any global warming alarmist. Just another confirmation to be added to the pile of empirical evidence that challenges catastrophic global warming claims.
Today's climate-doomsday cult celebrities and global warming alarmists continue to deny the truth about past extreme weather and natural disasters that took place well before atmospheric CO2 surpassed 350ppm...now combine that with current stable of IPCC-favored scientists who deny that the previous generation of scientists were predicting global cooling...and what do you get?...a fringe group representing a tiny slice of the world populace...a slice of fanaticism in total denial of the existence and power of natural climate change...past, present and in the future...they're *Deniers 'R' Us*, no?.....
IPCC Scientists' Favorite "Climate Science" Movies
There are past periods of extreme weather and severe natural disasters that just stand out as examples of strange climate activity and weird 'earthly' behavior.
The decade of the 1970s is one such period of bizarre, freaky and dangerous weather that prompted serious scientific discussions regarding global climate change at the time.
And the most discussed condition of climate change that had the focus of scientists and government experts?
Below is a list of early 1970's weather (and other natural disaster) events and links to multiple articles about the most popular climate change hypothesis at the time.
And these adjacent movie posters?
Pure Hollywood, utilizing anti-science propaganda masquerading as possible climate catastrophic conditions from global warming.
And try guessing the audience that embraces the gutter of such doomsday garbage - of course, you aren't surprised are you?
The East Coast elites, aging yuppies and metrosexual deadenders who bitterly cling to the CO2-caused "global warming" religion are having a tough time...over the last 20 years, winters in the Northeast region of the U.S. have become more harsh and severe...that's opposite of their climate-doomsday cult leaders' predictions...instead of getting climate news from the likes of Al Gore and Brian Williams, Northeast denizens of elite enclaves might want to finally introduce themselves to what is called empirical evidence.....
(click on charts to enlarge)
As the U.S. East Coast continues to dig out from another major blizzard, it is a reminder that natural climate forces and patterns have eviscerated the predictions made by by government climate "experts." Their predictions of warmer winters and less snow have not only been incorrect, they have been flat-out spectacularly wrong.
While ignorance is bliss for many, it is still is no excuse for the elites of politics and media to continue to spread falsehoods about CO2 causing warming winters.
As the above NOAA graphs clearly document, the strong cooling trend for the winter months of December (19 years), January (21 years) and February (20 years) across the U.S. northeast is indisputable.
Let's be clear about this: there is no identifiable group of climate-doomsday experts within government-funded circles who predicted twenty years ago that CO2 would cause this cooling trend outcome.
And precipitation trends over the same time periods in the Northeast? Well, depending on the month, take your pick, up or down. For any given winter month, one year of cold temperatures could produce a wet or a dry month.
It would appear that winter weather is not that predictable from year to year; and obviously, nor are climate conditions some 10, 20 30 or 50 years into the future.
Those who have relied on the CO2-induced AGW climate hypothesis have continuously been proven wrong. Yet, the CO2 cult faithful still hold climate doomsday predictions as gospel, regardless of the empirical science.
Modern severe weather incidents and examples of extreme climate change exceptionally different from the past are hard to come by for the climate-doomsday cult...in the case of "global warming" causing more frequent and greater snow records, turns out there are no new snow-depth records over the last 15 years for the U.S. mainland.....
(click on map to enlarge)
Remember this statement from climate alarmists over the last few years?
===> "Global warming causes greater amounts of snow and cold for the U.S. due to the fact that the Arctic is melting."
If that is true, then we should witness greater and greater amounts of snow accumulating across the continental U.S., year in, year out.
Of course, in the first place, there is only flimsy weather conjecture behind the "Arctic ice melting causes more snow/cold in the continental U.S." statement - it's just another convenient excuse to blame global warming for any and all severe weather events.
And as this map reveals, there is essentially zilch empirical evidence supporting that snow/cold excuse statement, despite the last two decades being marginally warmer. The climate reality is that almost all the original record-setting snow accumulations happened well before 1990.
Why is that important?
Well, the climate lies like this one are really easy to spout, which a compliant mainstream press then gleefully repeats, without even asking a single challenging question or doing any due diligence. This results in the public having a false impression that there must be scientific truth behind the claims, versus the anti-science speculative guessing the claims actually represent.
Ultimately, these mistruths then mislead everyone about the climate science reality, with the empirical evidence being shunted to the side.
The result? False science, and the ignorance of the climate data, leads to bad policy-making decisions and an immense wasting of valuable resources.
Climate-doomsday cult predictions of CO2-induced extreme climate change have been a common, easy refrain of politicos seeking donations from special interest groups...yet, the empirical evidence provided by NOAA and other climate agencies is simply overwhelming...those much anticipated increases of severe weather events from greenhouse gases are just not happening, including U.S. tornadoes.....
(click on chart to enlarge)
Tornadoes. They're dangerous and they're unsympathetic killers.
These extreme weather events are officially categorized in severity from 'EF0' to 'EF5' - with the higher number being the rarest of the killer tornadoes.
As this chart reveals, the good news for the U.S. is that the categories of severe tornadoes (E2-E5) are on the decline. The declining trends, since the 1950's period of lower atmospheric CO2 levels, are indisputable.
Based on a casual observation, one might conclude that increasing CO2 levels and global warming have curtailed these frightening weather phenomenon. Good!
Ahhh...those stubborn climate facts provided by NOAA are just sooo inconvenient at times, no?
Note: During the 2011 tornado season, there was a strong uptick but since then the severity T-counts have subsided, confirming the longer-term trend. 1950-2013 tornado dataset here. NOAA has not yet published official the 2014 severe tornado counts. Severe tornado counts for 2014 were confimed here, here, here, here, here and here. Above plots and trends produced using Excel.
NOAA and NCDC have updated many of their weather/climate trend reports for end of 2014...as observed in the recent past, severe weather trends have not seen the "expert" predicted increase from CO2, other greenhouse gases and, of course, global warming...the climate-doomsday cult talk from political-persons, mainstream reporters/pundits and on-the-dole bureaucrats remains without any empirical merit.....
(click on chart to enlarge)
One means to view the lack of climate extremes is to examine an interesting dataset that NOAA/NCDC maintains - the monthly % of U.S. that is either very wet and/or very dry. It has recently been updated through 2014.
As can be seen from this chart, very wet and very dry U.S. conditions fluctuate dramatically. Yet, some 45 years after 1970, the 5-year averages by the end of 2014 are close to the values decades before.
The huge increase of atmospheric CO2 levels from human emissions over this time obviously has had no impact (e.g. correlations of either climate condition with CO2 doesn't even reach the ±0.03 yawn mark).
This NOAA dataset extends all the way back to 1895; and the end result is its being, on average, within the same narrow range over the last century.
Despite the proclamations by those politicians and elites who are readily influenced by moneyed special interests, there is yet to be any empirical scientific evidence that CO2 is a causal agent producing extreme climate change or severe weather events.
For multiple decades, we've been warned by the elites and "experts" that extreme climate change is at our collective doorstep...severe record-setting weather events a common occurrence...CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases wreaking untold devastation & havoc...climate refugees swamping interior safe havens...and yet, at the end of 2014 the feared devastation, calamities and climate extreme records were still far and few between after 1990.....
(click on map to enlarge)
The above map depicts the greatest extremes of temperatures recorded and officially recognized as being legit by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency.
The WMO has been an avid participant pushing the climate disaster/catastrophe claims associated with the anthropogenic global warming political agenda. In conflict with their apparent agenda, the WMO happens to be responsible for determining the official records for extreme weather events across the globe.
Ironically, this proponent of CO2-caused weather extremes has officially documented the paucity thereof since the 1990s.
It was during the 1980s that the major national climate agencies and the UN began promulgating the idea that climate catastrophes and extremes were abundant, due to the growing levels of trace atmospheric CO2 emissions. The principal claim being the trace GHGs is causing an evermore hotter world, about to go from calamities to civilization cataclysm.
And as time wore on, the WMO and other "experts" were wrong - it just hasn't happened.
Examine the map closely and it will be noted that the 'newest' hemisphere/continent hot temperature record took place way back in 1978 - it's now 37 years later and we're all still waiting for those new temp extreme records.
One could conclude that the WMO's own official records have not been kind to the global warming scare. Amazingly, the same can be said for many other official weather extremes that the WMO keeps a tally of.
As can be seen, there are many climate records from the past that took place well before the 1990s. We are now into the 15th year of the 21st century and those predicted extremes remain a rare breed.
This should not come as a surprise though. Indeed, the world has suffered from incredible weather extremes, most of which were experienced prior to large GHG emissions due to natural climate and weather patterns.
With that said, earthly records are made to be broken - they always are. However, CO2 and other trace gases do not guarantee new records...but nature does, which the record books are filled with.
Cautionary note to world's elites and climate experts: Over the last 25 years, the world has witnessed multiple times more failed predictions of climate extremes than all the new record-setting weather events - a genuine exhibition of requisite humility may be due.
Source of WMO extreme records. Other extreme weather/climate charts.
Every time there is a forest fire (ie wildfire) global warming alarmists, like a pack of Pavlov's dogs, start hysterically howling that human CO2 caused the recent incendiary event...while at the same time claiming their predictions of increasing wildfire damage from CO2-warming are coming true...however, like always, the empirical evidence proves the alarmists are without scientific portfolio.....
(click on graph to enlarge)
Let's cut to the chase - are human CO2 emissions causing an increase in U.S. forest acreage being decimated by flames?
The adjacent chart is a plot of U.S. wildfire acreage going back to 1926, through the end of 2013. The green curve represents acres burnt (in millions).
In addition, the chart includes the plot of lumber harvested (billion board-feet) from U.S. forests and atmospheric CO2 levels over the same approximate time span. The brown curve is the lumber harvest; the grey curve is CO2 (ppm).
What does the chart indicate?
Wildfire acreage burnt collapsed after the 1930s. Not only did this collapse coincide with a growth of atmospheric CO2 levels from human CO2 emissions, the huge decrease in acres burnt took place when the harvesting of lumber from U.S. forests grew massively.
Then, as the total amount of harvested lumber declined and reached a significantly lower level - due to new environmental regulations - the number of acres burnt each year started to incrementally increase during the 1990's.
Intuitively this makes sense. As the dead and disease-infected trees started to pile up from lack of harvesting due to environmentalist concerns and government regulations, the U.S. forests became wildfire tinderboxes, easily set off by lightening and human carelessness - the law of unintended consequences from passionate 'green' policies strikes again.
Per the statistical relationships, both board-feet harvested and CO2 levels have an inverse correlation (-0.6 and -0.5, respectively) with the acreage scorched, across the entire time span.
Conclusion: It's always dangerous to draw firm conclusions from just statistics, but the empirical evidence strongly suggests that both lumbering and higher CO2 levels makes for less wildfires. The record clearly shows that wildfire damage over the last two decades are not unprecedented, and it remains well below the horrendous amount of acres burned during the early 20th century. For policymakers, the sanest recommendation towards improving U.S. forest health is to increase the amount of allowed lumbering, thus thinning forests of tinderbox materials; plus, to recognize any future CO2 increases as a potential contributor to healthy forest growth.
Note: The wildfire acreage burned during years 1926-1959 and the lumber board-feet harvested came from this congressional testimony by scientific forestry expert; post 1959 data from this government agency site. CO2 datasets found here. The chart's right axis represents both atmospheric CO2 levels and harevested board-feet. For the latter, the largest number at the top, '1300', reads as 13 billion board-feet; for CO2, it would read 1,300 ppm.
The latest UN-IPCC draft of climate change (as reported by the New York Times leading climate fear-monger) presents the case for tribal elites being possessed by a group-think mental disorder...the soon to be published report lists absurd catastrophic risks that have absolutely no objective scientific merit...instead, it provides clear evidence that 'compulsive climate change obsession' still inflicts a terrible mental derangement and delusions on the modern psyche.....
(click on for source)
Mental disorders are a such a wasteful tragedy - coming in waves to affect portions of the feeble-minded, never seemingly to be entirely eliminated from the genetic pool.
Some metal disorders, such as the 'compulsive climate change obsession' (or 'C3O' as some wags might put it), probably dates back to the start of humanity. As hunter-gathers worried whether a given day's strange weather was the harbinger of imminent death and destruction for all by angry goods or a vengeful nature.
You say you don't believe that this disorder exists, or that natural climate change never invoked such silly, useless and obsessive behavior in the past?
Well think again, as this article gem from the distant past reveals a 'C3O' disorder no different than the modern one affecting today's thought-leaders.
Another IPCC climate model prediction fails the ultimate test...it's confirmed that the computer simulations of increased flooding did not materialize...and human CO2 emissions do not cause more and bigger floods.....
(click on image for source)
The supposed extreme climate change caused by human CO2 emissions is not producing the predicted increase of intensity and frequency of regional flooding.
A new study conducted by experts comes to an unsettling truth: the consensus climate science of the IPCC, CAGW alarmists and computer models has been spectacularly wrong.
"In a massive review of the subject conducted by a team of seventeen researchers hailing from eleven different countries, i.e., Kundzewicz et al. (2013), we learn the following: (1) "no gauge-based evidence has been found for a climate-driven, globally widespread change in the magnitude/frequency of floods during the last decades," (2) "there is low confidence in projections of changes in fluvial floods, due to limited evidence and because the causes of regional changes are complex," (3) "considerable uncertainty remains in the projections of changes in flood magnitude and frequency," (4) increases in global flood disaster losses reported over the last few decades "may be attributed to improvements in reporting, population increase and urbanization in flood-prone areas, increase of property value and degraded awareness about natural risks (due to less natural lifestyle)," (5) "the linkages between enhanced greenhouse forcing and flood phenomena are highly complex and, up to the present, it has not been possible to describe the connections well, either by empirical analysis or by the use of models," and (6) "the problem of flood losses is mostly about what we do on or to the landscape," which they say "will be the case for decades to come.""
Depending on which climate alarmist "expert" you listen to, be it Al Gore, Tom Steyer, Obama, John Holdren or Michael Mann, each claims that the U.S. is suffering from CO2-caused extreme climate change...big problem though, NOAA empirical measurements of precipitation (snow and rainfall) prove those claims are nothing but blatant, political anti-science liesfalsehoods exaggerations.....
(click on chart to enlarge)
A prior 'C3' article documented the current normality of extreme drought across the globe.
With that said, the western U.S. is currently experiencing a very bad drought. If it's the start of another 200-year mega-drought, which plagued the area prior to the 1700's, there will be some very serious problems.
But for the entire U.S., NOAA reports that recent precipitation levels are normal - extreme high or low precipitation levels are not the norm.
The chart on the left is a plot of NOAA monthly measurements of precipitation since 1895, through June 2014. (NOAA dataset source) The black dots represent the moving 5-year (60-month) average of atmospheric CO2 levels.
The dark blue curve is the simple 60-month moving average of precipitation; the red line denotes the average monthly rainfall over the 1,434 months. As can be seen, the moving average is just about parked on top of the overall average - the declared current climate extremes purported by alarmists do not exist for the U.S.(nor for the globe as the prior article pointed out).
The total lack of precipitation extremes over the last 15+ years is completely counter to the CO2-based CAGW hypothesis that alarmists believe in fervently.
And what about other climate change "extremes" they hypothesize - well, the charts tell the real science story.
On this article's chart, the past extremes have been denoted (see color dots). Clearly, weather extremes can happen on a monthly basis, but they are rare, with no apparent association to CO2. Extended extreme precipitation levels over decades are literally non-existent in the NOAA climate record database.
Those Stubborn Facts: U.S. climate extremes of excess/minimal precipitation (rainfall and snow) are not evident in the recent climate record. The alarmist hypothesis that human CO2 causes modern precipitation extremes does not hold water, so to speak.
The latest research is conclusive, and confirms previous studies from multiple authors.
===>"The absence of trends in normalized disaster burden indicators appears to be largely consistent with the absence of trends in extreme weather events. This conclusion is more qualitative for the number of people killed. As a consequence, vulnerability is also largely stable over the period of analysis."
H/T: Roger Pielke Jr
For most CAGW skeptics, this finding is not a surprise since skeptics tend to be much more knowledgeable about past weather disasters. Previous weather disasters from the early 20th century were worse in many cases, and fully documented by the mainstream press at the time.
Conclusion: Recent weather events cannot be attributed to human CO2 emissions, nor the ongoing climate change that world is experiencing. In addition, modern climate change has not revealed itself to be "extreme." Thus, no correlation between disasters and the more recent non-extreme climate change.
Additional severe weather/disaster/climate articles.
Recent quotes regarding Obama's severe weather and climate change claims:
"Obama is on record saying that climate change “once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present” and is “affecting Americans right now.”...Obama’s claim that “climate-related changes are outside of recent experience” and “have become more frequent and/or intense” is a lie from start to finish."
"Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘I am mystified as to why Obama and John Kerry are making such strong (and indefensible) statements about climate change’"
As for Obama's extreme climate change science and severe weather ignorance, he might improve his credibility if he learned how to use Google, as a due diligence practice prior to a speech, just to keep from appearing like a total idiot, no?
Whether the "experts" are the IPCC's climate models or associated scientists, their climate predictions for Northern Hemisphere snow extent, i.e., square kilometer coverage, have been robustly wrong...
(click on chart to enlarge)
The IPCC has become globally infamous for their atrocious climate change, global warming predictions (read brief summary).
There are multiple examples of the up-to-date empirical evidence confirming that the IPCC's doomsday climate predictions are without merit - here, here, here and here are just a few examples.
And at the close of March 2014, it is now possible to compare the latest empirical evidence versus the IPCC "expert" prediction that human CO2 emissions would severely reduce snow coverage across the Northern Hemisphere during winter months (December, January, February and March).
As this accompanying chart obviously indicates, snow extent has actually increased over the short term (see 3-year average curve); and since the beginning of the dataset, winter snows have ranged within a narrow band.
During any given year's winter, there are periods of extremely large snow extent, soon to be followed by low extremes. This natural variation occurs despite the growing surge of CO2 emissions, as denoted by the methodically increasing black step-curve.
For many regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the past several winters since 2007 have witnessed brutal winters of extreme snow and cold, which the upsurge of the chart's 3-year average curve corroborates. As additional corraboration, there is the actual global sea ice growth that also mocks the "expert" IPCC predictions.
Addtional severe-weather articles and charts. Chronological list of severe weather/climate events.
Note: Datasets used to plot Excel chart: snow and CO2. Don't know how to chart in Excel? It's easy. Go here to learn how.
The 2013 year-end update of short-term drought conditions across the contiguous U.S. has been released.
The latest NOAA empirical evidence confirms that the drought trend has improved (i.e., lesser drought conditions are better than greater) since 1950. Not reflected on this chart is that the aqua-colored trend is an actual improvement to the trend stretching back to 1895, the inception of dataset.
Why 1950 for this drought chart's trend?
The IPCC now considers the year 1950 as the marker for CO2-driven catastrophic climate change. The climate "experts" and computer models that the UN's IPCC relies on predicted that droughts would become a major issue starting in the second-half of the 20th century.
Good news...the IPCC experts were wrong, again. This NOAA chart represents the indisputable facts.
As an aside, this 1895-2013 chart also depicts how the climate is constantly changing over extended periods - going from one extreme to another. This is clear documentation of the natural climate change that occurs and what skeptics emphasize, while at the same time, anti-CO2 fanatics and global warming alarmists completely deny.
Let's start with a couple of known-knowns: 1st, Hollywood is in the business of make-believe and fantasies; 2nd, Jessica Alba is definitely a drop-dead, freaking gorgeous Hollywood actress.
Of course, Jessica might be very pleasing to the eye, as many actresses and actors are, but inherited beauty genetics does not mean one will necessarily have a high IQ (or even impressive acting abilities).
"The challenges we face are serious. We are already beginning to feel
the effects of climate change – floods, heat waves and droughts are
becoming more severe, driving up food and energy prices. And rising
temperatures and more intense storms pose a serious threat to our
infrastructure throughout the country."
Since he can't be stupid, then his stated falsehoods are done to purposefully mislead others, no? Just like Obama, one would speculate.
(Hmmm...does anyone in this administration tell the truth about anything, ever? Benghazi? NSA domestic spying? Operation 'Fast & Furious' sanctioned gun-running? IRS harassment of Obama's political opponents?).
Regarding more intense storms, it is known fact (i.e. empirical evidence) that neither storm severity nor frequency is increasing.
Case in point: As this plot of global temperatures (NOAA dataset) and tornados since 1950 reveals, world temperatures have trended higher (note pause since late 90's), while the frequency of severe/extreme tornados (F3-F5) trended lower.
Extreme weather disasters have plagued humans over recorded time, well before atmospheric CO2 levels of 350ppm had been reached...the years 1958 and 1959 saw multiple disasters that would easily rival any of those that took place during 2011-2012...per the current alarmists' hysterical style of analysis, these '58-59 events most certainly would qualify as examples of extreme climate change (image source)
Over recent years, green-sharia scientists, pundits and mainstream journalists have claimed that every new severe weather event is a sign of climate change because atmospheric CO2 levels are above 350 ppm - they say 2012 weather disasters are examples of this, but they conveniently forget about 1957...a terrible year for sub-350 climate change eruptions
A University of Illinois "scientist" named Wuebbles goes hysterical about 2012 severe weather events - he thinks they are unusual, unprecedented...as usual though, green alarmist, taxpayer-funded scientists conveniently forget past history of climate change and bad weather
100% of climate scientists now agree that accelerating global warming has robustly stalled- the IPCC's gold-standard UK HadCRUT global temperature dataset confirms what skeptical scientists have long publicly discussed
There no longer is any serious debate of the non-existence of dangerous, accelerating global warming from human CO2 emissions - literally, from all current climate empirical evidence, it does not exist.
In the scientific real world though, there is an abundance of peer reviewed, solid scientific evidence pointing conclusively to a future of both moderate temperature and climate change.
As the above chart reveals, atmospheric CO2 levels have constantly increased since 1990 - see recent CO2 charts here.
In contrast, the IPCC's gold-standard global dataset (above chart) confirms temperatures have stalled since 1998 - actually, they have slightly cooled at a -0.08 degrees/century trend.
The chart's solid blue curve is a simple three year moving average of non-scary global temperature change that current political elites conveniently ignores and the MSM refuses to report.
Current global temperatures are significantly below NASA's climate model and "expert" predictions - note the dotted red line on chart.
All the major climate agency computer models, based on human CO2 emissions, have failed spectacularly.
Modern weather disasters (e.g., blizzards, tropical storms, etc.) portrayed by political elites and MSM "reporters" as caused by "climate change" are the exactly the same bad weather disasters that took place during earlier periods of low atmospheric CO2.
Unlike the 1950's, when a severe weather event was just called 'bad weather,' now days these events are identified as climate change or climate disruption, caused by humans. Every new hurricane, blizzard, flood and forest fire is quickly labeled as the new normal, which infers a similar event/disaster must never have happened before.
Unfortunately, for the climate ignorant, the 1950's were not an era of stable climate conditions and unchanging temperatures. Although the black & white TV entertainment was fairly simple back then, that period's climate and weather were just as complex...and deadly... as our current 21st century variety.
Below is a list of early 1950's "climate change" events and disasters that were originally identified as bad weather; and, interestingly, climate issues the previous generation of scientists were worried about at that time. A simple review of this list provokes, justifiably, a common sense climate-epiphany: my god, it's the same old, same old.
Green-sharia scientists in the pay of Big-Green constantly promote the idea that recent floods are the result of human-caused global warming and climate change - yet all empirical evidence and objective research proves that modern flooding is not increasing in terms of frequency and size
During 2012, parts of Spain experienced devastating floods. This terrible weather event was immediately claimed as more proof that climate change, due to global warming, is causing extreme violent disasters.
But are these "climate change" claims accurate, based on the latest scientific research or just more green-sharia propaganda?
Per the 2012 peer reviewed Spanish research of Barredo et al., the following was determined:
"..."the absence of a significant positive trend in the adjusted insured flood losses in Spain," which suggests, in their words, that "the increasing trend in the original losses is explained by socio-economic factors, such as the increases in exposed insured properties, value of exposed assets and insurance penetration." And they add that "there is no residual signal that remains after adjusting for these factors," so that "the analysis rules out a discernible influence of anthropogenic climate change on insured losses," which they say "is consistent with the lack of a positive trend in hydrologic floods in Spain in the last 40 years." [J. I. Barredo, D. Saurí, M. C. Llasat2012: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences]
Additional EU research that disproves the anti-CO2 propaganda of IPCC-related "scientists":
France - "...Wilhelm et al. (2012) say their study shows that "sediment sequences from high altitude lakes can provide reliable records of flood-frequency and intensity-patterns related to extreme precipitation events," closing with the warning that "such information is required to determine the possible impact of the current phase of global warming." And when this warning is heeded, it is clearly seen that the climate-model-inspired claim that global warming will lead to "an increase in the frequency and/or intensity of such events" - would appear to be just the opposite of what is suggested by Wilhelm et al.'s real-world study..."
Germany - "In light of these several observations -- plus the fact that "most decadal-scale climate-change impacts on flooding (Petrow and Merz, 2009) are small compared to historic peaks in flood occurrence (Mudelsee et al., 2006)" -- Bormann et al. (2011) conclude their report by stating that these significant facts "should be emphasized in the recent discussion on the effect of climate change on flooding." And if this is done, there is no other conclusion to be drawn but that the warming experienced in Germany over the past century has not led to unprecedented flooding throughout the country. In fact, it has not led to any increase in flooding."
United Kingdom - "As a result of this multifaceted endeavor, they (Macklin et al. (2005)) determined that "the majority of the largest and most widespread recorded floods in Great Britain [had] occurred during cool, moist periods," and that "comparison of the British Holocene palaeoflood series ... with climate reconstructions from tree-ring patterns of subfossil bog oaks in northwest Europe also suggests that a similar relationship between climate and flooding in Great Britain existed during the Holocene, with floods being more frequent and larger during relatively cold, wet periods."
"...they (Hannaford and Marsh (2008)) state that longer river flow records from five additional catchments they studied "provide little compelling evidence for long-term (>50 year) trends but show evidence of pronounced multi-decadal fluctuations." Lastly, they add that "in comparison with other indicators, there were fewer trends in flood magnitude," and that "trends in peaks-over-threshold frequency and extended-duration maxima at a gauging station were not necessarily associated with increasing annual maximum instantaneous flow."
Switzerland - "Reiterating the fact that "the findings of this study suggest that the frequency of extreme summer-autumn precipitation events (i.e. flood events) and the associated atmospheric pattern in the Eastern Swiss Alps was not enhanced during warmer (or drier) periods," Stewart et al. (2011) acknowledge that "evidence could not be found that summer-autumn floods would increase in the Eastern Swiss Alps in a warmer climate of the 21st century," in contrast to the projections of the regional climate models that have suggested otherwise."
Italy - "Diodato et al. (2008) undertook a detailed analysis of "the Calore River Basin (South Italy) erosive rainfall using data from 425-year-long series of both observations (1922-2004) and proxy-based reconstructions (1580-1921)." This work revealed pronounced inter-decadal variations...researchers write that "in recent years, climate change (generally assumed as synonymous with global warming) has become a global concern and is widely reported in the media." And with respect to the concern that both droughts and floods will become both more frequent and more severe as the planet warms, they say their study indicates that "climate in the Calore River Basin has been largely characterized by naturally occurring weather anomalies in past centuries (long before industrial CO2 emissions), not only in recent years," and that there has been a "relevant smoothing" of such events during the modern era."
Conclusions: Scientific charlatans associated with Big-Green organizations (or in the pay of) primarily rely on the real-world tragedies of severe weather events to push their anti-CO2, anti-job green agenda. Multiple EU studies disprove the green propaganda that climate change (i.e., global warming) is causing floods of greater frequency and size. The actual empirical evidence simply and clearly refutes the bogus green-sharia claims.
Additional severe-weather charts and listing of severe-weather events.
The attempt to label Hurricane Sandy as an "unprecedented" event due to climate change and global warming from human CO2 emissions is simply without merit - comparing 'Sandy' and other recent hurricanes to those in the past establishes that this supposed "superstorm" is just one of many 'Category 1' storms
(click on image to enlarge)
Despite the massive flooding devastation delivered by Hurricane Sandy on the huge and dense NY/NJ metropolitan area, it is not some "unprecedented" storm event that the U.S. East Coast has suffered. Nor is it a result of "high" CO2 emissions from man-made activities.
As this chart depicts, over the last 10 years, the East Coast has been hammered by 7 hurricanes, including the 'Category 1' Hurricane Sandy.
But for the 10 years ending 1962, during a period of substantially less atmospheric CO2, the East Coast was struck 10 times by 'Category 1' and higher hurricanes. (Note the 'Category 3' hurricane that wreaked incredible havoc on Long Island during 1954.)
All of these past hurricanes plotted on the chart originated east of the U.S coast, out in the Atlantic, just like Hurricane Sandy. And many of them snaked their way up the East Coast and finally made landfall at higher latitudes, just like 'Sandy.'
Conclusion: When the weather facts are examined objectively, Hurricane Sandy was not an "unprecedented" nor a "superstorm" severe weather event. And higher CO2 levels do not cause more hurricanes or stonger hurricanes to make landfall along the East Coast. To blame "climate change" and "global warming" for a 'Category 1' hurricane during the normal hurricane season is utter nonsense.
The NCDC (an agency of NOAA) publishes global ocean temperature records, which confirm that global warming of the oceans did not cause Hurricane Sandy - in fact, their most recent temperature measurements reveal that ocean temperatures have actually remained flat over last 15 years (thru September 2012), while CO2 levels have increased
(click on images to enlarge)
The chart on the left is a plot of global ocean temperatures for the 15-year period (180 months) ending September 2012. Clearly, since late 1997, global warming of the oceans has not happened and thus can not be the cause of Hurricane Sandy. (Unfortunately, some incredibly dishonest politicians and pundits have actually stated that anthropogenic global warming was the cause.)
The plot on the right represents ocean temperatures for the 15-year period ending September 1997. This chart depicts a modest warming trend of ocean waters, including an increase of CO2 levels.
When comparing the two different 15-year time periods, the following can be ascertained:
CO2 levels for 15-year period ending Sept 2012: Increased by 30 ppm
Ocean linear temperature trend equates to: +0.007 degree increase by year 2100
Polynomial trend and 3-year average indicate a cooling is in process
CO2 levels for the 15-year period ending Sept 1997: Increased by 22 ppm
Ocean linear temperature trend equates to: +1.10 degree increase by year 2100
Polynomial trend and 3-year average confirmed a warming trend during this previous 15-year period
Conclusions: The growing increases of atmospheric CO2 levels have not caused a global warming of the oceans over the last 15 years. Global warming was not the cause of Hurricane Sandy, which was essentially a typical weather hurricane that naturally occurs.
During 2012, the U.S. experienced a hot and dry summer with climate doomsday scientists and pundits claiming it was the most severe ever, and a sure sign of hhuman caused extreme climate change - ooops, wrong again, per NOAA
A select group of climate scientists and weather experts are forever trying to explain each severe weather event as a result of global warming from human CO2 emissions. They, and the usual parade of fame-seeking climate doomsday activists, then state "this is what extreme climate change looks like."
Although 2012 has been a warm year in the U.S. (probably not the warmest based on accurate temperature measurements,though), the claim of the U.S. being in the most severe drought condition ever is blatantly wrong and purposefully deceiving.
The adjacent NOAA/NCDC images (as of August) are of current drought conditions versus the severe droughts of 1988 and 1934. Clearly, the 2012 drought is less severe and less widespread than the previous droughts.
Droughts in the U.S. are not unusual - in fact, almost every year there are bad drought conditions in some region of the U.S. The 2012 drought is no exception and remains well within the normal weather variation experienced before.
Indeed, both the U.S. and the rest of the world have well documented periods of very severe weather in the past that makes the bad weather of 2012 pale in comparison, and such is the case for the summer of 2012.
Conclusions: Any climate "scientist" or weather "expert" who claims that typical severe weather events are examples of human-caused extreme climate change is, simply stated, a liar. The most recent U.S. severe drought is likely not a result of extreme climate change, but instead typical weather variation that the U.S. experiences, which NOAA and the mainstream press have long documented.
Climate doomsday alarmists often fabricate extreme climate change scenarios that have no basis in reality - one such scenario is that global warming, from rising CO2 emissions, will make U.S. East Coast winter storms worse
Read here. The vast majority of climate disaster scenarios, which climate doomsday scientists and pundits predict, are never realized. The increasing intensity and frequency of severe storms is one such failed prediction.
The IPCC's political-agenda scientists, and most Hollywood celebrities concurred, that the supposed global warming from human CO2 emissions would produce more severe winter storms ('nor'easters') on the U.S. East Coast resulting in untold devastation and human misery.
Researchers decided to analyze the empirical evidence to determine if the Hollywood and IPCC "scientists" were correct. As this included chart reveals, over the last 55 years, there is no evidence that storm intensity increased despite the huge increase in CO2 Emissions.
"The authors write that "East Coast Winter Storms (ECWS), commonly known as nor'easters, are among the most severe weather phenomena to impact the Northeastern United States,"...defined an ECWS as an area of low pressure with a closed circulation, moving in a general south-southwest to north-northeast direction and containing winds greater than 10.3 m/sec during at least one 6-hour period,"... they calculated the speeds of all ECWS over the 55-year period 1951-2006...researchers report that "the speed of ECWS during their passage over or near the east coast of the United states varied substantially from storm to storm, month to month, and season to season." However,...over the entire time period of their study, Bernhardt and DeGaetano rightly declare "there was no clear trend in ECWS speed."" [Jase E. Bernhardt and Arthur T. DeGaetano 2012: Natural Hazards]
Conclusions: The long predicted extreme climate change from CO2 levels and global warming has not happened. There has not been an increase/decrease of East Coast severe winter storms that would indicate a noteworthy change in existing natural climate variation.
IPCC climate doomsday advocates predict all sorts of calamitous, extreme climate change events from human CO2 emissions that seemingly fail to materialize - the lack of increased heavy precipitation events across the U.S. is another one of those failed predictions
Read here. Climate scientists again reviewed the empirical weather evidence to determine if there has been a surge of heavy precipitation events, as predicted by the IPCC and its climate models.
Per the IPCC and its climate doomsday acolytes, human CO2 emissions causes increased warming that causes greater water evaporation, which in turn will increase the frequency and volume of rainfall incidents. Obviously, the increase in heavy rainfall would then likely lead to an increase in flooding disaster incidents. The IPCC's climate models have been programmed to follow that assumption.
Yet when researchers actually check the climate model predictions against weather reality, the IPCC models are rarely correct. Mahajan et al. just determined that to be the case for the IPCC's heavy rainfall prediction.
"Noting that "extreme events of precipitation have a potential for impacting our social and economic activities,"...state that it is "essential to determine if there has been a systematic change in the extremes over the past years and what awaits us in the future owing to global warming," especially in light of the fact that "climate model projection studies suggest that intense precipitation would be on the rise as global temperatures increase due to increased greenhouse gas forcings in the future..."trends in monthly heavy precipitation, defined by a return period of one year, are assessed for statistical significance in observations and Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations over the contiguous United States...report that trends estimated from the two data sources they employed "straddle the margin of statistical significance, and hence a definitive answer to the question of increasing trend of heavy precipitation over the US cannot be arrived at by looking at observational data." And with nearly half (9 out of 20) of the GCMs employed in their study predicting trends that are "significantly different from the observations," they are forced to conclude that "the GCMs are not yet fully capable of simulating extremes of precipitation at a regional level,"" [Salil Mahajan, Gerald R. North, R. Saravanan, Marc G. Genton 2012: Climate Dynamics]
Conclusion: Human CO2 emissions, and the supposed global warming, are not causing an increase in heavy precipitation events across the U.S. as predicted. The IPCC's climate models again fail a crucial test when their output is compared to actual weather reality.
Read here. The vast majority of scientific research using actual climate evidence continues to disprove the doomsday predictions of the IPCC's climate modelers. The hypothesized catastrophic climate disasters that would be considered outside normal climate variation are just not happening.
The latest study confirming the failed predictions of the IPCC was completed by Tramblay et al. regarding extreme rainfall incidents in Morocco.
"Morocco is a North African country highly vulnerable to extreme precipitation events. In the present study, past trends in extreme precipitation and future projections using an ensemble of regional climate models (RCM) are evaluated." [Yves Tramblay, Wafae Badi, Fatima Driouech, Salaheddine El Adlouni, Luc Neppel, Eric Servat 2012: Global and Planetary Change]
"The authors write that "climate change is likely to produce more extreme precipitation events,"...they say that "for the Mediterranean basin, several studies indicate a possible amplification of precipitation extremes associated with a decrease of precipitation totals...which "could lead to an increased probability of occurrence of events inducing both floods and droughts"...employed data for ten measuring stations - Casablanca, Rabat, Larache and Tanger (Atlantic coast), Tetouan, Al Hoceima, Nador and Oujda (Mediterranean region), and Fes and Ifrane (Atlas mountainous area) - which they carefully analyzed for signs of the predicted precipitation-related phenomena..."Quoting the six scientists who performed the work, "the Mann-Kendall test indicates no significant trends in the data series for all the stations at the 5% significance level," and in like manner they report that "the Deviance test results between stationary generalized extreme value [GEV] models and non-stationary GEV models with time as covariate [also] indicate no evidence of trends in extreme precipitation for all the Moroccan stations.""
'C3' Editor Conclusions: The IPCC predicted extreme climate change as represented by severe precipitation events is not happening. This research out of Morocco seems to corroborate previous research done across the globe indicating a lack of discernible trend for severe precipitation events.
Taxpayer funded climate-doomsday scientists and the mainstream media ambulance chasers perpetuate the myth that today's severe weather events are a result of human-CO2 caused extreme climate change - actually, today's bad weather seems rather mild to similar events decades before large human CO2 emissions
Conclusion: The current extreme fear-mongering and severe hysterical claims emanating from the mouths of climate-doomsday scientists and their MSM cohorts are truly unprecedented - today's extreme climate change and severe weather incidents, not so much.
Read here. Climate-lies from doomsday scientists, associated with universities, is becoming much more common. The latest is the brazen lie that the current drought climate condition within the U.S. is a record.
It's not even close, as the adjacent empricial evidence reveals. The 1930's (top graphic) clearly had drought conditions well surpassing those of 2012 (bottom graphic).
And, of course, the famous 1930's drought and heat waves took place under a regime of low atmospheric CO2 levels.
The IPCC's climate doomsday scientists have been predicting that modern global warming would cause extreme climate change leading to an increase of severe weather events - new EU-Netherlands research proves the alarmists wrong
Read here. The Dutch are use to stormy weather and have a long history of recording such events. A researcher decided to investigate the records going back 101 years to determine if severe weather incidents had increased.
"In another blow to the alarmist fallacy that climate change is causing more extreme weather, a paper published today in the journal Climatic Change finds that windstorm damage in the Netherlands is presently the lowest over the entire 101 year period of study...The resulting windstorm loss time-series for the Netherlands contains some interesting features. Annual losses are stable over the whole period and have a dominant cycle with a period of about 50 years. The Netherlands is currently experiencing the minimum aggregate storm damage of the past 100 years, though only slightly lower than a quiet period of 50 years ago. Both of these minima are driven primarily by lowered rates of occurrence of damaging storms." [Stephen Cusack 2012: Climatic Change]
Conclusion: As this new peer reviewed study demonstrates, human CO2 emissions are not causing extreme climate change in the EU region of the Netherlands. Previous studies have also found severe weather incidents not increasing over the modern era, around the world.
The IPCC predictions of severe weather events, such as droughts, floods, storms and etc. due to global warming has been a rather embarrassing failure - and another study confirms that extreme climate change is not happening as result of warming
Read here. The UN, the IPCC and a group of climate doomsday scientists continue to predict an increase of severe weather from modern warming (which has gone missing for the last 15 years), plus constantly claim that any recent drought or flood or storm or whatever is the result of CO2 emissions and associated warming.
Unfortunately for them, their actual proof is literally non-existent - they have no empirical evidence to stand on, other than anecdotal stories and/or singular, one-off events. Instead, they base their predictions and their foolish claims on computer simulations. Of course, what they always fail to mention is that the climate models were programmed by the climate model "scientists" to produce severe weather event predictions from...wait...take a guess...yes!, from global warming.
However, as a plethora of studies before it, the Buntgen et al. research again finds that severe precipitation weather events have not increased in number or intensity as modern global warming took place.
"The authors state that anthropogenically-induced climate change is projected by climate models to increase the frequency, severity and probability of extreme meteorological phenomena; and many climate alarmists claim that we have been experiencing this effect of global warming...the nine researchers analyzed 11,873 annually-resolved and absolutely-dated ring-width measurement series from living and historical fir trees that had been sampled across France, Switzerland, Germany and the Czech Republic, and which continuously spanned the AD 962-2007 period...discovered there was "a fairly uniform distribution of hydroclimatic extremes throughout the Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age and Recent Global Warming,"...extreme hydroclimatic phenomena were found to not be amplified in either number or strength in response to global warming, which leads one to suspect that the same likely holds true for other portions of the planet, in contradiction of vociferous climate-alarmist claims to the contrary." [Ulf Büntgen, Rudolf Brázdil, Karl-Uwe Heussner, Jutta Hofmann, Raymond Kontic, Tomáš Kyncl, Christian Pfister, Kateřina Chromá, Willy Tegel 2011: Quaternary Science Reviews]
Conclusion: Extreme climate change, in the form of increased and more powerful severe weather events, is not occurring as a result of modern global warming. The actual empirical evidence as presented in peer reviewed studies does not support the catastrophic weather predictions of the IPCC and climate doomsday scientists.
Climate doomsday scientists and chicken-little pundits claim AGW is causing more frequent severe weather events – empirical research though can’t establish any link between extreme climate change, severe weather trends & global warming
Read here. Let’s be honest about this – our nation is led by many pathetically stupid people (hmmm…pathological liars?) who consistently choose to utter clown-like statements. Despite the preponderance of empirical research, these chicken-little clowns continue to claim that human CO2 emissions and “global warming” have caused an increase in severe weather incidents.
Fortunately, for the world, peer reviewed research based on empirical evidence (not computer simulations) establishes that an increased frequency of severe weather incidents is not the result of AGW but of colder climatic conditions. Here are seven (7) EU studies confirming that:
1. An Alps study "refutes the notion that anthropogenic warming is causing an increase of climate extremes and making weather more variable and extreme… Not only did the author find no change in variability, but he also detected a ”centennial oscillating structure”."
2. A Mediterranean coastal study…” In addition,...make a point of noting that "the apparent increase in intense storms around 250 years ago lasts to about AD 1900," whereupon "intense meteorological activity seems to return to a quiescent interval after (i.e. during the 20th century AD)." And they add that, "interestingly, the two periods of most frequent superstorm strikes in the Aigues-Mortes Gulf (AD 455 and 1700-1900) coincide with two of the coldest periods in Europe during the late Holocene…”
3. A study for the Aquitaine region…”…finding that dune formation was generally most common during cooler climatic intervals. In the most recent of these cold periods, the authors note there is voluminous historical evidence of many severe North Atlantic wind storms in which the southward spread of sea ice and polar water during that time likely created "an increased thermal gradient between 50°N and 65°N which intensified storm activity in the North Atlantic… Hence, the long view of history suggests that the global warming of the past century or so has actually led to an overall decrease in North Atlantic storminess.”
4. A study from the “from two cores of the Pierre Blanche lagoon just south of Montpellier, France found evidence in the form of "washover events" that allowed them "to identify the strongest storms in the Mediterranean area" over the past four centuries… Such a decline in the occurrence of "superstorms" in the Mediterranean area -- if not their total disappearance -- is a significant observation running counter to the climate-alarmist claim that global warming both intensifies storms and brings more of them.”
5. A study from Northwestern France “linked high-resolution sediment and rock properties of materials found in cores collected from the Seine estuary in northwest France to climatic conditions of the past few thousand years… they report on "four prominent centennial-scale periods of stronger storminess, occurring with a pacing of ~1500 years," which they say are "likely to be related to the last four [of] Bond's Holocene cold events," the most recent of which was the Little Ice Age…”
6. A study from the macrotidal Bay of Vilaine…” while observing that "this shift most probably documents the transition from the MWP to the Little Ice Age," which led to the "increased storminess both in the marine and continental ecosystems… concluded their study by stating that "the preservation of medieval estuarine flood deposits implies that sediment reworking by marine dynamics was considerably reduced between 880 and 1050 AD," implying that during that considerably warmer period than most (if not all) of what followed it, "climatic conditions were probably mild enough to prevent coastal erosion in northwestern France."
7. A study from France’s Atlantic coast…”analyzed tide-gauge, wind and atmospheric pressure data over the period 1951-… This work indicated that the number of atmospheric depressions (storms) and strong surge winds for this region, in the words of the author, "are becoming less frequent" and that "ongoing trends of climate variability show a decrease in the frequency and hence the gravity of coastal flooding" over the period of study.”
Conclusions: Extreme climate change – global warming during late 20th century has not led to an increase of severe weather per the multitude of recent empirical research studies (not computer simulations). Climate doomsday scientists and chicken-little politicians, primarily anti-science Democrat left-liberals-progressives, continue to mislead and frighten the public with fearmongering tactics about global warming and CO2 regardless of the empirical evidence. Instead, if the recent slight global cooling trend continues one could expect more stormy weather.
The IPCC, and its grumpy band of Climategate alarmist scientists, predicted extreme climate change from human caused global warming - specifically, they predicted more frequent and more severe hurricane landfalls - they were wrong
Read here. The adjacent chart reveals the number of days between landfalls of a major hurricane striking the U.S. Since the last Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane strike, it's been 2,412 days and counting.
Since 1900, that is the longest span ever between major landfalls. And this significant climate science factoid is contrary to the IPCC "experts" whose consensus prediction categorically claimed that these large devastating storms would be more intense and more frequent, due to the increasing human CO2 emissions and global warming.
As is obvious to even the most fanatical believer in the CAGW religion, the scientific, empirical evidence readily documents that the CO2-alarmist "experts" have been spectacularly wrong.
With that said, the U.S. is long overdue for a major severe hurricane strike and it could well happen in 2012. Then again, it might not. Either way, the IPCC has proven to be incapable of any scientific predictive skill.
The EPA, the IPCC and the USGCRP bureaucrats have erroneously predicted, per their global climate models, that southwest U.S. would become drier with more droughts - the latest research finds that these predictions are result of climate modeling failure
Read here. Climate alarmist scientists and multi-agency bureaucrats continue to produce erroneous assessments and misguided advice for policymakers based on global climate models. Computer models, and especially the global climate variety, have been a fountain of bogus predictions for years.
In a new study, experts documented another case of failed of global computer simulations that confirms why these hugely expensive 'big picture' models are pretty much worthless. Counter to the EPA and IPCC's predictions, the southwest USA is actually less likely to suffer from droughts, water shortages, forest fires, agriculture crop failure or insect infestations based on new research.
Why were the tax-payer sucking, big government agencies, soooo wrong? The global climate modelers forgot to tell the bureaucrats that the models did not include the impact of mountains on the climate and the bureaucrats were too stupid and/or lazy to ask - doh!
"A research team...[Gao et al.]...investigated that the differences between how large-scale global climate models and finer-scale regional climate models handled the characteristics of moisture flow in the atmosphere over the southwestern U.S...The regional climate models (RCMs) include much finer scale processes than are included in the global climate models (GCMs). In the Southwest, this includes a finer representation of the complex, mountainous terrain which plays a key role in the regional precipitation processes...compared how the RCMs handled the processes that lead to precipitation across the Southwest compared to how the processes were simulated in GCMs. They generally found that the better representation of the terrain by the RCMs allowed them to generate more future rainfall...result from Gao et al. showing that RCMs generated more future precipitation than GCMs in the Southwestern U.S...RCMs allowed them to better simulate the snow accumulation and ablation at high elevations and consequently “runoff in the Colorado River Basin is less susceptible to a warming climate in RCMs than in GCMs.”" [Yanhong Gao, L. Ruby Leung, Eric P. Salathé Jr., Francina Dominguez, Bart Nijssen, Dennis P. Lettenmaier 2012: Geophysical Research Letters]
Conclusion: Global climate modeling failure is the rule rather than the exception in regards to the computer simulations that EPA & IPCC bureaucrats and policymakers rely on. New research regarding a regional climate in the U.S. substantiates the failed predictive capability of global climate models. As a result, these global climate models guarantee massive amounts of government investments being wasted on erroneous climate change impacts, such as more droughts in the southwest U.S..
Read here. Global warming alarmists and hysterical pundits/reporters are now apparently turning every nasty weather event into "proof" that current global warming is causing extreme climate change. Unfortunately for said alarmists, the empirical evidence completely undercuts claims that warming causes bad weather - essentially, the claims are all hype for several reasons.
One, there has been no global warming for the last 15 years - the climate observation datasets are unequivocal about this.
Two, from the recent past, it is well documented that very severe weather has been part of our climate over the last 100 years, well before the modern warming from the late 1970's to the late 1990's.
Three, EU scientists (Sabatier et al.) have now documented that severe weather was worst in the historical past when temperatures were colder, not warmer.
"The authors write that "the Mediterranean region is one of the world's most vulnerable areas with respect to global warming,"...they thus consider it to be extremely important to determine what impact further temperature increases might have on the storminess of the region...produced a high-resolution record of paleostorm events along the French Mediterranean coast over the past 7000 years...from the sediment bed of Pierre Blanche Lagoon [near Montpellier, France]...nine French scientists, as they describe it, "recorded seven periods of increased storm activity at 6300-6100, 5650-5400, 4400-4050, 3650-3200, 2800-2600, 1950-1400, and 400-50 cal yr BP," the latter of which intervals they associate with the Little Ice Age. And they go on to state, "in contrast," that their results show that "the Medieval Climate [global warming] Anomaly (1150-650 cal yr BP) was characterized by low storm activity." They further note that these changes in coastal hydrodynamics were in phase with those observed over the Eastern North Atlantic...and that the periods of increased storminess they identified seem to correspond to periods of Holocene cooling detected in the North Atlantic..." [Pierre Sabatier, Laurent Dezileau, Christophe Colin, Louis Briqueu, Frédéric Bouchette, Philippe Martinez, Giuseppe Siani, Olivier Raynal, Ulrich Von Grafenstein 2012: Quaternary Research]
Conclusion: The claimed extreme climate change and associated severe weather events over the last 15 years are not the result of "global warming." In addition, historical empirical evidence makes it clear that severe weather incidents increase as the climate cools, not when it warms. It is well established that the past cooler climates have had profound negative impacts on society whereas warmer climates have been more beneficent.
Researchers analyzing data for extreme climate change risk continue to discover evidence that the predicted results are not happening - lack of extreme rainfall in the Himalayas is most recent example
Read here. The "scientists" associated with the UN's IPCC had predicted severe weather events would increase both in frequency and intensity due to global warming. Unique areas of the world, such as the Himalayas, were considered to be especially vulnerable to these events.
To assess the extreme climate change risk that the Himalayas faced, researchers set out to document the severe rainfall events that were long predicted.
"Nandargi and Dhar decided to present "a brief review of the available information and data for extreme rainfall events that were experienced in different sectors of the Himalayas during the last 137 years" in an attempt to determine "the impact of climate change on the extreme one-day rainfall of the Himalayan region, in the context of rising temperatures."...Working with data obtained from 475 measurement stations...said that there is an increase in the frequencies of extreme rainfall events from the 1951-1960 decade onwards," but only until "there was a sudden decrease in the frequency of extreme rainfall events in all the four categories in the recent period of 2001-2007...concluding words of the two scientists, "it is somewhat baffling as to whether climate change has any impact on extreme rainfall events in the entire Himalayan region..." [S. Nandargia, O. N. Dhara 2011: Hydrological Sciences Journal]
Conclusion: The extreme climate change risk promulgated by the big global insurance companies and their scientific minions has proven to be without merit when the actual empirical evidence is closely scrutinized.
Without any empirical evidence, the mainstream media continues to report that global warming is causing an increase of severe weather events - latest scientific analysis of tornadoes disproves IPCC alarmist claims to be meritless
Read here. The IPCC continues to push the bogus claim that "global warming" (supposedly due to human CO2) is (and will) causing more severe weather events with the publication of their new 'SREX' report.
The incredibly stupid and lazy journalists covering climate science dutifully report the desired summary propaganda that the IPCC wants heard. Yet if they made any effort, the reporters would soon discover that the empirical evidence does not support the the IPCC hypothesis that past warming has caused more severe weather.
The adjacent violent tornado chart is a clear cut example that alarmist claims of more severe weather due to warming is indeed not factual.
In addition, climate science journalists are soooo lazy, and obviously enraptured (cult-like?) with misleading the public about climate disasters, they always seem to miss the IPCC's fine print, such as this in the new 'SREX' report:
“While there is evidence that increases in greenhouse gases have likely caused changes in some types of extremes, there is no simple answer to the question of whether the climate, in general, has become more or less extreme.”...“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.”...“The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados.”...“The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses.”
Conclusions: First, severe weather events have not increased as a result of global warming - in fact, even the IPCC admits there is no increasing trend of said events. Second, climate science reporters and the mainstream media continue to mislead and misinform the public and policymakers with bogus reports of 'cherry-picked' extreme weather events, both current and predicted.
Read here. It has become a common practice among those advocating government control of CO2 emissions and higher energy prices that all modern extreme weather events are a result of global warming. These claims have taken on the characteristics of urban myths believed by those who have high disdain for empirical evidence.
Although there is ample scientific evidence that global warming has been non-existent over the past 10 years and that extreme weather events happened with alarming frequency prior to the modern era, a new peer reviewed study out of China shatters the urban legend that global warming causes more frequent and larger snowstorms.
Research on extreme weather events:
After the $21 billion snowstorm disaster experienced in China during 2008, Chinese researchers (Hou et al.) closely examined 500 years of historical data to determine how unique this gargantuan snowstorm was.
"From 10 January to 2 February 2008..."continuous heavy snowfall occurred over Central and Southern China...causing "1.7 million people to be displaced for periods ranging between a few days to a month," and affecting "critical infrastructure including electric power grids and communication systems," while "food production, forests, wildlife and buildings all suffered heavy damage..."...the four researchers "used weather records contained in Chinese historical documents from the past 500 years to search for ESEs [extreme snow events] that were comparable in severity,...they identified 25 additional ESEs that were "comparable to the extreme snow event in 2008 in terms of snowfall days, snow cover/icing days and snow depth," and a graph of their data indicates that all of the additional ESEs occurred during periods that were colder than the past decade...noting that their results reveal, as they describe it, "what we have learned from the past," which is that this particular extreme has become much less common than it was in colder times." [Zhixin Hao, Jingyun Zheng, Quansheng Ge, Wei-Chyung Wang 2011: Climate Research]
Conclusion: The green warmists that dominate the ranks of leftists / progressives / liberals / Democrats almost completely rely on promulgating urban myths regarding climate change, global warming and extreme weather events. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the preponderance of empirical evidence and peer reviewed research does not support the myths and legends.
For the global warming alarmist community, the inconvenient facts about droughts is that previous climate change produced more severe and longer lasting droughts
Read here. The historical evidence strongly supports that the severe climatic conditions of the Little Ice Age (pre-1850) produced extreme droughts that often affected Georgia and other locations of the Southeast U.S.
A new study of the U.S. Southeast confirms the known facts about droughts. Pederson et al. found that droughts during the end of the Little Ice Age were more severe and of longer duration than those of the 20th and 21st centuries. In essence, previous climate change, especially during cooler periods, produced more extreme climatic conditions in many parts of the world.
"A paper published today in Environmental Research Letters uses tree-ring proxies to reconstruct drought conditions of the American Southeast from 1665 to 2010. The authors find "The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665." [N. Pederson, A. R. Bell, T. A. Knight, C. Leland, N. Malcomb, K. J. Anchukaitis, K. Tackett, J. Scheff, A. Brice, B. Catron, W. Blozan, J. Riddle 2012: Environmental Research Letters]
Conclusion: The empirical, inconvenient facts about droughts is that they have been found to be more frequent and more severe during cooler climate change regimes.