Latest climate panic is topical, but it isn’t science.
Robson, A10
No sooner had a series of storms devastated the Caribbean basin than the climate change vultures pounced, calling it definitive proof of man’s disruptive effect on the weather. Which you might call fair enough since they’ve been predicting this result for decades. Except they haven’t.
At least not successfully or consistently. They have been predicting extreme weather ever since their prediction of skyrocketing temperature went flat, with a two-decade “hiatus” since 1997, despite ever- increasing CO2 levels. But before 2017, the U. S. had gone almost 12 years without a single Category 3 or stronger storm making landfall.
During that time media outlets were explaining why man- made climate change actually meant less severe storms. In 2008, the Ottawa Citizen said, “the extra heat will indeed pump more energy into the storms, but will also build up a phenomenon known to limit the storms: wind shear.” In 2010, MSNBC wrote soberly, “Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming …”
Then Harvey hit and they pivoted on a dime, saying things like, “Global warming to make powerful hurricanes more likely” (Boston Globe), and, “Increased rainfall and higher storm surges — which caused severe damage this month — are two of the clearer effects of climate change” (David Leonhardt in the New York Times.)
It’s not a theory if it only predicts things after the fact. Like the Times blaming man- made global warming for the California drought and also its soggy end. And there’s a far deeper problem here.
Even if you believe the Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended in Victorian times, and somehow blame humans even though the Little Ice Age itself is part of wellestablished cyclical trends of often dramatic natural fluctuations going back hundreds, thousands and indeed millions of years, there is no coherent reason to think increasing temperatures means worse weather.
It is possible to construct elaborate theoretical models for such a result or to shout about it, from Al Gore’s claim that warming causes simultaneous flooding and droughts, to Thomas Friedman in the New York Times this Sept. 13: “The climate has always changed by itself through its own natural variability. But that doesn’t mean that humans can’t exacerbate or disrupt this natural variability by warming the planet even more and, by doing so, making the hots hotter, the wets wetter, the storms harsher, the colds colder and the droughts drier.”
The problem is, there’s no result to explain. There’s no historical evidence that warming is generally associated with worse weather. We have no reason to think droughts are worse today than in the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, let alone the 17 th century or the 13th. Or that flooding is. Or that hurricanes are. Our fairly good storm records for the past century show a mild decrease in tornadoes, cyclones and such like.
When they do happen they can do enormous damage. Like 1780’s “Great Hurricane” that killed 22,000 people, the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. Or 1900’s “Galveston,” the worst natural disaster in American history.
All these theoretical models are an attempt to dispense with evidence, not explain it. Three of the 10 deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record were in the 18th century and four others before the Second World War. And while we lack detailed storm records from 800 or 8,000 years ago we do know Der Grote Mandrenk in January 1362 wiped entire islands and towns off the map of northern Europe during the disastrous cooling that brought the Medieval Warm Period to a grim end, complete with failed harvests and Black Death.
We also have a rough idea what the climate was like on Earth going back 500 million years. Normally it was warmer than today, often by around 10 degrees Centigrade. And this warmer Earth was extremely hospitable to life, from Eocene mammals to Mesozoic dinosaurs to the Cambrian Explosion. (See my new documentary The Environment: A True Story.)
To say that warm is generally good is not to deny that sudden temperature changes spell trouble for those plants, animals and people who l i ve through them or don’t. But if you’re going to have a sudden temperature change, up is better than down; the Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and Holocene Climatic Optimum were all far better than the glaciers coming back. And there’s nothing to suggest t hey were stormier than the Dark Ages or Little Ice Age.
The assertion that storms are worse on a warmer planet is sheer, cheeky invention quite independent of facts. If it turns out that 2017 is cooler than 2014-16 will Friedman or Gore attribute recent storms to the cooling? Not a chance. And that’s not science.
IT’S NOT A THEORY IF IT ONLY PREDICTS THINGS AFTER THE FACT. — JOHN ROBSON SHEER CHEEKY INVENTION INDEPENDENT OF FACTS.