I suppose it had to happen . . . since the predicted mega-hurricanes haven't born out since 2005, the environmentalists have moved on to blame the latest weather incident - flooding here in the Midwest - on global warming. The National Wildlife Federation has trotted out its own "climate scientist" who is quoted in this Reuters article as saying that "a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel these kinds of weather events." This "climate scientist," Amanda Staudt, claims that since warmer air can carry more water than cooler air, more rain will come from global warming.Did I miss something? Have we been having a heat wave? Have we been hotter than ever? No to all three. Staudt's theory holds less water than cool air would.
Reuters also quotes Nicholas Pinter from Southern Illinois University. He is critical of the assumptions made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when predicting that the Mississippi River and its tributaries will flood in certain places only once every 100 or 500 years. He is critical with good reason . . . in the last 35 years, there have been four 100-year floods. The Corps of Engineers doesn't account for global warming BUT, Pinter points out, the Corps also fails to account for the effects of land use and navigation construction.
Pinter and the Reuters article also fail to account for the most important factor in all of this . . . we human beings don't control the weather! We can't predict rain (see any local newscast for proof of that) let alone control when it falls.
And we can't control rivers either, no matter how many levees we build. Eventually rivers go where they want to go. Mark Twain put it best many years ago when he said, "The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise."
Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, tsunamis, droughts and earthquakes will come whether the earth is warming or not.
5 comments:
My question is why did Reuters get a "climate scientist" from the National Wildlife Foundation to comment on a weather event? They should have had somebody from the National Weather Service, especially regards her claim about increasing big storms by the end of the century. That sounds like unmittigated BS she pulled out of her read while on the interview.
And if that's what she did it's pure bad science and she should be ashamed. Has she done a peer-reviewed paper on those exact storm figures? Probably not.
BTW, your observation about lack of heat was excellent and should have been asked by the press. Temps have been below normal this spring and she should know it takes a cold-warm contrast to produce disturbances that produce those "big storms" she's needlessly warning everyone about.
Good question a.c. I think that I have an answer for you . . . this is an agenda driven story written by the "Environment Correspondent" at Reuters. Facts don't seem to matter much to the press these days, especially when they stand in the way of a good "climate change" scare.
And, by the way, thanks for the kudos.
I'm not a climatologist, but does it take both a hot air mass containing water vapor and a cold air mass to condense it to create a storm front?
Neither am I Dameon. A.C.?
BYW, I meant "doesn't" in the first line of my preveous message.
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