Links tagged “tornados”

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, professor and climate economist Richard S.J. Tol of the University of Sussex explained why it is so difficult to connect weather events on the scale of a tornado to shifts in the Earth’s climate. “Tornadoes are small, rarely more than 3 kilometers in diameter. The most advanced climate models, however, cannot see things that are smaller than 9 by 9 km. Climate models can therefore tell us very little about tornadoes,” he told The Epoch Times via email. “Data are not great, but suggest that there is no upward or downward trend in tornado frequency or severity,” he added. ... 

Responding to that article on Twitter, University of Colorado environmental science professor Roger Pielke Jr. described a figure from the article as “incredibly misleading,” pointed out that the rollout of Doppler radar systems increased reporting of very weak tornadoes in more recent years. ... 

“The rush to attribute the… tornadoes to climate change illustrates perfectly the political distortion of the topic,” climate economist and University of Guelph professor Ross McKitrick told The Epoch Times via email in another exclusive interview. “The IPCC AR6 (Sct 11.7.3) makes no attribution claims between greenhouse gases and tornadoes, and the long term data show no increasing trend in numbers or severity (indeed there is a slight decrease in numbers),” he added, referring to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the physical science basis for climate change. “Yet the public has been so primed by politicians and activists to blame extreme weather on greenhouse gases they hardly blink when someone like President Biden just makes up the connection.” “Now the alarmists are shifting to a claim that while the events are natural, greenhouse gases [make] them worse than they otherwise would be,” he told The Epoch Times. “Aside from the questionable statistical analysis behind such arguments, the big problem is that it’s ambulance chasing. The fact that they only ever associate greenhouse gases with bad weather outcomes is meaningless since they only ever look at bad weather events. They never study whether a stretch of mild weather could be attributed to greenhouse gases.”

Pielke Jr. : "What is climate attribution about? Politics first, science second So let's err on the side of claiming every weather event is linked, connected, fueled by climate."

Consider also that according to data from the U.S. National Weather Service from 2000 to 2020 only four of the strongest category of tornadoes were observed (which are labelled as F/EF5 tornadoes) In comparison, from 1954 to 1974 36 (!) such powerful tornadoes were observed. Our research on tornado damage in the United States over many decades shows a decline that is suggestive of an actual decline in tornado incidence. Based on the IPCC assessment of the literature, along with the underlying data and research, the only scientifically valid answer to the question of whether greenhouse gas emissions and associated climate change are leading to more or more intense tornado outbreaks — a “new normal” — is that neither tornadoes nor the most intense tornadoes have increased since at least the 1950s.

Why should you panic?  Because 'a computer simulation' of the year 2099 says you should! 

Michael Mann claims: "Indeed, more rigorous recent studies estimate that 5 million people PER YEAR die from climate change. As many as have died from COVID-19 IN TOTAL"

Climate Depot Note: Mann is including cold deaths as "climate change" deaths. See Bloomberg article Mann cites: "While most deaths have been caused by exposure to the cold, the trend is likely to reverse as the planet warms, they said." 

3 New Studies Conclude 21st Century Cold Temps Led To 7-10 Times More Deaths Than Warm Temps

Bjorn Lomborg: ‘Warming annually causes about 120,000 heat deaths but prevents nearly 300,000 cold deaths’