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Tornados and Global Warming

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It has come to my attention that people are already blaming the recent tornado outbreak on global warming. Senator John Kerry is among those persons.

Sen. Kerry Blames Tornados on Global Warming
Former Democratic presidential nominee blames ‘intense storms’ that have killed more than 50 on climate change.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
2/6/2008 5:07:05 PM

Politicians using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a tried-and-true strategy. Paint the idea green and a natural catastrophe became political fodder for former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.).

Kerry appeared on MSNBC on February 6 to discuss storms that have killed at least 50 people throughout the Southeastern United States. So, of course, Kerry used the platform to advance global warming alarmism.

“[I] don’t want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms,” Kerry said. “And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we’re not paying attention to. The fact is the hurricanes are more intensive, the storms are more intensive and the rainfall is more intense at certain places at certain times and the weather patterns have changed.”

Kerry’s assertion tornado activity is related to any type of climate change is questionable based on the writings of at least one meteorologist. Roger Edwards, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla., has doubts about any global warming and tornado relationship.

“As of this writing, no scientific studies solidly relate climatic global temperature trends to tornadoes,” Edwards wrote on the Earth & Sky Web site in April 2007. “I don’t expect any such results in the near future either, because tornadoes are too small, short–lived, hard to measure and count, and too dependent on day to day, even minute to minute weather conditions.”

So how bad was this outbreak? Not even close to the worst on record which occured in 1974. That date, mind you, is before the recent warming trend.

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/storms/

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the April 3-4, 1974, super tornado outbreak. It was the worst tornado outbreak in U.S. history with 148 twisters touching down in 13 states. Before it was over 16 hours later, 330 people were dead and 5,484 were injured in a damage path covering more than 2,500 miles.

“Deadly storms such as the 1974 super outbreak can and will happen again,” said Ken Haydu, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Wilmington, Ohio. “The people who experienced the super outbreak have an important story about tornado awareness and preparedness to pass on to later generations.”

Whenever you hear crap like this ask yourself if the same people are blaming the almost utter lack of Atlantic hurricane activity in 2006 and 2007 on global warming. If they don’t then they’re lying asshats cherry picking the data. A really amusing trend I’ve noted in the past year is that the term “global warming” is being increasingly replaced with “climate change”. As the global warming story unravels before the alarmist’s eyes they won’t admit they were wrong. Oh no. They just change the name of the game. Human activities aren’t warming the climate, no sirree Bob. Now human activity is changing the climate. Warmer, colder, more rain, less rain, more storms, fewer storms, all bases are covered with “climate change”. I guess they want us to believe that the weather was the same every year prior to the latter half of the 20th century. Incredible.

Comments
I KNEW I had seen this all before. It didn't start with Katrina but late night radio worrywarts began all this stuff about climate "change" making life horrible for anyone not living in a brick house. Then it occurred to me I'd gathered some articles to congeal in one post to keep up with this. Although some meteorlogists disagree, like Atlanta's Kirk Mellish, I think so far the logic of these articles more closely agrees with LCM. http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2007/04/remember-hoopla-over-global-warming.html On a related note, which I'm quite sure Dave Scot had guessed at among many others, it seems Biofuels are not the solution to motorpowered vehicles as pitched for cranking up on french fry juices. http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/02/farmer-fuel-funded-folly.htmlS Wakefield Tolbert
February 11, 2008
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As a meteorologist, and accepting the IPCC premise that the poles are warming relatively more than the tropical regions, I would expect severe weather outbreaks to become less frequent, if anything. This is because a weaker temperature gradient would logically result in weaker upper air dynamics (upper air forcing). These upper air dynamics typically provide strong lift and are generally required for thunderstorms to rotate (aka, "supercells"). To blame all adverse weather phenomena on global warming is ludicrous in my opinion.LCM
February 8, 2008
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StephenA Well said. The only reason I'm a chance & necessity skeptic and a global warming skeptic is that both are put forward as uncontestable, settled science and both are actually based on nothing but thin air. I'd say hot air but one of them doesn't even rise to that level.DaveScot
February 7, 2008
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The other day there was a scientist on TV up in the great white North demonstrating the effects of heat reflection and absorbtion. To do this he had 2 2x2 sheets- one white and one black- he was in the Arctic approx 32 F- after a couple minutes he pointed the thermoter at each sheet- the white = 32 and the black = 92! Just after that they were showing glacial melting and the site they were looking at was not white- it was very dirty. What does this have to do with anything? Dave knows- he has been posting that it is the soot that accumulates on the white snow pack that is the bigger culprit. Next time you watch a show about glacial melting keep that in mind...Joseph
February 7, 2008
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"I’ve noticed a correlation between ID support and denial of global warming. I can’t tell if its only a matter of ignoring evidence that contradicts one’s previously held beleifs or if it’s something deeper like the belief that the “designer” wouldn’t have designed a global system that we lowly humans couldn’t tinker with so easily." Or maybe we just have working bullshitometers.StephenA
February 7, 2008
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Aaron, You are right. I do think there is something deeper which links ID and skepticism about global warming. What it boils down to is this: from a moral perspective, quintessentially human moral behavior consists in acknowledging our Creator, and also doing the right thing by the people whom we are supposed to love - especially members of our family, but also relatives, friends, members of our community, compatriots and fellow human beings around the world. Ethically speaking, to act as a human being should means to love God and love one's neighbor. Any time we spend on other concerns (such as looking after the biosphere) is time NOT spent on what we do best as human beings, which is loving other human beings. Accordingly, we should expect that a Personal Creator would have designed a biosphere that could be maintained with a minimum of fuss, so that we could spend as much time as possible doing "the human thing" - i.e. showing love towards other people. That means that for every environmental problem that the Creator could foresee, there should be a straightforward, no-fuss solution. That was the case with the ozone hole: governments simply passed laws to ban the use of CFCs. The Creator of the cosmos should certainly have foreseen that humans would use fossil fuels to stay warm, and should therefore have designed the biosphere such that EITHER burning fossil fuels would NOT have a significant impact on climate, OR if it did have an impact, it should be easy to reverse. What dismays me about global warming is that it appears fiendishly difficult to reverse. The world's top boffins can't agree on what to do (e.g. should we go nuclear, go geothermal, go for clean coal, or put up solar panels in space to reflect back the sun's heat?), and if the alarmist IPCC forecasts are to be believed, it's far from certain that we'll be able to prevent a human and environmental catastrophe. A third of species could (we are told) become extinct. Thus if God designed Gaia, then it seems He did a really bad job, if we are to believe the anthropogenic global warming crowd. Thus AGW clashes with ID, which says that on the contrary, He did a great job. If AGW is true, then it seems we have to devote an inordinate amount of moral and intellectual energy to micro-managing Gaia, which shifts our ethical focus away from people and towards non-human entities, and abstract ones at that (the biosphere, and species, as opposed to THIS animal [my pet] which is in my care). What I am saying here is that caring - and especially worrying - about Gaia is ethically dehumanising. It takes time away from what we should be doing, which is caring about other people. If the world was designed by a Personal Creator, then we should expect to find a world where we can spend most of our time thinking about people, not micro-managing the planet. I also think it's bad for people's mental health to worry about the climate. It tends to make people obsess about a looming catastrophe which it seems we can do nothing to avert - and even if we do manage to do something, the pollution caused by ongoing industrialisation in Third World countries (and who can blame them?) will cancel out whatever we achieve, anyway. Considerations like these tend to make people oscillate between periods of devil-may-care indifference (I might as well not worry, because what I do won't make any difference!) and despair (We're all doomed!), according to their mood. If the equation that defined the 20th century was E = mc2, the equation which defines the 21st is already shaping up to be: SIN = CO2. More and more, people are coming to think of themselves as good if they recycle and buy a Prius. Thirty years ago, they would have considered themselves as good if they loved and were faithful to their spouse, loved and cared for their children, and were charitable towards other people in need. Now that we are all busy worrying about Gaia, we no longer have time to think about the things that really matter. Once upon a time, people worried about whether they'd be damned for not giving enough to feed the hungry and help the sick (see Matthew 25:31-46). Now, almost overnight, these concerns have vanished, and we are the poorer for it, morally speaking. I also note that having children has become a vice in the New Thinking. After all, the best way you can reduce your ecological footprint is to not have kids. Try squaring that with Genesis 1:26-31 - especially "Be fruitful and multiply." I can't. Deep ecology is profoundly anti-natal. Want proof? Check this out: http://www.vhemt.org/ and see what you think. The Judeo-Christian tradition, by contrast, sees children as a blessing, not as a curse on the planet, as today's new high priests would have us believe. Thus I DO see a tension between belief in anthropogenic global warming and belief in a Personal Creator, especially if one happens to identify this Creator with the Judeo-Christian God. If AGW is real, then unless we find a clear-cut, practical solution within the next decade, I would say that the world's Abrahamic religions will face a major threat. In most people's minds, they'll be discredited because they are no longer relevant, just as Marx is discredited now. 2008 could be the year when things start turning around for global warming. After all, there's nothing like an impending mini-Ice Age (like the one from 1300 to 1850) to make people stop worrying about the heat. China is having its coldest weather in 50 years, and some Russian scientists are forecasting a long cold spell, based on their models of solar cycles. It might seem a harsh way to make humanity snap out of its ethical deep funk, but if it discredits the New High Priesthood and puts some egg on the faces of the world's secular humanist boffins, then I say: bring on the cold!vjtorley
February 7, 2008
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"new discoveries demonstrate that global warming inhibits hurricane formation" That must be a tough admission because it destroys the template that George Bush is responsible for global warming which caused hurricane Katrina which destroyed much of New Orleans. So by fighting the move to stop global warming the AGW's are helping Florida and the Gulf Coast avoid disasters like Katrina until they go underwater.jerry
February 7, 2008
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Check out the following about how new discoveries demonstrate that global warming inhibits hurricane formation. (It's all about wind shears that break up the storms before they can form, you see. No one thought of this until the predicted hurricanes in the last couple of years never materialized.) https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/scientific-consensus-the-last-bastion-of-scientific-uncertainty/#comment-167450GilDodgen
February 7, 2008
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John Kerry is not a climate expert so I'm not going to really pay attention to what he personally thinks about the subject...although there is a growing amount of data that suggests human activities are causing changes to global climate. I've noticed a correlation between ID support and denial of global warming. I can't tell if its only a matter of ignoring evidence that contradicts one's previously held beleifs or if it's something deeper like the belief that the "designer" wouldn't have designed a global system that we lowly humans couldn't tinker with so easily.Aaron
February 7, 2008
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It appears that I agree with much of what I read on this website. I am glad I discovered it. The only global warming I am worried about is:
2PE 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.–NIV
Also, there is a reason why the new preferred term is climate change and not global warming. Flexibility.William Wallace
February 6, 2008
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