'The New Normal': US Blames This Winter's Severe Tornado's on Climate Change (msn.com) 150
More than 100 Americans were feared dead this weekend — including six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois — after severe storms and tornados tore through the central U.S. And "thousands upon thousands" of buildings were flattened, reports the Times.
The head of America's Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) "says the agency has seen a rise in intense storms and severe weather patterns that it anticipates to continue as a result of climate change," reports Insider. Speaking on morning news shows on Sunday, Deanne Criswell shared the agency's plans to prepare for increasing rates of deadly storms as the country faces the "crisis of our generation."
"This is going to be our new normal," Criswell said on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper...
Criswell's remarks come after severe storms and tornadoes ripped through six states, killing an estimated 80 people in Kentucky in what the state's governor, Andy Beshear, said on Saturday "is likely to be the most severe tornado outbreak in our state's history." They also follow a year marked by historic storms that caused unprecedented damage across the country, including winter storms that left large swaths of Texas without power and killed an estimated 210 people, rampant forest fires on the West Coast that have produced harmful smoke traveling thousands of miles across the nation, and severe hurricanes that ravaged much of the East Coast this spring....
"There's going to be a lot to learn from this event and the events that we saw through the summer," she told George Stephanopoulos [on his Sunday morning interview show]. "We're seeing more intense storms, severe weather, whether it's hurricanes, tornadoes, wild fires. And one of the focuses my agency is going to have is, how can we start to reduce the impacts of these events as they continue to grow?"
The FEMA official underscored just how unusual the weather was this weekend, according to the Huffington Post: "We do see tornadoes in December, that part is not unusual. But at this magnitude, I don't think we have ever seen one this late in the year," she said. "But it's also historic. Even the severity and the amount of time this tornado or these tornadoes spent on the ground is unprecedented."
Tornadoes usually last only a few minutes when thunderstorm updrafts lose energy. But once Friday night's storms formed, experts said unprecedented strong wind shear appeared to have prevented the twisters from dissipating â resulting in a disaster that lasted hours and traveled more than 200 miles at over 50 miles per hour.
In fact, the Times reports that the state of Kentucky witnessed the longest distance ever covered by a single tornado in U.S. history.
The head of America's Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) "says the agency has seen a rise in intense storms and severe weather patterns that it anticipates to continue as a result of climate change," reports Insider. Speaking on morning news shows on Sunday, Deanne Criswell shared the agency's plans to prepare for increasing rates of deadly storms as the country faces the "crisis of our generation."
"This is going to be our new normal," Criswell said on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper...
Criswell's remarks come after severe storms and tornadoes ripped through six states, killing an estimated 80 people in Kentucky in what the state's governor, Andy Beshear, said on Saturday "is likely to be the most severe tornado outbreak in our state's history." They also follow a year marked by historic storms that caused unprecedented damage across the country, including winter storms that left large swaths of Texas without power and killed an estimated 210 people, rampant forest fires on the West Coast that have produced harmful smoke traveling thousands of miles across the nation, and severe hurricanes that ravaged much of the East Coast this spring....
"There's going to be a lot to learn from this event and the events that we saw through the summer," she told George Stephanopoulos [on his Sunday morning interview show]. "We're seeing more intense storms, severe weather, whether it's hurricanes, tornadoes, wild fires. And one of the focuses my agency is going to have is, how can we start to reduce the impacts of these events as they continue to grow?"
The FEMA official underscored just how unusual the weather was this weekend, according to the Huffington Post: "We do see tornadoes in December, that part is not unusual. But at this magnitude, I don't think we have ever seen one this late in the year," she said. "But it's also historic. Even the severity and the amount of time this tornado or these tornadoes spent on the ground is unprecedented."
Tornadoes usually last only a few minutes when thunderstorm updrafts lose energy. But once Friday night's storms formed, experts said unprecedented strong wind shear appeared to have prevented the twisters from dissipating â resulting in a disaster that lasted hours and traveled more than 200 miles at over 50 miles per hour.
In fact, the Times reports that the state of Kentucky witnessed the longest distance ever covered by a single tornado in U.S. history.
1925 (Score:5, Informative)
Tri-State tornado outbreak
12 significant tornados (plus many smaller ones), one of which travelled for 219 miles (the longest ever recorded) and killed 695 people (more were killed by other tornadoes in that system).
Re: 1925 (Score:2)
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Re: 1925 (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but that didn't happen in the middle of December.
How about Dec 18-20, 1957? 37 tornadoes, including an F5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: 1925 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: 1925 (Score:2)
We have significantly better tech (Score:2, Interesting)
So basically after a hundred years of technological advancement we still got our asses handed to us. I think that's a pretty good indication that this round of storms was worse.
Re: We have significantly better tech (Score:3)
They are not âoeentirely randomâ. (Score:4, Interesting)
1. There is a significant differential in seasonal occurrence, just google âoeus tornado count by monthâ. May:Dec long term avg (60 yrs) tornado count is 10:1
2. Tornadoes are the product of some very particular conditions and causes, most significantly atmospheric instability usually seen in cumulonimbus clouds causing violent downdrafts. We can see cumulonimbus clouds coming for hours, sometimes days, but tornadoes, unlike other cyclones, typically only last for minutes. That makes their exact occurrence hard to predict because of their short duration, not because they donâ(TM)t announce their arrival. They do. You typically have warnings (conditions are right) on the scale of hours, watches (you could see one presently) on the scale of minutes. For met labs, certain doppler radar signatures are reliable (if over-) predictors of tornadoes. Walking around on the ground, if you have hail, then you have the conditions needed to create a tornado, but they may not form. The key to the cloud systems that breed them is instability. And climate change is driving several scales of extremes in temperature which is how you get unstable columns and systems of air, as well as larger storm systems overall.
Re: They are not âoeentirely randomâ. (Score:4, Insightful)
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One off freak events happen. This is part of a long term trend that continues year after year.
Re:1925 (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that hasn't been demonstrated. An increasing amount of various severe weather phenomena are indeed correlated with increasing global warming, but tornadoes aren't among them. Weather scientists think it's possible that there is a correlation, but tornadoes are too rare for there to be enough data to establish a trend.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
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Someone should tell him the elections is over, Trump lost, therefore he can take down the banner.
As someone who lives in the midwest (Score:5, Informative)
Re: As someone who lives in the midwest (Score:2)
Re: As someone who lives in the midwest (Score:2, Insightful)
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Meteorologists consider all of December as winter - north of the tropics, anyway. That's reasonable, since the first three weeks of December (still astronomical autumn) are typically much colder than the first three weeks of March (still astronomical winter)
Re: As someone who lives in the midwest (Score:2)
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The issue isn't freak events, it's a sustained increase in incidence and severity.
Re: As someone who lives in the midwest (Score:2)
Editors! (Score:3)
1) It's not actually winter yet. Winter does not start until the solstice, which is still about a week off.
2) "Tornado's" is not the plural form of tornado. The correct word is "tornadoes".
Re:Editors! (Score:4, Informative)
Meteorological winter
However, at the Met Office, we often use a meteorological definition of the seasons. By the meteorological calendar, the first day of winter is always 1 December; ending on 28 (or 29 during a Leap Year) February.
Meteorological seasons consist of splitting the seasons into four periods made up of three months each. These seasons are split to coincide with our Gregorian calendar, making it easier for meteorological observing and forecasting to compare seasonal and monthly statistics.
The seasons are defined as spring (March, April, May), summer (June, July, August), autumn (September, October, November) and winter (December, January, February).
source [metoffice.gov.uk]
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There is at least one mistake in your corrections
1) Meteorologists (north of the tropics) consider all of December to be winter, as the beginning of December is colder than the beginning of March.
So, while your definition of winter is astronomically correct, it's not the only definition, and so the headline is not wrong about that, even if e
Meteorological Winter (Score:2)
December 1 through February 28.
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1) It's not actually winter yet. Winter does not start until the solstice, which is still about a week off.
It's -15C where I am and the ground has been covered by snow for almost a month.
I can assure you that winter has started.
It is the Auduban Society's fault. (Score:4, Funny)
People how long will it be before you realize the dangers of protecting these butterflies? Yes, they look pretty, Yes, they look harmless. But it is the flapping of butterfly wings in the Amazon rainforest that creates tornadoes in Texas. It is science people, science!
Ask these tree-huggers why they are protecting things that are dangerous to human beings? They deny it out right. These butterfly effect denialists have to be called into account. What next? Small pox virus protection and rehabilitation Society?
Now these marauding hordes of butterflies have thrived and expanded so much they are spawning so many more tornadoes. This entire climate change thing is basically billions and billions of blistering blue butterflies buffeting the atmosphere.
Don't blame me. I am on the side of science. Blame the denialists.
Re: It is the Auduban Society's fault. (Score:3)
Just you wait if they ever find out who caused it (Score:2)
They'll be furious!
Protective windbreak forest belts (Score:5, Interesting)
In 50s and 60s the extensive forest belts were created in the USSR and since then there are practically no tornadoes in those parts.
Even now, when the land again becomes private property people do not eliminate these forest belts, but upkeep and repair them.
Here are some reading on the subject: https://books.google.ch/books?... [google.ch]
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What, forests? Are you a green communist or what? Good capitalists take everything they can get now (which includes cutting down forests) and damn the consequences!
Re: Protective windbreak forest belts (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't think a windbreak will stop a determined weather pattern that generates a tornado that runs 216 miles on the ground. I am for reforestation as a watershed and C02 sink.
No aid for Kentucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Rand Paul has repeatedly whined that FEMA shoudl be disbanded and has voted against every bill for disaster aid which has come through whenever a hurricane strikes the U.S.
Now he comes hat in hand asking President Biden for aid to help Kentucky when a single tornado comes through.
If Paul is so hepped on local services doing the leg work then let him walk the walk. Let the people of Kentucky foot the bill for the clean up instead of the U.S. taxpayers.
Either that, or on bended knee he can kiss the hand of President Biden before receiving the aid. That's what the last guy did.
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‘Our hearts are broken.’ [kentucky.com] McConnell, Paul back Beshear’s request for federal storm help.
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The article you link to states the reason for his opposition: he doesn't oppose disaster relief, he just insists we use already budgeted money for that purpose rather than new deficit spending. It's not an unreasonable proposition.
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Rand Paul has repeatedly whined that FEMA shoudl be disbanded and has voted against every bill for disaster aid which has come through whenever a hurricane strikes the U.S.
Now he comes hat in hand asking President Biden for aid to help Kentucky when a single tornado comes through.
If Paul is so hepped on local services doing the leg work then let him walk the walk. Let the people of Kentucky foot the bill for the clean up instead of the U.S. taxpayers.
~43% of Kentuckians voted against Rand Paul. Saddling them with both Rand Paul and a lack of disaster aid seems needlessly cruel.
Either that, or on bended knee he can kiss the hand of President Biden before receiving the aid. That's what the last guy did.
You mean Christie? He thanked Obama for the federal response, but Obama never made that a precondition of aid.
Or the "last guy" is Trump, who indeed tried to demand displays of fealty in exchange for aid, but that's hardly a good precedent to follow.
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Kentuckyians (?) deserve help just like every other disaster-torn region.
The fact that Rand Paul is just a shitty human being doesn't invalidate that.
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This comes up pretty much EVERY time a person protests the status quo of our system and then tries to use one of the services they're upset about.
(They never stop trying to crucify Ayn Rand over collecting welfare.)
Fact is, you can protest an unfair or corrupt system but still realize that while you're forced to deal with it, you may as well try to get whatever benefits you can from it when you qualify for them!
IMO, Paul is correct. FEMA should be disbanded, along with lots of other Federal agencies. But mo
Rand Paul is despicable, but they are Americans fi (Score:2)
rst. This is the heart of the problem with modern politics.
Everything is viewed through a party lens. These are, often literally, your brothers. Saddling all the people who voted against this ass hat with these decisions is just as reprehensible as what they do.
I imagine Putin loves that no one pulls this shit on his country, same with Xi Jing Hitler.
Let him lose an election over it, not people caught in the crossfire's lives. Also fuck Mitch McConnell, just for being.
CCP ... (Score:4, Funny)
US Blames This Winter's Severe Tornado's on Climate Change
Well, at least they are not blaming everything on the Chinese Communist Party just for a change.
Tornados??? (Score:5, Informative)
Te plural of "tornado" is "tornadoes" last I checked.
Of course, if you're talking about the property of the tornado (i.e. the torrnado's lunchbox), you got it right, and I apologize...
C'mon, editors gotta edit better than that....
Of course (Score:2)
Greengrocer's (Score:2)
We are down from a normal year on tornadoes (Score:3)
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/ [noaa.gov]
Usually we get 1400, this year we got a little over 1200
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Good site, but look at the "Annual Averages: Tornadoes by State" part of it. 30 yr 20 yr 10 yr averages. It's going up a lot in recent years for all the states in the center of tornado alley. Basically Texas and Colorado and again on some of the far eastern states are having less tornadoes recently, but all the center states are having way more tornadoes. Tennessee for example averaged 25 tornadoes for 30 years... but the recent 10 years is averaging 36 tornadoes... that's over a 40% increase for that state
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Most of that is better reporting, people with access to cellphones, better radars ect.
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To get storms you need solar insolation (preferably in the morning) , moisture at low levels and cool air above. If texas is getting dryer (which the west probably plays a factor in that with its drought, then you would get less storms.
Winter's Tornado's (Score:3)
This Winter's Severe Tornado's on Climate Change
Winter's -- correct use of apostrophe
Tornado's -- Tornadoes, incorrect use of apostrophe
In other news... (Score:2)
A consensus of scientists is that in addition to water being wet, its wetness is attributed to climate change.
Lost sight of the main point (Score:2)
Throwing climate science in the middle of it just muddies the waters.
Whether or not you agree with the origin premise, there are only so many broken records and so many "one in a century" events that you need to stack before you do declare a new normal.
That needs dealing with. Origin is philosophy and politics at the point, no matter where the datapoints.
EF5s: 1954-74=36, 2000-2020=4 (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/weathercha... [twitter.com]
Male Slashdotter even having a GF (Score:2)
Certainly unprecedented -- must be Climate Change.
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And the fix for Climate Change is to fully enact the entirety of the Democratic party agenda. How convenient.
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Not that rare. However high intensity tornado activity ebbs and flows. There were 7 F5s in a 24 hour period in 1974.
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You need to throw in all the property lost to flooding and wildfires as well. Going to be a tough sell too once that grand total gets up to say one-seventh the annual US military budget.
"A citation for that [noaa.gov]". (Only includes events with > 1 billion USD in damages, and not all of 2021.)
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying God did it is just the same thing
Stop being a moron. One of the long predicted things about global warming is more severe storms, and more record highs in temperature.
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wholly shit. I thought Slashdot was beyond the weather vs climate (disguised as a "there existed a previous record") debate. Good work showing there are still stupid people with mod points.
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Wholly shit. I thought Slashdot was beyond the weather vs climate (disguised as a "there existed a previous record") debate. Good work showing there are still stupid people with mod points.
I've said before that I think the editors may be using their unlimited mod points A LOT to steer conversations here. And this is social media, of a sort. Maybe the editors' mandate is to do in miniature what Facebook has been doing for so long - stirring up indignation and outrage in order to drive engagement.
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, that's what I do when I have mod points. I carefully analyze the thread, determine how best to drive engagement, then strategically apply said mod points to achieve the desired effect in the target audience.
But when I don't have mod points I don't even read TFA, and sometimes not even TFH. I post trivial, some might even say stupid, replies in the hopes that some stranger might mod them funny and validate my mediocre existence.
I imagine the editors as a larger version of myself, but with the ability to add dupes tacked on.
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there is plenty of evidence of climate change, but citing a common occurrence to us living in the actual regions is armchair quarterbacking by a moron living somewhere else
Nonsense, numbers of tornados are a very easy metric for anyone from anywhere to observe. If the number of tornados and their intensity have been going up for the last several decades (as they have been) then that strongly suggests something is causing this change as opposed to it just being random luck. As of right now I don't know of anything other than climate change that could be causing such a sustained increase.
Discussing the minutia of California weather patterns with a local vintner is not at all th
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Spring is typically considered tornado season, but tornadoes can occur at any time throughout the year. The Southeast experiences a second peak in tornadic activity in the fall and early winter, and winter tornadoes are not uncommon.
...
Similarly, tornadoes can happen at any time of the day. Nighttime tornado events are especially common in the Southeast, where the ingredients for storms are different and more conducive to nocturnal tornadoes than in “Tornado Alley” in the Great Plains.
Tornadic storms in the Southeast are often powered by an abundance of wind shear. They do not rely as heavily on rising warm, humid air that creates atmospheric instability – conditions that require daytime heating of the earth’s surface and are more prevalent in the spring.
But nighttime tornadoes can be especially deadly. More fatalities tend to occur because people often don’t receive warning communications when they are sleeping. Storm spotting is more difficult in the dark, and people are more likely to be in more vulnerable housing, such as mobile homes, at night than during the day when they are at work in sturdier buildings.
Most of the metrics you are trying to use are skewed by other factors. About the only thing you can track is frequency. They changed the scale in 2007 going to the Enhanced Fujita scale, which is not apples-to-apples to pre-2007 storms. Thats a very limited data s
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Saying God did it is just the same thing
Stop being a moron. One of the long predicted things about global warming is more severe storms, and more record highs in temperature.
But tornadoes are not storms. It is very likely that the pattern of tornadoes is changing due to climate change but it is not clear whether the US will get more or less tornadoes due to climate change. The fourth National Climate Assessment says:
"Some types of extreme weather (e.g. Rainfall and extreme heat) can be directly attributed global warming. Other types of extreme weather, such as Tornadoes, are also exhibiting changes which may be linked to climate change, but scientific understanding isn’t detailed enough to project direction and magnitude of future change."
Note that the knowledge is not detailed enough to project whether the number and severity of tornadoes will increase or decrease and by how much. And from a National Geographic article about tornadoes and climate change:
There is also evidence to suggest that tornado patterns have shifted geographically. The number of tornadoes in the states that make up Tornado Alley are falling, while tornado events have been on the rise in the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/tor
Re:Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, if you disagree with the assessment, please provide your own hypothesis, collect data and provide models explaining how your model better fits what is happening.
If you could prove that Climate Change is not a thing, nor it is human caused, and be able to support it against other scientific evidence, You would be a hero to the world, Gas an oil companies would pay you a lot of money, as you have erased a black mark in their history. Liberal groups would be your best friend, because you have shown that they don't need to split their resources fighting for climate change with their other issues they want to address. Conservative groups would love you because you have shown that they were right to not to do anything about it. A slew up low skill high paying jobs will open up again, in mining and drilling...
However, so far, all the evidence presented to me, supports climate change, being that I am a Computer Scientist and not a Climate Scientist, I probably should take their word for it, as long as they follow the scientific principals.
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Ok, if you disagree with the assessment, please provide your own hypothesis, collect data and provide models explaining how your model better fits what is happening.
If you could prove that Climate Change is not a thing, nor it is human caused, and be able to support it against other scientific evidence, You would be a hero to the world, Gas an oil companies would pay you a lot of money, as you have erased a black mark in their history. Liberal groups would be your best friend, because you have shown that they don't need to split their resources fighting for climate change with their other issues they want to address. Conservative groups would love you because you have shown that they were right to not to do anything about it. A slew up low skill high paying jobs will open up again, in mining and drilling...
However, so far, all the evidence presented to me, supports climate change, being that I am a Computer Scientist and not a Climate Scientist, I probably should take their word for it, as long as they follow the scientific principals.
Can't tell you much about the sources, but I can give you an article which seems to fit my expectations on climate change impact. The suggestions from this article are that the number of storms with tornadoes is decreasing, but the intensity (number of tornadoes) in any storm with tornadoes is increasing, with the overall trend more or less balancing out and the number of tornadoes not really changing.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/to... [carbonbrief.org]
I've always felt like more heat, more storms is too simplistic. Seems to
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Would you happen to have a citation for that? Where did you get the data from?
Thanks
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:5, Informative)
Would you happen to have a citation for that? Where did you get the data from?
Thanks
He obviously pulled it out of his ass.
The first google result is from NOAA [noaa.gov], providing data from 1950. Unsurprisingly, they have being increasing nationally. If you want Kentucky specifically, which should be a bit less useful data (weather patterns don't really care about state lines) here you go [courier-journal.com]. They went up from 38 for the 50's decade, and 84 in the 60's to 246 in the 00's and 342 in the 10's.
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Improvement in detection ability and spread does not an increase make. So the only reliable measure among changing technology and human expansion would be to look at the biggest ones which would have been easily measurable at the advent of radar monitoring to see if they have had a increase in occurrence. Which they haven't.
https://weather.com/safety/tor... [weather.com]
Re: Saying God did it is just the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
Some how I think radar monitoring was plenty mature for the huge jump between the 2000's and the 2010's.
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https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publi... [noaa.gov]
"From 1975 to 1995 (EB10), and through the remainder of the F era, the yearly mean was about 0.25, with a general decrease throughout our 12-yr F period also evident in a 5-yr running value (Fig. 3). The decline implies a reduction of F41 by approximately 40% in the 2000s that seems unlikely to be meteorologically driven, given the relative consistency in pre-WSR-8
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Except for the fact that there is a measurable and observable effect of the change in climate with the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.
As well how we understand the current extreme weather is caused, would be collaborate with the effect of climate change.
I am sorry that you personally feel guilty, or singled out accused for climate change, and you probably would be happier in a world where you are considered the superior form of life infallible and the pinnacle of morality. However we
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I actually live near a Mennonite (think Amish light) community. Where their businesses and homes are powered by Solar. have Internet Access and Cell phones, (Electric Cars are still considered too expensive and the models are too much a luxury item for them)
However it fits well with their religion. Having power generated themselves without the need of the support from the government, using Internet and Cell phones work communicate with each other and with customers and clients.
In fact the Amish themselves
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The people talking about climate change sound like they're lying because they're lying about the part where they do want to fix it, instead of just profiting and getting more power thru the panic.
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Re: Well it only stands to reason (Score:2, Insightful)
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The more things that are blamed on climate change which are clearly not any different than before the climate change narrative the easier it is to call Bullshit on climate change.
Meh, After dealing with deniers for a while now, I've come to the conclusion that they just like it warmer, and they do not care about others that it impacts.
They'll call bullshit on basic laws of physics, and when their fuel bills are lower, they don't care if sea levels rise, or tornadoes kill other people.
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I think you mean they call bullshit on all Armageddon hysterics. The climate change Chicken Littles are just the latest ones in a long line and they are welcome to take their place in the bin next to their predecessors. I think there is room next to the imminent ice agers and right behind the out-of-oil-by-2000 crackpots. You'll have to ask the Rapture people to scoot over a bit to make room as long as the Y2K and 2012 true believers don't mind.
I agree that the kooks are all kooks.
But to deny the basic physics that notes that a gaseous mixture has energy retention characteristics directly related to the composition of that atmosphere is placing the deniers in the same kook realm.
Because that's in a direct neighborhood of Zero point energy, harmonic crystal energies earth created by an angry Desert God in October of 4004 B.C.E., and perpetual motion. Denial of basic physics is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary proof - and
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No information is gained when all weather is blamed on climate change. Only statistical anomalies matter, and those only appear over decades as tiny increases, all that would be expected.
There was more linking in the referenced article that shows the headline is simply sensationalist clickbait. https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
What these folks are saying is that the conditions that spawned this tornado in mid December are the same conditions that would have been expected in late spring.
And since these unusual conditions are becoming more common, we might expect to see more events like this.
And you don't need to blame anything. If you end up with out of season weather patterns of war
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Here is a quote from your article:
"Warm weather was a crucial ingredient in this tornado outbreak, but whether climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, meteorologists say."
That says the opposite of the sensationalist headline.
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Here is a quote from your article:
"Warm weather was a crucial ingredient in this tornado outbreak, but whether climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, meteorologists say."
That says the opposite of the sensationalist headline.
Surely. There is always a problem with trying to claim any one weather event was caused by GW. Crazy weather happens all the time. There is nothing to stop a record cold event happening during a record warm year. The other way as well, but I remember no record cold years.
We had a really cold snap back in the mid 90's here in PA. -23 degrees, and two days of that sort of weather. The rest of the winter was pretty mild.
Then I think it was a year later, we got really hammered with snow. I mean Hammered. It
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Now discarding the crazy stuff, it's not too difficult to see trends - even in individual households.
Maybe. I looked up some tornado data and I couldn't find any obvious trend. If you can find some, I'd be interested in seeing it.
There is a trend here where I live to use less and less fuel in my snow blower. I went from 3 or more tanks a year, to the last few years, less than a tank, I have to siphon the remaining fuel out at the end of the season.
I'm not sure what this means exactly because you didn't put any time frame on it. Here in California, we are used to decade-long droughts switching to multi-year floods. It's just the way the weather is.
Not that I'm arguing against the reality of CO2 radiative absorption, that is well supported science. I'd just like to see better evidence of attribution before panicking the way t
Re: But (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes but sounding the global warming panic button is not helpful.
After a lot of discussions, I'm pretty certain that we are going to go forward just as we have been doing, and whatever repercussions that happen are going to happen. Deniers will claim people are pushing the panic button, and merely wait until it snows, then in unison, bray "So much for Global warming".
I really doubt that stopping now will have that much of an effect on what happens anyhow. The scientists who believe that we can slow things down are pretty naive IMO. The radiative forcing we've done since the mid 1700's has pumped enough energy into the atmosphere that we are now reaching a point of instability. And that energy has to be shed somewhere. We're on a roller coaster now.
Re: (Score:2)
IMO hurricanes and tornadoes are mother natures way of equalizing temps.
Not just an opinion, but exactly correct.
Even in the midwest, the week after a hurricane is some of the nicest weather we see.
Certainly the Weather here in PA is gorgeous. Crystal clear atmosphere, heading into the low 50's this afternoon. The aftermath.
I dont think the planet is doomed. But will mother nature shake us off like fleas on a dog? Most likely. Its likely we are doomed to return to horse-and-buggy technology for those that remain. Some knowledge and discoveries will stay, those that do not require adv technology to manufacture.
A distinct possibility. As more instability occurs, some places that were temperate or well watered might change, and we might see an increase in refugees. perhaps even war. But I suspect that the carrying capacity of the earth will be altered. Note I've outlined ways that even in that brave new world, we could provide needs to many more pe
Re: (Score:2)
No shit! People need to blame something, anything that makes their political points. In the meantime, there are bodies to be buried and lives to be rebuilt. That's where the focus needs to be.
I've lived in Tornado Alley almost all of my life and you just have a plan and get under cover or out of the way when the sirens hit.