2/11/2011

So where is the more extreme weather?

Man-made global warming advocates have predicted over and over that man-made global warming should lead to more severe storms. This piece in the WSJ asks: "is it true?"

To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.
As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.
We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.
Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change—as it always has. . . .

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1 Comments:

Blogger Chas said...

Markie Marxist sez: "I don't care what's going on with the weather! People need to hand over total control of their lives to the government now!
Okay, okay, so we have keep up the weather ruse to persuade people to do it, but let's at least pick something and stick with it! I can't keep up with this warming/changing/extreming thing anymore!
I know we have to keep the rubes off balance because the whole thing is a ruse, but it's even making ME dizzy. Can't we just go back to the good old days of ramming government down people's throats, whether they liked it or not? Yeah, I know, they never liked it, but still . . . "

2/12/2011 5:26 AM  

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