Gore links Iowa floods and tornadoes to climate change, but makes a basic error on global temperature to evaporation linkage, plus he misses the real reason behind imagined tornado increases.
[Excerpt: In a recent article in the Des Moines Register, Al ] Gore attributed the historic floods that devastated Iowa in June to man-made emissions causing more water to evaporate from oceans, increasing average humidity worldwide. “In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic.” Gore told the crowd of 1,000 Democratic donors. “No one has ever seen a flood like this.” Gore also blamed climate change for increased tornadoes, including the one that leveled much of Parkersburg earlier this year. “Yes, we’ve always had tornadoes in Iowa and in Tennessee,” he said. “But they’re coming more frequently and they’re stronger.”
UAH satellite derived global temperature data. Click for a larger image
Current value for August 2008 is -0.010°C
According to our current scientific understanding of the water cycle and water vapor on Earth, the average residence time of water molecules in the troposphere (where evaporation and most weather occurs) is about 10 days.
Since the global temperature trend has been a negative slope since 2007, and is currently near the zero anomaly line, and with the short residence time of water vapor in the water cycle, Gore’s claimed “warming” could not be responsible for increased water vapor. If anything, water vapor in the water cycle would be less now.
Gore clearly doesn’t understand basic meteorology, much less climate.
Then there is Gore’s claim of “Yes, we’ve always had tornadoes in Iowa and in Tennessee,” he said. “But they’re coming more frequently and they’re stronger.” Well, the graph below says otherwise.
Graph from NWS/NOAA. Smaller (F1) tornadoes seem to be on the increase, but not larger ones (F2-F5). This is likely due to increased reporting from Doppler Radar, storm chasers, and news gathering. Small tornadoes that once went unnoticed are now often reported, and make the news.
Gore is flat wrong.
References:
1) Climatologist dismisses extreme weather predictions due to man-made warming as ‘complete nonsense’ – By Hydro-climatologist Stewart Franks, an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia. (LINK)
2) Another scientist dismisses fearmongers: Midwest Floods and ‘Completely Unjustified’ Climate Change Fear Mongering – June 22, 2008 – By Mike Smith is a certified consulting meteorologist and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society He is CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc., an AccuWeather Company, based in Wichita.) (LINK)
3) U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report shows Hurricanes declining, NO increases in drought, tornadoes, thunderstorms, heat-waves – June 20, 2008 – (LINK)
4) Going Down: Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events (LINK)
5) Analysis in peer-reviewed journal finds COLD PERIODS – not warm periods – see INCREASE in floods, droughts, storms, famine – April 24, 2008 – (LINK)
6) Increasing tornadoes or better information gathering? – February 8th, 2008 – (LINK)
Anthony:
Although warming has leveled off for about a decade, it’s leveled off at a WARM temperature. So although the connections Gore tries to make are tennuos at best, your criticism is just wrong.
REPLY: Leonard, I think maybe you missed something really important. or perhaps I need to clarify.
The June 2008 global temperature anomaly (when the floods occurred) was less than in June 1988, when Jim Hansen “sounded the alarm” before congress about “global warming”. Explain then how that June 2008 global temperature value is “leveled off to a WARM temperature”, and how it affected the short term water vapor evaporation then.
See this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/02/what-a-difference-20-years-makes/
-Anthony
Iowa just happened to be right in the middle of where very cold spring air from the north was meeting the warm air from the south. Large supercell thunderstorms built at the confluence and heavy rain ensued. The system continued for weeks and thunderstorms continued building afterward since there was so much moisture on the ground.
The only unusual thing about it was how much below normal the cool air from the north was (2.0C below normal for the month of June immdeiately north of Iowa) and how long the weather system lasted. So if anything, it was cooling that caused it.
There he goes again, making like an ambulance chaser, seeking to cash in on anyone else’s misfortune. The environmental activism that Gore represents is going to find it to be rough going in the near future as Americans turn their attention to financial concerns.
The data does not support the AGW argument and yet stil the zealots flock to websites like this desperate to make a link.
The initial comment on the article is easily dealt with by Anthony…it appears that some people just dont’t want to understand.
The fact that Gore will not allow scientists into his speaking engagements says it all.
A dumb, stupid or downright corrupt media are responsible for this, it has gone on far too long.
In the UK we now have a Ministry for “Climate Change”….it is about as credible as Monty Python’s famous sketch of the “Ministry of Silly Walks”.
James
Every time Gore opens his mouth he makes erroneous or misleading statements,
whats new? It used to be called lying or fraud. Now lying and fraud are considered
o.k. as long as it’s done for the greater good.
Remember we are just the little people we don’t understand all this.
Better to let a failed politician with delusions tell us how to do it the right
and moral way.
Off topic but a good read about saint Al’s beloved carbon trading.
You know the one, same one that’s about to tank in the E.U.
http://darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/01/carbon-credit-trading-puts-global.html
He’s still stuck with the belief that warmer temperatures would raise the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere such that the feedback from water vapor would multiply the initial forcing of temperature by CO2, and that simply hasn’t happened. Neither relative nor absolute humidity kept up with the temperature rise and it illustrates a huge flaw of the models.
Of course, we’re cooling now, and lots of the warmistas haven’t adjusted. Why didn’t he just blame in on the La Nina, which is taking the heat for the recent global cooling? I’m tellin’ ya, the dissonance crescendoes.
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Misguided government is ultimately responsible for this AGW fear and it is further perpetrated and exploited by greedy people (Gore), corporations, scientific organizations or other institutions. Unfortunately government will eventually have to correct the mess that will cause more of a mess!
Carbon cap and trade=junk bonds
No one is going to sink dollars into this unless they can use the loss as a tax write-off. In this day and age of poor returns and reckless investments, my hunch is that there will be lots more caution. At the very least, cap and trade schemes are ripe territory for corruption, and right now, voters aren’t in a forgiving mood after bailing out poorly run and reckless banks. If Gore comes begging with hat in hand to bail out his company, I will be the first to suggest tar and feathers.
Al Gore (and others) no longer recognize different magnitudes, locations, and time scales at which the “warming” occurred or is supposed to occur. They don’t want to know or look at any details. They find it unnecessary. The debate (and science) is over.
He clearly doesn’t find it necessary to look whether the temporal “fingerprint” of any argument works and his Democratic Party comrades on the dinner are the least likely to tell him about these subtleties.
So the words “[global] warming” are used as universal, binary, qualitative, non-quantifiable magic words, much like God (or Devil?) was used in many religions. God and global warming are omnipresent (global) and omnipotent, except that God does all the good things and global warming does all the bad things.
I guess they won’t be interested in the time intervals in which the observed warming or non-warming could or couldn’t affect tornadoes or the time scales associated with the water cycle. What’s important for them is that there are many other people who believe the same beliefs about the omnipotency of global warming – even though the latter hasn’t existed at least for 10 years which is why it couldn’t have been responsible for any changes that occurred in the last decade.
It’s a new form of religion.
IceFree: Have you noticed that Democrat candidates/holders of high office are serial liars? Clinton, Gore, Obama, Biden, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Boxer, Waxman, come to mind.
Why is anyone really surprised that Al Gore makes inaccurate statements about the weather and climate??? If you objectively look at his biography he clearly does not have the educational background and training to make any statements about the climate, let alone be the self-appointed Mother Teresa of the Global Warming movement. As a boy he worked on the Gore’s family tobacco farm. After high school he earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and then served in Vietnam. He later went to law school and then became a career politician. How does someone with that biography become qualified to comment on the climate?
Al Gore is as predictable as the weather.
After stripping away the ignorant comments and ideas on both sides of this issue we are left with the realization that (gasp) it is really about money and worse, partisan politics.
Taxing greater polluters at a higher rate, and rewarding those who pollute less is an anathema to Repostriches. It is entirely predictable (yet disheartening) to have this turned into a political issue when it should be a cultural one.
None of us will be on this planet when the effects of action or inaction by this generation or the next are felt. The legacy we leave to our descendants should be the driving force behind any effort to mitigate the damage done by climage change.
Those who are most vocal about the issue have only a political or financial stake in the outcome, and I find that despicable. To all reading this, examine your own motives honestly. Why do you care about global warming? If it is a political or financial issue for you, then you have joined the Repostrich club.
Ostriches put their heads in the sand when confronted with a crisis.
Repostriches stick theirs in quite a different place altogether.
Easton, MD Star Democrat – September 29, 2008
(Reporting on a panel presentation by scientists from Horn Point Laboratory and the Program Manager for Climate Change Policy of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.)
“In Maryland, temperature records suggest the average temperature has increased over the last 100 years and it has increased even more significantly over the last 30 years. The annualtemperature increase is about 1 degree F per year and about 1.8 degree F per year in waters of the Chesapeake Bay.”
Seems it’s two orders of magnitude worse than even Al thought. Chesapeake Blue Crabs in a few years will be red when caught.
Anthony,
It is unfortunately not a matter of Al Gore not understanding this or that. Rather, it is a matter of not letting any inconvenient fact come in the way of his AGW/ACC dogma. Nothing is allowed to be seen as questioning the message, not even last year’s UK High Court ruling that found Gore’s movie to contain 9 outright falsehoods and 3 gross misrepresentations. So what you wind up with is a mantric chant telling us that “the earth is flat because it is round”.
Someone posted this link here:
http://darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/01/carbon-credit-trading-puts-global.html
And it is something I wrote a while back.
I am based in New Zealand and I am very concerned about Gore and his mates and their continued brainwashing of the left media and a large amount of the population, including our politicians.
I am heartened to see though that there are thinking individuals such as Anthony that are writing about the truth on this “climate change” scam.
We have gone way past you guys in lunacy here and have passed this bill under urgency weeks before an election that will tax us for emitting carbon:
http://darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-ets-bill-is-fundamentally-flawed.html
It will cost Kiwis at least 6000 kiwi dollars per family each per year.
The global warming religion is about tax and control NOT science and people like Gore need to be exposed for the liars that they clearly are.
Finally, here is a “humorous” take on where all this madness might take us.
Good on you Tony for making a stand.
Regards, Darren from Political Animal
And no one has ever altered the courses of rivers before, and built cities in flood plains…
about RIDGE RESIDENT’s comment – I’ve been reading but not participating for a long time but this idiotic comment just deserves a rebuttal. So here I am.
“Repostriches stick theirs in quite a different place altogether.”
And liberals feel rather than think. There’s no climate crisis, you are conflating feelings and emotions with facts.
What part of it hasn’t warmed in 10 years and climate isn’t following the computer climate models don’t you get?
What part of “Gore doesn’t understand basic meteorology” don’t you get?
Apparently you don’t either. Why debate facts when labeling, name calling, and other juvie tactics that are the mainstay of liberals works for you?
Nature is gonna kick you in the butt.
As Bill points out, slightly cooler-than-normal weather in the Great Plains will make thunderstorms worse, provided there is still the same amount of warm moist air from the Gulf and cyclonic energy in low pressure storm fronts. Ironically, for those who drink the kool-aid, this will just be further proof of ‘global warming.’ What they don’t get is that warmer air is more stable air, as is drier air versus humid air. I used to live in the Valley in California, off Hwy 99, before I moved to the Southeast. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw thunderstorms there in one summer. Here, in North Carolina, they are a regular (if not regular enough) occurrance. The entire difference is the waters to which each state is located near. Warm humid air makes for better storm conditions than cooler drier air. But when the two clash in that great mixing bowl of the Great Plains, the results are explosive. If the upper atmosphere cools (not ‘global warming) and the lower atmosphere warms (due to surface warming), then we could really see some sights, but it still will not be due to global warming. Temperature, humidity, and pressure…those differences make all our weather.
The only ‘green’ Al Gore has his eyes on is the kind with dead presidents on top side.
As mentioned by Kim (10:48:11) relative humidity has not kept up with temperature. NASA data shows decreasing relative humidity at all levels since 1948.
here
If Dr. Singer is correct that water vapor and CO2 are responsible for 95% and 3.6% of the Greenhouse Effect, respectively, then the entire 30% increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1880 is swamped by declining humidity. Based on this one could argue that the Greenhouse Effect has weakened since 1948.
here
Ridge Resident,
First, everybody has a political stake in anything that affects this nation or this globe, including you, so spare us the lecture on partisan politics. We’re not the ones agitating for biofuels that are starving people because of higher global food prices, or the ones who want to tax energy companies via the ‘carbon tax’ so that everybody’s electricty bills are higher, nor the ones that want to deface private property in the name of ‘global warming.’ You base your assumptions on global warming being a fact. Well, what if it isn’t? What if you and Gore and Hansen and all that crowd are wrong? Have you ever considered that, even just hypothetically? If you are, it makes all this nonsense I mentioned above an enormous burden on global society and a rip-off for the American taxpayer. As for me, it is about money too. I like having some. Higher food and energy prices do not do that for me. The way we are going now, people like me will have to have food stamps just to buy groceries, but at least your conscience will be assuaged by the fact that we have somehow stopped global warming. Reasonable people can disagree on the facts, but you illustrate that you are not reasonable because you are gripped by the fear that AGW generates. If none of us are left? That could happen even without global warming. And just in case you hadn’t noticed, insulting people does little to help them in listening and understanding your point of view. Since I haven’t seen you on here before, unless you are using an alias, I assume you are new here; therefore, you really haven’t earned the right, if it can be earned at all, to speak to the ‘regulars’ around here like that. It’s called respect, look it up in the time you haven’t devoted to acting like an idiot.
Ridge Resident, assuming your message is refering to CO2 as a pollutant, its effect and magnitude of effect needs to be determined. What many of us sceptics don’t like about the current state of affairs is the religious faith Lubos points out as necessary to believe what Gore et al purvey. It is obvious to those paying attention that much of the ‘measured’ warming is due to affected measurement by UHI and adjustments to these questionable measurements. If you want people to agree to throw Trillions of dollars at a problem, it is best to determine if it is a problem, and what is the cost to what benefit. It is obvious too that Gore’s fantasy is not going to come true from CO2 in the next few millenia. This isn’t putting one’s head in the sand, it is becoming educated enough to make a determination rather than following with blind faith someone who wants your money if you will only believe in their scam. Your reward for doing thus is being able to think you are a concerned citizen, the secret is you don’t have to pay for it, you can think what you like, so far. Gore’s genius, is to choose an indeterminable
threat, advertize it well, and figure out how to capitalize on it.
The Carbon Trading collapse will make the current market turmoil look like playschool by comparison.
I am not sure a single sentence in the Des Moines Register is a reliable source. Nor do I trust graphs from ICECAP with no context. Kim, you may want to revise the difference between relative and specific humidity.
The audio of the speech is available from here. The ‘climate’ section is fairly short and starts at about 33 minutes in.
At no point does Mr Gore explicitly attribute these specific floods to climate change, however he points out that the floods form part of a pattern of ‘500 year’ flooding records being broken around the world in recent years. If you load a dice to roll more sixes, it is impossible to attribute any individual six to the loading of the dice, nonetheless, sixes become more common.
Here’s the relevant passage: “The scientists have warned us for years that the accumulation of global warming pollution in the atmosphere is trapping more of sun’s heat and raising temperatures and in the process evaporation more moisture off the oceans and the warmer air holds more of the moisture. The average humidity worldwide, everywhere in the world, has gone up dramatically and when storm conditions present themselves more rainfall and snowfall falls at the same time and it causes historic flooding.”
Has Gore got the science right? it seems so.
We identify a significant global-scale increase in surface specific humidity that is attributable mainly to human influence. Specific humidity is found to have increased in response to rising temperatures, with relative humidity remaining approximately constant. These changes may have important implications, because atmospheric humidity is a key variable in determining the geographical distribution and maximum intensity of precipitation, the potential maximum intensity of tropical storms.
Hope this is useful.
REPLY: Sorry but you’re wrong. The data cited in that paper from Phil Jones et al is only to 1999-2000 in the graphs and tables. Thus your assertion that it is relevant to the present flooding issue is wrong. The fact is that we are globally cooler now, your argument and Gore’s simply don’t hold up with current data.
“Specific humidity is found to have increased in response to rising temperatures, with relative humidity remaining approximately constant.” Thus with the cooler temperature of the present, we have less specific humidity, including June 2008 when flooding happened. – Anthony
Gore botched the science badly. – Anthony
This article of mine sets out some relevant information particularly the point that severity of storms is linked to increased differentials and not higher or lower temperatures overall.
Hence the important factor is the RATE of warming or cooling which dictates the size of temperature differentials that can develop.
We are currently in a global cooling mode so if we are getting more or bigger storms and precipitation then that is a reflection of the speed of cooling.
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1458