From Stanford University
Preparing for climate change-induced weather disasters
The news sounds grim: mounting scientific evidence indicates climate change will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather that affects larger areas and lasts longer.
However, we can reduce the risk of weather-related disasters with a variety of measures, according to Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow Chris Field.
Field will discuss how to prepare for and adapt to a new climate at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston. Field’s talk, “Weather Extremes: Coping With the Changing Risks,” will be part of a symposium called “Media: Communicating Science, Uncertainty and Impact” 3-4:30, Feb. 16, room 204 of the Hynes Convention Center.
While climate change’s role in tornadoes and hurricanes remains unknown, Field says, the pattern is increasingly clear when it comes to heat waves, heavy rains and droughts. Field explains that the risk of climate-related disaster is tied to the overlap of weather, exposure and vulnerability of exposed people, ecosystems and investments.
While this means that moderate extremes can lead to major disasters, especially in communities subjected to other stresses or in cases when extremes are repeated, it also means that prepared, resilient communities can manage even severe extremes.
During the past 30 years, economic losses from weather-related disasters have increased. The available evidence points to increasing exposure (an increase in the amount and/or value of the assets in harm’s way) as the dominant cause of this trend. Economic losses, however, present a very incomplete picture of the true impacts of disasters, which include human and environmental components. While the majority of the economic losses from weather-related disasters are in developed world, the overwhelming majority of deaths are in developing countries.
Withstanding these increasingly frequent events will depend on a variety of disaster preparations, early warning systems and well-built infrastructure, Field says. The most effective options tend to produce both immediate benefits in sustainable development and long-term benefits in reduced vulnerability. Solutions that emphasize a portfolio of approaches, multi-hazard risk reduction and learning by doing offer many advantages for resilience and sustainability. Some options may require transformation, including questioning assumptions and paradigms, and stimulating innovation.
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and the Melvin and Joan Lane professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford. He has been deeply involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 he was elected co-chair of Working Group 2 of the IPCC, which released a special report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” in 2012.
“Increasingly clear” when it comes to heat waves, heavy rains, and droughts, which means “all of these took place in similar or greater amounts in the past.” That is increasingly clear to anyone who studies climate history.
I am concerned that, entering a cooling period (it was -18C in Ottawa, Ontario this morning), that we will see a repeat of the extreme weather events of 50 to 70 years ago – I’ve mentioned this in other threads – droughts, floods, tornado activity, hurricane activity etc. It is perhaps overdue or at least coming due. This will feed into this extension of the CO2 blarney. We skeptics should be giving expected extreme weather developments based on cycles before these guys own the subject rather than smugly showing that these events are less than they used to be. This latter reactive approach is for the CAGW of several years ago. These guys are moving on and taking the intiative for the near future and they are certain to be “right”.
Top marks WUWT. You posted a news article promoting “the other team” with no editorial snark whatsoever. This would never, never, never, never EVER happen at Sks or desmogblog.
Hey Chris, let’s hear that “mounting scientific evidence” of climate change induced weather events.
Hogwash, there’s been no increase at all in extreme events. Must drive the warmistas mad, but there it is. So when Chris Field goes on about this kind of nonsense …
… he’s just blowing smoke from his nether regions. Nobody has shown any link between those weather events he lists and slight changes in the global average temperature, that’s pseudo-science at its worst.
w.
What kind of software did they use?
Mega-Lo-Mania and/or Utopia? (both old Amiga & Atari games …)
And apparently C. Field was involved in the “work” resulting in a political award …
The economic and health “disasters” of our “unnatural” weather are oddly restricted to the American mid-west, the Arctic polar bear habitat, and (possibly) a portion of Russia or the Ukraine. These are three places known to CNN. The rest of the world where man is directly in the path of weather, seems to have no news-worthy problems in a general weather sense.
I have seen not one report of new, 21st century, “extreme” weather drought reducing populations in Africa. Despite supposedly terrible conditions and a landscape sensitive to moisture, heat and wind, there are more Africans every day (despite all the wars that are not at all climate related). Without being racist, as a scientific thinking, I am forced to ask, “Are Africans now smaller and requiring less food and water than before, more tolerant of heat and/or cold? Should Darwin have focused on the Dark Continent rather than the islands of the South Seas?” It certainly is a wonder.
China: bad conditions there. I guess, well, with a global climate change, that would be the place to see it. Very large. Lots of people, close together. Famines? Heat-prostrations in the millions (anything significant in a population >1 billion effects millions, after all). Must have missed that Program.
How about South Americans: too much UV from the ozone hole driving epidemic blindness, not enough river action to keep them hydrated? Is the Amazon drying up (not being cut down, drying up), causing anaconda infestations in the swimming pools of the Brazilian elite?
Tuvalu and Vanuatu: I know they are building new airstrips, but do these airstrips have protective dikes around them? And hotels on the Polynesian islands: are they elevated on pillars to stay dry when the coming storm surges sweep inland? If these projects are designed to last more than 10 years, the rising seas must have informed the engineering plans.
Sarcasm. I guess I’m supposed to note this.
Apropos, possibly: A friend of mine complained that his new girlfriend’s name was spelled with a capital “I”: everything of importance in their life had to do with how “I” would be impacted. Is global warming an American spelling problem, that “global”, in the hallways of the activists, spelled “U.S.A”, or even, “Hollywood”?
“Preparing for climate change-induced weather disasters”
Surely, one should just take out more insurance with Munich Re?
good grief…..why do these people act like the dust bowl never happened
“Some options may require transformation, including questioning assumptions and paradigms…”
But if you question “assumptions and paradigms,” wouldn’t that make you a skeptic? Since when does the consensus crowd allow for that?
It gets worse. I’d call it the ‘Carnegie Institute for Science Stupidity’. A browse through their papers revealed this gem: “Counting carbon: pre-industrial emissions make a difference” – the claimed very significant effect of man’s CO2 on global warming during the LIA, “using advanced models”, of course. Generously however “The researchers note that their work is not intended to increase the blame on people living in the developing world today”
I gave a climate-science-related seminar at Stanford’s Department of Energy Resources and Engineering, just last Tuesday, February 12, on the accuracy of climate models. Here’s the official announcement, and here’s the title and abstract:
“No Certain Doom: On physical accuracy in projected global air temperatures
“The UN IPCC predicts that by 2100, human CO2 emissions could increase global surface air temperature by about 3 Celsius. The validity of this projection depends upon the physical accuracy of general circulation climate models (GCMs). However, model uncertainties or errors are never propagated into air temperature projections, which invariably lack physically valid error bars. This seminar will explore how GCMs project global air temperature. GCM cloud error will be described and propagated to produce a lower limit estimate of physical uncertainty in projections of future global air temperature. The extent of our knowledge of future climate will be clarified.”
About 70 people attended, and it all went pretty well. I made the case that theory-bias errors are never propagated through climate projections. Climate models are then shown to merely project GHG forcing linearly, meaning they don’t do anything fancy to “predict” future temperatures. Knowing that, it’s easy to propagate error and to show that the error must grow with each projection time-step. Final error after 100 years is about (+/-)10 C. This confidence interval shows that air temperature projections are physically meaningless. The seminar ends by noting that the IPCC is telling us nothing about future air temperatures.
There were at least two climate modelers in the audience who disputed my analysis. But their objections were familiar to me and were not hard to counter. One objection, which is fairly common, was that the (+/-)10 C confidence interval is disputed as a physically impossible prediction that climate may be 10 C colder or warmer after 100 years. But this objection is to misunderstand a confidence interval. It is not a thermodynamic magnitude, but is a statistical value that expresses our level of ignorance about the significance of a result. Error propagation seems to be a novel concept to climate modelers. Experimental scientists have to sweat that kind of error growth all the time.
Chris Field, the disaster-maven of the head-post, is in the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford, see, of which School the ERE Department is also a part. Unfortunately he didn’t attend my seminar. It would have been an interesting experience.
Stanford Wood would do a better job if it were to look at to some of known unknowns.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
Now this, I believe:
The available evidence points to increasing exposure (an increase in the amount and/or value of the assets in harm’s way) as the dominant cause of this trend.
The rest is just an ongoing attempt to grasp at anything that can be remotely associated with Global Warming, even though Mother Nature again and again refuses to cooperate and support the theory.
Quacks (like Field) claim that it will get warmer and colder and drier and wetter, but unless they can say where it will do those things, they have no leg to stand on. It is funny to read stories like this, people like Field are selling placebos. Their modus operandi is always host hoc ergo propter hoc, after this then because of this.
Sigh –
Since the beginning of the use of money, economic losses from weather related disasters have increased, NOT just the last 30 years. Weasel word alert! Heck, 30 years ago if someone bumped the back of your car it was bumper to bumper, and you’d get maybe a scuff or a clean spot on your bumper. Now it’s an $1100 bumper cover and the associated cost of paint and labor.
Everything costs more. Everything always will cost more. Appealing to the “cost” aspect is ridiculous.
Yesterday I went and looked at some showhomes. They’ve built an entire new community just down the hill from me, and I am amazed at the stupidity of it… it’s in a beautiful picturesque valley, near the river. I remember several times in MY lifetime that valley was either flooded or close to it. All it takes is some ice jams during spring melt, especially in years when there was higher than average snow pack in the mountains, and that entire area is underwater. They’ve built hundreds of houses at $600k to over a million. I can hardly wait to hear the wailing about climate change damaging that neighborhood.
This is the “new normal”… we do things that a few generations ago would have been labeled foolhardy and hazardous, then are surprised when something goes wrong. Since blame must be assigned, it’s never the developers, or the levels of government that allow these things to happen (building on floodplains, building in valleys, building in areas KNOWN to have occasional weather-related problems), no, it’s somehow the oil companies and SUV drivers.
I laughed at the home builders here trumpeting their “sustainable” homes, their “environmentally conscious” construction, insufficient heating and cooling, trickles of tap water and “alternative” materials. How can anyone think they’re “sustainable” as they’re almost guaranteeing these houses will be submerged or floating down the river at some point???
But hey, go ahead, invent a bogey-man, blame everything on that. Because it’s not at all stupid to make poor decisions anymore, like tattooing every square inch of your face… because “society” has to just accept that things have changed. Yep.
Actually what hes saying is technically true lol. Property nowadays is more expensive so the economic loss is greater even though the storm intensity has dropped or the flooding is weaker.
If he has a strategy to fight inflation i’ll love to hear it.
The greater the temperature gradient between the tropics and the poles, the more “extreme” the weather will be. The poles will heat faster than the tropics, in any global warming scenerio.
I have seen no credible evidence to dispute this.
Therefore any increase in global temperature averages, will decrease “extreme” weather events, and decreases in global termperature averages, will increase “extreme” weather events.
There are far too many “experts”, that do not understand the basic characteristics of the atmosphere. It is cover for poor urban planning, and lack of any understanding of historical weather patterns.
more frequent and intense extreme
severe extremes
moderate extremes
As the hysteria mounts we get gradations of extreme. Where is mild extreme? Extreme extreme? Or possibly beyond extreme. And thank God he slipped in the word paradigm.
Cannot these folks read what they write and see how silly and false it is?
CodeTech says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Since the beginning of the use of money, economic losses from weather related disasters have increased, NOT just the last 30 years. Weasel word alert!
=========
amen…..don’t forget the deal breaker……printing more money
The available evidence points to increasing exposure (an increase in the amount and/or value of the assets in harm’s way) as the dominant cause of this trend.
Emphasis mine and cannot be over emphasized.
Economic losses, however, present a very incomplete picture of the true impacts of [what kind of?] disasters, which include human and environmental components. While the majority of the economic losses from weather-related disasters are in developed world,
Note we are not talking about increases, here. Total amounts are in play.
the overwhelming majority of [weather-related?] deaths are in developing countries.
1. Prove it. What sources do you have for deaths in developing countries?
2. the majority of people are in developing countries. So that’s where the majority of deaths will be from all causes.
3. No mention of “increase” of deaths.
4. I’ll by a claim that more people are dying of respiratory failure in China. This is due to air pollution and a longer life in general. If fewer people are dying of starvation and in re-education camps, more will die from heart and lung disease. But that is not climate related. Nor is it a weather related cause. The cause would be increases in air polluting sources making increasingly acute health emergencies by air inversions no different than a century ago. No doubt that is a “weather-related” disaster, but to treat an air quality emergency as a symptom of climate change is to treat the wrong disease.
Stanford Uni:
“In December 2002, four sponsors – ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger, and Toyota – helped launch GCEP at Stanford University with plans to invest $225 million over a decade or more. These four global companies have collectively committed over $150 million towards GCEP so far. In September 2011, DuPont joined the Project as its newest corporate sponsor.”
http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html
I agree with Willis. The article doesn’t and Field’s talk at AAAS will not, I’m sure, tell us anything that we all don’t know already. It’s just a re-statement of common knowledge: we have to prepare better for disasters by building better and more sustainably in zones prone to extreme conditions; we have to continue to improve early warning systems and improve infrastructure. Duhhh– Stating common knowledge by clothing it in academicspeak. The actual purpose of the article is to stick in that little falsehood about human-induced climate change.
There is also this clause which indicates these people are re-setting the goalposts: “While this means that moderate extremes can lead to major disasters . . .” Apart from the fact that “moderate extremes is a contradiction in terms, it appears to me to be an acknowledgement that all the chicken-little/frying-pan talk is in the words of Nixon’s spokesman, “inoperative” and consequently is to be replaced by phrases like “moderate extremes.” IOW, It no longer takes what we might refer to as “extreme extremes” to produce “major disasters.” “Moderate extremes” are perfectly adequate to do the job. I assume this is related to the flatlining of temperatures over the past 15 years.
Willis: I’d love to see you attend the symposium and set these people straight.
The Great Blizzard of 1888 was one of the most severe recorded blizzards in the history of the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blizzard_of_1888
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
The middle and late 1930s saw one of the worst droughts in U.S. history.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/media/water0101.swf
The Brits and their CRU at the U. of E. Anglia are big promoters of AGW theories and their otherwise interesting weekly periodical, “The Economist”, is a blind supporter of the jihad against carbon. Obama now wants the USA to join the jihad, too. So the story about the crunch for carbon trading in the current issue of The Economist I am pasting below is very interesting — Obama should read it before he tries to invoke that insanity on us:
The Economist
Carbon markets
Extremely Troubled Scheme
[snip . . please post the link rather than the article as this can lead to copyright issues which our host has no wish to enter into . . thanks . . mod]
Roger Pielke Jr. on Chris Field’s inaccurate testimony before Congress last August.
I gave this article one (upside down) star, for its enormous value in studying inverted meanings and logic turned on its head at every turn of phrase.
Its amazing how many ways a creative person’s self interest can be advanced by use of fear, and then furthered by opinion presented as fact without evidence.
Whenever I read such obvious BS like this, why does the concept of academic grant addiction always come to mind?
No grants without scary stories and as all the scary stories so far have proven to be bogus, the scary stories just have to get scarier.
Related: Seth Borenstein is at it again with all the usual suspects.
I see that a new acronym is used by climate scientists. EWE refers to Extreme Weather Events.
Reminds me of an old joke:
Question: Why did the ram run off the cliff?
Answer: Because he didn’t see the ewe turn.
OK — Here’s the link to the interesting story in the current issue of The Economist magazine of London that I posted above — it describes Europe’s failing, idiotic carbon-trading scheme like the idiotic one Obama now wants to impose on us here in the USA. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn by no other.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21571940-crunch-time-worlds-most-important-carbon-market-extremely-troubled-scheme
Assuming “climate change” is a synonym for AGW (caused by increasing carbon dioxide) then I find that I have grown up in a world that, somehow, was adjusted to some perfect anthropophyllic conditions of climate and weather with a somehow tolerable level of droughts,floods, storms, fires and other disasters which, somehow, can be blamed on climate.
If rising global average T does cause “extreme” weather events, what would falling global temperatures do? Would we get perpectly modulated weather with utopian levels of rain bourne on gentle breezes and never a storm or bushfire?
Since studies of conditions during the last glacial maximum show that Australia was so severely dehydrated that approx 80% was too dry to support trees, I don’t believe it. It does not make any sense to me that decreasing the T difference btween the poles and the tropics would cause increased atmospheric processes but increasing the difference would do so ,does.
Planning to cope with disastrous weather events or even (gasp) not developing settlement in regularly flooded or eroded regions does make sense. But, running scare campaigns based on
false statements of increasing risk is simply immoral (is this word relevant any more?).
I’m reasonably sure that Professor Chris Field must be smart to have gotten to his present appointments so he can’t claim ignorance. It is terrible how money destroys integrity.
Sent this email to Dr Field (cfield at ciw.edu)
Dear Chris
Congratulations you have been heavily quoted in an article at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/18/masters-of-disasters-and-captain-uncertainty/#more-79953
If you are not already aware WUWT is an award winning blog about Climate Science and gets very wide readership. As of today over 140 Million views.
I invite you to visit this blog post and provide an authentic link to any research showing empirical evidence supporting your quote below. You should find this a particularly easy task as you appear certain about the “Pattern” and it is the basis for all your alarmism.
“While climate change’s role in tornadoes and hurricanes remains unknown, Field says, the pattern is increasingly clear when it comes to heat waves, heavy rains and droughts.”
Meanwhile back at the ranch.
http://ww3.tvo.org/video/172664/rugged-coasts
Isn’t it a bit comic to use the word “climate change” without telling what kind of change he means.
It is pure Pavlovsk, that whenever climate change is mentioned, it means disasters of som kind, worse than imagined and worse than was.
I could imagine a lot of climate change that would be very pleasant.
Here’s a comment I posted a few months ago:
Here are a few possible non-natural causes of increasing insurance claims:
1. Greatly increased pleasure boat ownership and average pleasure boat value. (A proxy for this would be number and size of marinas and size of average berth in marinas. Another proxy would be annual sales of such boats, probably available from the Dept. of Commerce and/or some trade association.)
2. Increased use of frozen food, and ordinary food like meats stored in a freezer–which goes bad in an outage. Plus larger modern refrigerators store more perishable items, enabling people to shop less frequently, but putting more value at risk.
3. Increased issuance of official evacuation orders, and increasing compliance with them. These save lives but, with residents no longer in place, there’s less likelihood of vulnerable household goods being sheltered or moved to a safer location within the house during a storm or flood, of broken windows being patched up, etc. Also, there’s greater vulnerability to looting.
4. Increasing forest grow-back in the NE of the US may have made electrical lines more vulnerable to falling trees.
5. Possible lesser strictness with insurance claims by insurers, owing to one or both of these factors: A) Greater off-loading of risk onto reinsurers;
B) Legally mandated standards for payment of claims. (I.e., in the litigious US, homeowners whose claims have been denied must have sued and established case law that certain rules of thumb insurers used to use to estimate the value of losses, or allowable types of claim, were too ungenerous. I think this could be a big part of the explanation, and one that outsiders would likely overlook. But my thesis is supported by the much greater increase in insurance payouts in the litigious US compared to other regions, per Munich Re’s figures. I urge researchers to probe this by, as a first step, interviewing veteran insurance agents to see if there’s anecdotal support, then checking trade journals of the industry to see if this trend was reported on in them. One clue might be the cost to insure per unit insured. If the cost of insurance is higher in the areas of the US that haven’t had increased disasters in recent decades, this could point to lesser strictness with claims as an explanation.)
6. Possible higher-insured-house-values, due to pressure from mortgage holders (bankers, etc.). If the bank now wants, say, 90% of a house’s value to be insured compared to 50% 40 years ago, then claims will increase.
7. Possible interaction between creeping inflation and fixed deductibles. If mortgage holders set a standard 40 years ago of $1000 for deductibles (say), or if that is what is habitually chosen, then inflation will ensure that damages over the deductible amount will increase over time.
8. Possible increasing readiness of insureds to file a claim, owing to greater sophistication about interacting with such paperwork, greater ease of doing so (e.g., online), greater assistance from emergency management agencies, more sources of information online, and greater litigiousness and lesser stoical acceptance of fate, etc.
Apart from being an oxymoron, what is a “moderate extreme”?
The Folk who write on this site are the greatest !
One can learn more here than anywhere else.
Thank you.
Alfred
Eric the halibut: see my post at 1:09 pm pacific time. As the guy in “The Music Man” said, “It’s a puzzlement.”
“Field explains that the risk of climate-related disaster is tied to the overlap of weather, exposure and vulnerability of exposed people…”
“overlap of weather…”
Yeah, don’t you hate it when weather ‘overlaps’?
Is that like cold in the morning and warmer later in the day?
Or is that when, near the Spring Equinox, you get some cool ‘wintry’ days mixed in with some days that carry the hint of warmer days to come?
Don’t you hate that? Weather never ‘overlapped’ before CO2 came around.
“exposure and vulnerability of exposed people…”
Yeah, don’t you hate it when ‘exposed people’ are facing ‘exposure’?
Is that like the recent death of deceased people?
Or is it more like the irrationality of irrational people?
So confusing. The guy giving this talk must be really smart…
Seth Borenstein serves the Oppenheimer and Serreze soup in advance of some landmark papers about snow, blizzard and you guessed it, global warming!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-contradiction-less-snow-more-blizzards-161708650.html
“WASHINGTON (AP) — With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.
Then when a whopper of a blizzard smacked the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow in some places earlier this month, some of the same people again blamed global warming.
How can that be? It’s been a joke among skeptics, pointing to what seems to be a brazen contradiction.
But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say.”
One wonders where the cold air comes from…
“But when Serreze, Oppenheimer and others look at the last few years of less snow overall, punctuated by big storms, they say this is what they are expecting in the future.
“It fits the pattern that we expect to unfold,” Oppenheimer said.
The world is warming so precipitation that would normally fall as snow in the future will likely fall as rain once it gets above the freezing point, said Princeton researcher Sarah Kapnick.”
Of course it fits… Everything always fits global warming. And amazingly, once it gets above freezing point, snow is likely to fall as rain. We live in a formidable epoch!.
“Extreme” weather is all they’ve got now, since the climate has thrown a monkey wrench into their schemes and, going against their much-ballyhooed models decided to stop warming about 16 years ago. It’s classic misdirection on their part. I suppose the weak-minded and already convinced of EAGW (Extreme Anthropogenic Global Weather) will happily fall for that garbage.
Follow up:
Oh and Mann keeps making a fool of himself…
“The Rutgers snow lab says this January saw the sixth-widest snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere; the United States had an above average snow cover for the last few months. But that’s a misleading statistic, Robinson said, because even though more ground is covered by snow, it’s covered by less snow.
And when those big storms finally hit, there is more than just added moisture in the air, there’s extra moisture coming from the warm ocean, Robinson and Oppenheimer said. And the air is full of energy and unstable, allowing storms to lift yet more moisture up to colder levels. That generates more intense rates of snowfall, Robinson said.
“If you can tap that moisture and you have that fortuitous collision of moist air and below freezing temperatures, you can pop some big storms,” Robinson said.
Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann points to the recent Northeast storm that dumped more than 30 inches in some places. He said it was the result of a perfect set of conditions for such an event: Arctic air colliding with unusually warm oceans that produced extra large amounts of moisture and big temperature contrasts, which drive storms. Those all meant more energy, more moisture and thus more snow, he said.”
Again, one wonders where the cold air comes from… like in Siberia, China, Japan, Europe, UK, and those -40C in Yellowknife…
Pat Frank says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:13 pm
I made the case that theory-bias errors are never propagated through climate projections.
Pat, can I ask how theory bias errors are determined?
A link would suffice.
The cooling associated with the change in the sun has begun, but it will take a while for this to sink in.
Like Alfred thanks all of you, the info is terrific.
But frankly what bothers me the most is the money these people fraudulently squeeze directly from the whole population. It makes me sick to my stomach. The way many unknowingly are being manipulated by paying higher and higher costs of living for no reasons is criminal!
Same old alarmist rhetoric, repackaged at great expense on the taxpayers dime, via another climate change grant. Yea! Chris Field is out in left field as usual and the truth be dammed!
Philip, one way to show theory bias is to demonstrate certain errors are correlated among models. See Section 4.2 in the Supporting Information document (892 kb pdf) of “A Climate of Belief.”
I am still firmly under the impression that, in the main, weather is caused by relative temperature differences. In view of that, I struggle to understand how a change in average global temperature [can] significantly affect weather – it might move it around a bit by changing the climate belts and if we had a really significant shift in average temperature it might increase or reduce overall rainfall, but……..
And now we have science by rumor of press release
A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say. And two soon-to-be-published studies demonstrate how there can be more giant blizzards yet less snow overall each year.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SNOW_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-18-11-33-15
“Nobody has shown any link between those weather events he lists and slight changes in the global average temperature, that’s pseudo-science at its worst.”
Actually, its pretty easy to do with heat waves. Most folks dont know that 40 cities around the world have heat wave warning systems and that while the incidence of heat waves is up ( go figure its getting warmer ) the death rate is down, due to a variety of factors ( like air conditioning ). If you think preparing for heat waves is a bad idea or not supported by the data, then I suppose you are at odds with the local governments of 40 great cities. Then again, perhaps they know better. In any case, your argument would be with those elected officials and I’m sure they’d be glad to hear your opinions on the matter. Maybe they would nod politely and let you know that they looked at the data, made their decision, and saved lives in the process. Go figure. They might have looked at the data and said ‘you know for planning, we dont need 95% confidence’ And they would have a point. Cause policy decisions are not scientific decisions. a 60% chance of more floods might be important to folks who live in flood plains.. heck a 10% chance might be important. I’d ask the folks at risk, not an “objective” outsider.
The simple fact is we are unprepared for the weather of the past, and folks should think twice before rejecting calls for better preparedness. Because if it was worse in the past, and if you believe in natural variability, then it only makes sense to prepare for a future that is at least as bad as the past. Or, you can reject the idea that the future will be as bad as the past, weather wise, merely because some folks you don’t like are concerned that the weather of the future might be worse that the weather of the past. It seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Pat, thanks for your response.
If my understanding is correct, theory bias refers to the fact the climate models collectively show similar bias (error in the same direction). Shown by the fact that most models get cloudiness wrong in the same direction.
Not really surprising, and consistent with my observation that climate models are little more than exercises in quantifying confirmation bias, but it’s nice to see someone rigorously demonstrate this.
Even 3rd graders can read this: “In the early 1840s, American settlers arrived over the Oregon Trail and established farms and a bustling frontier town called Champoeg which eventually was wiped away in a devastating 1861 flood.”
Idiots. Stanford allows WAAAYYYYY too much pot smoking!
Hmmm… The press release cites “mounting scientific evidence [that] climate change will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather” but nothing attributes that opinion to Chris Field, the subject of the article. On the contrary, Field is quoted as saying that “The available evidence points to increasing exposure (an increase in the amount and/or value of the assets in harm’s way) as the dominant cause of this trend.”
It’s hard to argue with that position. If you build on a flood plain, you shouldn’t be surprised when it floods. Or to put it another way, those who ignore history (including the historical record of violent weather events) are condemned to repeat it.
Yet more specious bolleaux. If the 24/7 news effect is discounted, no one would be discussing “Extreme Weather Events”. However the junk science is dressed, it is genetically linked to this:
http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/environment/
Which links to this
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
This is not some conspiracy fuelled hysteria; it is written evidence of the effectiveness of a supra-national, unelected, non-governmental organization.
We can convincingly demolish, whack-a-mole style, all specious ‘scientific’ claims as they come along. That all too many people ignore WHY this nonsense is peddled, is part of the problem.
Wake up, fellow WUWT people.
Angling for the speaker circuit fees I see.
The solution to their problems is to re-tune their flexi-models downwards, not upwards.
Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.
“During the past 30 years, economic losses from weather-related disasters have increased”
I have no doubt. There’s the lunacy of the homes slapped together using northern, stick-built designs in South Florida. Homes that were not inspected by competent county personnel, which led to massive “economic losses” from hurricane Andrew. (Reporters looked at home foundations and discovered many were never bolted down to the footer.) Then there’s the idea of waiting over a century to do something about dikes in New Orleans. It’s not the century that gets you, it’s the next day after your council members decide to put off doing something about it, again.
Crop loss? Of course the economic losses are bigger. The crops are bigger, so what else could the losses be?
However, blaming it all on the climate lets the officials and individuals responsible escape responsibility. Now *that’s* an incentive.
Pat Frank says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Nice work, Pat. Thanks for your work on behalf of science.
Latitude says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:51 pm
“CodeTech says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Since the beginning of the use of money, economic losses from weather related disasters have increased, NOT just the last 30 years. Weasel word alert!
=========
amen…..don’t forget the deal breaker……printing more money”
And the CAGW scam has paid for how many of those houses? Al Gore has one on the beach in California. If a tornado took out his house in Tennessee, he would say it was a monster The only monster in Tennessee is his house.
TomRude says:
February 18, 2013 at 4:18 pm
This article or a report on it was up on the frontpage of CBSnews’ website but lasted only a couple of hours. The article pushes the new meme of “moderate extremes.” They are shamelessly trying to make hay out of Sandy and the recent New England snow storms. I can find no science that supports their position. To the contrary, isn’t the concentration of atmospheric water vapor falling marginally?
Philip, sometimes the high inter-model correlation was negative, but incidences of also strong anti-correlation just means that the models generally don’t have the physics right.
Theo, thanks. 🙂
Steven Mosher says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:45 pm
“The simple fact is we are unprepared for the weather of the past, and folks should think twice before rejecting calls for better preparedness. Because if it was worse in the past, and if you believe in natural variability, then it only makes sense to prepare for a future that is at least as bad as the past. Or, you can reject the idea that the future will be as bad as the past, weather wise, merely because some folks you don’t like are concerned that the weather of the future might be worse that the weather of the past. It seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
Then move the millions of people who live in the Flood Plains of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The “thousand year” floods of 1973, 1982, and 1992 in St Louis made it plain as the nose on your face that disaster is coming to those flood plains. President Bill Clinton toured the 1992 flood. How much do you think it would cost to move those people? Do you think anyone has the political will to attempt to move them? Why would you or anyone expect some impoverished person in Bangladesh to react with any less indignation and resistance than well informed people in Missouri?
Human beings cut off the nose to spite the face routinely. Nothing can be done about it (unless there is a successful Fascist state). Get used to it and then accept it.
Of course it will be more extreme weather, unless it leads to more boring weather…
Cliff Mass, UW meteorologist, quantified “boring weather,” says this winter ties the all time most boring Seattle weather
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-most-boring-winter-in-seattle.html
So, which is it, again?
Surely, it will become increasingly more and more difficult to promote the line of weather weirding/climate disruption, should global temperature anomalies continue to stall.
What is the logical connect with the allegation that these past 20 years there has been more extreme weather events when during that very period (well 16/17 years of it) there has been no change in global temperature anomalies?
Surely, if global temperature anomalies continue to stall and assuming that the public become aware of this fact (ie., no temperature anomaly rise these past 17, 18, 19 ,20 etc years), the public will not buy into man is responsible for weather weirding/climate disruption.
Presently MSM is keeping the lid on the fact that the global temperature anomalies has stalled for a lengthy period, but this lid will not remain fixed as more and more become trapped in fuel poverty and/or as soon as there is serious disruption to energy supply due to inherent unreliability/inefficiencies of renewables that have replaced conventional power generation. This fact will come out, and with this the public are likely to conclude that either the case for recent weather weirding/climate disruption is overstated, alternatively it is simply a natural phenomena.
The third flood was in 1993, not 1992 as I said above.
K.Bob says:
February 18, 2013 at 7:33 pm
However, blaming it all on the climate lets the officials and individuals responsible escape responsibility. Now *that’s* an incentive.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Seconded.
Climate change is being used to cover up incompetence of governments and the public sector in town planning, river and water management.
While the majority of the economic losses from weather-related disasters are in developed world, the overwhelming majority of deaths are in developing countries.
===========
Nonsense. Per capita weather related deaths are way down in the past 100 years, largely as a result of improved forecasting and communications.
If so many people are being killed by weather, then why are population levels so much higher now than before we started using fossil fuels?
Theo Goodwin says:
February 18, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Human beings cut off the nose to spite the face routinely. Nothing can be done about it (unless there is a successful Fascist state). Get used to it and then accept it.
===========
Any self respecting farmer 200 years ago knew you built your house on the hill and planted the lowlands beside the river. In that way the yearly floods fertilized your land ready for the next crop, and your house didn’t float away with the water.
Somewhere along the way common sense went out the window and people got the idea that the best place to build your house was beside the river. Now when it floods we are told it is global warming and our tax will have to pay to rebuild the numbskull that built by the river.
And then, our government in its wisdom decides that if we all dance around and stop burning fossil fuels, the river will stop flooding. After all, it never flooded before we started burning fossil fuels, so that must be the cause.
@ Steven Mosher says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:45 pm
=
“Actually, its pretty easy to do with heat waves. Most folks dont know that 40 cities around the world have heat wave warning systems and that while the incidence of heat waves is up ( go figure its getting warmer ) …”
I suggest you read Leroux “The meteorology and climate of tropical Africa” Springer 2001 when hazarding the correlation ‘warmer”=”heatwaves”. You’d realize that drought and heatwaves were more abundant during global cold periods than during interglacial, where the meteorological equator widened and greened even the Sahara. On the opposite, colder air masses coming from the poles create high pressure anticyclonic agglutinations that are in summer responsible for allowing intense and sometimes superheating of the grounds as the warm air cannot rise, clamped down by the high pressure and in winter, intense , prolonged cold spells.
Although you misinterpret the genesis of these weather events and attribute them to warming when in fact their increase in frequency is proven thanks to paleoclimatological work to be triggered by cooling, Leroux would agree with you that we should be better prepared for extreme weather events which we know will happen. No doubt that anarchic urban development in flood plains etc… were encouraged first by the very local governments that need smarting up.
No need indeed to invent some new theories to explain global warming’s failed predictions from 15 years ago to act on common sense.
@Theo Goodwin says:
February 18, 2013 at 8:02 pm
==
“To the contrary, isn’t the concentration of atmospheric water vapor falling marginally?”
Indeed Theo, the NOAA chart shows that Water Vapor is falling steadily from 1948 to 2011 at the 300mB level i.e. 9km altitude, falled from 1948 to 1980 then is flat till 2011 at the 600mB level i.e. 3km altitude and fell from 1948 to 1970, then rose slightly from 1970 to 1988 and is now slightly declining till 2011 at the 1,000mB level near surface.
Again, averaging can be misleading as since meridian exchanges have been intensified since the climatic shift of the 1970s, more moist air is advected to temperate extra tropical regions, which might be the reason we see an increase in lower tropospheric levels, that is from 0 to 1500m where MPHs are active (cf. Leroux).
the cost of non-climate insured damage like earthquakes and urban fires has risen because of the increased value of the infrastructure damaged. But weather related damages have increased at a much faster rate beyond the rate of increase in the value of the infrastructure.
There were two recent research papers that conclusively show that extreme rain events are definitely increasing.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html
Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html
Here we present a multi-step, physically based ‘probabilistic event attribution’ framework showing that it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000.
Izen @11.02
Hardly conclusive. The phrases “have contributed to” and “is very likely” don’t suggest absolute certainty to me.
@- Peter Plail
” The phrases “have contributed to” and “is very likely” don’t suggest absolute certainty to me.”
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with scientific language.
If I point out that your parents genetic makeup ‘have contributed’ to your genome and ‘is very likely’ to have shaped your genetic makeup would you still be uncertain about your parents contribution to your genetics ?
It really does take cojones to start your article with a flat out lie. Where is the “mounting scientific evidence”???? Where is it???
Here is the mounting scientific evidence and observations.
See also observations.
No trends in extreme weather
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/27/another-paper-shows-that-severe-weatherextreme-weather-has-no-trend-related-to-global-warming/
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/new-paper-shows-warming-causes.html
I suppose we will have to endure even more of this crap from those trying to hang on to their over paid jobs.
If you use models that assume the input of CO2, assume catastrophy then that is what you will get. For goodness sake CHANGE THE MODELS they are telling you LIES.
imdying says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Actually what hes saying is technically true lol. Property nowadays is more expensive so the economic loss is greater even though the storm intensity has dropped or the flooding is weaker.
If he has a strategy to fight inflation i’ll love to hear it.
———————————
That’s easy.
Stop government overblown spending.
cn
And the BS riddle continues: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SNOW_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-18-11-33-15
Mosher ,it is sad, and at the same time frightening, to witness the speed of your transformation from logician to phony post-normal advocacy. It is not easy to link drought with warming, first because there is no recent warming and second current droughts are not historically normal. So you are worried that we are not prepared for experiencing events like occurred in our past when we were not warming? I think you’ve been exchanging too much saliva with Ravitz.
ERRATA …..not historically abnormal
izen says:
February 18, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.
Even if they could show that “intensification of heavy precipitation events” has actually occurred over say the past 30 or 40 years (which is doubtful), they most certainly can’t show the human fingerprint. Oh, and the “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases” is just a convoluted way of saying that because of (assumed) manmade warming, there is an increased level of water vapor. But, keep on banging your bogus science drum, izen.
Less energy from the Sun should translate to a more mild weather system with less [not more] severe storms. As the cold moves from the Poles toward the equator, more snow [rain storms converted to snow] , later spring, fewer tropical hurricanes [less energy from the Sun]. This was the weather during the 1850s to 1900s.
It was Al Gore who gave a few years ago the final definition of ‘extremely hot’, the earth below our feet, millions of degrees.
Izen says:
What part of global are you missing here???? I remember being constantly told that the Medieval Warm Period only affected parts of the northern hemisphere and was not global (though disputed). Your extracts flat out admit these ‘alleged’ attributions weren’t even global. So there. 😉
Look at an ecofasc…friendly Province in Canada:
http://www.bcgreengames.ca/resources/for-parents/93-links.html
Agitprop to kids.
You know Steve, when I used to drive out of London on a hot summer’s day I noticed a noticeable drop in temperature as I headed out into the countryside. I wonder why? 😉
Just 2 points:
1) “autumn 2000” is just the weather and not the climate. Trends are the key. The claim is over-confident for a 3 month period.
2) Let’s look at something a model prepared earlier:
The meeting was on the 16th, it is now the 19th.
Any idea what his recommendations were?
Hmmmm –
““Media: Communicating Science, Uncertainty and Impact” 3-4:30, Feb. 16, room 204 of the Hynes Convention Center. ”
Didn’t they misspell Hyenas?
ferd berple says:
February 18, 2013 at 10:18 pm
Very well said. Developers and local governments have constructed so many “levees” on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers that they have shifted the flood plains – or maybe I should say that they have created new flood plains. As many informed people observed in 1993, the flood disaster in Missouri was mostly man made.
TomRude says:
February 18, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Thanks, Tom. That is what I thought. I asked because I am not up to speed on water vapor.
You’re welcome Theo!