2010’s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards: The Associated Press has published one of the most interesting pieces of environmental science journalism in a long time, and that’s quite a feat in itself. Indeed, there are some serious factual issues as the authors intersperse anecdotes with specific scientists’ quotations while playing fast and loose with the facts.
This article deserves a thorough fact-checking and deconstruction. Hold onto your seats on this roller coaster…
This is an absolute masterpiece: quotations are in the boxes, comments are mine.
This was the year that the Earth struck back. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 – the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.
What purpose does this statement serve? Is there a moral equivalence between suicide bombers and the heartbreaking suffering associated with Haiti’s earthquake, the resulting mysteriously-caused cholera epidemic, or the devastation associated with the Pakistani floods? Apparently there is, as the authors make that case that it is either human-caused or exacerbated.
And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.
That didn’t take long.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.
There is no doubt that the impoverished around the world suffer disproportionately from natural disasters: their ability to mitigate is very limited with poorly constructed buildings and standards of living that could further unravel by nature’s tragic pulling on the threads of survival. Earthquakes occur without regard to the dwellers above the ground. Tropical cyclones occur without regard to the topography in their path. Weather and seismic activity cannot be controlled; it can only be adapted to with the best possible disaster prevention. This fact is not ground breaking or in any way controversial, yet it is seemingly brought up, acknowledged, and summarily dismissed while Borenstein and Bell get to work on blaming humanity for the ills of the Earth.
Climate scientists say Earth’s climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.
Some climate scientists perhaps, but there is current NO peer reviewed literature that DIRECTLY connects the floods in Pakistan or the heat wave in Russia definitively to anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, there are scant scientifically diligent explanations available for the weather/climate events of 2010, but here’s one from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Climate Attribution or CSI outfit on the Russian heat wave. Note, this is also a draft document, and not peer reviewed (yet), but with the extent of the data analysis from inside, it has a helluva lot more weight than the word of scientists who have not demonstrated or presented similar data analysis on the Russian heat waves or the floods. Instead, as Borenstein and Bell helpfully intersperse in the article, scientists are giving expert testimony on the events without tangible evidence, but perhaps intuition, feelings, or political motivations, which are superfluous anyways to the situation at hand.
Here is NOAA’s explanation by Dr. Martin Hoerling, which has received almost no media mention anywhere, and definitely not a press-release from NOAA.
Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what exent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer.
AP continues:
In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.
What in tarnation does the number of casualties associated with plane crashes have to do with anything? Simply making an academic comparison here for the readers? WUWT!
Expert Quote #1
“It’s a form of suicide, isn’t it?” Professor Roger Bilham, geological sciences University of Colorado.
Anecdote #1
“I think it is the end of the world,” she said. “Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don’t care about nature.” Mask wearing Vera Savinova, a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow’s record heat, smog and wildfires.
Expert Quote #2
“These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming,” said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Where’s that missing heat? It’s a travesty…
How Extreme?
The article lists a series of weather events which seemingly are examples of events contemporaneously associated with the “season”, aka winter or summer aka cold/snowy, hot/dry, and some comments in parentheses. Here’s the rundown of extreme events: blizzards over the eastern-US, Russia, and China ( always happened, still happening, and will happen again & again ) | record heat in Los Angeles on one day (Urban Heat Island effects?) | freezes in Florida (yup, happened in January 2010 and December 2010) | tropical floods in tropical Australia, and desert droughts in desert Australia | Amazon drought (though flooding in nearby Venezuela must have been missed).
Anecdote #2 (How costly?)
Ghulam Ali’s three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family.
An attempt at scientific knowledge:
Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.
Almost, but not quite. Okay, it’s just untrue. La Nina is NOT the mirror image weather system of El Nino. El Nino is one mode of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is a 2-7 year period coupled atmosphere-ocean phenomena — it modulates the world’s weather — it is NOT weather. It is the number one mode of variability in the tropics. Someone please get these folks at the AP Wikipedia or Google or perhaps one of the experts can help them understand this. It’s like the fact checking / preparation that Larry King is known for! Here, Jerry Seinfeld talks to King who seriously thought Seinfeld’s show was canceled. Anyways, look at the graphic from that pesky government-run NOAA website again: when the red switches to blue, that’s when El Nino goes to La Nina, happens a lot — and if we had more than a hundred years of data, we’d see it goes back and forth, without any concern for the “human hand”.
Another attempt at scientific knowledge:
The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave – setting a national record of 111 degrees – would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.
The climate scientists he is referring to is ONE blogger at Jeff Master’s Weather Underground (no, not Bill Ayers’), Rob Carver. You’ll see from my comment #13 (RyanFSU), which is not responded to, that his interpretation of the “normalized anomaly” is woefully inadequate and should be removed as it is, uh, statistical rubbish. But, Carver is cited as “climate scientists” — the AP and the drive-by media is known for these mystery quotations of plural groups: “some people say“.
Expert Quote #3
“The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion,” said Greg Holland, director of the Earth System Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Please, someone publish a peer-reviewed transliteration of that statement, using the evidence contained in this article.
Expert Quote #4
“The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society’s emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.” Ecoscience author, and Science Czar John Holdren.
And, almost a the end, the AP writers manage to throw in the BP oil spill, and declare the Chilean mining crew’s 69-day ordeal as the “feel good story of the year.” WUWT!
Here’s a clue AP: if you really want to understand the world’s weather and climate, don’t look to global warming. It is an absolute pittance compared to the global reorganziation of the world’s weather due to El Nino, and it will be for the foreseeable future. So, if you want the easiest, best, and most correct expert explanation for what happened in 2010 here it is:
The transition from a strong El Nino to a strong La Nina (ENSO), hardly unprecedented, dramatically changes the tropical Pacific ocean temperatures. The atmosphere and ocean, acting together in a coupled fashion, teleconnect these tropical changes to the rest of the globe — both hemispheres. Storm tracks including tropical and extratropical cyclones, large-scale weather regimes such as blocks and Rossby-wave breaking cut-off lows, and shorter-time scale oscillations such as the PNA, NAO, and AO are all NON-LINEARLY associated with ENSO.
Academically, we have only begun to scratch the surface in understanding atmospheric/climate variability — and no matter what the experts on 2010 quoted in this article purport to understand about this year’s weather, it is only hand-wavy testimony that is actually at odds with some researchers at their own government labs!
Kevin Trenberth spoke honestly [“It’s a travesty…”] when he wrote in his email about not finding evidence of global warming – an email that he assumed would never be seen by the public.
But since he craves publicity, and because he knows if he said the same thing to the Ass. Press it wouldn’t be printed, Trenberth has reversed his story 180°, and embellished it to make it sound even more alarming.
Deliberate mendacity like Trenberth’s used to result in being shunned by one’s colleagues. I may be somewhat jaded, but I’m still shocked when I see a scientist like Kevin Trenberth say things that he must certainly know are not factual.
And he doesn’t have the excuse that he’s an idiot like Borenstein and Bell, who are no doubt on the Soros payroll like Joe Romm. Trenberth lied because the late Steven Schneider advised climate scientists that lying to promote their agenda is A-OK.
“Seth Can’t Tell the Truth” could be the title to a Berenstain Bears story.
It appears the gibberish has been removed from Drudge. It’s certainly no longer the headline and I didn’t even notice it buried in the other articles.
[ryanm: amazing how that happened 😉 ]
On a more positive note.
On Chanel 4 news UK tonight:
TV presenter asked Meteorologist what was the cause of present Britain’s persistent low temperature spell.
He answered it was due to low Sunspot activity.
Then followed an entirely rational discussion about the past history of such events.
Neither CO2 nor Global Warming were brought up.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Wow, the irresponsibility of the reporting is amazing.
This is not journalism.
It is muckraking.
R. Gates says: “Regardless. the article is a piece of trash and it’s sad to see the AP fall so low.”
Fall? It’s not a recent change. They have been battling UPI for the cellar for decades. UPI has the advantage of being owned by the Unification Church, but the AP keeps trying.
Anton says: “If it says AP near the byline, you can pretty much assume it isn’t true.”
“The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making,” said a weary Debarati Guha Sapir, director for the World Health Organization’s Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. “It’s almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting from it. We’ve created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact.”
This is serious, if you see a butterfly, cut its wings off fast.
Dr. Richard North suggests re-insurance industry is behind it & I think he’s right.
DaveE.
This whole AGW issue seems much like a variation of the millennial end-of-the -world movements that plagues humanity. In wonder what the next one might be about.
I note that the Russian heatwave was caused by a stable high during the summer months which prevented cooler changes coming through.
The same thing happened in Australia during the spring of 2009. A of high pressure stabilised over central Australia causing temps to build and resulting in an extremely warm spring/early summer.
However, this spring the highs were centred south of the mainland causing a cool, wet spring (wettest spring on record for Australia).
Pressure systems, winds and cloud are not part of the climate modelling so no wonder they get it wrong.
Speaking of fantasy disasters, check this story and a quote from it…
“Nobody really knows how the Arctic is going to behave as the ice retreats, but we do anticipate that significant changes will occur,” said Dr Seymour Laxon, a Cryosat science team member from University College London, UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12025283
Apparently, even though the entire UK is buried in snow and probably Laxon’s head too, these pro AGW scientists still think it’s warming.
Hard freezes in Fla. aren’t as uncommon as the media would have you believe , probably on the order of once every five years or so . I would like to add that – as an aside – I’m thoroughly sick of the words extreme , sustainable , and unprecedented . Off to make eggnog now …
Really? Ever? C’mon Borenstein, the planet is older than you are.
Utter and total desperation . . . the planet is warming so they have to come up with ever bigger lies and distortions to try and keep their propaganda efforts alive.
Goebbels would certainly understand and approve their methods.
Kinda sad actually that promising scientists like Trenberth have sunk to such depths of distortion, lies and exaggerations. He could have had a real career instead of the shark jumping crap he now spouts off. A sad, sad legacy indeed.
“2010′s natural disasters as talking points in this narrative is a new low”
Ya think that’s lower than sexing up 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita as global warming artifacts?
That’s a tough call for me. Those hit pretty close to where I live. Austin is a hurricane refuge city and lots of people here have friends and family on the Louisiana and Texas coasts who lost their homes for months, years, or forever to say nothing of all the lives lost in Katrina. Gore was especially shameless about blaming it on AGW.
[true, a lot of mileage was made out of the ’05 hurricane season, re-insurance and insurance made out like bandits based upon the flawed expert testimony by folks such as ____, ____, ____, etc.]
a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave – setting a national record of 111 degrees – would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.
Uh-huh.
From the Novgorod Chronicle:
1298: There was a wholesale death of animals. In the same year there was a drought, and the woods and peat bogs burnt.
1364: Halfway through summer there was a complete smoke haze, the heat was dreadful, the forests, bogs and earth were burning, rivers dried up. The same thing happened the following year . . .
1431: following a blotting out of the sky, and pillars of fire, there was a drought – “the earth and the bogs smouldered, there was no clear sky for 6 weeks, nobody saw the sun, fishes, animals and birds died of the smoke.
1735: Empress Anna wrote to General Ushakov: “Andrei Ivanovich, here in St Petersburg it is so smoky that one cannot open the windows, and all because, just like last year, the forests are burning. We are surprised that no-one has thought about how to stem the fires, which are burning for the second year in a row”.
1831: Summer was unbearably hot, and as a consequence of numerous fires in the forests, there was a constant haze of smoke in the air, through which the sun appeared a red hot ball; the smell of burning was so strong, that it was difficult to breathe.
The years of 1839-1841 were known as the “hungry years”. In the spring of 1840, the spring sowings of corn disappeared in many places. From midway through April until the end of August not a drop of rain fell. From the beginning of summer the fields were covered with a dirty grey film of dust. All the plants wilted, dying from the heat and lack of water. It was extraordinarily hot and close, even though the sun, being covered in haze, shone very weakly through the haze of smoke. Here and there in various regions of Russia the forests and peat bogs were burning (the firest had begun already in 1839). there was a reddish haze, partially covering the sun, and there were dark, menacing clouds on the horizon. There was a choking stench of smoke which penetrated everywhere, even into houses where the windows remained closed.
1868: the weather was murderous. It rained once during the summer. There was a drought. The sun, like a red hot cinder, glowed through the clouds of smoke from the peat bogs. Near Peterhoff the forests and peat workings burnt, and troops dug trenches and flooded the subterranean fire. It was 40 centigrade in the open, and 28 in the shade.
1868: a prolonged drought in the northern regions was accompanied by devastating fires in various regions. Apart from the cities and villages affected by this catastrophe, the forests, peat workings and dried-up marshes were burning. In St Petersburg region smoke filled the city and its outlying districts for several weeks.
1875: While in western europe there is continual rain and they complain about the cold summer, here in Russia there is a terrible drought. In southern Russia all the cereal and fruit crops have died, and around St Petersburg the forest fires are such that in the city itself, especially in the evening, there is a thick haze of smoke and a smell of burning. Yesterday, the burning woods and peat bogs threatened the ammunitiion stores of the artillery range and even Okhtensk gunpowder factory.
1885: (in a letter from Peter Tchaikovsky, composer): I’m writing to you at three oclock in the afternoon in such darkness, you would think it was nine oclock at night. For several days, the horizon has been enveloped in a smoke haze, arising, they say, from fires in the forest and peat bogs. Visibility is diminishing by the day, and I’m starting to fear that we might even die of suffocation.
1917 (diary of Aleksandr Blok, poet): There is a smell of burning, as it seems, all around the city peat bogs, undergrowth and trees are burning. And no-one can extinguish it. That will be done only by rain and the winter. Yellowish-brown clouds of smoke envelope the villages, wide swaithes of undergrowth are burning, and God sends no rain, and what wheat there is in the fields is burning.
speaking of media disinfo:
the following “study” appeared on most dem-leaning blogs, plus on CBS radio, toronto star, globe & mail, and more plus NYT blog and seemed to have one purpose:
17 Dec: NYT Blog: Brian Stelter: Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV News
The study was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project that is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland…
were 30 points more likely to believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring…
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/study-some-viewers-were-misinformed-by-tv-news/
10 Dec: Misinformation and the 2010 Election
WORLDPUBLICOPINION.ORG IS A PROJECT MANAGED BY THE PROGRAM ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY ATTITUDES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that: …
most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)…
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
only 616 people were interviewed.
PIPA: Sponsors
Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Tides Foundation …
Ben and Jerry’s Foundation
University of Maryland Foundation ETCETC
org/sponsors.htm
worldpublicopinion.org:
Staff: Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). He directs the PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll of the US public, plays a central role in the BBC World Service Poll of global opinion and the polls of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and is the principal investigator of a major study of social support of anti-American terrorist groups in Islamic countries. He regularly appears in the US and international media, providing analysis of public opinion, and gives briefings to the US Congress, the State Department, NATO, the United Nations and the European Commission. His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Public Opinion Quarterly, Harpers, The Washington Post and other publications. His most recent book, co-authored with I.M. Destler, is Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Brookings). He is a faculty member of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Association of Public Opinion Research.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/about.php?nid=&id=
the framing of all the questions was biased, the reading of which response was correct was politicised, yet the MSM reports it uncritically.
AP ardently phony? Borstein is a sign to skip to the next article, hopefully written by someone with thinking skills and integrety. I am beginning to think the authors of “Not Evil Just Wrong” are incorrect, stupidity of the magnitude of CAWG is as evil as man can get. Hysterical actions for an imaginary problem. Imposition of stupid rules in the name of a belief. Use of propaganda to manipulate children. All the historical precursors of mindless mob violence. Dehumanise your opponents too far and they will return your love in spades. And so on, all normal cycles of human nature except if I believe this (that they are evil) about the proponents of AWG I will be forced to apply their logic to them. That precautionary principle has never worked before but if I am to be subjected to it then it is only fair I should apply it to all who cause me to fear for my freedom and future. Which is not a path to a civil and peaceful society. I think therefore the proper tools to use are laughter and mild derision and humor, after all we cannot always help being stupid. And to top off the dumb thoughts, I do not know if the planet is warming or cooling ,the chosen time frames are very small. the state of the land based stations is worse than I ever dreamed, the actual value of UHI may be orders of magnitude larger than we were told, The data still has not turned up for confession at the CRU and yet claims of science are made for the results. Climatology is similar to scientology in my book as I now wonder if any science is to be found in the CO2 causes warming claims. I suspect the next decade will be a bad time to be an authority as nothing will be accepted on trust because our goverments, at least up here, have blown the AWG alarm endlessly.However 2010 has been a wonderful year and in 2011 I expect govts to cave and use the truth, “We Do Not Know”.
John R. Walker asks:
“Said it before and I need to say it again – why give this scum the oxygen of publicity?”
Answer: Simply to provide documentation for future historians of science as they dig through archives of old blogs, trying to figure out why some ‘scientists’ left science for the AGW religion, and how sensible humans overcame their hegemony with the mainstream press.
A basic instinct in animals and humans is the flight or fight response. The most dangerous animal is a cornered animal because the animal cannot take flight and thus has no choice but to fight.
It is no coincidence this eco-propaganda came out when it did. Cancun just ended in a disaster. It is a well know fact that if you want something to be disclosed discretely you do so on Friday. Thus, this eco-propaganda would not have been published Friday because it would receive far too little exposure. Sunday is a good day to release something you want well know, because it will talked about first thing on Monday. That is why this article is eco-propaganda.
But why so vitriol? The AGW believers and others who stand to gain are cornered. Cancun didn’t work, Copenhagen didn’t work, well populated areas are freezing, and the political climate in the US is changing against the true believer/war profiteers. Global warming belief is cornered by all these. The only option left is a desperation fight. It is also a sign that the end is nigh for those who have tied their fates to the belief. The smart one will, of course, find another crisis to profit off of, but most are about to go down in ignominious defeat.
A desperation attack on Sunday was well-planned by those who know how to manipulate people.
As there are 195 countries in the world, if 18 broke temperature records it means that 177 did not, which means that by my advanced statistical reasoning the world must be cooling.
On the other hand I could be wrong.
Not sure if things are getting worse (colder instead of warmer) or that it’s always been like this & the media is only reporting it more with new vast Internet for all of us to now view.
Just wrote to AP to complain about the article. Not sure it will have any effect or not, but if it stops just one paragraph of inaccuracy getting out it will be worth it.
What makes me really mad in all of this is that this article, once in the AP ‘network’ will get republished left right and center by simple ‘cut and paste’ journalism/editing; the amount of actual publishers who critic what comes down the wire is thin and far between. The number of checks and balances once stuff like this gets into the system is minimal and I know it is having worked on news feed processing systems sourcing_many_ providers – also the amount of effort you need to spend deduping the articles due to the republishing cross networks is quite horrendous.
“The Associated Press has published one of the most biased pieces of environmental science journalism in a long time, and that’s quite a feat in itself. (…) Undoubtedly, there is a considerable amount of scientific ignorance on the part of the authors, but using the human suffering associated with 2010′s natural disasters as talking points in this narrative is a new low for the Associated Press.”
Biased narrative?!?!
Well , putting Al Gore blowing fire on the Earth and calling AP ” is a new low” is not biased?
Reporting all colds events in the world during one of the hottest years on record, while ignoring the far more common (in this year and this decade) hot extremes is not biased?
Making the link between excess heat in the atmoshere and extreme weather is a pretty obvious thing. This year will pass as a very wild year, even if you don’t like it.
““These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming,” said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Where’s that missing heat? It’s a travesty…”
This is an absolutely biased and misleading quote. The “travesty” of Kevin Trenberth is about missing heat in the Oceans, that WAS MEASURED JUST IN THE UPPER 700 METERS OF THE OCEANS where there was no appreciable warming since 2003.
2003 is a relatively recent year, and there are problems with measurements. Look at how the data has been corrected one and again:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-2010-update-to-nodc-ocean-heat.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/10/update-and-changes-to-nodc-ocean-heat.html
Looking at the upper 2000 meters of the ocean, instead, shows an unmistakable warming:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Tracking-the-energy-from-global-warming.html
The von Schuckmann’s paper shows a trend of 0.77 W/m2 of warming in ocean, a study published after the paper that Trenberth was referring in the email, so he still didn’t know about it.
Von Shuckmann still very likely UNDERestimate the warming, as the thermo-steric sea level rise estimated in the paper is 1 mm/yr, when the total thermo-steric SLR is 3.2 mm/yr(measured from altimetry)-1.9mm/yr(ocean mass from GRACE)= 1.3 mm/yr., that is, o.3 mm/yr more than in the Von Shickmann paper.
Clearly there is a lot of heat accumulating in the planet, and 2010 is so far the warmest year in the NASA GISS and NCDC datasets and second warmest in UAH and RSS satetellite datasets, despite the 2009-2010 El Niño was much weaker than the 1997-1998 Super El Niño, and was quickly followed by a moderate-to-strong La Niña, and we are coming out in the deepest solar minimum in a century.
Claiming that there is no global warming is burying the head in the sand, and in the warmest year on record (or second warmest if you prefer UAH and RSS) a series of climate extremes is absolutely no surprise. AP is reporting that extremes.
[ryanm: so, if the globe were 0.5C cooler, then none of this would have happened? come on… i’m making the argument that Natural Variability >>>> AGW by a lot … I’m not writing for Associated Press and sending my work across newswires across the world to media that pay for the service. Go get your own blog if you don’t like the content here, no one is going to engage you on blog policing or censoring.]
It should be possible to tally up the number of people each year (as a percentage of population) who died from extreme weather events – heat, cold, snow, floods, droughts, tornados, hurricanes, typhoons, and anything else I might have missed. Tally it up in dollars damage compared to global GDP while you’re at it as a another measure and don’t forget to include crop losses (if any after accounting for gains).
If “global climate disruption” is real then both datasets described above should reflect a growing problem taking a toll in blood and treasure.
Someone should be able to get a nice juicy grant to study on this for a spell and then write it up for publication in a trade rag.