Another inconvenient truth – 2012 US tornado count well below normal

The chart above shows that at this time in 2011, the annual running total was about 400 tornadoes *above* normal; a mirror opposite of 2012.
That is very interesting since global temperatures were very similar. With regards to Hadcrut4 for example, the average for the first ten months of the year is 0.443. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. I do not see how it will get above 9th place since the average for the last two months would need to be 0.653 to rise to 8th place. The 2011 anomaly at 0.399 puts 2011 in 12th place. The other data sets show similar trends. How do the warmists explain this?

They’re going to say it anyway ! and will be believed by the obama drones.
When will you get it that facts dont matter anymore? The lefts answer to inconvenient facts is to just keep repeating the same emotional lies.-
Polar bears are dying, the seas are rising, its getting hotter, glaciers are almost gone.

@kadaka: RE: Heidi Cullen: US hit by record storms and rising oceans, ice sheets melting 20x faster…
Horse-Hockey-Stick!

I suppose many believe they need these kinds of prediction and perhaps they do. They are that and just that, predictions and no better then any other “educated guess”. We all need to step back a bit when using this kind of information in the first place. Almost all of these types of predictions are based on some science, some history and lots of assumptions. Unfortunately they are all to often used with an agenda. All to often that agenda is designed to assist this or that group to keep their lucrative jobs or by organizations such as insurance companies and the like to try and justify otherwise unjustified cost increases or better put unjustified additional profits.

Good thing real tornadoes are down, cause the usual suspects are spinning their propaganda so hard, they are generating mini storms of their own. Wonder if all the spin in Doha shows up on the Doppler radar? That would be unprecedented, and a cause for alarm.

Richard Holle says:
November 29, 2012 at 12:11 am
[Comment from over on the tail end the pineapple express thread, that still fits here, I would estimate fewer than 25 tornadoes generated , more in the 12 to 18 range if my forecast maps for the 2nd 3rd of December prove to be accurate]
News flash this is just another Lunar declinational surge in the global circulation, the moon is maximum North declination today, 11-29-2012, for this 27.32 day cycle. The real kicker that causes the extra rainfall and larger storm, greater wind intensity is that we are having a heliocentric conjunction with Jupiter on December 3rd, which is adding extra ionic energy gradient across the frontal boundary.
There is a charge up period for the five days before synod conjunction, that drives positive ions from the equator into the mid-latitudes, that peaks at maximum declinational extent, then as the moon starts to move South again, it drags in the (negatively – charged) cold polar air mass to wring the moisture out of the (positively + charged) fetch of tropical air giving rise to the enhanced rainfall rates and resultant totals.
As this system moves East, Texas will probably see some of this rainfall, and by the 2nd and 3rd the position of the tropical fetch of moisture will be poised over the Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi, area and spawn a winter outbreak of tornadoes, just as the synod conjunction with Jupiter passes peak alignment and enhances the effect, so expect the severe weather to extend on to the East coast the 4th and 5th as well.
Most extreme weather events are the result of these outer planet enhancements of the normal lunar declinational tidal effects, which is why we are having a lull in hurricanes (no conjunctions till fall, mid winter) and severe tornado outbreaks the past couple of years with Saturn synods with the earth in March 22 2010, April 3rd 2011, April 15th 2012, and April 28th 2013, driving the intense tornado outbreaks in the springs.
CO2 has nothing to do with it, check the dates for past severe weather events with the heliocentric (Synod) conjunctions with the outer planets, much is explained and it adds a lot to the ability to forecast severe weather years in advance, try it you will like it.

This is an EXTREME absence of tornadoes, so it’s perfectly consistent with AGW. Remember that a few years ago when Antarctica appeared to be losing ice mass, it was because of AGW. It was then determined that Antarctica was gaining ice, and that was explained by increased moisture and snowfall over the south pole caused by AGW. Now NSIDC has reported that Antarctica IS losing ice, and (again) it’s because of AGW. I know it’s a running joke that everything is due to AGW, but I wish they’d get their hysteria straight.
To borrow a line from A Man For All Seasons, one can only hope that when their heads stop spinning their face is to the front.

Tonight Shep Smith on Fox News reported that this was the third most active tornado year ever.
Apparently they don’t mind fudging the facts.

What this shows is that tornado frequency is not an indicator of any relevance to climate. Anyone that even mentions them is simply stating nonsense for political points. An honest scientist should look at this data, see the variability and pronounce it “non-definitive”. And ask “What else have you got?”

Is it just me, or is there a sad air of desperation and defeat about the spin-meisters of doom by weather? I sense they are not even making the effort, to at least sound plausible, anymore.

Thanks Bill McG
You were right in your comment at mid-year. As you are probably aware Joe Bastardi called it correct a few months earlier when things looked really different. Are you aware of his methods?
Holle has his own calculation approach and it seems to be able to predict things a year or more ahead. I am always impressed by robust predictions because I like engineering which is all about understanding the mechanisms and make reliable products.
A long time friend of mine who harasses me on another blog thinks that if we keep the CO2 level down to 350 ppm we will avert great and even humanity threatening disasters and I am really sure he got that idea from you.
I would like to know from you how you concluded that 350 is the right number. All available evidence suggests that lower CO2 means more frequent and more power tornadoes, especially the latter category. All records save property damage (for obvious reasons of an ever-advancing civilization) are in the past and we don’t even have a long set of records. All we know for sure is a warming world means fewer and less powerful hurricanes and storms and tornadoes. I am sure you have also seen the hurricane power chart.
So it will interest me to know how you came to the opposite conclusion. Any “model” that matched the past would not project a reversal in tornado numbers. In fact from a thermodynamic perspective the energy driver. – temperature gradients – are reduced in a warming world.
Thanks in advance.

Strong tornado count (>EF2) basically has a long term, negative correlation to northern hemisphere SST. Though the conditions that create tornadoes are not that simple, so don’t expect this to work on a year to year basis, like all things in climate there are decadal scale patterns too:
http://i50.tinypic.com/2w3z0p4.png
(Note tornado count is inverted in this graph)
Tornado count on this inverted plot peaked around year 2000. There is a clear trend towards more tornadoes. This is yet another indicator that we have entered a cooling phase since around 2000.
Expect more proof of “extreme weather” next year from weeping Bill whether there are more or less tornadoes, it will always the “abnormal” “new normal” and a sign of impending doom.
Meanwhile, in the real world:
For the US, the current cooling will bring more tornadoes and less hurricanes.

It’s friggin 4 degrees F here in mid-Maine… wtf??
And the weather channels are all… “Going to be a high of 40’s for Saturday…”… are they for real?

Back in April 2011 Dr. Roy Spencer thought Warmists were joking when they tried to link more tornadoes and global warming.

“MORE Tornadoes from Global Warming? That’s a Joke, Right?”
“…….If there is one weather phenomenon global warming theory does NOT predict more of, it would be severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Tornadic thunderstorms do not require tropical-type warmth. In fact, tornadoes are almost unheard of in the tropics, despite frequent thunderstorm activity…………..
But contrasting air mass temperatures is the key. Active tornado seasons in the U.S. are almost always due to unusually COOL air persisting over the Midwest and Ohio Valley longer than it normally does as we transition into spring. …….”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/04/more-tornadoes-from-global-warming-thats-a-joke-right/

Never let observations get in the way of a good story. Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Always blame global warming for things people don’t like or find ‘unusual’ at certain times of the year. Blame the weather for things people like or find ‘normal’ at certain times of the year.
When are these scaremongers going to give up with the misinformation campaign against the public?

john robertson says:
November 30, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Is it just me, or is there a sad air of desperation and defeat about the spin-meisters of doom by weather? I sense they are not even making the effort, to at least sound plausible, anymore.
________________________________________
Why should they?
The brainwashing part of the project has achieved its purpose. The next step is to consolidate the position before the cooling climate makes the hoax obvious to the Sheeple. That is why the IPCC was no even at the convention. It is not and never was about CAGW it was about the UN’s ability to tax and getting a strangle hold on energy. If you control energy you control a country.
A top Democrat and Republican on energy matters in the Senate left the door open to compromise on a potential carbon tax
In Washington they are saying But why institute a carbon tax, if not to raise revenue? In brief: Because it would reduce harm in the future and compensate for harm in the past. And how would it “compensate for harm in the past?” July 5 [2012] (Reuters) – The United Nations on Thursday urged countries to impose international taxes to raise more than $400 billion a year, such as a carbon tax, a currency transaction tax and a billionaires tax

…a United Nations survey which suggested “innovative” ways to fund global development projects…
“Indeed, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change mandates only that higher-income countries make specific targeted reductions, as those countries are responsible for most of the man-made concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and are best able to bear the economic burden,” the survey said.
“In this vein, a tax of $25 per ton of CO2 emitted by developed countries is expected to raise $250 billion per year in global tax revenues,” the survey continued….
In August, Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington introduced a bill that would create a carbon emissions permitting system, placing an initial maximum price of $18.75 per ton of carbon which would then steeply rise to $131.25 per ton of carbon over a decade.
The Managed Carbon Price Act of 2012 aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent of 2005 levels within 42 years of its enactment, and the Treasury Department would issue permits which are not allowed to be traded. Permits could only be purchased from the Treasury or refunded by them
The proceeds from the tax going to a trust fund where 25 percent would go towards deficit reduction and 75 percent would be spent to offset price increases for the public….
The American people care about the deficit and they’re worried about climate change–and we can fix both without hurting the economy,” McDermott said

I wonder how much of that tax is going to go to the UN. In Australia it is 10%

http://climaterealists.com/?id=10681
cherry picking. On what basis were these periods chosen? If you have the data to do a plot ,plot it all, not the bits that make a point.
cf
http://i49.tinypic.com/xbfqtw.png

Will Bill Mckibben have the courage to respond to those who responded to him? Stayed tuned to this station to find out the intriguing answer to this and many more questions on today’s episode of ” Alarmist Hit and Run”.

Actually, according to the folks at the Natl Severe Storms Laboratory, the heat dome that caused the remarkable drought seems to be the reason for fewer tornadoes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/28/tornado-season-2012-recor_n_1711679.html A hard sort of tradeoff–Jeff Masters provided some statistical reasoning to say it was probably not worth the tradeoff. http://www.heraldandnews.com/article_90e490d2-e419-11e1-84eb-001a4bcf887a.html Interestingly, all this came up once before, when Mr. Watts accused me of ‘disappearing’ things from my Twitter account, but then it turned out he didn’t have the settings quite right on his Twitter account (admittedly fairly easy to do) and so they just appeared to be disappearing to him.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/bill-mckibben-disappears-his-own-commentary-on-poisonedweather/ We cleared that up at the time. At any rate, that’s all from weepy me today–I’m in Omaha, where last week 99.69% of the state was in severe drought, but this week it’s up to 100%. I hope everyone has an excellent weekend

P. Solar says:
December 1, 2012 at 6:15 am
http://climaterealists.com/?id=10681
cherry picking. On what basis were these periods chosen? If you have the data to do a plot ,plot it all, not the bits that make a point.
cf
http://i49.tinypic.com/xbfqtw.png
Do you actually believe that in 1860-70 there was a global network of observers recording cyclones, by whatever name called and calculating the ACE for each year?

bill mckibben;
I’m in Omaha, where last week 99.69% of the state was in severe drought, but this week it’s up to 100%. >>>>
Proving that you still cannot understand that an anecdotal remark about a tiny portion of the planet is meaningless.
Can you explain how 16 years of ZERO change in the global temperature cause a drought in one area representing less than 1% of the globe?
There’s increased flooding in many parts of the world this year such as remarked on upthread. Do you suppose that the ZERO change in global temperature over the last 16 years caused this too?
Which is it? Did the ZERO temp increase cause increased flooding or increased drought?
Did the ZERO temp increase cause both less ice in the Arctic and more ice in the Antarctic?
There were several points of fact and science that were made to you in this thread, and your only response is to whine that Anthony made a mistake regarding your twitter feed? That’s it? Confronted with a list of errors YOU made all you can do is deflect? That’s all you got? A bit of yipping about a minor computer setting? But on science and facts…. ZERO.

Gunga Din;
Missing heat. Missing tornadoes. Missing hurricanes. What are they missing?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Missing increased drought index (the planetary average matters, not weepy bill’s anecdotal evidence), the tropospheric hot spot, accelerating sea level rise, increased temps…. all missing.
You know what else is missing? The ability of Bill McKibben to come up with a response other than “oh yeah? well Anthony made a mistake about my twitter feed”.
Go get ‘um Bill. That’ll make you look like you know what you are talking about.
Keep coming around, you make a great poster child for the inability of the warmists to spout anything other than excuses.

Bruce Cobb says:
December 1, 2012 at 9:23 am
I’m fully aware of why Anthony uses the ‘weepy’ adjective. I understand that Bill’s tears may well have been somewhat crocodilian. My point is that using such terminology does not advance his/our argument in any way.
Getting personal in this way both detracts from the argument and undermines the sceptical case. I strongly believe that sticking to the science and avoiding ad hominem is the best way forward.
I’ve been following this great site for many years. I’ve learned a lot from from Anthony’s hard work and dedication and I am very grateful. If we stay focused we can win. If we get personal it only exposes our soft underbelly. What’s the point of doing that other than creating some short term, shallow satisfaction.

@mkelly
“It’s really amazing that they’re considering someone for Secretary of State who has millions invested in these companies,” Bill McKibben, a writer and founder of the activist groups 350.org and Tar Sands Action, told the website. “The State Department has been rife with collusion with the Canadian pipeline builders, and it’s really distressing to have any sense that that might continue to go on.”
+++++++++
One of the main Canadian activist groups in Vancouver admitted on national radio they had accepted $3.6m by US funders to generate opposition to the pipeline from Alberta to the BC Coast. The timeline works out to $17,000 a week for a few years. They had no shame admitting they were shilling for foreign interests, whipping up the local populations in towns and reserves to serve some US interest. Is Bill and 350.org involved or perhaps some other group?
As the US apparently doesn’t want more Canadian oil via new pipelines it seems reasonable they should not concern themselves where it is sold. Now there is talk about piping it to the East Coast to ‘supply Eastern Canada’ which is the same as saying, we will ship it East if agitators and shills prevent us shipping it West. The middle of Canada has no problem taxing the pipelines across their land (it is called linear property taxes). If the BC government doesn’t want it, no problem.

small minds look at one year and say its proof that the earth is ok. small minds

The problem with alot of climatologists on the agw side is they are closed minded weather voyeurs, only peaking in when it delights them enough to try to prove their point. They dare not mention the severe cold that is engulfing other areas of the world, nor understand that the US may go into the same kind of pattern Dec 15-Jan 14, though if we do, I am sure a) an excuse that involves warming or climate change will come up and b) we will hear about some place that is warm. They obviously have not looked at the past facts of what the weather has done in similar cycles ( example the 1950s) when the pdo flipped and there was onslaughts of heavy rain and snow in the northwest US drought and heat in our summers and hurricanes on the east coast. Nor will they even say boo about the severe cold that is overtaking larger areas than the US already, the far east, Europe into now Asia and nw North America While I dig in and look at everything they look at, the more you look at it, the more you realize how lacking their ideas are, I realize that they dont even look at, or if they do, simply ignore , anything that goes against them. Sea level rise? Since the gulf was at one time covering all the lower Mississippi valley, that is certainly something that can happen again. so much for your 8 inch rise or whatever since the sunspot cycle started ramping up after the little ice age. Arctic melting. lets see what happens when the AMO flips in 5-10 years. And by the way you need not look any further for the answer than Alaska and Europe. These people should be dragged outside in the cold that is making life miserable, and be made to explain what happened to the canary in the coal mine in Alaska now that the PDO has flipped and one brutal winter after another has started, and perhaps the most absurd of all the comments, though given some on hurricanes I have heard, its tough to say what is the most ignorant, that snow and cold would soon be a thing of the past in europe ( try telling them that now, its the 4th winter in a row of a major period of severe cold) Given they have no clue as to how the climate cycle works naturally, or could not have taken a class in it.. they run to blame warming for the cooling. And all the while, massive amounts of people are meant to suffer as economies are handcuffed by draconian laws that are fighting ghosts, while lining peoples pockets with the money of the people that are most affected.. the workers.
And by the way, cut with the natural variability excuse. Because that argument is nonsense. What are you trying to say, that if co2 was not as high as it is, we would be in an ice age?
These people are like children that have to have their way, have to make sure that feelings are more important than facts. Those of us brought up in the real world where right and wrong matter and jobs are on the line, understand that. So at the risk of hurting the feelings of the climate voyeurs let me leave you with this chart
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1-s2-0-s0921818112001658-gr11.jpg
read it and weep, you are dead wrong, and most of us dont want to see this planet thrown into the misery your regressive. NOT PROGRESSIVE ideas will lead too.
As blackouts start in the Arctic cold in europe you think about that in your still warm home, and face the facts as to who cares more about their fellow man

rob says:
December 1, 2012 at 2:39 pm
small minds look at one year and say its proof that the earth is ok. small minds
_________________________________
graph 10,000 yrs
graph 140,000 years
graph 450,000 years
flick graph
STILL looks O.K.

Joseph Bastardi says:
December 1, 2012 at 2:50 pm
The problem with a lot of climatologists on the agw side is they are closed minded weather voyeurs…
_______________________________
Thank you Joe.
We all have to keep in mind that these CO2 restriction measures in the UK alone have cause:
25,700 excess winter deaths in the UK in 2010-11
George Monbiot: The level of excess winter deaths in the UK is higher than Siberia’s.

The number of people dying as a result of fuel poverty is three times higher than government estimates suggest, according to new academic research.
Some 7,800 people die during winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly, says fuel poverty expert Professor Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster. That works out at 65 deaths a day…. link

A household is defined as being fuel poor if it has to spend 10 per cent or more of its income on paying to keep the home adequately warm.
In 2003 the number of households hit a low of two million, but it climbed to four million in 2007 and then 4.5 million in 2008, the figures for which were published today by the Department of Energy & Climate Change.
This figure suggests that one in six households were fuel poor during 2008, a year which saw energy bills shoot up by 45 per cent…. link

Mean while the World Bank who is crying THE SKY IS FALLING, it has increased loans to build COAL fired plants from $100 million in 2005 to $4,270 million in 2010 link
The USA funds 1 in five dollars of these loans. So as our coal powered plants are shut down our tax go dollars go to build new COAL PLANTS in India, China and other countries!!!!

From bill mckibben on December 1, 2012 at 9:24 am:
At any rate, that’s all from weepy me today–I’m in Omaha, where last week 99.69% of the state was in severe drought, but this week it’s up to 100%.
http://www.drought.gov/portal/server.pt/community/drought.gov/202/area_drought_information?mode=2&state=NE
“Severe” is #3 of the 5 designations of drought. For the week of 11/27, currently 100% of the state of Nebraska is in the D2 to D4 range, “severe” to “exceptional”.
As it was three months ago (8/28), at the start of the water year (9/25/2012)… Last week (11/20) only being 99.69% was a slight improvement.
Tables: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_tables.htm?NE
You can see the changeover to D2-D4 range came pretty quick, from only 4.94% on 6/19 to 100% on 7/24. Bad bout of weather. This year was the worst, but as seen in the tables which only go back to 2000, 2002 had a similar spike.
From Curious George on December 1, 2012 at 1:57 pm:
Bill McKibben – I have been trying to find out, 1. What definition of “drought” the US Drought Monitor uses, 2. How they measure its intensity. So far unsuccessfully. I’ll appreciate your help.
Much searching later, I found here a passing description:

The U.S. Drought Monitor is unique, blending numeric measures of drought and experts’ best judgment into a single map every week. It started in 1999 as a federal, state, and academic partnership, growing out of a Western Governors’ Association initiative to provide timely and understandable scientific information on water supply and drought for policymakers.
The Monitor is produced by a rotating group of authors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Drought Mitigation Center. It incorporates review from a group of 250 climatologists, extension agents, and others across the nation. Each week the author revises the previous map based on rain, snow and other events, observers’ reports of how drought is affecting crops, wildlife and other indicators. Authors balance conflicting data and reports to come up with a new map every Wednesday afternoon. It is released the following Thursday morning.

As it combines numbers with “best judgement”, the levels of drought are “informed opinions”. As there is a subjective component, good luck finding those definitions.

Hey Bill!
Bill McKibben!
Have you seen ZERO?
THIS is what ZERO looks like:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/01/18-annual-climate-gabfests-16-years-without-warming/
Can you explain to us Bill, in your own words, how the exact same temperatures we have today as we had 16 years ago caused all the weather you insist on weeping about? C’mon Bill, give it a shot. Use grown up words and explanations please, none of this appeal to emotion that earned you your nickname.
Please explain also how, in that same time period, CO2 went from 364 ppm to 391 ppm without changing the temperature. Again, use big people words, just the facts, no weeping, no pointing to one spot on earth and screaming look! look! warming! Just the data sir, and global data.
And no, it isn’t hiding in the oceans, we have the Argo buoys carpeting the ocean and they’re not detecting squat. No, it isn’t in the ocean depths below the Argo buoys because it would have to pass by the Argo buoys to get there, and they’d detect that. No, it isn’t more aerosols from China because their aerosol production is a fraction of what we cleaned up in the western world over the last few decades. Remember when major cities in Europe and North America had stand up comics zipping one liners like “I shot an arrow into the sky, and it stuck there” and “I’m not sick, it’s the smog, I inhaled a piece”? Do we have jokes like that anymore? No! We cleaned up ten times what China is putting out.
So explain Bill. Please. With real grown up words, facts, and reasoning.
I bet you’ll ignore me, because you cannot answer. You’ve got nothing. Bupkiss. Nada. ZERO.
Yes, you’ve got ZERO.