Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Nature refusing to play along with climate crisis narratives.
‘Tornado drought’ dampens Democrats’ climate-change narrative
Bernie Sanders pushes climate-change narrative despite last year’s ‘tornado drought’
In the wake of last week’s deadly twister outbreak, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared that climate change is making tornadoes worse, to which the experts say: Not so fast.
Purdue University professor Ernest Agee, who has studied tornadoes for 50 years, said his research and that of other scientists shows that the number of violent U.S. tornadoes has in fact tapered off slightly in recent decades.
…
What’s more, 2018 was the first year since record-keeping began in 1950 without an EF4 or EF5 tornado, the most devastating twisters, as rated on the Enhanced Fujita Scale from EF0 to EF5, according to the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center.
“We’re definitely not seeing a trend of increase. If anything, we’re seeing a decrease in the number of strong and violent tornadoes,” Mr. Agee said. “And that’s in papers that I’ve published and my students and other colleagues that are prominent in the field.”
…
Climate change is inevitably blamed for any natural disaster, and Mr. Sanders led the charge following the deadly tornado, saying in a Facebook post, “The science is clear, climate change is making extreme weather events, including tornadoes, worse. We must prepare for the impacts of climate change that we know are coming.”
…
“He [Sanders] references our study, which says that climate change is shifting eastward. We just don’t know for sure if it’s precisely climate change that’s causing it, and certainly we cannot say at all that climate change caused the Lee County, Alabama, tornado,” Mr. Gensini said. “We’re not there as a science to be able to do that.”
…
Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/10/tornado-decline-dings-climate-change-narrative-ber/
Let us hope one of Bernie’s supporters helps Bernie understand that he is making a fool of himself, with his wildly inaccurate claims about climate change and tornadoes.
Bernie’s knowledge of “climate science” is right up there with his knowledge about everything else.
What knowledge? he is deliberately LYING!
“In the wake of last week’s deadly twister outbreak, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared that climate change is making tornadoes worse, to which the experts say: Not so fast.”
Since it is VERY easy to look it up to see that the reality is what DR. Agee shows, it is in small decline and no F 4-5 last year.
The suggestion that one of his supporters correct him will fail because they think like him too well, not when you are a known anti science Socialist moron.
You’re probably correct, Sunsettommy, he is lying. However, we should also consider the other possible reason for this egregious mis-speak, he may simply be stupid.
More than likely his supporters are stupid. Most of them think that he is and lives as a Socialist. They don’t realize (or care) that he is an unaccomplished do-nothing who lives quite well on government patronage scraps. In other words, he is not even good at kick-backs and other forms of bribery.
@Sal: The Marxists had a term for people like Bernie’s followers “Useful Idiots.”
Always the question with these sorts of people; stupid, ignorant, deluded, conniving, lying, willfully ignorant, or some combination?
Doesn’t matter. He has been doing it for long enough that it is obvious he no better than a piece of crap.
If we give him the benefit of the doubt, and he is truly just simply ignorant & deluded in his altruistic political endevour, it doesn’t add anything to his resume.
An altruistic POS is just as smelly as a plain old ordinary POS.
Here is a graph I did 5 years ago. It unquestionable that tornado activity was higher during the 1950-75 “cooling period” than it has been since.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/tornado_compare_ef234/
[MODS: how can we get images to show as images and not links? ]
Bernie has lived most of his life ideologically possessed.
That has framed his perception of reality.
In addition, he has never added any economic value to the world.
His mouth has been his most worked muscle.
Ahhh, Bernie Sanders . . . not the sharpest tool in the shed.
as in a wooden mallet
More like a ball bearing.
I was thinking the bag of manure my wife keeps in there, to amend the soil, but I guess ball bearing works too…
Fortunately even a bag of manure is far more useful than a Democratic Socialist
I really don’t see the point in mindless insults if you want to question someone’s claims. Clearly he is wrong. If he’s “stupid” that may be an excuse. I suspect he does not know the facts but then he should inform himself before parroting some untrue adaptation of the “whatever it is, climate change is contributing” meme.
That is irresponsible for someone seeking office. Attack him on that instead of mindless slurs.
If he is smart enough to know better, if he is responsible enough to learn before he speaks, if he is honest enough to to tell it like it is, AND still he does not, then “stupid” is not a bad characterization, since any appeal to logic, evidence, honesty or any other positive human trait obviously is not in play.
Thus, what constructive words will have any constructive effect on a person who seems to have zero response to these constructive qualities?
Bernie is a Communist who knows the path to communism involves a few years of calling it “Democratic Socialism”.
If anyone wants to mindlessly slur the guy and openly mock him and his ideas, I’m going to look the other way. NOTHING good can come from him. NOTHING.
If anyone is a “Putin Puppet”, its Bernie.
There is a difference between stupid and ignorant.
Yes, ignorant is when you have the intelligence to know and do not apply it. Stupid is when you knowingly ignore any potential of intelligence that you might have and opt for simple minded postures, even if you have the intellectual ability to do otherwise.
My use of “stupid”, thus, is not just an IQ thing — it also involves an emotional intelligence quota that allows one to rise above herd mentality. So, I guess I should qualify my personal use of “stupid” from now on.
If it looks stupid, and the person who should know better is the perpetrator, then it IS stupid. It is stupidity by way of negligence.
One of my favorite secular quotes:
“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
Will Rogers
Is Bernie just ignorant?
(ig·no·rant
[ ig-ner- uhnt]
ADJECTIVE
1.
lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned: an ignorant man.
2.
lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact: ignorant of quantum physics.
3.
uninformed; unaware.
4.
due to or showing lack of knowledge or training: an ignorant statement.)
Maybe. Probably not.
And I don’t think he’s stupid either. (That is not able to comprehend information.)
I just think he’s not being honest with us or himself.
Or maybe he (like Hillary and others) is just ignorant of what “honesty” really is?
If not, that doesn’t make such just “stupid is as stupid does” but evil.
“Let us hope one of Bernie’s supporters helps Bernie understand that he is making a fool of himself, with his wildly inaccurate claims about climate change and tornadoes.”
Or rather, let us hope everyone else understands it, but not Bernie himself.
Please, no one warn Bernie! He’s too valuable as the latest Demonrat idjit-on-display. As Napoleon said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”.
Keep screaming THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING, and ocasio kotex will run with it.
“…ocasio kotex will run with it. ” Occasional Cortex, and I think she already ran with her “only 12 years” thingy.
“Let us hope one of Bernie’s supporters helps Bernie understand that he is making a fool of himself, with his wildly inaccurate claims about climate change and tornadoes.”
It is Democrats you are talking about, speaking outright lies appears to be second nature to them.
“It is Democrats you are talking about, speaking outright lies appears to be second nature to them.”
Believing outright lies, too. They are SO gullible!
Is it still gullibility when the victim wants to believe?
That’s one of the big unanswered questions in my mind: Which leftists know the truth and are just lying for partisan political purposes, and which ones are dupes who have bought into the leftwing propaganda 100 percent.
We can be sure some of them are deliberate liars, but for the rest, I don’t know which category to put them in. I see some people who I think are deliberate liars on tv and then they say something that shows me they are actually living the delusion, so if they believe what they are saying, they are not deliberate liars, no matter how wrong they are. I suppose there are combinations of deliberate liars and True Believers depending on the circumstances and issues.
Be that as it may, their leftwing thought processes, wherever they came from, are dangerous to the basic freedoms of human beings.
One really good clue is when their personal behavior does not match the creed they are preaching for the rest of us.
It is an interesting question, Tom.
My view is that the Left mindset is basically one of ‘I know what’s best’ and many of them honestly believe they are doing the ‘correct thing’.
The problems then arise when they are forced to confront an opposing viewpoint. To accept the viewpoint is correct destroys the ‘I know what’s best’ construct. To destroy this construct basically questions everything they have done in their rational lives and suggests to them that maybe their entire lives have been meaningless. Since discovering they have been ‘wrong’ their entire lives is not something they want to deal with they tend to instead lash out at the opposing viewpoint that is simply WRONG.
(A Right by comparison doesn’t mind being wrong provided they don’t make the same mistakes. They don’t need to ‘Know Best’, they just need to be successful and happy at what they do.)
So, getting back to the ‘are they lying’ vs ‘are they ignorant’ discussions. Well… both maybe? I will accept that there are some who know how to game the system and will say any truth or lie (even in the same sentence) if they believe it serves their personal needs, but I also think there are many who refuse to discuss and debate because they have already made up their minds that ‘They Know Best’ and accepting a lie is the best way to maintain their inner stability.
People often suggest that Leftism is a mental issue. I tend to agree. If it is a force for good or bad I will leave open for personal debate, but I do believe you need to have a ‘Leftie Brain’ in order to become a Leftist.
I eagerly await the justification for adjusting the number of previous tornadoes downward.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a curmudgeon theme. He’ll just have to get louder and more belligerent to make up for it.
From the article: “We’re definitely not seeing a trend of increase. If anything, we’re seeing a decrease in the number of strong and violent tornadoes,” Mr. Agee said. “And that’s in papers that I’ve published and my students and other colleagues that are prominent in the field.”
I live in Oklahoma and anecdotally I can say we are definitely not seeing tornado outbreaks like we had in the past. That’s not to say they won’t happen again, but lately, the weather has been visibly milder.
We may be setting up for a more active tornado season this year what with the subtropical jet (Pineapple Express) blowing across the southern U.S., and we still have a portion of the polar jet dipping down into the southern U.S. and running parallel to the subtropical jet which is going to cause extra turbulence where they interact. I believe this is what caused the large tornado in Alabama last week that killed 23 people and was on the ground for about 24 miles.
These same conditions exist right now so people in this same area should be on the lookout for strong tornadoes. The southern tier of states is warm enough and moist enough to pump them up.
It’s been my personal experience that lately tornadoes in tornado season just can’t seem to get the juice to really blow up into big storms. We used to have weather fronts come through pushing dozens of big tornadoes. Today, we see very little of that. A weather front lately might produce one big tornado, but not dozens strung out over a hundred miles.
I, personall, perfer it this way. The fewer, smaller tornadoes, the better, as far as I’m concerned. 🙂
Give us more of this Global Warming if it does this!
I haven’t found anything so far that is an actual negative to “Global Warming”. Even the actual warming manifests itself as higher lows and lower highs. In other words, milder weather.
There is a negative, I suppose. It’s having to listen to the morons like Bernie and AOC fantasize about disaster scenarios that won’t ever happen.
“Even the actual warming manifests itself as higher lows and lower highs. In other words, milder weather.”
That’s definitely true, and I believe the milder weather of recent years is directly related to the reduction in tornado numbers and strength.
John and Tom
No, that’s NOT true! Most of the warming is happening at night and in the Winter. However, that translates to the lows increasing more rapidly than the highs. See my analysis of the temperature records:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/11/an-analysis-of-best-data-for-the-question-is-earth-warming-or-cooling/
Clyde –
MN could sure use warming this winter. Not many days above average
If you live in a place where global warming adherents have taken political control you’ll actually see a positive. That would be a hugely positive increase in your electric bill. But I suppose some would call that a negative.
Extreme Mildness, the new normal? Head for the hills, the craziness knows no bounds.
/sarc
Catastrophic mildness
I can only hope that Bernie’s pass from “the home’ expires very soon.
Just how can climate change “cause” a single tornado event, of the exact same type the US south-southeast states have always experienced in large numbers in the springtime for like, forever?
The alarmist-mongers are completely dishonest and silly. They are conclusion jumpers – indeed the entire intellectual basis of climate alarmism is the ability to jump to unsupported and indeed preposterous conclusions.
“indeed the entire intellectual basis of climate alarmism is the ability to jump to unsupported and indeed preposterous conclusions.”
Isn’t that the truth!
How can climate change cause a single event? The answer might be the new professional specialty called “Attribution Science”.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/10/675382734/why-scientists-are-talking-about-attribution-science-and-what-it-is
“Why Scientists Are Talking About Attribution Science And What It Is
December 10, 2018 6:39 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Christopher Joyce 2010
As negotiators struggle to hammer out the rule book for a global climate agreement, scientists meeting in Washington, D.C., have yet more evidence linking climate change and extreme weather.”
(End Quote)
A climate scientist specializing in Attribution Science would be able to discern the fingerprint of man, the same way that a native tracker could discern which way the animal went just by sticking his finger in the animal poop.
(It was not that difficult to decide against \s on this one)
Well, there isn’t much science to attributing everything under the sun that someone doesn’t like to climate change.
That is “conclusion jumping” – they should just refer to their “science” as such.
It’s even funnier when someone refers to a “climate event”.
I can only hope that Bernie’s pass from “the Home” expires very soon.
One thing going on with tornadoes is the spread of Doppler radar, so more of the low-power events are noticed. Locally (the Hill Country of Texas), when we have severe thunderstorms, the local TV stations tend to do to continuous coverage, and report very minor tornadoes that are in fairly remote areas and do not actually touch down.
So there should be an artifact in the records relative to the 1950’s and 1960’s, before radar.
One thing going on with tornadoes is the spread of Doppler radar, so more of the low-power events are noticed.
We see the same phenomena with all extreme weather events. We have better methods of detecting and tracking such storms and we have 24-hours news coverage. Storms that, in the past, would have gone unnoticed or little remarked upon make headlines today. But the actual storms themselves are no worse or frequent that they ever were (if anything, data shows that they might actually be less severe/less frequent currently compared to the past)
NOAA even documents the observer bias in the reporting of minor tornadoes.
Even with that bias, the trend for all tornadoes is essentially flat for the last 60 years.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology/trends
However, the same site shows a bar chart for F3+ tornadoes for the same period. The trend is sloped significantly downwards.
[Good news for those of us in the Plains states.]
Let us hope one of Bernie’s supporters helps Bernie understand that he is making a fool of himself, with his wildly inaccurate claims about climate change and tornadoes
His supporters are far-left socialist. Not only won’t they help him understand, they can’t as they believe the nonsense hook link and sinker.
From the article: “He [Sanders] references our study, which says that climate change is shifting eastward. We just don’t know for sure if it’s precisely climate change that’s causing it,”
It’s my experience that the path of greatest tornado destruction periodically moves east and then moves back west. It depends on the path of the jet stream coming in from the southwest to the northeast.
From the article: “and certainly we cannot say at all that climate change caused the Lee County, Alabama, tornado,” Mr. Gensini said. “We’re not there as a science to be able to do that.”
I would say that the cause of the powerful Alabama tornado (EF4, I think somone said) was it occurred right where two jet streams, the polar jet and the subtropical jet were interacting, which would serve to increase the energy and turbulence in that area.
The same conditions are present today.
The Polar jet is not a factor with tornadoes later in the season because it withdraws northwards out of the seasonal path of destruction. So although the temperatures are not as warm now as during the heighth of the tornado season, the two jet streams combined in early March to provide just enough extra energy to the system to create the large tornado.
Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. 🙂
This is clear to anyone who is watching the weather.
You are right that the situation in the south of the US may be repeated.
Here’s a Nullschool view.
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/B/baryonic+matter
We can see the subtropical jet (Pineapple Express) streaming up from the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands and entering the southwest US, and we see the polar jet meandering down into the southern US and the subtropical jet travelling parallel to it over the states in the Southeast (marked).
So any storm front that comes along that path is going to be enhanced when it reaches the area around Alabama where the jet streams are running close together and the big tornado happened last week. Keep your eyes open if you live in that area.
That wasn’t the nullschool link!
Here it is:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-107.13,38.67,401/loc=-87.097,34.593
Look out! Global warming’s coming this way. Oh no.. It’s coming from over there now.. Run!
Thanks South Park.
The most irritating thing about “main stream” media sources is that they will mention scientific studies but do not provide links or sufficient information to find them.
“The science is clear, climate change is making extreme weather events, including tornadoes, worse.”
Only in Bernie’s fevered imagination is this even remotely true. “The science” is just shorthand for the pseudoscientific “climate change” narrative being spouted by those still hoping to profit from it, whether politically, career-wise, or financially. The “extreme weather” narrative is something they’ve latched onto as it is, on an emotional level, somewhat believable. They are relying on people’s poor memories and intellectual laziness combined with the fact that weather has become a much-hyped, alarmist-slanted, 24-7 business.
““The science” is just shorthand for the pseudoscientific “climate change” narrative”
This should be pointed out more often.
“The Science” is a talking point for the alarmists. It’s the same as the alarmists saying “the science is settled” and in the alarmist’s favor. Skeptics should challenge this notion at every turn.
Bruce, good points. Extreme weather and flooding are particularly fraught in statistical terms and the more extreme the more problematic. The historical record is simply insufficient to have a strong basis for “true” recurrence-intervals-vs-stage or intensity (say for >100-yr events). On top of that as you alluded to, people have a sort of worry gene built in, “my oh my we never had weather like this in the good old days” so yes it sure works on an emotional level.
This just in: Bernie has accused Mother Nature of being a spy, colluding with the Russians to hide the physical evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Hank Johnson has suggested that the FBI look under Guam to see if that’s where she has been putting it.
Unfortunately many of us here in tornado alley have the feeling it’s going to be a bad tornado year based on how active the winter has been and the fact that it’s been a few years since we’ve had a bad year.
The subtropical jet stream (Pineapple Express) has been bringing in moisture from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland for months now and if it continues then we probably will have stronger outbreaks of tornadoes because tornadoes are enhanced when the jet stream comes in at the southwest to northeast angle, and the jet stream brings in lots of moisture which also enhances tornado strength.
You’d never guess that the science Bernie Sanders has been exposed to was all preceded by the word, “Political.”
Meanwhile, the temperature anomalies at the equatorial Pacific only 0.2 C compared to the average 1971-2000.
Not to worry.
I’m sure Snopes will get right on it.
Bernie says whatever. He just says it and a hallelujah course repeats it thought free.
Heat is energy, right? The more heat, the more energetic the weather systems.
Not so fast. From a thermodynamics point of view, gradients — not heat content — represent useful energy. Those gradients may be temperature, pressure, humidity, or what have you. It’s the frequent collision of warm, humid Gulf air with cool, dry northern air — creating massive gradients — that makes North America such a tornado factory.
I suspect that people’s mistaken conflation of heat with usable energy that makes them automatically assume that global warming will produce more violent and frequent storms.
Bingo. The decrease in EF4&5 tornadoes makes perfect sense if you think about the second law of thermodynamics.
Including the recent EF4 in Alabama, we’ve only had 8 total EF4&5 tornadoes in 2015 through 2019. The average back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s was more than 10 per year.
That’s a night and day decrease, not unlike what the alarmists predicted would happen to snow.
In 1972, the Democrats ran a candidate with very many parallels to Bernie Sanders. For his day George McGovern was espousing many very liberal ideas. He ran against the incumbent Richard Nixon of course. McGovern had developed many enemies within the DNC, just as Bernie has. McGovern made a poor choice in his initial VP candidate, Eagleton, who turned out to be manic-depressive on regular doses of thorazine to limit his suicidal depression bouts. He dumped Eagleton and added Sargent Shriver, of the Kennedy Clan, as his VP, with Kennedy’s still trying to cover-up Ted’s Chappaquiddick drowning of MaryJo. Nothing went well for McGovern. Unfortunately the Nixon campaign felt it necessary to break in and steal documents from the DNC’s WaterGate hotel offices.
McGovern won DC and Massachusetts. The other 49 states of course went to Nixon.
Bernie may have a vocal support base, but if gets the DNC nomination, it will fracture the Democrats even further from any Democrats viewed as centrists like Biden. He would probably have to get some guy like Beto to be his VP. And his overwhelming message of socialism would lead to a drubbing in the general election.
Bread lines are good [Bernie Sanders]. Vote for him now, get free bread lines later.
And reliable electricity like in Venezuela.
I find it annoying that you posted a video that changes my settings so that his picture bcs my timeout screen
Regarding the Bernie Sanders video: I seem to recall an analogy for the difference between a govt-run socialist or communist society and a free-market society. In the socialist/communist society, people wait in line to buy bread (which they did in the old USSR during the Cold War as I recall). In the free-market society, the bread sits on the shelf waiting for the people to buy it.
Sorry Senator, but I’ll choose the free-market society. I’m not exactly crazy about waiting in long lines.
Maybe he’s having problems with short term memory and picking the wrong talking points to go together. Happens when you get older. I know.
+
The “tornadoes shifting east study” is fataaly flawed anyway, because they are counting ALL TORNADOES, incl EF-0s.
Ant half competent tornado expert knows that may more tornadoes are reported these days because of better reporting systems, DOPPLER etc. NOAA admit all of this, and say that to get proper long term trends, you need to only use data for the stronger tornadoes, EF3 and over, which would nave likely been counted in the past. When you do this, you see that tornadoes have become much less frequent in the Southeast
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/new-study-claims-tornadoes-are-getting-more-frequent-in-southeast/
“Nature refusing to play along with climate crisis narratives.”
This has always been the case, yet it is the narratives that get all of the publicity across the vast wasteland of mainstream media, while the retractions and the reality are only noticed by readers of WUWT! I guess we can also include the readers of the Washington Times on this one. Still, the big lie is reaching far more ears than the simple truth.
It’s the whole point of the term ‘climate change’ that any event can be blamed on CO2.
Yes.
All of this Anti Bernie stuff. Lets not forget that some people keep
voting for him, and others like him.
MJE
Unfortunately there are, and will always be, a lot of people who believe that the job of government is to take money from those who work and give it to them.
Michael, Getting votes and being liked doesn’t make ones ideas good, after all some people voted for and liked Hitler.