By Roy Spencer | Fox News
Progressive politicians like Al Gore, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.N.Y., don’t hesitate to blame any kind of severe weather – even if it is decreasing over time – on global warming.
With the devastating Dayton, Ohio tornadoes fresh on our minds, it is useful to examine exactly why (modest) global warming has produced fewer – not more – of such events.
The simple answer is that tornado formation requires unusually cool air.
Very few thunderstorms produce tornadoes. In the hot and humid tropics, they are virtually unheard of. The reason why is that (unlike hurricanes) tornadoes require strong wind shear, which means wind speed increasing and changing direction with height in the lower atmosphere.
These conditions exist only when a cool air mass collides with a warm air mass. And the perfect conditions for this have existed this year as winter has refused to lose its grip on the western United States. So far for the month of May 2019, the average temperature across the U.S. is close to 2 degrees Fahrenheit below normal.
Every year, springtime thunderstorms in Central and Southeast U.S. have plenty of warm, moist air to draw on from the Gulf of Mexico. What they generally don’t have is a persistent cold air mass producing strong wind shear at the boundary between a warm and cold air mass.
In recent decades, slow warming in the U.S. has been accompanied by fewer of these cold springtime air masses over the West. As a result, based upon official National Weather Service statistics the long-term trend of strong (EF3) to violent (EF5) tornadoes has been decidedly downward, with 2018 experiencing a record low in activity.
Cold air meeting warm air causes lots of problems.
Lets hope the planet warms a bit.
Its why alarmists claim worse weather with CO2 emissions….when it gets colder, more violent tornado, blame assigned.
Temperatures going up is blame assigned to same cause…both outcomes covered.
Tornadoes must have been exceptionally bad during the ice age when the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered all of Canada and much of the northern USA. Not to mention hurricane activity, as well as all storms, with that much temperature differential gradient between the northern cold glacial air meeting the southern air masses. What I don’t really understand is why supposedly intelligent people think an extra 2 degree C from preindustrial circa 1850 at the end of the LIA is so bad for civilization and want to dismantle our western economies to rectify this. Surely there must be some other ulterior motive at play? Why do intelligent people want to go along with this alarmist rationale when every intuition in our body is telling us that the climate is the most benign in recent human history?
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2015GL064929
“Recent review papers reported that many high-resolution global climate models consistently projected a reduction of global tropical cyclone (TC) frequency in a future warmer climate, although the mechanism of the reduction is not yet fully understood. Here we present a result of 4K-cooler climate experiment. The global TC [tropical cyclone] frequency significantly increases in the 4K-cooler climate compared to the present climate. This is consistent with a significant decrease in TC frequency in the 4K-warmer climate.“
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X06009186
“Our record demonstrates that the frequency variability of intense landfalling cyclones is greatest at centennial scale compared to seasonal and decadal oscillations. [T]he period between AD 1600 to 1800 [Little Ice Age] had many more intense or hazardous cyclones impacting the site than the post AD 1800 period.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379115301335
“A comparison with North Atlantic and Western Mediterranean paleoclimate proxies shows that the phases of high storm activity occurred during cold periods, suggesting a climatically-controlled mechanism for the occurrence of these storm periods. … Periods of low storm activity occurred from 560 cal yr BC to 140 cal yr AD (SP9 and SP8, Roman Warm Period) and from 820 to 1230 cal yr AD (SP4, Medieval Warm Period).”
http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/30_january_2015?folio=540&pg=98#pg98
“Our work illustrates a major constraint on the large-scale global atmospheric engine: As the climate warms, the system may be unable to increase its total entropy production enough to offset the moistening inefficiencies associated with phase transitions. … On a warming Earth, the increase in perceptible water has been identified as a reason for the tropical overturning to slow down, and studies over a wide range of climates suggest that global atmospheric motions are reduced in extremely warm climates.“
Alan, would you care to actually say what your point is?
The references didn’t address tornadoes, but they all point out how HURRICANES are DEFINITELY more frequent during colder periods. Warmer climate= fewer extreme weather events like hurricanes, colder climate= more extreme weather events like hurricanes( and presumably tornadoes).
They were references showing Earthling2 was correct. The path of tornadoes is relatively small and there would be no geological record of such, but there is both concrete and theoretical evidence that there are DEFINITELY more hurricanes during cooler periods, fewer during warmer periods.
Thank you for clarifying. Lists of references, with or without headlines/abstracts, don’t engage most readers.
Modelling is quantifying an argument. If your model predicts something that has a mechanism not understood, don’t publish.
“…why supposedly intelligent people think an extra 2 degree C from preindustrial circa 1850 at the end of the LIA is so bad for civilization and want to dismantle our western economies to rectify this.”
Because climate change has never been about climate. The atacks from the greens on nuclear demostrate that point most clearly. And you answered your own question with, “and want to dismantle our western economies.”
The means is the desired outcome here for the Watermelons.
But, the plebs who vote for this Green nonsense actually believe it is about the weather/climate being spoon-fed a steady diet of propaganda from academia, media and politicians that we are on the precipice of doom and approaching a climate emergency. The average people I know who vote for that actually think the future warmer weather/climate is going to destroy us, and some of them are quite intelligent overall. That is the part that I don’t understand, when it is clearly staring us in the face that we are in another Climate Optimum and the weather/climate has never been so good for humanity as it has been the last 100 years and can only get better with another degree of warming. For 1001 reasons…
I realize that the leadership of the leftists and climateers are in it for the money, power and control over humanity, but for the normal average everyday voting folk to sleep walk into this and actually support with their vote is the part I don’t understand. Do people willingly want to be led over a cliff to their destruction with this climate doom? It is so obvious that there is nothing out of the ordinary with the climate, other than there has been a gradual warming out of the LIA which was so disastrous to humanity. We are engaged in physiological warfare for the control of civilization, similar to a 100 year religious crusade. I just don’t understand intelligent people falling for this when the evidence is so clearly known and available that there is no climate emergency from a very gradual long term warming.
psychological warfare…damn autocorrect. When do we get edit back?
Reply to Alastair Brickell
Show us the proof that AGW is true .The facts are that there is no proof that the burning of fossil fuels will warm the planet more than one degree Celsius with the doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere .
The theory that the earths temperature will rapidly increase is an unproven theory that that relies on the tropical hot spot that has never been found and positive feed backs from water vapour .
Bring some proof to this site to back up your claims about AGW .
The war against fossil fuels is a war against all of the populations of the world .
If the people pushing these ideas were serious they would be advocating for nuclear energy to replace coal and gas power stations .
Why don’t they ?
It is quite simple .
Number one they have not thought what it would be like with a scarce supply of energy .
Number two they have given it some thought and that is their aim to destroy modern civilization .
Come back with some rational arguments how you would deal with expensive intermittent power supplies and how the world would manufacture steel and cement with out coal .
The real question, Earthling2, is why all the scientific societies have rolled over in support of AGW.
One can see intelligent laypeople going for the idea, resting their decision on the authority of the physics, chemistry and geophysical societies.
The fault lays with the leadership of the scientific societies. They have deliberately betrayed science, or else have become abjectly incompetent. Those are the only choices. The question is, how did that happen?
By intent. And it wasn’t just scientific societies, it was also getting Liberals on laity leadership positions in the Anglican Church (Episcopal Church in the US).
A lot of this groundwork in the US was laid by VP Al Gore in the 1990’s. The idea of the societies becoming involved in policy advocacy was the lure along with more funding for its members. An analysis of what transpired during CSU professor Bill Gray’s professional years during his highly successful years in 1990’s to becoming an outcast by 2005 highlights what was happening. In the grant funding rejections to those who openly objected to both the politicization of the fields of climate research and meteorology and to a decline in science standards of skepticism and uncertainty regarding climate.
No Pat, the question isn’t “how did this happen.” The question is why you have committed the logical error of “false dilemma” when you state: “They have deliberately betrayed science, or else have become abjectly incompetent. ”
…
You see Pat, you have ignored the possibility that they all support AGW because it is in fact true.
Pat, implicit in your post is the assumption that AGW is false. That is a big mistake on your part.
@ AB
No — Pat has not ignored this possibility — he speaks from a base of evidence that proves his basic assumption. It is you who ignore this evidence.
Yes, because the evidence proves that AGW is false. The big mistake, again, is that you ignore this evidence.
Ahh, Watermelons again, sickly Greenie on the outside, Pinko on the inside.
Don’t forget, up until 5 yrs ago, offucially no significant warming from man’s CO2 occurred until after1950. It was only after wide acknowlegement of the “Pause”, and the discovery that model projections of warming were proving to be running 300% or more too high. The main worry was for an increase of 2C from 1950 prior to that. They immediately decided ti push the starting gate back to 1850 from 1950 to bankroll the 0.6C of the past century on to their man-caused GW which plainly wasnt going to make it to +2C by 2100 under business as usual without the addition. They introduced 1.5C over 250 yrs as the danger level just to be sure they wouldnt undershoot. Natural warming growth (now not mentioned these days) at 0.6C/ century would all by itself reach (2.5 x 0.6C) 1.5C… what a coincidence!
These people believe humans are a cancer on the planet and prefer that our numbers are severely reduced. Falling on our economic swords will kill millions. Mission accomplished. I suggest they volunteer for the front of the line.
They don’t care about facts. The world is ending and it is fault of us deniers.
This new and interesting interview with Patrick J. Michaels explains why we reached this sort of mad reasoning even in the sphere of science:
https://www.weltwoche.ch/ausgaben/2019-22/artikel/incestous-relationship-die-weltwoche-22-2019.html
A perfect example why “global warming” has been discarded in favor of “climate change”.
Climate should never be changing, it should stay forever as it always was, disregard those fairy tales about ice ages.
Global warming became climate change which has now become Climate Crisis. I guess “climate catastrophe” will be the next buzz phrase.
It is already
Don’t know what’s after catastophe…extenction perhaps
We’ll find out in 11 years, 30 years…whatever the chosen interval is…or at least be told the reasons why it hasn’t happenned [yet].
I have been stressing this fact repeatedly. I have attended the NWS Skywarn storm spotting sessions on many occasions. Skywarn teaches how and why severe weather forms. I tell people that it is cold, rather than warm that is the key to severe weather.
One only has to look to 1974 and 2011 to see that. The two largest tornado outbreaks on record. Both years had strong La Nina’s. The cooler Pacific ocean water off the west coast helped to keep air moving across the US at a cooler temperature.
The tropics do not change temperature much. So the warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is pretty much a constant. It is the temperature of the cooler air that varies.
Graduate from one of the earlier NWS Storm Spotter training classes in the DFW area in the mid 70’s, in part conducted by one Alan Moller who sadly is no longer with us … RIP Alan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moller
Rotating thunderstorms/tornadoes — cold air clashing w/warm, humid air in jet-stream zones, like certain areas of N America. ‘Nuf said.
Wait… the cool-over-warm idea doesn’t itself produce wind-shear, methinks. Instead, it promotes and increases water condensation, either as droplets or in solid phase as snowflake accretion. The condensation of water #vapor# to either liquid or solid acts to substantially reduce air pressure, which in the environment of neighboring air in turn results in vortical shear. The effect builds upon itself. Hence why thunderheads ”go postal” along tornado alley, in spring and summer, with the cold-over-warm layering of the atmosphere.
At least that’ show it was ‘splained to me by a decent atmospheric scientist once.
It’s the different velocity of these air masses that causes strong horizontal circulation in the atmosphere which can then tip vertical if the cell is isolated.
LOOK at the convergence of warm moist air (moving from the south) and cold dry air (from the NNW) in the vicinity of eastern/north central Texas’; we are having Tornadic T-storms in the vicinity of Dallas and Ft. Worth as I type this …
This chart is a live update, so, it won’t be the same much past 3:30 PM EST / 2:30 PM CST time
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/displaySfc.php?region=ict&endDate=20190529&endTime=-1&duration=0
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/tornado_compare_ef234_hadcrut4/
explanation of those graphs:
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/tornado_compare_ef234-2/
There has been a very similar reduction in EF2 EF3 and EF4 category tornadoes since 1975 peak. There is link and it is a negative one.
Delta T is the driving force for all ‘heat engines’, tornadoes included. The recent spate of tornadoes in the USA heartland reflects this. The stationary high pressure system keeping the southeast US very warm is now dissipating. This will allow the stationary low pressure system, keeping the Rocky mountains and plain states cold, to move on as well. The large delta T between the 2 systems dissipates simultaneously. We should get a least a week or 2 of lower tornadic activity as a result. The month of May has the highest frequency of tornadoes historically.
As for AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked President Trump why he’s so against socialism, and the President replied “Because Americans want to walk their dogs, not eat them!”
J-Mac,
Something similar…
Free market Capitalism: Where the bread waits at the store for you to arrive to buy it.
Socialism: Where you wait in line at the store for the bread to arrive so you can buy it.
A better one: “…..socialism is simply spending other people’s money!” I think this was from Margaret Thatcher.
In the old Soviet Union, a common joke was “First, we pretend to work. Then, they pretend to pay us.”
Thank you.
I object to the characterization of Ocasio-Cortez ‘thinking’.
Trained parrots don’t think.
I object to those politicians being called progressive (a word they stole from normal people). How about “regressive” or “Luddite” even?
No argument there. I have a lot of words of my own, but in deference to those on the board, I try to stick to no more than PG-13 profanity.
Nay, Nay, don’t denigrate parrots.
taz1999,
Very true. Parrots, trained or not, are way, way smarter than AOC and a great many of her fellow politicians to boot.
You could argue, however, that parrots mimic their owner. So who owns AOC?
Many parrots are pining for the fjords
I stand corrected on the parrot-comparison.
And you expect a CAGW ‘true believer’ like AOC to understand something as ‘complex’ as warm and cold air masses causing wind shear? Perhaps she can get a really good example of deadly wind shear during her next flight from NYC to DC …
OK so wind shear is essential for the formation of Tornadoes, and wind shear is a killer for Hurricanes. But Hurricanes themselves can spawn multiple Tornados. Have I got that right?
The tornado which struck my neighborhood in Oklahoma City last Saturday night, followed almost the exact same track of one which struck some years ago. Both struck without warning and both took lives.
One instant, a normal rain, the next, a howling beast outside.
Tornadoes here are tracked and warnings are issued in time to seek cover, but when they spin up right on top of you, there is no warning at all.
I was lucky and just lost a few leaves from trees, although everyone across the street and East suffered loss.
The excellent OG&E crews had power restored in 18 hours.
I think I saw a video of that tornado on the internet, and it was pretty evil. I am glad to hear you are fine, and feel badly for those who were hurt or the families of those killed.
Oclahoma’s indigenous populations legends (there must be some) about tornadoes should be noted down, if not already done, in order to save for posterity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_tribes_in_Oklahoma
It’s quite a solid theory now that the heat islands of OKC and Wichita direct tornadoes to the south and up the southeast to east side of the cities. I would be a little hesitant to rebuild with the typical stapled white pine home in these areas.
… waiting for a cite (link, author name, etc.) on that “white paper” describing the “directing” of tornadoes …
I swear I had read it published somewhere but now I can’t even find a blog on it. We’ll just call it my theory. And I’ll wager that at least the next five tornadoes that hit these cities will hit either the west or southern suburb and then dissipate, or hit the south and southeast sides before possibly continuing on their path – vs hitting tornado to hit the central, north, or northeast sides of these cities.
The one that moved through Dallas the day after Christmas in 2015 came up from the south, over roughly central Dallas, that cell fizzled, and a new cell formed up to the east and spawned a tornado – hitting east parts of Dallas and several suburbs.
https://www.weather.gov/fwd/dec26tornadoes
If ANYTHING, urban heat islands intensify the associated T-storm complexes that spawn tornadoes, not weaken them …
This house in sub-tropical Australia is designed to withstand the cyclonic winds … more expensive but should be cheaper to insure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7NBkBKw1Ns
All houses and buildings of every kind are designed to withstand cyclones rated to that location. The building code of Australia provides details on how to do that. It’s been the case ever since Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin in the 70’s.
A tornado and a cyclone are two different animals entirely. I could see how the house in your video would be great in a hurricane but that does not apply to a tornado.
It seems to be a very tight house. I wonder what its chances are of exploding in a tornado?
I am running the furnace most every day and some days, all day, in May and I’m in the high desert of Arizona! It’s been danged cold. My daughter in Phx. was running her furnace earlier this month.
Sometimes I wonder if some people are professional AGW posters who see the title of an article and go straight to the comments with a prepared post and skip the article?
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Tulsa for the first time back in March, for the AKC National Dog Agility Championships at the Oklahoma Ford Dealer’s complex. I met friendly people all over, talked to several who had moved there some years ago from places like LA and Baltimore and absolutely loved the town.
I marveled at the wide open blue skies, and at the same time wondered what it be like for a newcomer to see those skies get darker and darker, maybe get that sickly greenish hue, and see — or maybe not see, but only hear — the funnel descending from the sky to lay waste all around.
But I certainly understand now why people stay and rebuild; the land has a way of pulling you in.
I’ll tell you how new people handle our tornadoes.
Some years ago, an OKC resident transplant from New Jersey told me that he was now fully an Oklahoman, because when the sirens go off, he would grab a beer from the fridge and go stand in the yard and watch the sky.
I will beg to differ. Many tornadoes in the high plains of the West are associated with the enigmatic “dry line”. There may be little to no temperature contrast, but there is a difference in humidity. A dry line in Europe does possess a temperature contrast.
The dry line is a feature of colliding warm and cool air masses over North America. I’m not so sure what is enigmatic about it…
Not in the American west it isn’t. See T.N. Carlson, F. H. Ludlam, Tellus, XX, 2, 14. 1968.
One of the problems is that tornadoes used to be described by the damage they did on the ground. Now the sensationalist-NPCs describe a tornado by how big they think it is based on rain wrap, i.e. last night’s Eudora, KS tornado that looked to be a mile wide due to rain wrap but left a damage path of a few hundred feet, or by claiming that the entire rotating wall cloud seen on radar is the tornado, e.g. 2013 El Reno tornado claimed to be 2.5 miles wide yet the damage path was also a few hundred feet wide and rated EF3 damage.
To this day you will still find claims of the 2013 El Reno tornado being the most powerful and biggest tornado evah! The facts are irrelevant in the post truth world. This is just not scientifically inaccurate and annoying, it’s a disservice to the communities that have and will be hit by real EF5 tornadoes – Joplin, Greensburg, Moore, etc. Just look at actual aerial photography of any of those three tornados, which were all strong EF5, and compare it to El Reno 2013.
Of course the widespread of doppler radar might help up the count.
That and more people living in tornado alley.
How ever actual science,logic and physics need not apply,this is weather porn and the only way to stop it ,is mock it.
Sadly the people caught in these storms, who are killed,injured or financially damaged will be used as a club,fake moral outrage from the pornographers.
Funny how Gang Green loves to hide behind the misfortunes of real people.
Climate change deniers seeing the glass half full. Did it occur to anyone here that a lack of cold air is a sign of a warming planet, or is that fact a bit too inconvenient?
Greg, perhaps you should read it again, or is that a bit too inconvenient?.
There is TOO MUCH COLD AIR! Which is why I’m running my furnace in the daytime in mid May here in the upper end of tornado alley.
I am running the furnace most every day and some days, all day, in May and I’m in the high desert of Arizona! It’s been danged cold. My daughter in Phx. was running her furnace earlier this month.
Sometimes I wonder if some people are professional AGW posters who see the title of an article and go straight to the comments with a prepared post and skip the article?
I think it’s been well established that the world has warmed, as evidenced by the slow decline in the number of tornados as graphed.
But I’m guessing that you’re thinking that is a bad thing?
The lower 48 have shown a slight cooling trend over the last four years. That might have something to do with this year’s uptick in tornadoes.
Which is exactly what the article is all about, yes.
Ja.
It is cooling.
The summers will get very dry on the higher latitudes.
Perhaps Dr. Roy isn’t aware that the cold air mass in the nation’s heartland was the result of climate change, LOL.
“Perhaps Dr. Roy isn’t aware that the cold air mass in the nation’s heartland was the result of climate change, LOL.” Thank you Bob Vislocky … Always good to see a classic demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
And when, pray, was the time before climate change when there were therefore never any cold air masses in the Midwest?
More precisely, the cooling is a result of the warming.
Up is down, black is white, bad is good. We’re all equal. Now find your center, breathe deeply, hold for twenty seconds, and release slowly, as you chant, “Ooooooooooo mmmmmy God, we’re all doomed.”
Today’s Liberal’s embrace 2 of the Orwell’s 3 slogans of the Ministry of Truth in 1984
War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength.
Waiting for them to get around to “war is peace.”
It’s all part of the psychological warfare the Left needs to control people and keep them off balance with DoubleThink, that is, holding two incongruent beliefs simultaneously.
Such as global warming, rebranded as Climate Change, causes global cooling too.
Bob, the cold air is not coming from the heartland.
“These conditions exist only when a cool air mass collides with a warm air mass. And the perfect conditions for this have existed this year as winter has refused to lose its grip on the western United States. ”
The cold air mass is stuck out here in the West and SW. I like it cool so it suits me fine but most Arizonans are quite ready for Spring and not so much rain, though, those of us with brains, which excludes our Calif. transplants, never complain about getting rain as we well know, as night follows day, drought follows rain and we take all we can get to refill our aquifers and lakes.
Good post and comments.
Far too much valid info.
What happens to liberal/Democrats if they discover that all weather change is caused by UNEQUAL heating?
Hope for the best and press on.
Then they’ll claim that “climate inequality” is the problem.
climate inequity
climate marginalization
climate prejudice
climate repression
climate racism
Okay, that’ll do it for now.
Hmm, it was exactly what I already thought it was.
The most vulnerable populations for climate change are emotional people and children.
Oh, I misstated that. It should be, The most vulnerable populations for climate-change propaganda, are emotional people and children.
My guess is the Alarmists will point to this tornado outbreak as a sign of human-caused global warming. That’s not a hard guess to get right since the Alarmists point to every weather event as a sign of CAGW.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/12-straight-days-of-tornadoes-shatter-twister-record-leave-heartland-storm-weary/70008393
“Meteorologists are not sure how tornadoes form but they do know that they are often associated with severe electrical storms. The key to understanding tornadoes is that they are the result of rapidly rotating electric charge. Just as electrons are the current carriers in the copper wires we use for power transmission, so they are in the tornado. The BIG difference is that the electrons are moving at many meters per second in the tornado while they take several hours to move one meter in the copper wire! The result is that enormously powerful electromagnetic forces are in control of the tornado. This effect has been called a “charged sheath vortex.”
https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050330tornado-electric-discharge.htm
^^^^ This looks like that strange “Solving Tornadoes” guy who is outright strange to begin with.
None of what he posts should be taken seriously. One can easily find actual, bonafide research by individuals who have an actual basis in reality and physics rather than falling down the ‘rabbit hole’ (Alice in Wonderland anyone?) these guys dig …
“The most violent type of weather storm on planet Earth is a tornado. Meteorologists tell us that the unstable air in a thunderstorm produces updrafts and downdrafts, which interacts with a wind shear to ultimately create a tornado vortex. But many scientists acknowledge that the exact processes that cause a tornado remain mysterious. In recent Space News episodes, Thunderbolts contributor Andrew Hall has explored the electrical genesis of lightning and other earthly weather phenomena. Today, Hall offers his own thesis on the electrical genesis of tornadoes on Earth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU706V0bltc
To: jmorpuss May 30, 2019 at 4:16 am
The use of a simple electrometer (look it up) in the vicinity of a tornadic T-storm could prove or disprove these cockamamie theories – note the “authors” of said theories have no desire to do any research along these lines to confirm their theories.
Jim ,
I suggest it’s you that needs to do a bit more research ….
“But new research combining a new type of Doppler radar with photos and videos of tornadoes formed by supercell thunderstorms shows the opposite is true: Tornadoes materialize from the ground up.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-12-tornadoes-ground-contrary-popular-thought.html
“It’s not just wind that raises sand and dust devils, say physicists, powerful electrical fields created by wind, sand and dust also levitate more dust into the air.
The discovery could have implications for global climate modelling and even help explain what makes Mars such a dusty world.
More than 100,000 volts per metre of natural, ‘static’ electricity have been measured in desert dust storms and the mini-tornado-like dust devils or willy willies.”
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/08/18/1717965.htm
“The voltages involved in the Earth’s circuit are significant. At sea level, the typical potential gradient in fair weather is 120 V/m. Nonetheless, since the conductivity of air is limited, the associated currents are also limited. A typical value is 1800 A over the entire planet. When it is not rainy or stormy, the amount of electricity within the atmosphere is typically between 1000 and 1800 amps. In fair weather conditions, there are about 3.5 microamps per square kilometer (9 microamps per square mile).[5] This can produce a 200+ volt difference between the head and feet of a regular person.
Local turbulence, winds, and other fluctuations also cause small variations in the fair weather electric field, causing the fair-weather condition to be partially regional”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_atmospheric_electrical_circuit
re: jmorpuss May 30, 2019 at 3:15 pm
Jim ,
I suggest it’s you that needs to do a bit more research …
The research has been done, many times over, and how you guys come to oddball conclusions as you do is testament to the lack of a grasp of physics is all …
Rear. Earth 2, May 29. As to the “”Why do intelligent people believe””
.
Because either A .they are not clever, or B. Because they want to believe,
its what their “”Belief system” requires them to believe.
For example if you think that a form of World Government is desirable,
then you will do all that you can do to bring this about. So you must
believe in that particular “Cause”.
While on topic, why do we use the word “Progressive” in front of names
such as Al Gore. Yes I know why they use it, but why do we use it. The
reality is that the word Progressive means to move forward, to improve, to
make better. Yes they the people like Al Gore feel that they are in this
particular category, but why do we use it., when we quite obviously do not
think that they are truly progressive. ?
MJER VK5ELL
Funny that. The Roman Empire thought it was being “progressive” before it disintegrated into dust.
Leaving those city gates open to encourage immigration by Barbarians helped a lot, no doubt.
Pamela and jtom: yours are the funniest paired comments I’ve seen to date!!
The term, “climate change” should be reserved for the down and up periods when we slide into and out of a cold period, leaving “climate stability” to the peak plateau of the warm period.
That’s a great truthful statement!
Roy,
with the greatest respect, the list of opportunistic creeps you opened the article with are NOT “progressives”, not by any metric reasonably applicable.
Progress is the result of trial, error, retrial and eventual success. It relies on ‘scientific’ method and an openness associated with intellectual cultures that are open to new ideas and especially ones confronting existing pockets of ‘settled opinion’.
The galoots listed and their ilk forbid proper trials and would never accept any ‘error’ on their part.
They may well brand themselves as “Progressive” but in reality are simply intoleranat, arrogant, narcissistic, jackbooted ideologues.
The news reports stated that 5 million people were without electricity. I have to wonder what the number would be if the affected areas were supplied with electricity produced by wind turbines. I know a guy at ARPA-E who claims that offshore wind turbines can now withstand hurricanes (I have no reason to doubt him, but I’ve seen no evidence). I doubt if any amount of engineering could produce a wind turbine that would survive an F-5 tornado. A series of tornadoes could easily wipe out vast numbers of wind turbines, and restoring power would not be a matter of “simply” repairing downed power lines; it would mean rebuilding the powerplants.
Nuclear doesn’t have this kind of problem. A containment building in the U.S. has to be able to withstand the impact of a 747 at landing speed, and the largest credible earthquake in its geologic region.
(y)
Good post!
It’s sad that the high-schools of the 1960s and ’70s did such a bad job, on average, at teaching basic physics, meteorology and weather to the students of the day. Additionally, the colleges and universities, to gain more “paying” students lowered science requirements for entrance and graduation, in general, and began institutionalizing “soft science” curricula as “environmental ‘science'”, “earth ‘science'” and others. In the ’90s, Geography, became “a ‘hard science'” though it lacked any general hypotheses or any central Theory of Geography. Geography Departments scrambling for dollars, not students, and some-kind-of-legitimacy recognition quickly adopted, “Geographic Information Systems” and the, notion, of “System ‘Science'”, though both are still vaguely defined and illegitimate as Science Disciplines. Long gone are the days when Latin, was an ability for entrance to even very modest colleges and universities of the late 19th and early 20ith centuries.
Thus, the abortions, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders and AOC, are well explained by simple logic.
QED
I think science was taught quite well in the 60s, thanks to the moon program and the Left hadn’t taken over education, yet. It was where I went to high school. I did go to a Catholic high school, but I still think the curriculum in public high schools was strong in science, too. This is probably why we didn’t fall for the Ice Age Cometh and Global Cooling scam brought to us by the same people who turned on a dime and decided the same villains that were causing an Ice Age were causing runaway warming, CO2 and fossil fuels.
Also, I had four years of Latin in high school.
So you’re saying it’s cold air in May that’s the problem?
CLIMATE CHANGE!
Did I do that right?
A tornado is an atmospheric heat engine – as such it needs a hot source and a cold sink. As such it could be possible to argue (in the normal hand waving style of the climate cult) that because CO2 is “trapping” heat that this is likely to mean a reduction in hurricanes.
So, like chess – working out what a sane opponent would do next and trying to work out your counter move – I’ve wondered what I would say when the alarmists made this argument (as I called them before I realised they were a cult).
Instead, the way they refuse to point out reducing hurricanes (when the trend showed a large decline) or now decreasing Tornadoes as “proof of global warming”, shows:
1. They don’t understand very basic science
and/or
2. That they won’t ever suggest that “global warming” does anything other that a “doomsday” scenario.
or
3. The cult members are lunatics
Mike Haseler – embrace the healing power of “and.” 😀
http://whrc.org/john-holdrens-presentation-of-climate-change-and-the-human-condition/
Not sure the Order of the Rising Sun recipient agrees.
Still trying to absorb seeing “AOC”, “Bernie Sanders”, and “think” in the same sentence.