Big Wind

Climate change is not creating more storms:

A recent report from the Fraser Institute, a non-profit research firm that stands out as one of the last redoubts of sanity in Canada, makes clear the paucity of evidence for claims that climate change is causing more severe weather: "According to the UN's Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), evidence does suggest that some types of extreme weather have become more extreme, particularly those relating to temperature trends. • However, many types of extreme weather show no signs of increasing and in some cases are decreasing. "Drought has shown no clear increasing trend, nor has flooding. Hurricane intensity and number show no increasing trend. Globally, wildfires have shown no clear trend in increasing number or intensity, while in Canada, wildfires have actually been decreasing in number and areas consumed from the 1950s to the present. "While media and political activists assert that the evidence for increasing harms from increasing extreme weather is iron-clad, it is anything but. In fact, it is quite limited, and of low reliability. Claims about extreme weather should not be used as the basis for committing to long-term regulatory regimes that will hurt current Canadian standards of living, and leave future generations worse off." But the conservative Canadian outfit is far from alone in reaching that conclusion. Take for example this from the National Geographic Society, which is anything but a voice of anti-climate change analyses: There is no real evidence that tornados are happening more often. A lot more are being recorded now than in 1950, but a closer look at the data shows the increase is only in the weakest category, EF0. There's been no increase in stronger twisters, and maybe even a slight decrease in EF4s and EF5s. That suggests we're just spotting more of the weak and short-lived tornadoes than we did back when the country was emptier (the United States population in 1950 was less than half what it is now), we didn't have Doppler radar, and Oklahoma highways weren't jammed with storm-chasers. I love that reference to Oklahoma highways being full of storm chasers. Those guys are crazy, to be sure, but they have helped grow our understanding of what causes tornadoes.

Sometimes you have to be crazy to get to the truth...