A recent paper at Phys.org, originally published by Chicago Court, says climate change is the cause behind recent atmospheric river events in California, as well as an alleged increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. This is false. Atmospheric rivers are a natural part of the West Coast climate, and neither historical data nor recent trend data suggest that the frequency or severity of those events is increasing. Likewise, there has been no increase in major hurricanes over the past hundred years due to global warming.
IN “Climate change is driving extreme weather. How do we make a difference?,” writer Barbara Willard makes a number of false claims about climate change and extreme weather, the most immediate serious being that recent atmospheric rivers are being powered by change. climate and deadly storms are becoming more common. Single weather events, or even seasons of bad weather, cannot be used to measure climate change, as measured by at least a 30-year trend in regional weather.
Willard credits the National Academy of Sciences’ science of “extreme event distribution” for driving the narrative that weather is getting worse due to climate change, but she ignores why. Why is this a poor scientific standard? The attribution scientists start with the assumption that carbon dioxide has had a significant impact on climate and that moderate warming over the past hundred years is driving, at least in part, extreme weather. It’s a good example of a confirmation bias. They run many computer models, some of which are fictional reproductions of what they suppose, I think What the climate might be like if humans didn’t exist on the planet, and some scenarios include humans but are based on imperfect temperature and emissions assumptions.
The misleading nature of attribution science has been pointed out many times at Climate realismFor example, This, ThisAnd This, because the accuracy of the computer model is accurate only when the input data and assumptions regarding interactions and feedback mechanisms are integrated in the model. None of these models have been confirmed to accurately describe the recorded climate conditions. Since we cannot exploit a parallel universe where a storm is more or less extreme, there is inherent uncertainty, which makes these kinds of computer models interesting from a theoretical perspective, but not more than that.
Real-world weather data is available and improving, so attribution modelers’ predictions can be tested over time. So far, when actual data have been compared with computer model predictions, the evidence has undermined the “climate catastrophe” theory.
Regarding rivers in the atmosphere, Willard said climate change has “fueled” recent “rains” in California. However, even scientists and publications Those who generally advocate alarm texting have acknowledged that recent weather in California is not historically unusual. A senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Los Angeles told a LA time writer that recent atmospheric river events “are not as large as what we have experienced before.”
Indeed, there is a long history, both recorded by humans and indicated by representative paleontological data, of large variations between drought and flooding in California. Willard writes that there is “widespread scientific consensus that climate change increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere,” but recently Studies have found no evidence of this occurring in areas originating from atmospheric rivers on the west coast.
As for hurricanes, Willard’s claim is easily refuted with the most recent hurricane data. Major hurricanes, or those rated Category 3 or higher, have not increased over the past decades, and the past year has seen some of the lowest major hurricanes since the 1980s. (See figure under)
As discussed in Climate at a glance: Storm, The IPCC states there is only low confidence “for the attribution of any detectable change in tropical cyclone activity to human influence.” Most recently, 2017 saw the end of the longest period without a major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in recorded history, a period of nearly 12 years with ARE NOT great storms. The distance is seen in the image below, which shows major hurricanes making landfall in the United States through 2020.
The year 2022 ends with the weakest hurricane intensity in 42 years, despite predictions of a very early extreme hurricane season, as discussed in detail, This.
Willard concludes the article with a call to climate action, including personal lifestyle changes like going vegan and traveling less, as well as political lobbying and evangelism in your community. What she overlooked, however, was looking at weather data and fact-checking sources of political climate alarms. Even when the most basic research is conducted, climate change is no longer so catastrophic.
https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/linnea-lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. As a Heartland Institute intern in 2018, she co-authored the Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Unmasking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracture”.
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