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Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do
Geoffrey.landis writes An article about the current California drought on 538 points out that even though global climate warming may exacerbate droughts, it's nearly impossible to attribute any particular drought to climate warming: "The complex, dynamic nature of our atmosphere and oceans makes it extremely difficult to link any particular weather event to climate change. That's because of the intermingling of natural variations with human-caused ones." They also cite a Nature editorial pointing out the same thing about extreme weather.
The climate has always been a highly fluctuating system where extreme temperatures oscillate over seasons and location by, say typically +/-20K (Kelvin), around a mean value around 287K, slowly growing. In some countries the fluctuations are larger, in some others smaller. All the discussion about the human-induced warming is about the effect of changing this mean value by a couple of K (now +0.5K, in the next century by +2-4K). So even in the most pessimistic scenarios the warming remains in amplitude a small fraction of the typical annual fluctuations. No wonder that it will be difficult to prove that any extreme fluctuations will result from the warming.
If anything, it's the opposite:
http://models.weatherbell.com/...
The graph shows the global annual counts for all hurricanes and major hurricanes. From '92 through '98, there was around 35 major hurricanes per year, falling this year to 29 major hurricanes. The peaks of the graph roughly correspond to el Nino years, with the stronger the el Nino the more hurricanes. If you consider a hurricane to be a heat transport mechanism to move heat from the oceans to space, this comes as no surprise.
Of course, the "more hurricanes" argument morphed into "less hurricanes but stronger" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/global-warming-to-bring-s_n_471227.html), but once again the planet isn't co-operating with theory.
During the 1980s, the tobacco companies frequently cited the fact that no case of cancer had ever been demonstrably proven to be caused by cigarette smoking. I had a close relative with a severe addiction who repeated this whenever nonsmokers (like me) complained. This highlights the dichotomy of statistical evidence versus absolute proof. In order to prove that a cancer victim inhaling burning tobacco caused their cancer, you would have to track the specific molecules of the smoke's chemicals that damaged the initial cancer cell's DNA. You'd need to observe the cell dividing out of control, and verify that that particular tumor was the one that lead to the diagnosis. Apparently, the fact that something is incredibly hard to prove can be used as evidence that it can't possibly be happening. Fortunately, most open minded people are willing to accept a vast amount of statistical evidence as proof.
Extreme weather, huh? 10 years ago we were discussing right here, how continuing global warming will make hurricanes more frequent.
The usual suspects were writing "insightful" posts lamenting "deniers" and the sorry state of the uneducated populace preventing the sophisticated elite from saving the planet.
Today, 10 years since that discussion, we are living through a 30 year low hurricane-frequency — something, none of the "Global Warming" models predicted...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Some people think reducing CO2 emissions will somehow make the world cleaner, but it won't. If not for AGW, there's no real urgency to reduce CO2 emissions, it's not a pollutant.
Except for Ocean Acidification. We are already starting to hit the turning point where hard shelled marine creatures are unable to form their shells because of acidification. Visible effects are starting to be seen in the Antarctic - pteropods are now starting to become unviable due to the cold water amplifying the effects of acidification. These little snails are a key food source in the ecosystem, if their population collapses, it will wreck untold damage on the marine ecosystem.
So yes, there still is an urgency to reduce CO2 emissions, and yes, it is a pollutant.
http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/?prmid=4939
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency
No, that's the exact opposite from what climate researchers have been claiming. To repeat myself, "[w]ithin the science of climate change that regarding hurricane (and other tropical storm) formation is famously unsettled." The models at least, seem to suggest a probable decrease in the frequency of formation (along with a possible increase in intensity) (Knutson et. al.).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke