Before I write this article, I would like to ask anyone who feels as if they would like to help the victims of the awful tornadoes that ripped through our country this weekend to consider donating to either Samaritan’s Purse or Operation Blessing. Both of those organizations have very low administrative costs and will stay on the scene as long as necessary. When hurricane Florence hit New Bern, both organizations were staged outside the range of the hurricane in preparation, arrived on the scene almost immediately, and stayed long after other organizations had left. I strongly recommend both of them.
On Monday, The Blaze posted an article about the tornadoes. The article features the research of Meteorologist Joe Bastardi. One of the things that I truly appreciate about Mr. Bastardi is that he views weather in the context of cycles. Because of that, his long-range weather predictions tend to be much more accurate than most of what you see on television.
The article reports:
When a reporter asked Biden on Saturday whether climate change contributed to the deadly tornadoes, Biden pointed to climate change allegedly increasing the intensity of storms.
“All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden said. “The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.”
“I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that,” Biden continued. “But the fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously, it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a quantitative read on that.”
The reason he can’t give us a quantitative read is that what he is saying is simply not true.
The article continues:
How did Bastardi respond?
The famed meteorologist accused Biden of weaponizing tornados and shared data showing that severe weather this year has not been as severe compared to previous years.
“Clueless Joe Biden In action again with his weaponization of Tornados. 1) Violent tornadoes not increasing. 2) this year tornados, hail and wind all together near-record low,” Bastardi said. “Mindless media should do their dang job and call him on it, I called Trump out on Dorian jibberish.”
The data Bastardi included, coming from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, directly contradicts claims from Biden and Criswell that severe weather is more intense because of climate change.
Please follow the link to read the entire article. Mr. Bastardi includes graphs and further information to make his point.
The article notes:
Climate change hawks love to exploit isolated weather events to promote a certain narrative about the climate. However, climate, by its very definition, describes observable patterns of weather over long periods of time — not isolated events.
Thus, if climate change were truly driving more intense weather, such a phenomenon would be observable over a substantial period of time. But as Colorado University professor Roger Pielke Jr. pointed out on Sunday, the U.S. government’s own data shows that tornados, for example, are becoming less common in the U.S.
“According to data from the U.S. National Weather Service from 2000 to 2020 only four of the strongest category of tornadoes were observed (which are labelled as F/EF5 tornadoes) In comparison, from 1954 to 1974 36 (!) such powerful tornadoes were observed,” Pielke explained. “Our research on tornado damage in the United States over many decades shows a decline that is suggestive of an actual decline in tornado incidence.”
Pielke also highlighted an important point to consider when politicians and those with an agenda begin blaming climate change for weather disasters.
Fear paves the way for more government control. If we have learned nothing else in the past two years, we should have learned that.
