Climate change is back, baby!

Where is the media coverage of February's incredible warming and extreme weather?

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 4:58 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Read more about: severe weather | climate | climate change skepticism | climate science

tornado Well, that record cooling trend in January, which was solid evidence (to some) that human-caused global warming was at an end, melted away as fast as the summer ice in the Arctic. Not only did February begin a frighteningly unsustainable warming trend for this year, it saw a record number of tornadoes.

Climate change is making a comeback! In your face, delayer-1000s! And as Jon Stewart -- or the Pope -- might say, damn you, polluters! But where is the news coverage? This is just more proof (as if we needed it) that the media is fundamentally conservative.

Let's start with the temperature. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has their monthly global temperature dataset out through Feb. 2008 (it starts in Jan. 1880). January was only 0.12 degrees C above the 1951-1980 mean (for that month) and a full 0.74 degrees C colder than Jan. 2007 (the warmest January record).

But Feb. 2007 was 0.26 degrees C above the monthly mean, and a mere 0.37 degrees C colder than Feb. 2008. The "legitimate science writer" David Appell explains the staggering implications (if we used the same reasoning as typical delayers):

... the world is warming up at 0.14 degrees C/month, or 3 degrees F per year, or a dramatic 30 degrees F per decade! By 2018, Fairbanks Alaska will be like Atlanta was this year. Atlanta will be ... well, like Hell ...

More seriously, this February ripped the tornado record books to shreds as if they had been caught in a giant whirlwind whose intensity had been amplifed by global warming. The country suffered through a stunning 232 tornadoes -- almost triple the previous record, a mere 83 tornadoes in 1971. (Reliable records go back to 1950.)

There is some recent research by NASA that "the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms." More interestingly, the famed blogging nonalarmist meteorologist Jeff Masters explains:

Each of the past three years has seen an unusually early start to tornado season. One would expect to see a shift in tornado activity earlier in the year in a warming climate, along with an earlier than usual drop off in activity in late spring. We can see that in both 2005 and 2006 that tornado activity dropped off much earlier than usual, and it will be interesting to see if 2008 follows a similar pattern. Note that there is a very high natural variability in tornado numbers, and the record for fewest ever January and February tornadoes was set just six years ago in 2002, when only four twisters occurred. It will be at least ten more years before we can say with any confidence that a warming climate is leading to an earlier peak in tornado season.

That spin is a tad nonalarmist for me, especially given that we were just in a brutal one-month regional global-warming-is-over-and-global-cooling-has-begun trend (at least over land in North America). Let's just say that the party is over, delayer-1000s -- you know who you are.

Hopefully we can get back to serious discussions about how we will avoid quadrupling carbon dioxide concentrations from preindustrial levels, and maybe even move on to discussing how we can avoid doubling them to 550 ppm.

For story: Climate change is back, baby!
11 Comments | Post a Comment

So, you're an alarmist?

Is that a good thing?

I don't think that you can expect people to follow your alarms if you base it on one year. What if next year we have 9 of the hottest months ever, but January and February are colder than average? Or if there are only three tornadoes, and your idea is in shreds?

by atreyger at 7:16 PM on 13 Mar 2008

This post was (mostly) humor

In case that wasn't clear. I was satirizing the deniers/delayers who glommed on to a (sort of) cool January. On my blog, I can actually post something under the "Humor" category.

In any case, the weather is getting more extreme. And it is going to get much hotter soon.

by jromm at 7:28 PM on 13 Mar 2008

A sequel

Another bloody sequel. Hope it is better than Shrek 3. Maybe we can call it 28 Years Later? ;)
www.angryafrican.net

by Angry African at 8:12 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Continually amazed....

... by the parochialism.
Okay, this time around, the snow in Baghdad was mentioned in support of the "it's cold, now wouldn't you care for some of that global warming."
Where I now live in the Baltics, it's been the warmest winter (as in the season) since something like 1928, February has hardly seen any snow.
Back in Austria, this season has brought snow (as opposed to the winter before), and immediately there is less reporting about possible challenges of climate change to skiing industry. However, föhn winds had also brought temperatures up to +15 centigrade, quite a few times.
We had "the one" big storm for this decade (so it sounded in news) in 2007... then January of this year brought "Paula," March brought "Emma"...
I wouldn't say it's global warming, but it sure is different.

Dr. Gerald Schmidt Positive Ecology Project www.positive-ecology.org

by GSchmidt at 10:03 PM on 13 Mar 2008

GOP glomming onto a cool January

Notice how Mr. Man-on-Dog himself, former Senator Rick Santorum of PA, seems both to deny and to accept AGW, in this piece on why John McCain is just not good enough yet for true social conservatives such as himself:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080313_The_Eleph ....

Notice also that global warming comes right after same-sex marriage in the catalogue -- very high praise (right word?) indeed.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 8:30 AM on 14 Mar 2008

Jeff Masters sez ...

Jeff Masters sez that with any global warming, evaporation from the oceans will cause some interesting results. This water vapor can be estimated fairly well in at least a steady-state manner - and it is HUGE.

The question is the amount of aerosol in the water vapor plumes, and where the water vapor plumes go. Dry areas may end up with "dry" lightning storms that create more wildfire, and some coastal water may see more tropical cyclone action.

Or perchance the Bermuda and Continental high pressure cells this summer will become so embedded that it will be like Australia, hot and no rain at all. I've given up on prognosticating just because it's gotten so darn weird. -sammie

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 11:57 AM on 14 Mar 2008

Reasoning Powers

"if we used the same reasoning as typical delayers"

Sir, if only you were so capable.

by StillSkeptical at 2:28 PM on 14 Mar 2008

The failure of human thought, judgement...........

and will.

Although an unwelcome one, a message has somehow got to be responsibly transmitted both to and by the human community's richest, most powerful and famous leaders -- the ones who own mass media, organize public opinion, form government policy and implement action plans -- so that the word goes out from this moment in space-time to our children because the time for ubiquitous, self-limiting behavior change is at hand for the family of humanity. Indeed, the time has come for leadership to acknowledge and accept human limits and Earth's limitations, and act accordingly. Unrestricted human consumption, rampant economic globalization and unregulated propagation activities are now occurring on a colossal scale worldwide. These distinctly human, global "overgrowth" activities appear to be giving rise to emerging global environmental threats that can be reasonably and sensibly managed, modified or otherwise changed, as necessary. We can choose a different behavioral repertoire: for example, less per capita consumption, slowed economic expansion, and the acceptance of humane and voluntary reproduction limits.

Hopefully too much time has not been wasted, too much of the environment irreversibly degraded, too many species massively extirpated, many too many resources recklessly dissipated and too much of the world we inhabit utterly compromised by our relentless consumption, production and propagaton activities in these early years of Century XXI.

by stevenearlsalmony at 6:16 AM on 15 Mar 2008

Infinity

Mathematicians like to talk about different kinds of ifinity generated by their different equations. The distinctions are quite meaningless; the only difference is the rate of increase. Kant got it right many years ago. There are only two kinds of infinifty:

You can continue the series as long as you WANT to.
You MUST continue the series forever!

This is what all this climate change nonsense is about. Energy equals life, and life is unacceptable to the malthusians, all because they are fixated on the second kind of infinity

by StillSkeptical at 7:21 AM on 15 Mar 2008

Malthusian?

I don't understand why people who believe in climate change are labelled 'malthusians'. As far as I am aware, Malthus' theories related to population, believing that population grows faster than the land's carrying capacity, and is reduced by checks such as famine, disease and war. What does this have to do with climate change?

I can see that global warming will definitely be a population check, in fact in some--extremely distorted--way it may even be good in that, by sending humanity into crisis and drastically cutting the excess population. But surely the people who believe that are the ones who reject climate change or refuse to do anything about it...not the ones who want to change before it's too late.

So I don't quite get it. I'd welcome any enlightenment

If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?

by tico89 at 10:22 AM on 15 Mar 2008

error error error

You've swapped Feb. 2008 and Feb. 2007; you mean

"But Feb. 2008 was 0.26 degrees C above the monthly mean, and a mere 0.37 degrees C colder than Feb. 2007."

by gzuckier at 11:30 AM on 28 Mar 2008

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