It's been on the tip of my lips for days. It was my first thought when I'd heard that we'd had a storm of mega-tornados that cut a swath across nearly as devastating as a Replicator Beam Weapon across the surface of Atlantis.
It should have been the first thing out of everyones mouth, yet there was abject silence.
Finally, Scientists have begun to hold their tongues no more.
In an email interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change” in the context of these extreme tornadoes.
There now, don't you feel better? I know I do.
Yes, those are the words - Climate! Change!
And we all know the reason we don't bring it up. Even before Conservatives began whining that doing so is blaming the victim.
Conservatives attack any discussion of climate policy within the context of the killer tornadoes as “grotesque,” saying that to do so is blaming the victims.
(Washington) The Center for American Progress (CAP) wasted no time in trying to politicize the deadly tornadoes which have killed over 300 people across the country. In a blog post on CAP's site titled "Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers", Brad Johnson quoted one climate change scientist, claiming all weather is affected by global warming. He offered no proof of his claim, only stating it as a fact. Then Johnson goes on to write the following:
"The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists." - Think Progress
The belief displayed by the Center for American Progress is the same left wing rhetoric that blames "man-made global warming" for earthquakes and hurricanes. The insult delivered by the Washington group not attacks members of congress but people in the districts most effected by the storm, many of whom question global warming theories.
Yeah, but that isn't the real reason. I know I for one didn't want to repeat the kind of rhetoric we'd previously heard from Jerry Fallwell after 9/11.
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
Or when his fellow traveler Pat Robertson and others expertly pinpointed the cause of Katrina.
ROBERTSON: You know, it's just amazing, though, that people say the litmus test for [Supreme Court nominee John G.] Roberts [Jr.] is whether or not he supports the wholesale slaughter of unborn children. We have killed over 40 million unborn babies in America. I was reading, yesterday, a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood. And he used the term that those who do this, "the land will vomit you out." That -- you look at your -- you look at the book of Leviticus and see what it says there. And this author of this said, "well 'vomit out' means you are not able to defend yourself." But have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way?
Or what he said about Haiti.
And you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heal of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal.
And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.
There is no valid counter argument to the fact that warming waters in the gulf contributes to increased water vapor in the atmosphere and in turn, more intense storms including hurricanes and tornadoes (but not earthquakes - I don't know where they get that nonsense). That's what you'll hear if instead of partisan hacks you actually listen to real scientists like Dr. Tenbreth who happens to be head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Tornadoes come from thunderstorms in a wind shear environment. This occurs east of the Rockies more than anywhere else in the world. The wind shear is from southerly (SE, S or SW) flow from the Gulf overlaid by westerlies aloft that have come over the Rockies. That wind shear can be converted to rotation. The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong. There is no clear research on changes in shear related to global warming. On average the low level air is 1 deg F and 4 percent moister than in the 1970s.
That view is backed up by Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.
The fact remains that there is 4 percent more water vapor–and associated additional moist energy–available both to power individual storms and to produce intense rainfall from them. Climate change is present in every single meteorological event, in that these events are occurring within a baseline atmospheric environment that has shifted in favor of more intense weather events.
And Gavin Schmidt, climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
It is a truism to say that everything has been affected by climate change so far and therefore this latest outbreak must in some sense have been affected, but attribution is hard and the further down the chain the causality is supposed to go, the harder this is. For heat waves it is easier, for statistics on precipitation intensity it easier – there are multiple levels of good modelling, theory and observations to back it up. But we have much less to go on with tornadoes.
What they are all saying is clear. We know what makes tornadoes and that it involves warm moist air from the south impacting cold dry air from the north and west. We do know that the southern air is current much warmer and wetter than it has been in decades past. No Rational Person Disputes This. The question of whether this is a the result of human activity has been settled, it IS. What we don't know yet is how much of a differences that makes to the size, ferocity and number of EF4 and EF5 tornadoes.
Logic and Facts dictates that it does make a difference. How large a difference is yet unknown, but to automatically claim it make no difference what-so-ever is Anti-Fact and Anti-Science.
Science is Non-Partisan, unless you're partisan position is to be -Anti-Science in the service of Corporate Greed and malfeasance.
It is fair to wonder and consider just how large an impact a gradually warming climate has been to the intensity of these storms. It is also fair to point out that - in tragic irony - the states hit hardest by this devastation actually are represented by politicians who have been at the forefront of fighting against better understanding of Climate Issues and haven't taken any steps at all to mitigate the potential catalyst to supercells of this type.
It made no logical sense to blame Gays, the ACLU, abortion and the devil for 9/11, Katrina or Haiti. That was Crazy Talk. But it does make sense to question how and whether reduced Co2 emissions might lessen the likely of storms which have ravaged across the American Heartland.
That's isn't "blaming the victim" - it's having the nerve to take charge and take some Responsibility to ask the questions required in the situation in order to potentially make it better.
Those of us who are not caught in the Paradigm Paralysis of the Conserva-Christo-Corporate-Climate-Denialist CULT - need to be responsible and tell it like it is.
Say the words. They will not make Lord Voldemort magically appear.
Vyan