Ever since Typhoon Haiyan devastated portions of Southeast Asia -- particularly the Philippines -- in early November, members of the self-styled mainstream media and climate alarmists have charged that "the most powerful storm ever" was caused in part by global warming, and more âextreme weather eventsâ will happen because even during a climate change âpause,â the heat âisn't missing -- it's right there in the ocean, waiting to put super typhoons on steroids.â Those claims are wildly exaggerated as indicated by our friends over at Climate Depot report. In fact, many scientists disagree strongly with them, including weather expert Brian McNoldy, who stated: âWhile Haiyan was absolutely amazing, itâs not alone. ⦠Extremely intense tropical cyclones are rare, but have always been a part of nature -- we donât need to find an excuse for them.â The senior research associate at the University of Miami added that the typhoon was âin an elite company of a handful of other tropical cyclones scattered across the decades and across the worldâ but "was just as subject to this yearâs climate as the numerous others that werenât so impressive.â Climate Depot also points out several exaggerations in media descriptions of the weather event. One of the most obvious examples was one in which Simon Redfern, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences for the University of Cambridge, asserted: âAs climate change continues, we should expect more devastating storms.â Meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted that Redfern's claim as the âfirst of many garbage articles to comeâ before noting that over the past 1,000 years, the Philippines have been hit by more than 10,000 tropical cyclones. âDon't be so arrogant to believe man caused Haiyan.â âNo independent fact checking,â Maue added. âJust rely on a blog.â Another obvious example of inaccurate reporting was the prediction aired during an installment of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 that the storm's waves would reach 40 to 50 feet in strength. That colossal mistake led Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder, to tweet that the Philippine Meteorological Service only expected a surge 18 feet strong. As a result, Pielke stated that the CNN program was âoff by 22 to 32 feetâ and then asserted: âSome of the weather reports of wind speeds were exaggerated.â He also noted that a super-powerful storm âdoesn't need the extra hype. Reality is bad enoughâ and is âpretty scary and devastatingâ on its own. Another participant in the Haiyan debate was global warming alarmist Jeff Masters, who also asserted that the storm was âthe most powerful hurricane ever.â Meteorologist and climate change skeptic Joe Bastardi replied: âIf you really studied typhoons, then Haiyan is perhaps as big as they come, but don't shoot your mouth off about it being the strongest ever." The Real Science website agreed with Bastardi by declaring: âJeff Masters exaggerated the wind speeds by 50 MPH and got thousands of news publications to print his lies, which are now the sacred legend of the climate religion.â Bastardi also clashed with Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist for Climate Central -- which describes itself as âa non-profit science journalism organizationâ -- who used a tweet to ask âWhat's fueling #SuperTyphoon#Haiyan's intensityâ before answering: âDeep warm water.â The meteorologist responded by asking: Are you for real? Of course water is warm, NO typhoons within 100 miles of this since 2008. No stirring of water. Did you even bother to look at how infrequent typhoons have been where this is crossing, which means water is not cooled? Claiming that global warming is causing more typhoons and hurricanes is in line with a new strategy by climate alarmists. Since the actual global temperatures have not matched their wild predictions at all, they've now shifted to claiming that global warming will somehow cause more extreme weather events. Earlier this year, the alarmists and their media followers erroneously tried to claim that the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, was somehow related to global warming Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-...t-storm-ever-rejected-scientist#ixzz2mRT35CPr
No they did not. The true experts (not the media monkeys) said it would take many months of study to say with any confidence what role GW played and even then that can only be given in terms of probability. But one thing that is absolutely certain is that every weather system on earth is now being affected by global warming in some way. The current atmosphere has more energy in it in the form of heat and water vapor (taken together = enthalpy), the seas are warmer and the jet stream and the ocean currents are changing. There is no question about it. All of these things affect the weather events, usually making them worse.
Last week science couldn't prove warming caused the typhoon, but this week science can prove it didn't. Makes perfect sense. As stated elsewhere, warming doesn't guarantee any particular outcome, it merely loads the dice.