[Rantman] Fearful eyes lean out across the horizon of storm and deluge. frogs fall from the sky

[Richard Pauli]

*On this day in May, fearful eyes lean out across the horizon of storm 
and deluge. *

Americans are enduring and dying, facing outrageous weather and torment 
of floods, tornadoes, droughts and heat.   We adapt, we salute the dead 
and try to move on.

Humans work hard to deny that this terrifying weather is a manifestation 
of climate destabilization and global warming.  Statisticians can say 
there is no causal connection between weather and climate - but it 
strains common sense experience of the real world.

Anyone trying to statistically disconnects weather and climate will have 
to shout very loud.  They may be technically correct, but their 
chalkboard will be sucked upward and smashed to pieces as flood waters 
rise and the bark of the trees is stripped bare.   The post-tornado 
forecasts say that rainfalls of human detritus are expected to fall 
sixty miles away.

Instead of plain talk, scientists present a tragicomic skit of "Who's on 
first?"     Statistics says that no single weather event can indicate 
that humans caused global warming.   This logically correct statement 
carries the wrong scientific spirit and morally disappoints.   Science 
news reporters will say tornadoes happen when the normal cycles of a La 
Nina jet stream meet with hot moist air.   And perhaps they will add 
that, by the way, the jet stream has shifted because the polar ice caps 
have melted.  But few will say the Arctic ice melted because the 
atmosphere is hot and getting hotter like a greenhouse from too much 
CO2.   But since that is far too many concepts to follow in a mass media 
news explanation -- instead they ask us to accept it as "normal weather" 
and to "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, whose on first."

The broadcast meteorologist may deny a causal connection between climate 
and weather.    But there is a definitional connection - different ends 
of the same thing -  one is short term, local and the other is long 
term,  regional or global.   Climate is defined by weather events.   So 
a cold, wet climate means one will see lots of cold, wet weather.   Not 
always, just on average.   If a region's climate changes, then it's 
because weather changed.   If the frequency of tornadoes and rainy 
weather increases, then climate is also defined.    The 3rd 500 year 
flood in one season followed by triple twist tornadoes tells you things 
have changed.   Frogs falling from the sky is neither weather nor 
climate.   Unless it happens a few times more.  If weather events set a 
new record, then that weather is added to the weather data that defines 
the new climate.    The abnormal weather is a data point that defines 
the normal in the new climate.

After we get hundreds of new temperature records, storms, rainfalls, and 
heat waves from weather events,  then together all this data will mark 
our charts and graphs will show a climate.   From measurements across 
decades we learn today's climate has an increased capacity to carry 
water vapor, by a global average of 4% - this means that average weather 
events had contained more water vapor.   Similarly, our climate has 
grown hotter by 1 degree on average.   Because this is our climate, in 
the future, it will be a more common to see warmer and wetter weather.

Now science needs to be clearer on what it is trying to say about 
disconnecting climate and weather.  They sound as if they are talking 
frogs and snails and puppy dog tails - they may be real data points on a 
chart, but this further removes scientists from the human conversation.

Journalist Ross Gelbspan, in his superb essay the "*U.S. Press Coverage 
of the Climate Crisis: A Damning Betrayal of Public Trust*" says:

    Given the dramatic increase of extreme weather events -- you would
    think that journalists, in covering these stories, would include the
    line: "Scientists associate this pattern of violent weather with
    global warming." They don't.

    A few years ago I asked a top editor at CNN why, given the
    increasing proportion of news budgets dedicated to extreme weather,
    they did not make this connection. He told me, "We did. Once."   But
    it triggered a barrage of complaints from oil companies and
    automakers who threatened to withdraw all their ads from CNN if the
    network continued to connect weather extremes to global
    warming. Basically the industry intimidated CNN into dropping the
    one connection to which the average viewer could most easily relate.
    /http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=7743&method=full
    <http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=7743&method=full>/


It is a disservice for professional meteorologists to disconnect weather 
and climate change.  It disrespects science and common sense.  It 
insults the innocent dead.

Just as no single weather event can be climate, so too, every single 
weather event is one piece of data that adds up to climate.   Every 
single human event has helped cause global warming.   Huge coal plants 
that make our electricity, also will emit CO2 and directly makes the 
atmosphere hotter.   The combustion from our cars, hundreds of times per 
second from each cylinder, in everything we do, we are causing climate 
and weather chaos.  Industrial civilization itself is directly connected 
to both weather and climate change.

The vaudeville show-and-tell of denial and misdirection is growing 
tiresome.   The comedy becomes tragedy.

Richard Pauli
May-2011
Reprint permission granted with attribution.


See also Bill McKibben's opinion piece in the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-link-between-climate-change-and-joplin-tornadoes-never/2011/05/23/AFrVC49G_story.html



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