Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have demolished claims by global warming activists that global warming caused or worsened many extreme weather events last year.
According to NOAA’s new publication, Explaining Extremes of 2013 from a Climate Perspective, there is no discernible connection between global warming and 2013 extreme weather events such as the California drought, Colorado floods, the UK’s exceptionally cold spring, a South Dakota blizzard, Central Europe floods, a northwestern Europe cyclone, and exceptional snowfall in Europe’s Pyrenees Mountains.
The California drought provides a good example of global warming activists making false and irresponsible claims regarding global warming to deliberately mislead people who aren’t familiar with scientific studies and evidence. The liberal Center for American Progress and its media allies such as the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Associated Press, and others have all published stories claiming global warming caused or worsened the ongoing California drought. Scientists, however, say just the opposite. “[F]or the California drought, which was investigated by three teams from the United States, human factors were found not to have influenced the lack of rainfall,” NOAA reported in an accompanying press release.
Adding additional emphasis to the NOAA publication’s findings, scientists reported in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that natural factors such as ocean current cycles and varying wind patterns caused most of the warming along the U.S. West Coast since 1900.
So, scientists report that most of the warming in California is natural, and the evidence shows no link between global warming and the California drought. Nevertheless, agenda-driven activist groups and their media lapdogs repeatedly tell the lie that global warming is causing California’s drought. Ironically – or not – President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry frequently claim global warming is responsible for the California drought, all the while claiming people who disagree with them are members of the Flat Earth Society. Somebody tell that to the federal government’s own scientists at NOAA.
Similarly, global warming alarmists frequently claim global warming causes extreme cold temperatures and extreme snowstorms. Analyzing two of these claims, NOAA found no evidence linking the events to global warming. To the contrary, NOAA reported “Analysis of UK cold spring showed the probability of occurrence may have fallen 30-fold due to global warming.” So, global warming not only played no role in the UK’s cold 2013 spring, but global warming made the disruptive event 30 times less likely than would otherwise be the case. Nevertheless, shameless alarmists such as National Geographic News claimed global warming was responsible for the extremely cold spring. Despite the NOAA findings, National Geographic News has yet to issue a retraction.
The disparity between science on the one hand and global warming activists and alarmist media coverage on the other hand is particularly striking regarding the Colorado floods of September 2013. Global warming activists and their media allies wasted absolutely no time exploiting the victims of the deadly floods to make irresponsible claims that global warming was to blame. NOAA scientists, however, report global warming played no role and may be making such tragic events less likely. Modeling of past and present Colorado rainfall events “found that the probability of another extreme 5‑day rainfall, like the one that caused widespread flooding in Boulder, is estimated to have decreased because of human-caused climate change,” NOAA reported.
According to NOAA, heat waves were nevertheless exacerbated by global warming. Of course, any amplification in heat waves is counterbalanced by extreme cold events becoming 30 times less likely. Importantly, global warming’s reduction of extreme cold events provides more human health and welfare benefits than any harm caused by an increase in heat waves. Official government mortality statistics show people are much more likely to die during winter months and extreme cold events than during summer months and heat waves.
The next time you hear politicians and global warming activists claim global warming is causing or worsening extreme weather events, know that the objective science shows they are telling self-serving lies.
