The Patriot Post® · Anything Can Happen and Probably Will
I am going to do something a bit different here for Patriot Post readers. With the upcoming winter looming and the Climate Ambulance Chasers lying in wait for anything that happens anywhere as evidence to prove their point, I thought it would be nice to give an example of how no matter what happens, it will be repackaged as proof humans are wrecking the climate. It seems like a new strategy has evolved – using people who really don’t know the weather and climate, repackaging knowns and then claiming it is some big discovery that backs their idea. I used an example last week: The “hidden heat” in the ocean, which Dr. Bill Gray explained over 30 years ago with his ideas, forecasting the current overall weather pattern that lead to the increase in hurricane activity.
Look at this example: a tweet from the head of 350.org, Dr. Bill McKibben:
(In case you want to go to his website, here it is. I want to be as fair as possible, and nothing can be fairer than your looking at exactly what this organization and the people who make up its team are about.)
Dr. McKibben apparently ignored, or did not know, about the forecast I made a week before when I asserted that what I was most sure of is that Climate Ambulance Chasers would use the tropical storm and snowstorm occurring simultaneously as an example of … whatever it is they are pushing. More predictable than the weather is the prostitution of weather events by these people – events those of us who have loved and studied weather and climate all our lives know about.
Let’s look at Dr. McKibben’s idea.
1.) The snowstorm was a record-breaking early season event associated with abnormally cold air. For it to snow that much this early, we had to have well below normal temperatures. It occurred in an area of the nation where late-season cold was delivering snow into May. So let me get this straight: Late-season cold followed by early season cold is somehow indicative of the whole global warming disaster?
2) And what about Tropical Storm Karen? Apparently, Dr. McKibben was not aware of the reason Karen was unusual. It is very rare for a tropical cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico to not make landfall as a tropical cyclone. In other words, what happened with Karen is evidence against what he is trying to push. The storm died in the Gulf, though its ghost is delivering more wind and rain to the Mid-Atlantic states now than it ever did in areas of the Gulf Coast under a hurricane watch. But facts mean little to these people. Grab the headline and never mind the truth.
(Side note: The propaganda about the latest F5 ever in May so far south, which was downgraded to an F3, failed to mention the cause of it – the result of a major cold trough abnormally far south. What was remarkable about it, had it been an F5, is the fact that it was so late and so far south because it was so cold.)
3.) We had a tornado outbreak in the Plains last week. I guess Dr. McKibben is unaware of the second season that occurs with tornadoes. As the upper jet starts to intensify in the fall, and the upper air temperatures fall, warm humid air masses can come in off the Gulf of Mexico. The result is a spike in the number of tornadoes in October and November. In fact, the second season is particularly dangerous because often times these tornadoes occur at night. Houston, Texas, was hit on Nov. 16, 1993, in front of the nasty winter of ‘93-'94 across the U.S.; Huntsville, Alabama, on Nov. 15, 1989 (the following December was one of the coldest on record, by the way); and Shreveport, Louisiana, on Dec. 3rd, 1978, again in front of a major cold winter. Interestingly, if I were him, given the lack of tornadoes this year, I would be worried that the occurrence of twisters late in the season is a harbinger of a cold winter. But then again, I am sure a cold winter would simply be twisted into more evidence that we are heading for a CO2-fueled climate disaster.
4.) And then there are the wildfires. We have a near record low year, yet the wildfires that are showing up are used as evidence of the weather going wild? Again, never mind we are so far below normal that the opposite is more of an option to a rational person.
Is there anything truly rational about a group which thinks that no matter what happens, it shows it was right, even if the results are contradictory? You make the call on that.
Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.