There are many reasons why we might see this rise in actual disasters – e.g. as somebody said, because they are reported more readily, because there are more people living closer together, because the environment has been degraded, etc. Gore was clearly inviting his audience to make a leap of logic by incorporating this graph into a discussion of climate change, which is that of all the other possibilities out there, that at least some of the credit can be given to climate change. That may or may not be true (I’d guess it probably is), but he’s clearly shoehorning a dramatic looking chart into his talk for effect, and implying if not stating explicitly, that global warming is a major reason for that effect.

I thik your refutations of climate deniers would be more effective if you focused on more egregious offenses than the one discussed here. Clearly Pielke is a blowhard who’s harping on a relatively minor offense to distract from the larger picture, but by choosing to engage him in something that itself is fairly questionable, I think you do your more substantive points a disservice.

p.s. Thanks for posting and I appreciated your critique of Superfreakazoidnomics.

-B

Realclimate.org doesn’t give me the same misgivings, probably because the climate alarmists (I’m not saying Gore qualifies as such), not just the denialists, come in for harsh criticism frequently. Gore, too, gets criticized, though at an appropriate level. For example, in reviewing a book by Mark Lynas, Eric Steig writes that Lynas is typically careful in his statements; for example, “unlike in Gore’s discussion of sea level in ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ Lynas does emphasize the long timescales (thousands of years) in this case.” (this case being Lynas’ discussion of the melting of the poles)

I do remember sitting in the theater watching “Truth” and at that point (the sea-level rise montage) thinking, “Come on, Al, it’s scary but you’ve got to remind the viewer that it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s starting to feel a little like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ in here.”

I do suspect Gore has modified and improved his presentation, but I do believe there were a few times when his understandable desire to warn humanity about the real crisis of global warming caused him to stretch things a bit or mischaracterize the science. Perhaps that continues today, perhaps not, I don’t know enough to say.

Such exaggeration is very, very hard not to do; it’s also difficult to talk about anything for an hour without making several errors of fact. Steig, in a review of “Inconvenient Truth” three years ago, concluded that Gore did an “admirable” job of presenting the science accurately. Other climate scientists with whom he saw the film had a few more problems with Gore’s discussion of CO2 and temperature rise, but also seemed pleased overall.

Better to continue to emphasize the scary climate science in the last two years and the possibly too-conservative nature of the 2007 IPCC report, as you’ve done so well on this site, than spend so much time defending Gore, IMHO. But it’s easy to be an armchair critic, so: Thanks for the great blog. And if you have blasted the left when it mischaracterizes climate science, sorry that I missed that; I’m a newcomer here.

Brian

1) The CRED report only suggests climate could be a “contributing” factor. Gore’s statement is much more extreme.

2) I don’t need to parse “this” to critique Gore’s statement. I’m not critiquing cause but effect. The graph, and the report, is only presenting disaster reports, not disasters. Gore misinterprets the data as “weather-related disasters.” It is not. The data represents disaster reports.

Please tell me how you can credibly argue that the extreme rise in disaster reporting worldwide over the last hundred years is primarily due to any source other than the obvious and well-documented increase in communication and connection worldwide. A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, telephone, air travel, cars and postal service were hardly universal. They only grew to ubiquity since the 1960’s. From my own research, those are the technologies that “went global” starting in the 1960’s.

As CRED has agreed, these factors were primary until very recently. One can make other arguments for the last decade, but that’s about it.

While showing the slide, this is what he said:

“This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented. On the left-hand side of this image you can see what used to be the norm. In recent years the increase has been quite startling. Four times as many in the last 30 years…This from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. It is quite startling.”

Hard to argue with that.

It is quite easy to argue with that. I did so on RPjr’s blog (here and here, and CRED acknowledged I was correct. Simply put, you (and Gore) ignored what the graph actually shows: increases in reported rather than actual disasters. The historical reporting increase is largely due to better worldwide connecting technology, particularly when comparing today to mid-20th century and earlier.

As a result, this particular argument is mostly a tempest in a teapot.

[JR: Let me be clear -- based on what CRED said in their authoritative annual report, which was the basis for Gore's remarks, it is impossible to (credibly) argue with what Gore said -- assuming you even know what he meant by "this" which you don't.]

Elaina

http://www.craigslistpostingtools.info

“But it could also support the notion that natural climate variability is responsible in part for both the rise in temperatures and the increased hurricane activity that is seen during both the periods of time.”

There’s a much higher standard deviation in global mean temperatures at regional levels than the global level. In any given decade, the range is up to 2 C for U.S. temps (an area that makes up less than 2% of the Earth). Globally, the decadal range (land + ocean) is typically not more than 0.3 C – much smaller than the U.S. variability but large enough to confuse contrarians during ENSO cycles.

Since the 1930’s U.S. temperatures were much warmer compared to the rest of the Earth during that period, one has to wonder what U.S. temperatures will be like if that scenario returns, given the current heat balance of the Earth.

“It does continue to surprise me that the geographic pattern of global warming is such that although the world has experienced 75 years of global warming since 1934, the United States has yet to eclipse that year’s record anomaly.”

Given the high standard deviation, it’s not all that surprising. As a sidenote, the 2000s have also clearly eclipsed the 1930’s in the U.S. record.

—–

Steve Bloom,

It’s possible and would be a somewhat better indicator.

No.

‘34 was the warmest year IN THE U.S.

And, somehow, you forgot to read the reports explaining the empirical evidence surrounding the talking point “natcheral var’bilty”.

Best,

D