Many storms may have gone unnamed in the 1800’s because it was the 1800’s and we do things differently now. I have no links or anything, but I’m sure everyone here has read posts about hurricane activity cycling up and down over 30 year periods or whatever it is, and other statistics establishing that there are no particular storm trends to take note of.

I get shot at because I point out trends in weather extremes, but persist because it’s more accessible. Understanding science requires a specialized education which is increasingly rare in our culture. Someone with relatively little science background but a close interest in weather can see that big flooding storms are more common now and what used to be unusual is now normal. A lot of evidence over decades really does stand firm.

Science can be used to understand and explain, but noticing climate aka trends in weather only requires consistent observation over time and the whole planet (or at least a whole hemisphere).

I feel like saying, it’s the havoc, stupid; it’s too late when it gets to your doorstep. The costs of rescuing people from their own stupidity are unimaginable.

Let’s look at the deeper psychological reasons.

Apart from instances where a person may have a specific reason to deny, say, global warming ( i.e., a person selling fossil energy may want to sell more product) why would anyone deny the obvious? Hey, it’s getting warmer!

Just like a cigarette smoker might rationalize that one more cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, a global warming denier might rationalize that just a little more greenhouse gases emitted by humans can’t possibly have that big an impact on the planet. In both cases, the person holds two contrary rationalizations or beliefs simultaneously. To avoid the anxiety encountered in changing their behavior (e.g., quitting smoking or emitting less greenhouse gas) they will continue to adhere to the rationalization that helps them avoid the anxiety of change.

This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance.

The only cure is constant and positive repetition of the real facts. What is the benefit of quitting smoking? What is the benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

The denierbots will keep doing their thing, clinging to any absurd argument they can, even as the poles melt, the ocean acidifies and rises, droughts get worse, etc. They don’t give a flying fig about the truth; they’re using ideology to argue against science, and are one step beyond playing tennis without a net. All they have to do is keep pushing all of their idiocy at once (and they have more than enough people and money to do so), and know that some of their messages will work with some people and achieve their goal: Ongoing delay.

I think that by far the best alternative is to make sure we get every person possible who understands the science to the polls at every election, so we can override the tidal wave of idiocy from the denierbots. All we need is a way to keep our side fired up and engaged. Perhaps a bunch of web sites that constantly talk about… oh, wait.

Why do the deniers try to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather?

From a scientific standpoint, links to extreme weather are the weakest aspect of AGW. From a PR standpoint, convincing (to everyone – not just to people who understand AGW) links to extreme weather would be a huge win. Links to extreme weather are both high value targets, and easy targets. But most importantly, in many cases, a person needn’t say anything obviously crazy, or, indeed, anything obviously linking them with AGW denialism in order to question a link to extreme weather. Links to extreme weather are the safest targets. You’re fortunate in that most denialists have no idea how easy it would be to attack links to extreme weather with very little risk. And Pielke is particularly frustrating in part because he understands all this most cogently, and makes mistakes relatively rarely.

However – I have mixed feelings about the environmental community’s decision to de-emphasize links to extreme weather. At the end of the day, the science indicates links. It might be bad PR to bring them up, but that doesn’t make the links unreal.

p. 5 on droughts
“Averaged over the continental U.S. and southern Canada the most severe droughts occurred in the 1930s and there is no indication of an overall trend in the observational record, which dates back to 1895.”

[JR: Well, yes, if you average it over the entire area, then you merge the predicted climate-driven droughts from subtropical expansion in the Southwest with the increase in moisture expected in other parts of CONUS.]

p. 53 on streamflow
“Lins and Slack (1999, 2005) reported no significant changes in high flow above the 90th percentile. On the other hand, Groisman et al. (2001) showed that for the same gauges, period, and territory, there were statistically significant regional average increases in the uppermost fractions of total streamflow. However, these trends became statistically insignificant after Groisman et al. (2004) updated the analysis to include the years 2000 through 2003, all of which happened to be dry years over most of the eastern United States.”

p. 68 on Nor’easters
“They found a general tendency toward weaker systems over the past few decades, based on a marginally significant (at the p=0.1 level) increase in average storm minimum pressure (not shown). However, their analysis found no statistically significant trends in ECWS frequency for all nor’easters identified in their analysis, specifically for those storms that occurred over the northern portion of the domain (>35°N), or those that traversed full coast (Figure 2.22b, c) during the 46-year period of record used in this study.”

p. 76 on tornadoes
“A data set of F2 and stronger tornadoes extending back before the official record (Grazulis, 1993) provides an opportunity to examine
longer trends. This examination of the record from 1921-1995 indicates that the variability between periods was large, without significant long-term trends”

p. 77 on severe thunderstorms
“Thus, there is no evidence for a change in the severity of events, and the large changes in the overall number of reports make it impossible to detect if meteorological changes have occurred.”

p. 132 on US hurricanes, 1851-2006
“For 1871-2006, the optimal model was AR(4), for which the slope was
-.00229, standard error .00089, significant at p=.01. For 1881-2006, the optimal model was AR(4), for which the slope was -.00212, standard error .00100, significant at p=.03. For all other cases, the estimated trend was negative, but not statistically significant.”

[JR: Again, I think I have been quite careful in my word choice. Some types of extreme weather events are linked to global warming and increasing ( in frequency and/or severity). Others, not so clearly. But I'm not certain what your point is. OK, not every conceivable extreme weather event is detectably increasing. Many area and global warming is probably a significant factor.]

Name Storms Vs Temperature

Second why a particular weather event is consistent with changes in climate likely can’t be reduced to bite sized chunks digestable with the weather forecast and takes away from telling folks to duck and cover so to speak.

If someone does take the time to explain how particular extreme weather is consistent with climate change would make folks understand what climate change is so better not to take a chance of the conversation going that direction.

As mentioned a disaster is immediate and tangible. That reducing CO2 emissions might reduce the frequency and severity of extreme weather events would bring up the “What’s the downside of pursuing renewable energy?” argument. I don’t think the deniers can win that one if it gets started in earnest so better to not take a chance of the conversation going that direction.

I think at the time this was a smart thing to do. Otherwise the deniers would point to every calm hurricane season or cold winter or summer that lacked drought and flooding as a signal that global warming was not occurring.

The deniers will state this anyways, but the prior lack of attribution (of extreme climate events) by the environmental community means they don’t have to be seen on camera fuddling around for an explanation every time we have a calm hurricane season or cold winter.

We are just now learning enough about our climate to attribute certain climate events with global warming.

Also, you sort of fudged an earlier explanation for last year’s calm hurricane season. You stated it was due to a La Nina.

The hurricane/global warming science seems to indicate two things of importance that are often not discussed that you may not be aware of.

One is that Pacific tropical cyclones don’t seem to have increased greatly with recent global warming. The reason may well be that the Pacific tropics are already maxed out heat wise and additional heating isn’t going to lengthen the Pacific storm season (it is already year round) and cause a lot of increase in strength. Perhaps the Pacific is between threshold limits where additional heat causes an increase (or decrease) in storms?

The other is that just as the Antarctic Sea Ice area is so large compared to the Arctic, and models indicate it will have a delayed response to global warming; it is therfore irrelevant to use global average sea ice numbers when discussing current sea ice loss and global warming.

Similarly; the Pacific tropics are not expected to respond sharply to current global warming and they are so large (with a year round cyclone season) and have so many storms that the very sharp increase in Atlantic storm numbers and strength is lost in a global average.

Atlantic storms have increased in number and overall power in the recent past but may now have hit a plateau (until the next threshold is exceeded). In other words, the increase in Atlantic storms has already occurred and is well documented. Scientists are not sure if Atlantic storms will increase further in response to global warming or may decrease. But this is on top of the well documented, existing global warming to date increase.

A lot of folks miss this point.

That and a La Nina tends to increase Atlantic storm numbers. Last year’s Atlantic season was above normal for total number of storms and way above normal for other parameters such as number of strong storms, duration of storms, number of landfalling major storms and others.