Ireland and Britain get to enjoy it this week:
Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and much of western England hit by severe weather with winds gusting at more than 100mph
A violent Atlantic storm with vicious gusts topping 100mph has brought major disruption to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and much of the western half of England from the Lake District to Cornwall.
Major bridges have been closed, power lines cut and flights delayed or abandoned by the sudden but brief onslaught, which is expected to peter out by Tuesday afternoon, although with sporadic turbulence continuing on Wednesday and early Thursday.
Heavy rain has accompanied the gales in many areas in the first abrupt break from the exceptionally mild spell over the holiday, which saw the warmest and calmest Christmas for 14 years.
The worst effects have been felt on the British Isles’ Atlantic coastline, with 105mph gusts recorded at Malin Head in Donegal and some 15,000 homes left without power in the area and neighbouring Sligo.
Chile, too:
Firefighters in Chile battled three huge wildfires Monday that have burned about 90 square miles of forest, destroyed more than 100 homes and driven away thousands of tourists. […]
Chile’s normally rainy southern regions are suffering from a nationwide heat wave, on top of a drought that makes fires increasingly likely. The country was battling 48 separate fires on Sunday alone, and red alerts were declared for the regions of Magallanes, Bio Bio and Maule.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/02/MNGQ1MK0RS.DTL#ixzz1iP0QfarK
No one could have anticipated [blah, blah, blah]. From the IPCC 2007 assessment of Climate Change:
“It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.” (In IPCC terminology, “very likely” means a probability greater than 90 percent and “likely” means a probability greater than 66 percent.) […]
“Extra-tropical storm tracks are projected to move poleward, with consequent changes in wind, precipitation, and temperature patterns, continuing the broad pattern of observed trends over the last half-century.”
Damn alarmists. Better to see no evil, hear no evil and make certain no one understands the evil that is being done.
(cont. below the fold)
Better to see no evil, hear no evil and make certain no one understands the evil that is being done.
Scientists say they could, in theory, do a much better job of answering the question “Did global warming have anything to do with it?” after extreme weather events like the drought in Texas and the floods in New England.
But for many reasons, efforts to put out prompt reports on the causes of extreme weather are essentially languishing. Chief among the difficulties that scientists face: the political environment for new climate-science initiatives has turned hostile, and with the federal budget crisis, money is tight. […]
A typical year in this country features three or four weather disasters whose costs exceed $1 billion each. But [in 2011], the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tallied a dozen such events, including wildfires in the Southwest, floods in multiple regions of the country and a deadly spring tornado season. And the agency has not finished counting. The final costs are certain to exceed $50 billion.
“I’ve been a meteorologist 30 years and never seen a year that comes close to matching 2011 for the number of astounding, extreme weather events,” Jeffrey Masters, a co-founder of the popular Web site Weather Underground, said last month. “Looking back in the historical record, which goes back to the late 1800s, I can’t find anything that compares, either.”
Meanwhile, 100% of the Republican party’s major candidates for President have rejected the scientific consensus that global warming and its consequences that are changing our climate have anything to do with the actions of human beings dumping gigatons of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide at an ever increasing rates into the environment.
[In 2010], a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data. […]
Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire. “These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a ‘business as usual’ path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s] projections, such a path … would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100,” he said.
“Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce.”
Well, Republicans have more important things to worry about, like all those freeloading Ni … uh, African Americans stealing our tax dollars. Just ask Rick Santorum.
