No Increase in Weather Extremes - IPCC

[JohnB]

Well the new special report is out today from the IPCC. The full report is available here but is a slow d/load and a 44 meg file. I'm still reading it so the thread title may finish up to be more accurate as "Not sure about increase".

 

Roger Pielke covers the high points.

 

The most quotable quotes are these;

 

"There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"

"The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"

"The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"

 

So, no increase in tropical or extra tropical storms or hurricanes. No increaseing trend in losses. No increase in rains and floods.

 

This means that anybody who is advocating action wrt climate change on the basis of "extreme weather events" is now truly in "denial" about the facts.

Edited March 29, 2012 by JohnB

[iNow]

Wow. That's quite some spin from perennial climate change denier Roger Pielke. I hate liars, and he is clearly one.

 

 

Here's another view:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/story/2012-03-28/climate-change-global-warming-weather-disasters-floods-droughts-storms/53826590/1

 

Global warming linked to deadly, costly weather disasters

 

Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday.

 

The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

 

The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

[Essay]

At least you note how your "Title" is biased upon a premature assessment of information.

===

 

IEEE has a long and respected reputation.

 

http://spectrum.ieee...the-climate-fix

{1st sentence} While many prominent climate scientists are spending their time advocating action and highlighting what we do know, Roger Pielke Jr. apparently wants everyone to take a giant step backward and restart the entire conversation.

 

...his [Pielke's] thesis remains the same. In short: Scientists need to stay out of politics.

 

Significantly, Pielke agrees with the rest of his field on the need to stop emitting carbon dioxide and to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere... [but] he just doesn't want scientists to tell the rest of us how to get there.

 

If Pielke's first tenet is the completely unrealistic and potentially counterproductive divorce of science from policy, his second, as evidenced by the meager carbon price....

Hey, at least Pielke is advocating for a price on carbon!

 

It's nice that he seems to agree with the (good) science.

===

 

So I came across this IEEE book review [above] after seeing an advertisement for his book on his blogsite: http://rogerpielkejr...nd-climate.html

where he is posting re: ...The new paper -- titled "A Trend Analysis of Normalized Insured Damage from Natural Disasters" ...based on an extensive dataset from an insurance company, Munich Re.

 

Pielke emphasizes, from the conclusion of the report:

"Climate change neither is nor should be the main concern for the insurance industry. The accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone areas is and will always remain by far the most important driver of future economic disaster damage. . .

 

What the results tell us is that, based on the very limited time-series data we have for most countries, there is no evidence so far for a statistically significant upward trend in normalized insured loss from extreme events outside the US and West Germany. . ."

 

HA! What a surprise! "...based on the very limited time-series data we have for most countries..." they don't find a long-term or global signal. Why would one be expected?

 

However....

"The accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone areas is and will always remain...."

Gee, go figure....

===

 

Pielke notes that his main interest in this report about "insurance losses," which he gives "double emphasis," is that:

"The authors acknowledge support from the Munich Re Programme "Evaluating the Economics of Climate Risks & Opportunities in the Insurance Sector"

 

He seems to see this as a conflict of interest, but who else is going to help fund a study on "insurance losses?" It was their extensive dataset after all.... Why would Pielke find this so suspicious? Oh well; whatever....

===

 

After reading how the report notes "that both regional trends might be associated with simple variability or how they adjust for insurance penetration," (my emphasis), I can see why they only found global warming happening in the U.S. and West Germany.

 

I think that also might explain why their "global average" didn't show much long-term change. But John, are you trying to put this up as evidence that globally extreme weather isn't happening more often, more extensively, and more aggressively; or will you really edit the title?

===

 

Pielke may think this report is suspect or needs reinterpretation, and you can echo that if you want to; but Pielke posted the report itself, which uses phrases highlighting "...the strong probability that there is a connection between the large number of weather extremes and climate change,"

 

and

 

"...the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change."

[JohnB]

Well, I guess this must happen when name calling and ad homs are more important to your arguments than actual facts.

 

According to Essay, climate scientist Dr Roger Pielke Jr "agrees with the rest of his field on the need to stop emitting carbon dioxide and to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere" yet according to iNow the same person is a "perennial climate change denier".

 

So a person who thinks that CO2 is a cause of climate change and that the amount of CO2 emmissions should be cut is a "climate denier". But I suppose that when reality is constantly diverging from its properly ordained path and ignoring the modelled projected paths, then name calling is all you have left. How about you pair work out between you exactly what a "denier" is and get back to the rest of us?

 

Essay, I'm really not too sure what the point of your post was. The point of Dr Pielkes post was that the actual report as written was very, very different from what the press releases about the report were. The bottom line of the Munich Re report was that there was no evidence of an increase in extreme events after normalising for population density and movements.

 

[W]e warn against taking the findings for the US and Germany as conclusive evidence that climate change has already caused more frequent and/or more intensive natural disasters affecting this country. To start with, one needs to be careful in attributing such a trend to anthropogenic climate change, i.e. climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Our findings reported in this article could be down to natural climate variability that has nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change.

 

Convective events, i.e. flash floods, hail storms, tempest storms, tornados, and lightning, deserve closer attention since these are likely to be particularly affected by future global warming (Trapp et al. 2007, 2009; Botzen et al. 2009) and there is some evidence that past climatic changes already affected severe thunderstorm activity in some regions (Dessens 1995; Kunz et al. 2009). Figure 7a shows that there is no significant trend in global insured losses for these peril types. Similarly, there is no significant trend in insured losses for storm events (Figure 7b), tropical cyclones (Figure 7c) or precipitation-related events (Figure 7d).

 

So the Munich Re report showed that for flash floods, hail storms, tempest storms, tornadoes, lightning, storm events, tropical cyclones and precipitation events there is no significant trend.

 

iNow, as for your "other view" you might want to google the author of that particular piece for a bit of background on how he appears to slant his columns. The very real problem that you have is that Dr Pielke is rather more modest than you give him credit for. The full quotes from Section 4.5.3.3 of the new report are as follows; (note the bolding)

 

There is high confidence, based on high agreement and medium evidence, that economic losses from weather- and climate-related disasters have increased (Cutter and Emrich, 2005; Peduzzi et al., 2009, 2011; UNISDR, 2009; Mechler and Kundzewicz, 2010; Swiss Re 2010; Munich Re, 2011). A key question concerns whether trends in such losses, or losses from specific events, can be attributed to climate change.

 

So in dollar terms the losses have increased. Nobody is saying anything otherwise BTW. But now for the fun.

 

Most studies of long-term disaster loss records attribute these increases in losses to increasing exposure of people and assets in at-risk areas (Miller et al., 2008; Bouwer, 2011), and to underlying societal trends – demographic, economic, political, and social – that shape vulnerability to impacts (Pielke Jr. et al., 2005; Bouwer et al., 2007).

 

The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados (Boruff et al., 2003; Pielke Jr. et al., 2003, 2008; Raghavan and Rajesh, 2003; Miller et al 2008; Schmidt et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2009; see also Box 4-2).

 

Most studies related increases found in normalized hurricane losses in the United States since the 1970s (Miller et al., 2008; Schmidt et al., 2009; Nordhaus, 2010) to the natural variability observed since that time (Miller et al., 2008; Pielke Jr. et al., 2008).

 

The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses (Pielke Jr. and Downton, 2000; Downton et al., 2005; Barredo, 2009; Hilker et al., 2009)

 

Yes that's right, Dr Pielke, iNows "perennial climate change denier" and apparently also "clearly" a liar actually wrote much of the literature that this section of the IPCC report is based on.

 

We now have two questions. Who is more likely to have the story straight, an AP reporter or the scientist whose peer reviewed work is being referenced by the IPCC in their current report?

 

And how does iNow like his crow, roasted or stewed?

[iNow]

I don't know why I bother, really. Quote mining and cherry picking comments does not negate the conclusions of the report itself, which are the polar opposite of what you've put forward in the OP.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/climate-adaptation-idUSL2E8ESRWJ20120328

 

the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear nations need to act now, because increasingly extreme weather is already a trend.

 

The need for action has become more acute as a growing human population puts more people and more assets in the path of disaster, raising economic risk, the report said. The report's title made the point: "Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation."

<...>

The report's release dovetailed with an unprecedented March heat wave in the continental United States and a London conference where scientists warned the world was nearing tipping points that would make the planet irreversibly hotter.

 

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10904327-un-climate-panel-ties-some-weather-extremes-to-global-warming

 

The study forecasts that some tropical cyclones -- which include hurricanes in the United States -- will be stronger, while the frequency might diminish.

 

"Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins," the experts stated. "It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged."

 

Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide and increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia.

 

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/11585476-418/scientists-warn-of-climate-change-onslaught.html

 

Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists said in a new report issued Wednesday.

 

The greatest threat from extreme weather is to highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

 

<...>

 

Report co-author David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center says this month’s U.S. heat wave, while not deadly, fits the pattern of worsening extremes. The U.S. has set nearly 6,800 high temperature records in March. Last year, the United States set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters, though many were tornadoes.

 

“When you start putting all these events together, the insurance claims, it’s just amazing,” Easterling said. “It’s pretty hard to deny the fact that there’s got to be some climate signal.”

Apparently it's not too hard for the deluded, though...

[JohnB]

I don't know why I bother, really. Quote mining and cherry picking comments does not negate the conclusions of the report itself, which are the polar opposite of what you've put forward in the OP.

 

Bullshit. I'm quoting the actual report and you are quoting newspaper reporters. That's point 1.

 

Two of the four reference links are by the same reporter, a Seth Borenstein, who I suggested you google before relying on him too much. That's point 2.

 

You quotes are referring to what models predict for the future and what "may" happen in the future. The section of the report I'm quoting is what has been observed in reality and therefore refers to the period up to now and not the future. That's point 3.

 

Model projections for the future do not negate observations from the past, or does separating past and future confuse warmistas? Going back to basics, the past is what has already happened, the future is what has yet to happen. Your argument is that since the models predict something for the future, this somehow negates the fact that there is no trend in the statistics for the past and that people who point out that there is no trend in the past are somehow liars and wrong. The logic of this form of argument eludes me, probably due to its non existence.

 

However the observed facts do give you a problem concerning the predicted outcomes. The same climate models that are predicting all these horrible things in the future also predict an observable trend right now. With the .7 degrees of warming that we've had there should be observable trends in climate extremes, but there aren't. This begs the question that if the predicted behaviour isn't seen now, on what reasonable basis can we expect to see it in the future? Forget the old and silly argument that if a model can't it right for 1 month out, why should we believe 100 year predictions. The simple fact here is that the models aren't getting the predictions for yesterday or last year correct.

 

It is accepted in the modelling world that an ability to hindcast is actually no proof an accurate ability to forecast, but seriously, when even the hindcasts are wrong?

 

One of the major insanities of the climate debate is that I get called "denier" not because I deny any facts or observations from the past, but because I don't believe the unverified and unvalidated 100 year future prognostications of the climate model oracles. But I suppose the definition of deluded is that there is difficulty in telling the difference between predictions and reality.

 

PS. Would you care to comment on the fact that the person you decribed as a "perrenial climate denier" and a "liar" wrote much of the literature that Section 4 of the report is based on? Why do you put newspaper reports about future trends as more reliable than the peer reviewed literature about past trends?

 

Actually I'm still wading through the report but much of it asn't above about a 15 year old level of predictive ability. The average high school student would figure it out. Coastal areas will be more susecptible to tidal surges and sea level rise. "Who'da thunk that?" Riverine areas will be more prone to flooding than non riverine areas. If there is more development in extreme weather areas then more buildings will get damaged. That this sort of thing even requires a computer model boggles the mind. Do we really need a model to tell us that if we build cities where hurricanes cross the coast the damage bill will go up?

 

The report also uses the word "likely" a lot. This word in IPCC speak means about 50%. So in reference to actual climate change it is likely that some areas will get more rain and some areas less. "No sh*t, Sherlock". It is likely that a poor nation with crap infrastructure will suffer more from an extreme event that a richer nation with better infrastructure would. Like I said, the average 15 year old could work out most of it.

Edited March 31, 2012 by JohnB

[swansont]

Swiss Re now says that climate change is a component in increased flood losses

 

Population growth, demographic change, a higher concentration of assets in exposed areas, greater vulnerability of insured objects and climate change are all contributing to the increasing costs of flood damage.

(emphasis added)

 

http://www.swissre.com/media/news_releases/nr_20120906_flood_underestimated_risk.html

 

Munich Re seems to be agreeing

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/10/weather-disasters-climate-change-munich-re-report/1622845/