Sunday
Feb012009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The ice storm that wasn't
EU Referendum: Why would the Telegraph report a heatwave that killed 19 people in Australia, but not an ice storm that killed 42 in the USA?
The BBC and the WMO seem to have missed the ice storm too. Funny that.
There was also a snowstorm in the United Arab Emirates, which I haven't seen reported over here.
Reader Comments (15)
Don't know which BBC you're reading but it's hardly as if they don't report ice storms in the USA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7782145.stm
As for the telegraph, given that they have published several pieces by Booker it's a bit of a joke to call them 'warmist'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7861075.stm
And as for snow in the UAE, so what?
Must be a conspiracy.
IIRC this is only the second time there has ever been snow recorded in UAE. So surely that's a more important weather event than a drought in Australia of which there are many.
And more important than a long term pattern of decreased rainfall which is shaping up to be a crisis in Australia? You surely must be joking.
What do such isolated weather events show anyway? Nothing, and it seems you only jump on their lack of reporting because you think that every cold snap somewhere means it is cooling globally, or at least people who don't know the difference between weather and climate might think so. I'm not sure how a handful of such events would mean more than the consistent warming pattern of the last 30 years and more, but there you go.
By the way when the cold front hit the east of the US, the west of the US was experiencing higher temperatures than normal. I don't think the BBC reported that either, but presumably that is some kind of cover up too.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l0JsdSDa_bM
Re the UAE, the article linked to in my original post says it was only the second time snow had been recorded in this place. More unusual than a drought in Oz I would have thought.
"Frank I agree that such events show nothing. That's why I object to the BBC's concentration on hot ones."
I see no evidence of that. Of course, reality concentrates on the hot ones - there are more of them - which I suspect is closer to the root of your problem with this.
Probably more of the abnormally hot events aren't reported by the BBC than cool ones, again for the simple reason that there are more of them in the first place.
"Re the UAE, the article linked to in my original post says it was only the second time snow had been recorded in this place. More unusual than a drought in Oz I would have thought."
The drought in Oz is a record drought and it is far more newsworthy for that alone than a single weather event in UAE.
Also, while the rainfall reduction may or may not be related to AGW, there is little doubt that the increase in temperatures is, and that it makes the droughts worse - incidentally this is also happening in Argentina and looks set to happen in California and elsewhere (while on this side of the aisle we're told warming stopped 10 years ago and that it is some kind of new ice age!). In fact research soon to be published shows that the tropics have expanded. So, this is part of an emerging crisis called global warming which is probably among the most newsworthy events in history. For the BBC not to report it as such would be nuts.
I think that after spending too long reading the denialist stuff you must forget that yours is the fringe theory, and that you're probably wrong.
You are also wrong about rainfall's relationship to T. Higher T is meant to lead to higher evaporation and therefore to higher rainfall.
"To a climatologist these are both weather events"
Yes but one is part of a pattern and the other isn't, at least not yet. Weather patterns are climate, and changes in weather patterns are climate changes.
The claim is not (so far as I know) that AGW is causing these droughts - it's that it's making them worse.
" Higher T is meant to lead to higher evaporation"
Yes, and more evaporation is not really what you're after when you have a drought.
In plainer terms, a drought is bad news. Droughts when it's hotter are worse droughts and worse news.
A pretty good analysis of the Oz data that explains this point is here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/drought-in-australia/
You misunderstand me. Global warming is meant to lead to more precipitation. Ergo the drought is evidence that the AGW hypothesis is wrong.
"Global warming is meant to lead to more precipitation. Ergo the drought is evidence that the AGW hypothesis is wrong."
There are actually two different hypotheses there. One is AGW and the other is that AGW means more precipitation. Failing to separate the two is like saying that if someone claims television causes cancer, and a clinical trial shows it doesn't, then there is no such thing as television.
Re increased precipitation, I think they predict this to occur this century. I don't know if any significant change has either been predicted to occur by now, or been observed yet. I also think these type of predictions about effects, especially regional ones, are much weaker (i.e. more likely to be wrong or inaccurate) than the basic claim about increased heating of the earth's systems, and global temperature.
But a drought in a particular location isn't evidence against it anyway, as temperature increases also lead to drying so this type of prediction doesn't preclude (and may even predict) droughts in particular regions and increased rainfall elsewhere (resulting in a global increase, but still local droughts). Plus in some places changes in precipitation (e.g more rain than snow) stress reservoirs that were designed to handle something else.
Re whether the forecast is meant to affect the here and now, the increased mass of Antarctica is ascribed by AGW enthusiasts to increased precipitation.
I believe that the precipitation forecast comes from the same climate models that predict T. It's therefore part of the same hypothesis.
"Sorry, you're arguing that it HAS rained in Oz but it has evaporated? Really?"
Did you look at the link?
>>The protracted nature of this current drought and the consistent above average temperatures have dried out catchments and reduced base flows from groundwater systems to rivers.<<
"Re whether the forecast is meant to affect the here and now, the increased mass of Antarctica is ascribed by AGW enthusiasts to increased precipitation."
This is a hypothesis about Antarctica. I was referring to global increase in precipitation, which has been predicted for this century at least.
"I believe that the precipitation forecast comes from the same climate models that predict T. It's therefore part of the same hypothesis."
Not so. If the computer models were all wrong and indeed if there were no such models at all, that would just mean we had no good computer model. There would still be an AGW hypothesis - more GHG, more warming, other things being equal - and it would still look pretty good. After all the theory dates back over a century.
And of course simple models of 20 years ago have already been vindicated, not sure why that doesn't count.