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July 10, 2009

Report Blames Heavy Rains on Warming Despite Record Cold

Marc Sheppard
A report published yesterday by the National Wildlife Federation blames recent US “heavy storms and major floods” on the higher concentrations of atmospheric water vapor brought on by manmade global warming.  Have any of these guys been outside lately?

Announcing the results on their website yesterday, NWF climate scientist Dr. Amanda Staudt explained:

“Global warming is partly to blame for these heavy rainfall events. Warmer air simply can hold more moisture, so heavier precipitation is expected in the years to come.”
According to the report itself [PDF]:

“As the climate continues to warm, the atmosphere will be able to hold more water. With more moisture in the air, the trend towards increasingly intense precipitation events will continue. In the Midwest and Northeast, big storms that historically would only be seen once every 20 years are projected to happen as often as every 4 to 6 years by the end of the 21st century.”


And those words apparently led Public News Service to conclude and inform its readers that the warmer-air-driven “severe weather events” depicted by the NWF include “this summer's nearly non-stop rain in New England.”

As a resident of New York and frequent visitor to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, I can personally confirm the constant downpours.  

But I can also affirm that last winter was among New England’s coldest ever, with record low temperatures being reported throughout the region.  Like here and here and here. And that this unusually wet spring/summer also saw unusually low, not high, temperatures.  Early June actually brought snow to areas of Northern New England. Boston’s mean temperature for June was 63.3°F.  That ties it with June 1982 as the sixth coldest June on record there since records began in 1872. 

And the entire Northeast has been experiencing similar patterns. In NYC’s Central Park, June 2009 was tied with 1897 as the 8th coldest since 1869 (that’s 151 years).  A little to the west, Chicago had its coolest July 8 in 118 years. 

And as to the NWF claiming that CO2 induced warmer air is causing our relentless rain, perhaps they should have first read this June 22nd piece from The Guardian. The British newspaper correctly reported that in the US Northeast, “June so far has been the coldest in 27 years and is on track to become one of the wettest Junes on record, according to weather research firm Planalytics, which has tracked such data since the 1930s.”

So why would a prestigious environmental group the likes of the NWF draw such laughably untimely correlations? 

Perhaps their proposed remedy might lend some insight.  Says Dr. Staudt: [my emphasis]

“Now is the time to confront the realities of global warming, including the increasing frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events across the country. We must aggressively move toward a cleaner energy future and reduce global warming pollution, thereby ensuring that we avoid the worst impacts.”
In fact, the report specifically recommends that global emissions be reduced “by at least 80 percent by 2050.”  Which just happens to be the same figure the UN has been pushing as vital to the international climate agreement they’ll seek in Copenhagen in December.

Time runs short on this international con-job.  That’s why the faster global temperatures continue to fall, the louder you can expect these opportunists to nonetheless yell “fire.”  

And rain.


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