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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-08-30

And One For The Snarky Environmentalists--CORRECTED (thank you, Linda)

[In the original version of this post, the University of Colorado Environmental Studies professor was identified as "Roger Wielke"; his proper name is Roger Pielke]

In the wake of Katrina, all the usual suspect are, of course, jumping up and down on the graves of those killed saying "global warming did this!!" But, as with most environmental pronouncements, the science behind such claims is somewhat . . . lacking.

In fact, the science is actually contrary to that conclusion. From a paper by University of Colorado Environmental Studies professor Roger Pielke:

The paper concludes that with no trend identified in various metrics of hurricane damage over the 20th century, it is exceedingly unlikely that scientists will identify large changes in historical storm behavior that have significant societal implications, though scientists may identify discernible changes in storm behavior. Looking to the future, until scientists conclude (a) that there will be changes to storms that are significantly larger than observed in the past, (b) that such changes are correlated to measures of societal impact, and (c) that the effects of such changes are significant in the context of inexorable growth in population and property at
risk, then it is reasonable to conclude that the significance of any connection of humancaused climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small. [emphasis mine]

This is important because this paper is actual SCIENCE--that is, it studies observable phenomena in the context of their occurence, and makes an effort to correlate those occurences to variables in the environment in which they occur. Quite a different thing from the computer simulations and "models" in use by the environmentalists.
Posted by: Michael / 8/30/2005 11:42:00 PM

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