Increased Tornadoes? Naturally, CBS Suspects Global Warming

On Friday morning's "Early Show," CBS co-host Harry Smith was hot on the tornado beat. "As we've reported, a huge storm in the middle of the country is blamed for four deaths in three states. The storm caused 65 tornadoes in just one day. It's just the beginning of tornado season, but we have already seen more than 300 of them and it is likely to get even worse as we get into April and May, the prime tornado months."

He brought on Warren Faidley, who he said "calls himself an extreme weather journalist. He's been chasing tornadoes for some 20 years now and he joins us this morning." Smith asked vaguely why the increased tornadoes, but when the answer he wanted wasn't obvious enough, he pounced: "You talked about El Nino. It's hard to talk about climate and not talk about global warming. Do you think that has anything to do with it?

Faidley responded: "Well, there's research right now studying to see if El Nino is related to global warming, but, you know, the earth is getting warmer. There's no doubt about that. The statistics show that no matter who you listen to. And of course storms love heat. Heat is energy to storms. That's one of the problems now with the active jet stream pattern we're seeing and the increased heat. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in April and May when the tornado season peaks."

Smith also talked about the hurricane season, but didn't say that last year's mild hurricane disproved global warming panic scenarios: "It was interesting, because there were so many hurricanes predicted for last year, but those prevailing winds just kept pushing, you know, whatever storms that did form, kept pushing them right off the coast." That was puzzling, while the answer to extreme weather seems obvious to CBS.