Ever since Typhoon Haiyan devastated portions of Southeast Asia -- particularly the Philippines -- in early November, members of the self-styled mainstream media and climate alarmists have charged that "the most powerful storm ever" was caused in part by global warming, and more “extreme weather events” will happen because even during a climate change “pause,” the heat “isn't missing -- it's right there in the ocean, waiting to put super typhoons on steroids.”
Those claims are wildly exaggerated as indicated by our friends over at Climate Depot report. In fact, many scientists disagree strongly with them, including weather expert Brian McNoldy, who stated: “While Haiyan was absolutely amazing, it’s not alone. … Extremely intense tropical cyclones are rare, but have always been a part of nature -- we don’t need to find an excuse for them.”
Climate Depot also points out several exaggerations in media descriptions of the weather event. One of the most obvious examples was one in which Simon Redfern, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences for the University of Cambridge, asserted: “As climate change continues, we should expect more devastating storms.”
Meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted that Redfern's claim as the “first of many garbage articles to come” before noting that over the past 1,000 years, the Philippines have been hit by more than 10,000 tropical cyclones. “Don't be so arrogant to believe man caused Haiyan.”
“No independent fact checking,” Maue added. “Just rely on a blog.”
Another obvious example of inaccurate reporting was the prediction aired during an installment of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 that the storm's waves would reach 40 to 50 feet in strength.
That colossal mistake led Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder, to tweet that the Philippine Meteorological Service only expected a surge 18 feet strong.
As a result, Pielke stated that the CNN program was “off by 22 to 32 feet” and then asserted: “Some of the weather reports of wind speeds were exaggerated.”
He also noted that a super-powerful storm “doesn't need the extra hype. Reality is bad enough” and is “pretty scary and devastating” on its own.
Another participant in the Haiyan debate was global warming alarmist Jeff Masters, who also asserted that the storm was “the most powerful hurricane ever.”
Meteorologist and climate change skeptic Joe Bastardi replied: “If you really studied typhoons, then Haiyan is perhaps as big as they come, but don't shoot your mouth off about it being the strongest ever."
The Real Science website agreed with Bastardi by declaring: “Jeff Masters exaggerated the wind speeds by 50 MPH and got thousands of news publications to print his lies, which are now the sacred legend of the climate religion.”
Bastardi also clashed with Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist for Climate Central -- which describes itself as “a non-profit science journalism organization” -- who used a tweet to ask “What's fueling #SuperTyphoon#Haiyan's intensity” before answering: “Deep warm water.”
The meteorologist responded by asking:
Are you for real? Of course water is warm, NO typhoons within 100 miles of this since 2008. No stirring of water.
Did you even bother to look at how infrequent typhoons have been where this is crossing, which means water is not cooled?
Claiming that global warming is causing more typhoons and hurricanes is in line with a new strategy by climate alarmists. Since the actual global temperatures have not matched their wild predictions at all, they've now shifted to claiming that global warming will somehow cause more extreme weather events. Earlier this year, the alarmists and their media followers erroneously tried to claim that the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, was somehow related to global warming
