Response from Ray to Farmer
..and it's out of cycle with the natural changes.
You should inform the scientists who contributed to the Working Group 1 section of the latest AR5 IPCC report. They found little evidence that storms, floods and droughts had been increasing during the past 60 years or so.
Also not true, that's not what they say. See my reply #301 of this thread with a summary of what they did say (and you have trouble understanding or admitting). I've attached the summary again, to reduce the need to flip back and forth.
Now isn't that interesting, Bart. We appear to be quoting from the same report yet your quotes are much more alarmist than my quotes. Why is that?
This really gets to the nub of the problem. The reason why I became skeptical about the dangers of rising CO2 levels, is because, after doing my own research to discover information that wasn't presented in summaries, that seemed very relevant and also interesting, it became obvious that the purpose of the summaries aimed at the public or policy makers, was to create maximum alarm rather than present the findings in an objective manner.
My initial explanation for the differences between our quotes, presumably from the same document, is that your quotes are from the 'Summary for Policy Makers', whereas mine are from the 'Technical Summary of the Working Group 1 report'.
However, having skipped through the Summary for Policy Makers, which precedes the Technical Summary in the report, I could find no reference to your following quotes.
*Increases in intensity and/or duration of drought.
the scores are Likely, or More likely than not.
- *Increases in intense cyclone activity
the scores are Virtually certain (was likely in some regions), More likely than not, and Likely.
Perhaps I skipped through too quickly. Could you please provide the page number in the report, where these statement occur. Perhaps we're not even looking at the same report.
The following images show the report that I'm referring to, and the relevant quotes are on page 50.
file:///D:/Writings/Climate%20Change%20posts/WG1AR5_ALL_FINAL.pdf
The technical summary also includes statements of medium or high confidence in the increasing occurrence of extreme temperatures in certain locations, more precipitation on average, and rising sea levels, which one would expect to occur if the planet is undergoing a slight warming. I have no dispute with such claims in general, but do have concerns about the alarm generated, and the accuracy of the measurements, both past and present, for comparison purposes.
Here are the quotes relating to floods, droughts and cyclones (or storms).
(1)
There is low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall), owing to lack of direct observations, dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice and geographical inconsistencies in the trends. However, this masks important regional changes and, for example, the frequency and intensity of drought have likely increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and likely decreased in central North America and northwest Australia since 1950.
(2)
Confidence remains low for long-term (centennial) changes in tropical cyclone activity, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities. However, for the years since the 1970s, it is virtually certain that the frequency and intensity of storms in the North Atlantic have increased although the reasons for this increase are debated (see TFE.9).
There is low confidence of large-scale trends in storminess over the last century and there is still insufficient evidence to determine whether robust trends exist in small-scale severe weather events such as hail or thunderstorms. {2.6.2–2.6.4}
(3)
There is high confidence for droughts during the last millennium of greater magnitude and longer duration than those observed since the beginning of the 20th century in many regions. There is medium confidence that more mega droughts occurred in monsoon Asia and wetter conditions prevailed in arid Central Asia and the South American monsoon region during the Little Ice Age (1450–1850) compared to the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950–1250). {5.5.4, 5.5.5}
(4)
With high confidence, floods larger than recorded since the 20th century occurred during the past five centuries in northern and central Europe, the western Mediterranean region and eastern Asia. There is medium confidence that in the Near East, India and central North America, modern large floods are comparable or surpass historical floods in magnitude and/or frequency. {5.5.5}
What is interesting are the statements in the #3 and #4 quotes. The clear implication is that droughts were worse during the MWP than they have been during the 20th century, and possibly even worse during the LIA in monsoon Asia, although it was wetter in Central Asia and South America.
This concurs with what I've read about the collapse of the Khmer civilization in Cambodia, around the time of the beginning of the Little Ice Age in Europe. In the early 14th century AD, as the local climate went into a cooling phase, there was a series of continuous droughts, or mega droughts, which seriously affected the population which relied upon the monsoon and water from the Mekong River to fill their dams and canals, and to grow their crops. The Himalayan snows, which feed the Mekong when they melt in summer, also did not melt as usual during this period of cooling weather, causing much of the population to desert their cities in order to survive. The neighbouring Thais then took this opportunity to invade their enemy, and the cities around Angkor Wat became lost in the jungle until they were rediscovered by the French colonialists in the 19th century.
Please don't tell Michael Mann about this. He'll feel very stressful.
