Yes, significant weather events are becoming more common.
However, the problem with the climate change deniers is that they'll just use global figures, where the droughts in parts of the world (like where there are currently some 20 million people in East Africa at risk of dying from forced displacement and famine) are somewhat leveled by superfluous precipitation in others.
Sad, and as for some governments in this world, it borders on criminal neglect or even intent.
Cheers,
Bart
What you've written above, Bart, is unscientific, inconsistent, false or at best misleading.
There are no climate change deniers among those who know anything about science and/or climate. The first thing that anyone learns about climate, who is at all interested, is that climate is always changing. It always has changed in the past, and it is expected that it will continue to change in the future, with a high degree of confidence.
The term you should be using is 'Anthropogenic Climate Change Skeptic', that is, a person who is skeptical about the claimed certainty that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 from human emissions is the main driving force behind the current warming phase.
A necessary part of all scientific investigation is precision of language. If someone doesn't even know the difference between denialism and skepticism, how can he be trusted to make unbiased comments on the very complex subject of climate.
It is not just the skeptics who use global figures, but the alarmists. However, it is the skeptics who point out the enormous difficulty in getting a precise global average temperature. Imagine if you were to try to get an average temperature of your 3-bedroom house with just one thermometer placed in the middles of one room.
Imagine the even greater difficulty of getting an accurate average global temperature with a mere few thousand temperature gauges placed around the world, many of them situated at airports and urbanized areas where the 'Urban Heat Island' effect causes a bias in temperature that has be adjusted for (but probably isn't always adjusted, or at least accurately adjusted).
The term 'global warming' has no meaning in the absence of an average global temperature.
Yes, significant weather events are becoming more common.
And you say this despite my bringing to your attention, in the Trump thread, the view of the latest AR5 IPCC summary on this issue of extreme weather events. That's what I call true denialism.
To refresh your memory, here's a summary of the current IPCC view on extreme weather events, in the AR5.
“Overall, the most robust global changes in climate extremes are seen in measures of daily temperature, including to some extent, heat waves. Precipitation extremes also appear to be increasing, but there is large spatial variability"
"There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century”
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”
“In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”...there are currently some 20 million people in East Africa at risk of dying from forced displacement and famine....Sad, and as for some governments in this world, it borders on criminal neglect or even intent
The really sad part is the assumption of many governments that reducing CO2 levels will fix the climate and make it more benign so that people who live in arid regions where famine is a common occurrence will eventually be able to grow more food.
Famines have always occurred throughout history. In this modern global community we know (technically) how to fix the problem, with food aid, the building of infrastructure, the transportation of water from where it's more plentiful, the teaching of the local people to adapt to different farming techniques and grow different crops that are more suitable to the climate, and so on. All this requires lots of cheap energy, as well as cooperation from corrupt and self-serving governments.
As I've mentioned before, elevated levels of CO2 have a tremendously beneficial effect of greening the planet and increasing crop production.
This CO2 fertilization effect is even more pronounced when plants are water-stressed, as they are when poor people are struggling to grow their crops in arid regions.
