At the end of the "Little Ice Age" when Global temps were 0.8 degrees cooler than today California and the west suffered extreme weather of epic proportions. An amazing read.It was huge. "In 1861, farmers and ranchers were praying for rain after two exceptionally dry decades. In December their prayers were answered with a vengeance, as a series of monstrous Pacific storms slammed—one after another—into the West coast of North America, from Mexico to Canada. The storms produced the most violent flooding residents had ever seen, before or since." California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe - Scientific American
Yea! I remember as a child growing up in the 1960's in the Atlantic Ocean three separate hurricanes going on at once. Unheard of! One source tried to blame it on flying saucers. lol. Scientists who study the sun say we are actually coming up on a cooler trend as the sun goes through periods of more heat and less heat.
Title should be... "In my opinion" Extreme weather not caused by Global Warming "But I didn't read the article, because it doesn't agree with me" Good article though, bad try at lying cheating and stealing
Whether or not one believes the planet we're on is warming is no more relevant than whether or not one believes the human body will eventually get old and die. It's simple observation ... from as far back as writing on stone tablets ... no one was ever recorded, for example making it to the age of 10,000 .... because the "HighLander" movie is fictional. Similarly, there are no more glaciers running through the fly over states, because the warmer temps melted them all away. Neither is really that deep or debatable an issue. .
From the article; Some parts of Kauai AVERAGE 450 inches of rain a year ... some 7x as much as that one time only storm. Is 66 inches of rain - one time - tantamount to 'extreme' weather? Isn't it more likely the floods were due to the natural terrain / piss poor storm/flood control back then? The storm drain systems back then may have been on par with a dixi cup & a straw. .
On careful inspection, soils under very wet forests often contain charcoal at depth, indicating a history of drought. Walking through river channels you can see layers of 'poorly sorted' rock sizes on eroded faces. There were floods. In short there is absolutely nothing new or 'anthropogenic' about extreme events. That is absolutely not a reason to ignore a possibility that distributions of extreme events can be shifted by climate. I think Pielke Sr. is right on the money to suggest that, to minimize impact of extreme events, one starts with a detailed knowledge of what have happened before, and where. 'Regime changes' are certainly (and appropriately) controversial. But to know, understand, and do nothing seems like a very poor approach.
If any of you are in IT, you know unintended consequences are a given modifying any complex program. Our ecosystem is more complex than that, so predictions are really iffy. Having said that, I do believe humankind has impacted the environment.
