ONLY IDIOTS ARE WARMISTS NOW — OR SOMETHING FAR WORSE

After a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma May 20, two prominent Senate Democrats proved how profoundly mistaken are those who assume liberals are smarter and more moral than conservatives.

As most Americans mourned the 24 dead and 277 injured, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., blamed the tornado (and hurricanes and wildfires) on Republicans, because so many dispute the theory of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming or AGW. 

There’d be fewer tornadoes if her bill to impose a carbon tax became law, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Tornadoes occur when a warm front laden with moisture collides with a cold front.  They happen chiefly in Spring when warm, wet winds moving northward from the Gulf of Mexico run into cold, dry air coming down from Canada.

It’s the contrast in temperatures that matters.  Warming (or cooling) would affect formation of tornadoes only if it sharpened the contrast between fronts.  But most warming has taken place at night in winter in cold climates.

This tends to diminish the contrast, which may in part be why there have been, on average, fewer strong to violent tornadoes (EF-3 to EF5) each year since the warming trend began in 1979 than in the 25 years before it.  There have been fewer tornadoes of all types in the last ten years than in each of the six preceding decades.  In the 12 months before the tornado struck Moore, there’d been fewer tornadoes than ever before.

Only one among the 25 deadliest — the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri May 22, 2011 — happened after 1979.

Hurricanes happen when warm, moist air rising from the surface of the ocean collides with much colder air higher up.  There have been 7 major hurricanes (Cats 3,4,5 on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale), on average, each decade for the last 100 years — but just 5.6 per decade since 1980. 

There were 67,774 wildfires last year, well below the peak of 249,370 in 1981.  The number of acres burned (9.09 million) was well below the record of 9.9 million acres set in 2006.

So compared to Sens. Whitehouse and Boxer, the Flat Earth Society (yes, it still exists) seems scientifically respectable.  Are Whitehouse, Boxer & Co idiots?  Or have they another motive for saying things so preposterously false about warming and violent storms? 

In April, the lower troposphere was just 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in 1979, according to satellite measurements.  Scientists are scaling back climate models to reflect real world data.  Australian scientists who predicted the planet would warm 6 degrees Celsius by 2100 say now the rise this century will be closer to 2.

Temperatures may not rise at all.  In Pittsburgh, a record low set in 1877 was broken May 24.  Record lows were set in Oregon and North Carolina in May.  Temperatures have been below normal in 79 percent of the U.S. 

This was the coldest Spring in decades in Germany and China.  In Britain, Easter was the coldest ever. France braces for its coldest summer since 1816. 

Another Little Ice Age, like that between 1300 and 1850, will begin next year, predict Russian astrophysicist Habibullo I. Abdussamatov and Mexican geophysicist Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera.

We’ll see.  But we can be sure the dangers of AGW have been grossly exaggerated when Britain’s Met(eorological) Office, an enthusiastic promoter of AGW, admits (however grudgingly) warming since 1880 is not statistically different from natural random variation.

As warmist scientists dial back alarmism, and more of their colleagues express skepticism about the underlying science, politicos make ever more shrill predictions of disaster, which they say is closer now than ever.

Few politicians have the smarts to be rocket scientists (or even climate scientists), and Mr. Whitehouse and Ms. Boxer are among the dimmest bulbs in the Senate chandelier.  But it is difficult, even for them, to say so many things at such wide variance from the facts without intending to deceive.

AGW alarmism is fomented chiefly by those with ulterior motives — crony capitalists who seek enrichment at the public trough, ideologues who want to expand the size and power of government.

President Zero epitomizes both of these ulterior motives – as he made clear at a Chicago fund raiser last night (5/30) by saying, "I don’t have much patience with people who deny climate change."  This is not the statement of an idiot, but of something far worse.

Those genuinely concerned about the consequences of warming are relieved to learn their fears were overblown.  But those for whom AGW alarmism is a means to another end are in a state of panic.  They’ll say anything — however false, illogical or mean spirited — to keep the scam going a little while longer.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.