Rasmussen Reports
U.S. meteorologists say the deadly storms tearing up the South are not a result of climate change. None the less, the extreme weather has rekindled the global warming debate in Washington, D.C.
But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of American Adults think the recent severe weather is primarily caused by long-term planetary trends. Only 19% blame the extreme weather on human activity which many climate change activists view as the cause of global warming. Twelve percent (12%) say there’s some other cause for the bad weather, and 19% more are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans say the weather in their area is worse than it has been in recent years. Roughly half (49%) disagree with that assessment, but 12% are undecided.
Fifteen percent (15%) of adults say they have personally been impacted by the severe weather or have a family member who has suffered through it. Among those impacted by the severe weather, 62% say the weather in their area has been worse this year.
The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on May 10-11, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
The recent severe weather in the South and Midwest is garnering much media attention, and 50% of Americans rate the government’s response to the weather-related disasters as good or excellent.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans and 50% of adults not affiliated with either political party believe long-term planetary trends are the root cause of the recent destructive weather. Democrats are evenly divided on the question.
Adults under the age of 30 are more inclined to blame the severe weather on human activity than their elders.
Separate recent polling finds that 47% of voters believe climate change is primarily caused by long-term planetary trends. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree and believe human activity is more to blame. While more voters have blamed planetary trends since January 2009, this is the widest gap between the two since July of last year.
Early storms in December prompted one-third of Americans to say the winter season was already worse than it had been in recent years.
H/T Skeptics Corner
By Paul Chesser
Rankings, ratings and scorecards are often only vehicles for environmental groups to draw attention to their cause (as with Greenpeace), and more often than not they are given legitimacy - even when they conflict with other likeminded groups - since a sympathetic media likes to amplify their agenda.
And then there are the operatives who just want to make a buck off the “Green” scam with the creation of faux rankings. Such appears to be the case with GreenBusiness Works, which last week published its 2011 “Southeastern Corporate Sustainability Rankings.” The Atlanta-based group is the creation of a marketing and communications guru named Stephanie Armistead, who years ago converted her agency to one that focuses on the liberal priority of “Corporate Social Responsibility.”
The rankings showered love on companies that any business consultant like Armistead would want as clients. GreenBusiness Works pegged United Parcel Service as the top company and a “Sustainability Champion.” Other recognized corporations - which had to be headquartered in one of six Southeastern states and have a minimum market capitalization of $100 million to qualify for consideration - included Coca-Cola, Duke Energy, Hanesbrands, Southern Company, Fedex Corp., Office Depot, Nucor, and Progress Energy, all of which were praised as “Sustainability Leaders.”
To illuminate the illegitimacy of the rankings, three (Southern, Duke, Progress - the latter two are merging) are electric utilities that have received heavy criticism from environmental groups for their heavy use of coal and nuclear to generate power. Nucor heavily impacts the environment with its steel, metals and mining businesses, and both UPS and Fedex spread carbon dioxide emissions across the globe on a daily basis via their airplanes and delivery trucks.
Nevertheless UPS soaked up the meaningless accolade. “This award recognizes the growing importance of sustainability as a leadership criteria for corporations,” said UPS Chief Sustainability Officer Scott Wicker. “We are honored to know that our efforts in energy conservation, socially responsible business practices, volunteerism and transparent reporting are being recognized by the Southeastern Corporate Sustainability Rankings.”
GreenBusiness Works says the criteria used to evaluate the businesses came from CRD Analytics, a “leading provider of independent sustainability investment analytics.” The proprietary methods utilized by CRD apparently disregard actual greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions, as well as the opinions of environmental activists. They do, however, claim to take into account factors such as “environmental performance,” product responsibility, community, human rights, diversity and opportunity, and employment quality, as well as “governance performance indicators.” However, no descriptions of what makes each aspect positive or negative is provided.
More likely the Greenbusiness Works assessments are based upon the business aspirations of Armistead and the sponsors of her rankings. After all, according to GreenBusiness Works:
...the long-term vision for the Rankings is for it to be converted into an investable index with a portion of the profits donated to a Southeastern region non-profit organization (perhaps GreenBusiness Works?)…
Proud sponsors and supporters of the second annual Rankings include the following environmentally-conscious companies: Reznick Group, Servidyne Inc., Grubb & Ellis, ROOKER, Sustainable Options, JustMeans and Georgia Trend. “The firms sponsoring this year’s Rankings were invited to participate because of the resources they offer to companies interested in advancing sustainability,” remarked Armistead. “Brokering relationships between entities adopting sustainability practices and those with the resources to support them is a key initiative of GreenBusiness WORKS. This year’s sponsors provide important resources for any organization interested in accelerating their work in sustainability.”
How’s that for transparency? In other words, Armistead drafted these co-sponsors precisely because they cater to the sustainability efforts of the corporations whose business they hope to win. Are these businesses also Armistead’s clients? What an advocate!
For example, Reznick Group is an accounting, tax and business advisory group, with a specialty in renewable energy tax credit services. From their Web site:
Federal energy tax credits incentivize organizations and entities to finance renewable energy project development. With the new administration in Washington, and a continued focus on the environment, we believe there are many new financial opportunities for the renewable energy industry.
Reznick Group’s renewable energy accounting and energy tax consulting professionals provide business advice to clients on the most efficient means of financing and capitalizing renewable energy projects. In doing this, we perform assurance and tax consulting and compliance work related to a variety of corporations, partnerships and service arrangements that stand to benefit from federal renewable energy tax credits.
Another sponsor of the rankings, Servidyne Inc., “helps businesses reduce costs by cutting energy consumption and enhancing the operating and financial performance of their existing buildings.” Justmeans claims it “has become the leading platform and ecosystem for the growing ‘sustainable business’ industry.” And GreenBusiness Works itself offers “our instructional designers and training consultants work directly with the clients subject matter experts to develop customized, cost effective training solutions to satisfy short and long term, environmentally sustainable business objectives.”
Wouldn’t any of these consultancies - even CRD Analytics, an investor advisory firm that specializes in sustainability - just love to win contracts with the likes of UPS, Coca-Cola, or Duke Energy? Perhaps these rankings are just the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Meanwhile, beware of self-authorized Green groups who praise corporations for their environmental magnanimity - there is probably a deal to be struck in the background.
Paul Chesser is associate fellow for the National Legal & Policy Center and is executive director for American Tradition Institute.
By Steve Goddard
When warm El Nino dominated, Trenberth blamed it on global warming (here).
“One respected climate scientist who has gone out on a limb about the global warming-El Nino connection is Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He thinks that El Nino may function as a kind of pressure release valve on the tropics. In an era of global warming, Trenberth says, ocean currents and weather systems might not be able to bleed off all the heat pumped into the tropical seas. Periodically, it has to get rid of the excess that builds up, he suggests, and that safety valve is El Nino.
Since 1976, there have been seven El Ninos. Based on the most reliable records, which go back 120 years, we would have expected to see only five, Trenberth says. Could the recent upturn be part of a natural cycle or some kind of oddball blip on the climate radar screen?”
Now that cool La Nina is dominating, they are trying to blame that on global warming.
“This is mainly the fault of La Nina, a cyclical weather system. “It used to occur once every five to six years, but it is increasingly frequent and severe due to global warming,” says Lozano. The current spell of bad weather is expected to last another two months.”
Whatever the weather is, they will rationalize it as being caused by global warming. The incredibly low (non-existent) standards of climate science make this possible.
They never will admit to the existence of multidecadal cycles in the oceans because that would explain away much of the warming from 1978 to 1998. See how El Ninos are more frequent and longer in duration than La Ninas in the warm PDO and La Ninas more frequent and longer in the cold PDO.
By Dennis Ambler, SPPI Blog
Contract and Converge is the UN agenda for wealth redistribution, which requires the West to cut back on our use of hydrocarbon energy and allows developing nations to expand theirs so that they can catch us up.
Brazil Company invests 2 billion USD to develop Mozambique vast coal reserves
The world’s largest iron-ore producer, Brazil’s Vale will double investments in Mozambique to 4 billion US dollars in the next four years, said Chief Executive Officer Roger Agnelli, on Monday. The Rio de Janeiro-based company invested 2 billion USD since it acquired the Moatize coal mine in 2004, said Agnelli in Tete province, 2,000 kilometres north of the capital Maputo.
Vale started operations at the 1.7 billion USD Moatize this weekend and is expected to produce 11 million metric tons of metallurgic and thermal coal a year once fully operational, the company said. Moatize employs 7,500 workers and its coal will be transported along a 600-kilometer railway line to the port of Beira in central Mozambique. Vale plans to set up a coal-to-liquid plant in Mozambique, Agnelli said, declining to give more details. The southern African country’s government supports the plan to produce fuels from coal, said Mineral Resources Minister Esperanca Bias. “We want to add value to coal produced in the country,” she said in an interview. “But first we have to see how the project is operating”.
Mozambican President Armando Guebuza presided over the inauguration ceremony Sunday in Moatize. The former Portuguese colony of Mozambique has billions of tons of coal reserves, but until now they have been largely untapped.
Later this year, India’s Tata Steel and Australia’s Riversdale Mining are expected to jointly open another major coal mine in nearby Benga.
Don’t expect James Hansen to visit Mozambique anytime soon to campaign about their coal “death trains”.
Meanwhile, back in the US,
Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” Campaign Is Beyond the Pale, by William Yeatman on May 9, 2011.
“Last Thursday, the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee held a hearing on “Environmental Protection Agency Mining Policies: Assault on Appalachia.” For detailed descriptions of the EPA’s outrageous war on Appalachian coal production.
Suffice it to say, EPA has subverted the Administrative Procedures Act to enact a de facto moratorium on mining. It engineered a new Clean Water Act
“pollutant,” saline effluent, which the EPA claims degrades water quality downstream from mines by harming a short lived insect that isn’t an endangered species. The hearing on Thursday was part 1; this Wednesday, the subcommittee is scheduled to hear from EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.
I attended the hearing, and at the media table, I picked up a Sierra Club “Beyond Coal Campaign” press release, by Director Mary Anne Hitt. It is an excellent window into the lying and exaggerations frequently employed by environmental extremists in order to demonize coal. Below, I reprint the entire press release, sentence by sentence (in bold), each followed by a rebuttal (in italics).”
Sierra Club: “This Committee’s leadership is trying to stack the deck against Appalachian miners, families and businesses.”
Stacking the deck!? This is absurd. To be sure, all four witnesses before the Subcommittee were opposed to the EPA’s war on Appalachian coal, but that was by BIPARTISAN agreement. Indeed, the only Democrat to show up was Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), the Ranking Member, who opposes the EPA’s machinations more than Republicans, due to the fact that his State is the largest coal producer in Appalachia, and is, therefore, harmed most.
Sierra Club: “Despite the severe threats that mountaintop removal coal mining poses to the health of Appalachian families and the environment, not a single community member affected by mountaintop removal has been invited to speak to this Committee.”
For starters, mountaintop mining poses no threat “to the health of Appalachian families” and essentially zero impact on the “environment.” As I explain in detail here, the EPA’s war on Appalachian coal is predicated on protecting an insect that lives for a day, and which isn’t even an endangered species.
As for the Sierra Club’s nonsense about the Committee not having invited a “single community member affected by mountaintop removal,” there is an extremely likely explanation: No such “community member” exists. In May 2010, I travelled to Charleston, West Virginia, to attend an EPA field hearing on its Appalachian coal crackdown. It took place in the Charleston Civic Center, and there were probably 2,000 people in the room, of which I’d guestimate that 1,980 were against the EPA. Of those that supported the EPA’s assault on Appalachian coal production, 10 worked for the EPA, and the rest were from environmentalist organizations. There were no “community members affected by mountaintop removal.” The upshot is that the only people in this affair who are “affected” are the coal industry and support industry workers who are at risk of losing their jobs.
Sierra Club: “Mountaintop removal is not the economic cure-all that many in Congress claim it to be.”
Wrong again! Mountaintop mining might be anathema to radical environmentalists at the Sierra Club, but it’s absolutely essential for the Appalachian coal industry’s competitiveness vis a vis coal production west of the Mississippi.
Sierra Club: “In reality, it costs miners their jobs through mechanization, jeopardizes their health and puts state budgets even deeper into debt.”
Regarding the first clause: If mountaintop mining “costs miners their jobs,” then why do miners support it? As for the second clause, it is an unequivocal fact that local and state governments in Appalachian States rely on the coal industry for a significant part of their tax revenues. For example, at the May EPA field hearing, Logan County (West Virginia) School Superintendent Wilma Zigmond said that, “coal keeps the lights on and our schools running,” after noting that property taxes from coal mines contribute more than $17 million annually.
Sierra Club: “There is a better way.”
Really! That’s great. Please, tell me this better way! (I sure hope it’s not windmills and solar panels)
Sierra Club: “Clean, safe and affordable alternatives exist to power our nation - without the high economic and health costs or destruction that come with mountaintop removal coal mining.”
Doh! She was talking about wind mills and solar panels. The fact is, you can’t replace reliable, affordable energy (like coal power) with unreliable, expensive energy (like wind mills and solar panels). It just doesn’t work. I’ll also reiterate that the “high economic and health costs or destruction that come with mountaintop removal mining” is limited to an insect that lives for a day, and which isn’t even an endangered species.
Sierra Club: “In this time of economic uncertainty, it is more important than ever for Americans to seek out safe, cost-effective solutions to our energy crisis.”
This is ridiculous. “In this time of economic uncertainty,” it is important for people to have jobs, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SIERRA CLUB OPPOSES. Moreover, the most “cost-effective” solution to our “energy crisis (?)” is coal. I’ll grant that coal mining is more dangerous to Americans than the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels in China. [To be sure, as a free marketer, I’m a proponent of China’s right to sell America wind turbines and solar panels without restrictions, in order to cheapest meet the foolish green energy production quotas that our politicians subject us to.]
Sierra Club: “Mountaintop removal coal mining simply doesn’t fit this bill.”
Perhaps in bizzarro world, but not here on planet earth.
Hockey Schtick
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner is the past chair of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. Dr. Morner has just published a peer-reviewed paper showing that the Sun will be in a new major Solar Minimum by the middle of this century, resulting in a new Little Ice Age over the Arctic and NW Europe. Dr. Morner bases his analysis upon solar influences on the Earth’s length of day and the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al., and finds the analysis provides conclusions “completely opposite to the scenarios presented by the IPCC.”
Enlarged.
ABSTRACT: At around 2040-2050 we will be in a new major Solar Minimum. It is to be expected that we will then have a new “Little Ice Age” over the Arctic and NW Europe. The past Solar Minima were linked to a general speeding-up of the Earth’s rate of rotation. This affected the surface currents and southward penetration of Arctic water in the North Atlantic causing “Little Ice Ages” over northwestern Europe and the Arctic.
EXCERPTS: At around 2040-2050 the extrapolated cyclic behavior of the observed Solar variability predicts a new Solar Minimum with return to Little Ice Age climatic conditions.
The date of the New Solar Minimum has been assigned at around 2040 by Morner et al. (2003), at 2030-2040 by Harrara (2010), at 2042 ±11 by Abdassamatov (2010) and at 2030-2040 by Scafetta (2010), implying a fairly congruent picture despite somewhat different ways of transferring past signals into future predictions.
The onset of the associated cooling has been given at 2010 by Easterbrook (2010) and Herrara (2010), and at “approximately 2014” by Abdassamatov (2010). Easterbrook (2010) backs up his claim that the cooling has already commenced by geological observations facts.
At any rate, from a Solar-Terrestrial point of view, we will, by the middle of this century, be in a New Solar Minimum and in a New Little Ice Age (Figure 7). This conclusion is completely opposite to the scenarios presented by IPCC (2001, 2007) as illustrated in Figure 3. With “the Sun in the centre”, no other conclusion can be drawn, however.
By John O’Sullivan
Desperate greens file countless lawsuits in last gasp bid for climate regulations: experts, public and lawmakers unmoved.
May 2011 sees the Big Green litigation machine go into overdrive as it ignores Gallup Poll ratings showing Joe Public no longer believes it’s global warming propaganda. In a story that is going viral on the web, Matthew Brown (Associated Press) explains that, ‘The courtroom ploy was backed by activists looking for a legal soft spot to advance a cause that has stumbled in the face of stiff congressional opposition.”
In the United States environmentalists plummet new depths as gullible children are groomed to appear in courts to explore any legal loophole to squeeze through impose swinging climate regulations damaging to economic recovery. Meanwhile in Canada skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball rides a tide of popular support to fight back against well-funded climate doomsayer libel suits.
Greens Groom Kids with Crank Claims of Carbon Contamination
Loorz was first groomed as an ‘eco-warrior’ at the tender age of 13 after seeing former Vice President Al Gore’s discredited movie, ‘Inconvenient Truth.’ A British High Court ruling in 2007 was that Gore’s film contained nine lies.The judge ruled that the film can only be shown to children with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. Sadly, Loorz’s green groomers omitted to pass on that vital piece of information.
Thus the deep-pockets of environmental ‘charities’ believed to be funding young activists, are still remorselessly insisting that human emissions of carbon dioxide that comprises less than 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, is a dangerous ‘poison.’ But to biologists the benign trace gas is merely plant food and has long been pumped into Loorz’s sodas to give that bubbly fizz.
Lawmakers Condemn Green’s Misuse of Precious Court Time
Many legal analysts predict that this latest ruse by climate extremists will clog up the court system in all 50 U.S. states. Such lawsuits are already being frowned upon from an unlikely quarter: the Obama administration.
Already, the U.S. Supreme Court has disapproved of such “nuisance cases.” Environmental lawyer, Steven G. Jones correctly echoed the voice of the judiciary, “[t]he Supreme Court has long recognized that there are cases that raise political questions that should be reserved for the political branches of government.” [1.]
In his excellent legal analysis, ‘Republican Lawmakers Join Obama Administration in Urging Supreme Court to Overrule GHG Nuisance Case,’ Jones highlights the fact that the Obama administration agreed with Republicans that the U.S. Supreme Court was correct to overturn an appellate ruling that would have allowed environmental plaintiffs to sue sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) under tort law. Thus even this ultra-green President who tried and failed to get Congress to pass climate laws frowns upon this new and ill-thought out legal gambit.
Harvard Law School professor Jody Freeman agrees with Columbia University law professor Michael Gerrard are among a host of experts advising that these frivolous lawsuits won’t save a moribund green cause. Freeman doubts a law court could ever be an appropriate forum for the issue.
“I am generally skeptical the plaintiffs will succeed in the courts pressing for common-law remedies from judges,” Freeman said. Another expert, Hans von Spakovsky, attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), dismissed the lawsuits for being based on “a creative, made-up legal theory.”
Skeptic Climatologist Well Set to Advance Court Cases
However, to the far northwest in Vancouver, British Columbia, a far more compelling and ultimately decisive global warming legal battle is being fought in Canadian libel courts. Climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball and his legal team are confident they will dealtheir own fatal blow to two lawsuits filed by UN climate extremists, thus putting an end to any claims that man-made global warming has any scientific substance.
The omens are good, according to ‘Time’ magazine, which notes that Canadian voters, just like their U.S. cousins, have been voting down green policies in recent elections; so it will be hard to find any jury north or south of the 49th parallel eager to resurrect environmentalism’s lost cause.
[1.] Id. at 11 (citing Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962) and Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 277 (2004)).
Best of luck to Dr. Ball im the battle against nuisance cases brought by Drs Weaver and Mann. In discovery, the whole house of cards that is ‘AGW’ will be exposed and will collapse. BTW, half your donations to ICECAP (button top left and email for address to jsdaleo@yahoo.com) in the next two months will be sent to the legal fund for Dr. Ball.
By Roger Lott, Staff Columnist
A wonderful piece by Lott. See how the hair bristles on the alarmist commenters - without any good sensible arguments why Lott is wrong.
--------
“Fire and brimstone,” “real collapse” and “biblical concern” are the kinds of phrases many of us have come to associate with global warming. Economist Eban Goodstein did not disappoint in his lecture at Dartmouth this April, using these terms and many others as he called on his audience to save the planet by redesigning “every city on Earth” and becoming superheroes like characters from “The Lord of the Rings.” Before trying to build a new world order, however, it’s worth taking all the hysteria about climate change with a grain of salt.
There’s certainly been a lot of unfounded alarmism in recent decades. In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt said, “If present trends continue, the world will be ...11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” In 2000, University of East Anglia senior research scientist David Viner predicted that within a few years, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” It’s time to stop taking people with academic credentials so seriously when they engage in such nonsensical speculation.
Goodstein predicted in his lecture that “Impacts from the arctic ice melting could cost… somewhere between $2.4 trillion and $24 trillion in cumulative damages by 2050.” The absurdly unhelpful breadth of this range reflects how hopeless it is to try to predict temperature changes over four decades and then reduce to dollars and cents an infinite number of effects on issues such as animal welfare, forestry, human health, agriculture and energy use. These impacts aren’t even necessarily negative ones - indeed, a model by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that a slight rise in temperature would cause modest growth in total world agricultural output.
It’s far from clear that the past century’s mild warming of about 0.6 degrees Celsius is really the result of increased human emissions. Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson points out, “When CO2 levels were over 10 times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.” Given the National Center for Policy Analysis estimate that humans are responsible for just 0.28 percent of the greenhouse effect, we shouldn’t be too ready to assume responsibility for climate change. Indeed, temperatures actually fell from 1940 to 1970 at the same time that carbon dioxide emissions increased.
Considering the guesswork and subjective judgment involved in predicting the effects of climate change, it’s no wonder that damage estimates for a metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions range from the $2 suggested by Dutch economist Richard Tol to the $85 proposed by British economist Nicholas Stern. It is disturbing that environmental groups believe the government should mandate massive and extraordinarily expensive infrastructure changes based on an almost arbitrary figure that could easily be off by a factor of 10.
Any government response to climate change will inevitably be more about politics than science. By exaggerating global warming threats, government officials can justify higher taxes and push a variety of preexisting agendas as they regulate the various human activities that contribute to emissions. Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart put it best when she said in 1998, “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits ... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.” This sentiment is perhaps shared by many members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every IPCC report since 1990, insists is “not a scientific body. It is a political organization that puts out propaganda as naturally as Green Peace.”
While environmental awareness is generally a good thing, we must be on guard against “experts” spouting sensational, politically-motivated scaremongering to make headlines and attract funding. Unfortunately, the College’s decision to invite someone like Goodstein without bringing in opposing perspectives reflects the extent to which many members of the Dartmouth community have bought into the overblown hype surrounding climate change.
By Tom Nelson
Financial Times: “It is still proving extremely difficult for scientists to extract a clear sign of the effects of climate change from the normal long-term historic cycles of weather and climate activity”
Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: Financial Times on Disasters and Climate Change
I often highlight situations where the science of disasters and climate change is misrepresented. Here is a case of the opposite situation. Today’s Financial Times gets the science of disasters and climate change exactly right:
The biggest question, though, remains the extent to which climate change is the driver of hurricanes, cyclones and flooding that have hit the world with apparently increased ferocity and regularity in recent years.
It is still proving extremely difficult for scientists to extract a clear sign of the effects of climate change from the normal long-term historic cycles of weather and climate activity. That is despite simple logic saying that a warmer climate should result in more powerful storms because of a greater water content in the atmosphere.