By Dr. Tim Ball in the Canada Free Press

In his book State of Fear, Michael Crichton wrote about exploitation of fear by environmental extremists. He should write another book about exploitation of lack of knowledge. Climate and environment were previously outside of politics, but once they became potential election issues politicians exploited them better than environmentalists. It fulfills H.L Mencken’s observation that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

So before anyone attempts to make political gain from the tragic events of the tornados that killed people across the southern US recently, let’s put the science on the record.  And while we’re at it let’s explode another false claim that storms and severe weather will increase with global warming. 

Storm and accompanying tornadoes that caused the recent deaths were partly created by increased warm moist air off the Gulf of Mexico as a result of La Nina. This influx of warm moist air is needed to meet with the cold air that pushes far south, as it has all this winter. It will continue to do as the Earth continues to cool, as it has generally since 1998. The dilemma then is that storms will most likely increase in frequency and severity, but it will be because of global cooling, not warming. 

Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis have positioned themselves to continue to claim they are right no matter what ultimately happens. They switched from calling it ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ as the concern as global temperatures began to decline while carbon dioxide levels increased. This position produces incredible statements that merely demonstrate ignorance such as Greenpeace climate spokesperson Steven Guilbeault’s comment, “Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that’s what we’re dealing with.” Unfortunately most of the public are not yet knowledgeable about the issue to know how silly Guilbeault’s comment is, but they’re learning. Read more here.

See larger graph here.

Dr. Timothy Ball is a Victoria, British Columbia-based environmental consultant, former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, and Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project .