Our mother country has just held a flood. I was not able to attend, but the UK Telegraph gives us the scoop. And of course, the cause was global warming. Charles Clover, the Telegraph's Environmental Editor explains, in an article with this image at the beginning.
We are left with little doubt.
Big Ben, the London Eye and Westminster Abbey awash. The submerged streets of London indistinguishable from the Thames. Admittedly, the above image, arresting as it is, is the stuff of cinematic trickery. But could it happen? One day, if we are not careful, it just might...
[I]f the floods of this week have taught us anything, it is that few events can be more extraordinary than the weather - and there is plenty of reason to think long and hard about the extraordinary weather we have recently been experiencing.
Ok, so the image above is a computer generated fantasy, and not news footage. Clover is nonetheless certain that the recent floods are caused by global warming. And he tells us a lot about the computer models that predicted the recent storm, and the similar models on which the global warming case is based. You might get the idea that this summer's English rain confirms the latter, but, well, pretty much the opposite is the case, as Mr. Clover responsibly acknowledges.
The overall trend for Britain identified by the computer models as a result of global warming was wetter winters and drier summers. However, Dr Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the University of Reading and another of the paper's authors, said more intense rain storms in wetter years would also fit into the pattern.
"Generally speaking, the models are tending to show a drier trend in summer in the UK," he said. "Nevertheless, when it rains it can rain harder, because the atmosphere can contain more moisture in a warmer world."
So dry summers with little rain would confirm the computer model. Good. And the occasional summer flood during a dry year also confirms the theory. Alright, I get that. But is England having a dry summer? Not exactly.
For much of the summer the jet stream has been further south and stronger than in a typical summer. This has resulted in many depressions crossing southern and central parts of Britain, interacting with very warm and moist air to the south and generating exceptionally heavy rain storms, while other parts of Europe are experiencing drought.
We also know that this is the wettest May to July period for England and Wales since records began in 1766, even though July is not over yet. Some 15.2in (38.7cm) of rain has fallen since the beginning of May, double the average.
Exactly contrary to the theory, England is having one of the wettest summers in at least 241 years. And Mr. Clover thinks that this too confirms global warming.
The question here is not whether we are in a warming period (the evidence of that is very strong), or whether human activity is accelerating it (the evidence is largely convincing), but whether a specific weather event like a flood can tell us anything about global trends. Mr. Clover knows that it cannot. "Scientists," he dutifully notes, "remind us that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change and that Britain is a byword for variable weather." But his thinking is so saturated with the global warming faith that he cannot apply what he knows or recognize what he is seeing with his own eyes. This is not science. It is invincible faith.
Mark Twain said that faith is believing in things you know ain't true. And he also said something like this about some poor soul: it's not what he thinks that bothers me, it's all the things he knows that ain't true. Mr. Clover knows that the English flood is evidence of global warming. And he believes it even though he knows that it ain't true.
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