Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Flood Disasters and Human-Caused Climate Change - 0 views
-
[UPDATE: Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate has a post on this subject that -- surprise, surprise -- is perfectly consonant with what I write below.] [UPDATE 2: Andy Revkin has a great post on the representations of the precipitation paper discussed below by scientists and related coverage by the media.]
-
Nature published two papers yesterday that discuss increasing precipitation trends and a 2000 flood in the UK. I have been asked by many people whether these papers mean that we can now attribute some fraction of the global trend in disaster losses to greenhouse gas emissions, or even recent disasters such as in Pakistan and Australia.
-
I hate to pour cold water on a really good media frenzy, but the answer is "no." Neither paper actually discusses global trends in disasters (one doesn't even discuss floods) or even individual events beyond a single flood event in the UK in 2000. But still, can't we just connect the dots? Isn't it just obvious? And only deniers deny the obvious, right?
- ...12 more annotations...