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31 August, 2017

An amusing bit of Warmist "research"

Warmists regularly attribute any flood or any drought to global warming.  But you can't have it both ways.  Does global warming produce more or less precipitation? The scientific answer, of course, is that it would produce more rain, as warmer oceans evaporated off more.  So are we having more rain these days?  No. A recent paper which seems to have all the world's hydrologists as co-authors tells us that.  We did NOT have any increase in floods across the last 50 years.  Here is the abstract below.  I will resume my comments once you have had a look at it. The first sentence is all you need to know.  Another prophecy has failed!

Changing climate shifts timing of European floods

Günter Blöschl et al.

Abstract

A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale.

Science,  11 Aug 2017: Vol. 357, Issue 6351, pp. 588-590

As we know, however, Warmism cannot be allowed to die.  So the authors have made a last desperate attempt to save something from the wreckage of their theory.  They now say that global warming is making floods come SOONER.  Not a big comfort, one would think but beggars can't be choosers.  But is the claim right?  It is the product of some torturous statistics and there's many a slip between cup and lip in that sort of thing.  And it does not look good.  Climate bulldog Paul Homewood has pulled out the official British flood statistics and shows that there is no trend anywhere in Britain.  There are changes from year to year but they are random, not pointing in any particular direction.  If I believed in God I would think he had a sense of humor.  He certainly seems to enjoy upsetting Warmist applecarts.






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