Rivero's ridiculous views on climate

This week Rivero mentioned my home, Wales. More specifically he mentioned the weather.

Rivero is more than a skeptic on climate-change, in fact he likes to ridicule the idea, and he mentioned Wales because even though it is early Summer here, apparently it snowed last week.

Doubtless Rivero imagines such events discredit the idea of 'global-warming'.

However, Rivero is attacking a strawman - anthropogenic global-warming causing climate-change does not necessarily mean that everywhere will get warmer. At least not in the short-term.

What Rivero also fails to mention is that Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) is the highest mountain in England and Wales, and it only snowed at the summit.

Here's a picture of Yr Wylfa (in the Winter).


It's a mountain.

Does Rivero really think that snow on Snowdonia in June means anthropogenic 'global-warming' is, and always will be, entirely false? How ridiculous is that?

Rivero always likes to pick weather conditions which he seems to think undermine the arguments for global-warming. Rivero cherry-picks cold weather conditions, and extrapolates that 'global-warming' must be untrue.....a con, as he calls it.

But there's a difference between weather and climate. And of course, the weather in Wales has nothing necessarily to say about the weather elsewhere. Let alone the climate.

For one thing, snow on Yr Wylfa in June might suggest an extreme weather condition. climate change needn't imply short term temperature rises everywhere at all times. It doesn't at all mean that, it's a strawman.

When was the last time there was snow on Yr Wylfa in June? What a ridiculous thing to base an opinion upon? When was the last time there was no snow through a winter? There are so many questions that need asking. How much snow is there usually? I've been there in Spring and seen snow. How much sunshine through the year? How much rain through the year compared to previously? etc etc etc. That's climate, not weather.

The Guardian has an interesting piece on exactly this today, and it draws on a far wider range of evidence than Rivero ever would. Big shock.

Here's some of the Guardian article:

Drought zones have been declared across much of England and Wales, yet Scotland has just registered its wettest-ever May. The warmest British spring in 100 years followed one of the coldest UK winters in 300 years. June in London has been colder than March. February was warm enough to strip on Snowdon, but last Saturday it snowed there.

Gosh, look - snow on Snowdonia mentioned in an article that certainly does consider 'global-warming' to be real. How's that Mr Rivero, eh? How can it be?

What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than those in Egypt, something is happening.

Well, maybe it is. Such accounts are really not the test, though: it needs more.

Sober government scientists at the centre for hydrology and ecology are openly using words like "remarkable", "unprecedented" and "shocking" to describe the recent physical state of Britain this year, but the extremes we are experiencing in 2011 are nothing to the scale of what has been taking place elsewhere recently.

Last year, more than 2m sq km of eastern Europe and Russia scorched. An extra 50,000 people died as temperatures stayed more than 6C above normal for many weeks, crops were devastated and hunderds of giant wild fires broke out. The price of wheat and other foods rose as two thirds of the continent experienced its hottest summer in around 500 years.

Just 6 degrees makes that much difference? Crikey. But it's all negated by snow on Yr Wylfa, right, Mr Rivero?

This year, it's western Europe's turn for a mega-heatwave, with 16 countries, including France, Switzerland and Germany (and Britain on the periphery), experiencing extreme dryness. The blame is being out on El Niño and La Niña, naturally occurring but poorly understood events that follow heating and cooling of the Pacific ocean near the equator, bringing floods and droughts.

Vast areas of Europe have received less than half the rainfall they would normally get in March, April and May, temperatures have been off the scale for the time of year, nuclear power stations have been in danger of having to be shut down because they need so much river water to cool them, and boats along many of Europe's main rivers have been grounded because of low flows. In the past week, the great European spring drought has broken in many places as massive storms and flash floods have left the streets of Germany and France running like rivers.

But for real extremes in 2011, look to Australia, China and the southern US these past few months. In Queeensland, Australia, an area the size of Germany and France was flooded in December and January in what was called the country's "worst natural disaster". It cost the economy up to A$30bn (£19.5bn), devastated livelihoods and is still being cleaned up.

In China, a "once-in-a-100-years" drought in southern and central regions has this year dried up hundreds of reservoirs, rivers and water courses, evaporating drinking supplies and stirring up political tensions. The government responded with a massive rain-making operation, firing thousands of rockets to "seed" clouds with silver iodide and other chemicals. It may have worked: for whatever reason, the heavens opened last week, a record 30cm of rain fell in some places in 24 hours, floods and mudslides killed 94 people, and tens of thousands of people have lost their homes.

Meanwhile, north America's most deadly and destructive tornado season ever saw 600 "twisters" in April alone, and 138 people killed in Joplin, Missouri, by a mile-wide whirlwind. Arizonans were this week fighting some of the largest wildfires they have known, and the greatest flood in recorded US history is occurring along sections of the Missouri river. This is all taking place during a deepening drought in Texas and other southern states – the eighth year of "exceptional" drought there in the past 12 years.

"I don't know how much more we can take," says John Butcher, a peanut and cotton farmer near Lubbock, Texas. "It's dry like we have never seen it before. I don't remember anything like this. We may lose everything."

But there's snow on Yr Wylfa, in Wales! So don't worry.

In Mexico, the temperature peaked at 48.8C (119.8F) in April, the warmest anywhere in the world that month, and nearly half the country is now affected by drought. There have already been 9,000 wildfires, and the biggest farm union says that more than 3.5 million farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy because they cannot feed their cattle or grow crops.

But there's snow on Yr Wylfa! In June!

Wherever you look, the climate appears to be in overdrive, with stronger weather patterns gripping large areas for longer and events veering between extremes. Last year, according to US meteorologist Jeff Masters, who co-founded leading climate tracker website Weather Underground, 17 countries experienced record temperatures. Colombia, the Amazon basin, Peru, Cuba, Kenya, Somalia and many other countries have all registered far more or less rainfall or major heatwaves in the past few years, he says. Temperatures in Bangladesh have been near record highs, leaving at least 26 people dead in the past week; Kuwait has seen temperatures in excess of 50C and Rajasthan in India 49.6C, while parts of Canada, including Toronto, have been sizzling at a record 33C.

Rich countries may be more or less immune in the short term because the global trading system guarantees food and access to electricity allows air conditioning, but in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, millions of people this year have little or no food left after successive poor rainy seasons. Last week, international aid agencies warned of an impending disaster.

Sceptics argue that there have always been droughts and floods, freak weather, heatwaves and temperature extremes, but what concerns most climate scientists and observers is that the extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, their intensity is growing and the trends all suggest long-term change as greenhouse gases steadily build in the atmosphere.

Well, exactly. And if anything, Rivero's example of snow on Yr Wylfa in June fits the bill, rather than disproving it.

Killer droughts and heatwaves, deeper snowfalls, more widespread floods, heavier rains, and temperature extremes are now the "new normal", says Nikhil da Victoria Lobo of the giant insurance firm Swiss Re, which last month estimated losses from natural disasters have risen from about $25bn a year in the 1980s to $130bn a year today. "Globally, what we're seeing is more volatility," he says.

Ah, but what would a Swiss insurance company know about it? And anyway, it snowed on Yr Wylfa in June, dontcha know?

New analysis of natural disasters in 140 countries shows that climate is becoming more extreme. Last month, Oxfam reported that while the number of "geo-physical" disasters – such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions – has remained more or less constant, those caused by flooding and storms have increased from around 133 a year in 1980s to more than 350 a year now.

"It is abundantly clear that weather-related disasters have been increasing in some of the world's poorest countries and this increase cannot be explained fully by better ways of counting them," says Steve Jennings, the report's author. "Whichever way you look at the figures, there is a significant rise in the number of weather-related disasters. They have been increasing and are set to get worse as climate change further intensifies natural hazards.

But it's snowing on Yr Wylfa! Oh hold on....that fits with extreme weather like we've been seeing elsewhere, and which we should expect if global-warming were real......right Mr Rivero?

While no scientist will blame climate change for any specific weather event, many argue that these phenomena are textbook examples of the kind of impact that can be expected in a warming world. Natural events, such as La Niña and El Niño, are now being exacerbated by the background warming of the world, they say.

Except Rivero. Oh, but he's not an expert, he's a moron. That explains that then.....

"It is almost impossible for us to pinpoint specific events . . . and say they were caused by climate change," says William Chameides, atmospheric scientist at Duke University, who was vice-chair of a US government-funded national research council study on the climate options for the US which reported last month. "On the other hand, we do know that because of climate change those kinds of events will very, very likely become more common, more frequent, more intense. So what we can say is that these kinds of events that we are seeing are consistent with climate change."

And still Rivero thinks his extreme examples discredit the idea. lol.

Oh, and look how fucking lovely my country is? We're blessed. :D God's country.

We've got far more water than we know what to do with - the English steal a lot of it - which makes us moan, as it falls on us, not them. Hopefully everywhere dries out and we can sell all this frigging bwrw glaw.

What a fabulous place?

We used to have raves just below those lakes. One time was the worst night of my life - I had a lift there, and so no car to hide in, and the weather was atrocious. Man, that was awful......what a night. Wow.