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Posts Tagged ‘hurricanes’

Holy *%$&! its snowing in Austin, Texas! What do I do? Can I still drive? Do I have to go to work? Should I put on big boots and go buy as much bottled water and creamed corn as I can fit into a stolen borrowed shopping cart? Or just jump on the global warming denier train ASAP?

Terrified victims of SNOWMAGGEDON tremble in fear outside the Public Citizen office

That’s right folks, those fluffy flaky beauties may be lovely to our amazed southern eyes, but to climate deniers they are cold hard proof that global warming is fake. Because its cold outside, so how can the globe possibly be warming?!?! Hah! “Fact” your way out of that truthiness!

***Sigh*** Some folks have a lot of fun busting up climate deniers, but I just don’t have the stomach for it. Far from laughing in glee at those fools who can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate”, it just makes me sad. So I’ll let the president do my dirty work for me.  Check out this video of Obama addressing the crowd at a town hall meeting in Nevada.  He actually does  a really good job of explaining the science of “global boiling”, as Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room notes:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwHnU5ObPY]

…we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody’s like-a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, “See, look at that. There’s all this snow on the ground, you know, this doesn’t mean anything.” I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer. It means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver which supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow. The idea is that as the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns and that creates more violent storm systems, more unpredictable weather. So any single place might end up being warmer. Another place might end up being a little bit cooler. There might end up being more precipitation in the air…

So there you have it, folks. Global warming doesn’t mean it is simply getting hotter. It doesn’t mean there will never be snow again. It means that global temperatures overall are going up, and that’s going to make weather all over the place get a little wonky.  Like stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, extreme drought in south Texas, or even snow right here in Austin.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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There’s new information out as to how Texans will be affected by future climate change impacts, and its not looking good.  According to new studies and modeling, the number of powerful Catergory 4 and 5 hurricanes will likely increase along with global temperatures, as will the overall frequency and severity of storm activity such as tornadoes and hail storms.

A new study published in the prestigious journal Science based on “the most extensive computer modeling of storm activity to date” indicates that though the overall number of Atlantic storms will likely fall 30% by the end of the century, the number of powerful Cat. 4 and 5 storms could increase by 81%.  As someone who has lived on the Gulf Coast, this information is a pretty huge cause for concern.  Usually when you hear that a big storm is coming, you can at least rest easy until you know its going to be a bad one — no need to batten down the hatches for a tropical storm.  Looks as though that luxury will soon be lost.

Then at a conference at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, weather researchers announced that

climate change will likely increase the frequency and severity of storm activity in Texas, an area of the country that is especially vulnerable to the “triple threat” of hurricanes, hail storms and tornadoes

Dr. Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory said that straight-line winds, which are created when areas of high and low pressure collide, will increasingly become a greater threat to structures such as homes and businesses.

As evidence mounts about the negative impacts of climate change, we can only hope that Texas lawmakers and decision-makers will come to see the desperate need for comprehensive legislation to mitigate these effects.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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