6)Extreme Events

“As a climatologist who has studied the Earth’s climate for nearly forty years, I have learned that carbon dioxide is not a climate control knob; it is merely a minor player in climate change. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas and it accounts for nearly 90% of the net warming of the planet due to the radiative impact of the Earth’s atmosphere.” David R. Legates (2019).

“It is well known that strong to violent tornado activity in the US has decreased markedly since statistics began in the 1950s, which has also been a period of average warming. So, if anything, global warming causes FEWER tornado outbreaks...not more. In other words, more violent tornadoes would, if anything, be a sign of 'global cooling,' not 'global warming.” Roy Spencer

As Pielke (2017) said in his address and testimony to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives “Scientific evidence in support of the conclusions I presented to this committee in 2013 is even stronger today. There is little scientific basis in support of claims that extreme weather events – specifically,

hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes – and their economic damage have increased in recent decades due to the

emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, since 2013 the world and the United States have had a remarkable stretch of good fortune with respect to extreme weather, as compared to the past”.

He then added “The lack of evidence to support claims of increasing frequency or intensity of hurricanes, floods, drought or tornadoes on climate timescales is also supported by the most recent assessments of the IPCC and the broader peer reviewed literature on which the IPCC is based” (Pielke, 2017).

In fact, browsing through (IPCC, 2012) and (IPCC, 2013) one can only concur with Pielke (2017) and be surprised of the harassment he reports having been victim of, for his honest stance and his unbiased report of the facts.

“There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities”. SREX, p.8, (IPCC, 2012)

The better are the observations and the more accurate are the records, the less confidence IPCC have in an increase in tropical cyclone activity.

“There is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia “ SREX, p.8, (IPCC, 2012)

So, there is no global drought trend but only regional phenomenons, some more some less intense or frequent.

“The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences. Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging”. SREX, p.9, (IPCC, 2012)

If it is challenging for IPCC and SREX authors to attribute any change in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences, one can hardly imagine who will succeed!

“Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain”. SREX, p.11, (IPCC, 2012)

The IPCC tells us that the natural variability is way bigger than the “signals” coming from their anthropogenic influence scenarios and that in the end that they do not even know the sign (!), i.e. which is whether these climate extremes will increase or decrease!

“It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged. There is medium confidence that there will be a reduction in the number of extra-tropical cyclones averaged over each hemisphere” SREX, p.13, (IPCC, 2012)

The first good news, tropical cyclones are now forecast to decrease !

“There is low confidence in projections of changes in large-scale patterns of natural climate variability. Confidence is low in projections of changes in monsoons (rainfall, circulation) because there is little consensus in climate models regarding the sign of future change in the monsoons. Model projections of changes in El Niño–Southern Oscillation variability and the frequency of El Niño episodes are not consistent, and so there is low confidence in projections of changes in this phenomenon”. SREX, p.16, (IPCC, 2012)

As seen before, large-scale patterns of natural climate variability are the most important part of these extreme events, but it is unfortunate that even the sign of future change is beyond climate models. Well, the good news is that for once, it is clearly stated that one just deal with models, software, simulations, i.e. nothing real.

“In some aspects of the climate system, including changes in drought, changes in tropical cyclone activity, Antarctic warming, Antarctic sea ice extent, and Antarctic mass balance, confidence in attribution to human influence remains low due to modeling uncertainties and low agreement between scientific studies" (IPCC, 2013) p. 115

One must congratulate here IPCC for their honesty, they know nothing. In fact this above statement could even make them sympathetic for the first time as it would place them in the real of science for once, as per reminded by Harari (2015) “Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus – we do not know. It assumes that we don't know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things that we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge. No concept, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge”. Given what was stated before and how uncertain things are, one should not be surprised that the AGW theory is no immune to critics.

“Based on model results there is limited confidence in the predictability of yearly to decadal averages of temperature both for the global average and for some geographical regions. Multi-model results for precipitation indicate a generally low predictability. Short-term climate projection is also limited by the uncertainty in projections of natural forcing” (IPCC, 2013) p. 115

IPCC acknowledge that they have very limited capabilities to forecast future Global Annual Mean Temperature (GAMT) be they global or regional, that precipitations are beyond scope and that as they do not even master the most important “natural forcing” call it natural climate variability, short-term projection is also beyond their means.

“There is generally low confidence in basin-scale projections of significant trends in tropical cyclone frequency and intensity in the 21st century” (IPCC, 2013) p. 115

So, tropical cyclones are supposed to be less frequent, but IPCC does not know where at the basin-scale level.

“There is low confidence on magnitude of carbon losses through CO2 or CH4 emissions to the atmosphere from thawing permafrost. There is low confidence in projected future CH4 emissions from natural sources due to changes in wetlands and gas hydrate release from the sea floor” (IPCC, 2013) p. 115

At least one more scare that has low confidence. That one should be removed from the list of apocalyptic warnings one is threatened with.

Another classical scare, the hydrological cycle and the droughts is dealt with (IPCC, 2013), p. 44 “ The most recent and most comprehensive analyses of river runoff do not support the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) conclusion that global runoff has increased during the 20th century. New results also indicate that the AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in droughts since the 1970s are no longer supported.” dismissing previous AR4 conclusions.

Finally, reading this Unlikely Physics of Climate Change (IPCC, 2013) had some merits, beyond the astonishing 1,732 occurrences (!) of the word or sub-word “likely” and the 190 occurrences of the word “unlikely”, which means that 190 times in this document were discussed unlikely or even more than unlikely conjectures, one knows now that IPCC does

not know much and that the worse of the apocalyptic forecast of the doomsday sayers are not even endorsed nor supported by IPCC who remain extremely cautious with respect to their ability to forecast or anticipate anything!

In fact, apart from those who make their bred and butter pushing the scare button, serious authors are extremely cautious with any kind of human-related causation and, for example, as far as the North Atlantic Ocean is concerned Villarini et al. (2011) “By using statistical methods combined with the current understanding of the physical processes, we are unable to find support for the hypothesis that the century‐scale record of short‐lived tropical cyclones in the Atlantic contains a detectable real climate signal. Therefore, we interpret the long‐term secular increase in short‐duration North Atlantic tropical storms as likely to be substantially inflated by observing system changes over time”.

The testimony of David R. Legates, on 28th October 2019, before the House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee is replete with highly relevant data and information relating to extreme meteorological events and Legates explain why, for obvious reasons, warmer climate is not only better for general plant productivity and food sustainability but also decreases extreme meteorological events contrary to what the scare mongers pretend. Legates (2019) states “Warmer conditions, such as what we currently are experiencing, exhibit less climate variability than colder conditions. The Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient drives the poleward transport of energy in the climate system. Under a warmer world, the Tropics warm but the Poles warm even more. Consequently, the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient lessens and the outbreak of much severe weather – driven by the interaction of cold polar air with warm tropical air – diminishes. Hurricane landfalls, for example, were much more frequent in South Carolina, New England, and China during colder periods”. Legates' statement is further supported by an extensive study by Liu et al. (2001) considering a 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China, where they state “ this article, we produce a 1,000-year time series of typhoon landfalls for the Guangdong Province in southern China, based on Chinese historical documentary records. Remarkably, the two periods of most frequent typhoon strikes in Guangdong (AD 1660–1680, 1850–1880) coincide with two of the coldest and driest periods in northern and central China during the Little Ice Age”

Then rightfully, Legates (2019) stresses that Mean Global Air Temperature(s) (MGAT) is not that which is important and it should even be said that they contribute to the deception scheme that has been put in place, especially when trying to present smoothed data over various time-periods in terms of “anomalies” with respect to the MGAT. In fact, this is just meaningless and what people are interested in, are brutal daily or short-term shifts and dangerous weather events that create the most damage and cause the most deaths, not arguing about whether some adjusted measurements (e.g. Tropical atmosphere) show that MGAT has increased by less or more than +0.1°C/decade (e.g. satellites +0.095°C/decade, Balloons +0.073 °C/decade) when models, having lost any credibility, forecast three times more. Therefore and rightfully, Legates (2019) states “So, let us look at the data...Next, consider hurricanes. The global number of tropical storms and hurricanes shows no net change since the satellite era began in the early 1970s. Neither is there a significant change in the number of major hurricanes (Category 3-5) or in the number of hurricanes making landfall. Consider also tornadoes. The annual number of tornadoes since the advent of the Next Generation of NOAA weather radars has not changed and, in fact, the number of strong tornadoes in the United States has actually decreased over the past fifty years. In addition, the length of time between the strongest tornadoes, F5/EF5, has steadily increased over the same time period. Again, much of this can be explained by the reduction of the Equator-toPole temperature gradient and the reduced contrast between warm, moist Tropical air and cold, dry Polar air that feeds tornadic activity”.

Finally, on a more conjectural note following the dire events that occurred in early October 2020 in the South-East of France, Météo France228 indicates "in the current state of analysis of the observations, there is no marked trend towards an increase in the number of episodes of heavy rainfall in the South-East of France since it has been possible to record them accurately (since 1958)". Within the frame of the HyMeX project (Ducrocq et al., 2014), the National Center for Meteorological Research observes that the Mediterranean region is subject to a wide range of natural risks, including heavy rainfall and flash floods in autumn (Beaulant et al., 2009), intense cyclogenesis associated with strong winds and swells in winter and heat waves and droughts accompanied by forest fires in summer. These phenomena involve complex non-linear interactions between processes covering a wide range of scales (from a few hours to a century) and different compartments of the Earth system (sea, air and continental surfaces) (CNRM, 2020a) and states “ The evolution of the occurrence and severity of High Precipitation Events in the frame of climate change remains an open question” (CNRM, 2020b). So, there is no need to jump to a foregone conclusion, even though this is what most of the mainstream media have done, blaming the global warming for these.

228Météo France is the official government sponsored meteorological organization who fully supports the AGW thesis.

So, it is not difficult to summarize where we stand: those who make baseless claims that extreme weather events will increase due to a very minor increase of the Mean Global Air Temperature are just dead wrong and are most probably performing an intentional deception as it cannot be supposed that they are so incompetent that they cannot come up straight with the facts. The simple truth is that the facts do not support their narrative and that they cannot care less as they are used to thwarting them and to mislead people and to go always further... Since 2003 and the curious paper by Allen (2003) the outlandish idea of finding a culprit, even if there is none, for any flood or any adverse climate event has grown and the community of Extreme Event Attribution (EEA) has been reported as taking some importance by Jézéquel et al. (2018).

In fact, even though Stott et al. (2016) acknowledge from the beginning that “The evidence for human influence on the probability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed” these authors endorse the idea that some attribution could be made on an ad-hoc basis for such extreme events as if many extreme weather and climate events had never occurred before. This approach is an extension of some flawed reasoning coming from their baseless statement “Societies around the world are faced with increasing climate change risks” and shows how much our modern societies have become unable to accept natural risks as an intricate and con-substantial part of life and how people are self-deceiving themselves with the anthropic sin, always thinking that man is at the core to all processes, all events, etc., be they good or bad. In a perfect example of circular reasoning, the Coupled general circulation models (GCMs) which appear completely useless to forecast these events would be good enough for their attribution, you are flummoxed, aren't you, so are we ! This is the sorry state of climate science and policies.

A very clear and not passionated truth about such extreme weather events can be assessed by observing the deaths caused by climate disasters, it is very factual. In the 1920s, the number of deaths from climate disasters averaged 485,000 per year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, there were an average of 18,357 per year, or 96% less. In the first year of the new decade (2020), the initial estimated number of deaths from natural (climate) disasters was even lower at 8,086, i.e. 98% lower than the 1920s average of the 20th century. But of course, these numbers must be put in perspective of the fact that since the 1920s, the world's population has quadrupled. With these data, one can easily estimate the global risk of "death in a climate catastrophe" (in one year):

• In the 1920s it was 0.000243 (reference point); • In 2010, 0.0000025 (down 99%); • In 2020, 0.000001 (down 99.6%).

Figure 84. Climate-related death risk has decreased 99.6% since the 1920s. From Lomborg (2020b).

“Interestingly, basic meteorological theory tells us that extremes depend significantly on the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles – something that is expected to diminish in a warmer world”. Richard Lindzen (2016)