Pakistan’s Floods And The Climate-Attribution Con
Climate alarmism and journalistic bias have reached new heights of misleading hype on the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan which is reported to have received more than three times its annual rainfall in August.
The question is, of course, if human-induced climate change has had anything to do with making the floods more dramatic that could reasonably have been expected in the absence of human influences, i.e, as a result of a natural disaster that has been hitting the Indian subcontinent for centuries.
The answer (as given in the small print) by climate scientists at the world weather attribution project is ‘no’ – although it is quite obvious that they, the BBC and much of the news media, don’t like this answer.
As a result, they go all around the scientific and journalistic houses to give the contrary impression.
When the case they want to make cannot be made, they claim that the picture is “complex.”
How can scientists think that this sort of thing is acceptable? The BBC report says that “global warming is likely to have played a role in the devastating floods that hit Pakistan, say scientists.”
On the face of it, “likely” might, or might not mean a better than 50 percent chance, but in this case, it doesn’t. Far from it.
Consider the revealing statement by Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, one of the World Weather Attribution teams:
“Our evidence suggests that climate change played an important role in the event, although our analysis doesn’t allow us to quantify how big the role was.”
So now we have “important role,” added to “likely!” Are you being nudged in the right direction yet?
Then we have the admission they don’t know how big this “important role” is.
And it gets even stupider.
The world weather attribution website analysis has as its main conclusion the rather unsurprising conclusion that the flooding occurred as a direct consequence of the extreme monsoon rainfall.
Then it long-windedly goes on to explain why climate models are no good when it comes to analyzing the event or its connection to climate change, concluding that the existence of natural variability means it is actually:
“infeasible to quantify the overall role of human-induced climate change.”
Well, you don’t say. But wait, there’s more.
“What we saw in Pakistan is exactly what climate projections have been predicting for years.”
But then they admit the event is well within the range of historical natural variability pointing out that 2022 was the wettest year since err…1961!
And let’s not forget that only a few years ago climate scientists claimed that “our analysis found that the summer monsoon rainfall is decreasing over central South Asia – from south of Pakistan through central India to Bangladesh.”
So the real story is, “There is no solid evidence climate change had anything to do with Pakistan’s flooding” — in sharp contrast to the BBC’s headline “Climate Change: Pakistani Floods ‘likely’ made worse by flooding.”
How can the scientific community, and those interested in the subtleties and realities of climate communication justify being so misleading?
How can journalists stand to distort scientific ambiguity using faux certainty to support a climate narrative abandoning any sense of journalistic rigor?
See more here climatechangedispatch
Some bold emphasis added
Header image: Die Welt
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MattH
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It has been estimated that the Tonga Hunga sub-sea surface eruption in January this year increased water vapour in earth’s atmosphere by around 10% to 20%.
This water vapour was ejected into the stratosphere, above the troposphere where the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar atmospheric circulatory cells exist up to a height of approximately 15 kilometers.
When and how this extra water vapour returns to earth’s surface is indecipherable and how much this year’s global flooding events are the result of El Nino, the eruption, or normal expected weather events is unknown and will remain unknown.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Matt,
Will the water in the stratosphere return to the Earth? The temperature of the sunlit side of a satellite in orbit reaches 250C, similar to the temperature on the sunlit side of the moon. This is enough energy to split the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The hydrogen will rise to the top of the atmosphere while the oxygen will remain in the stratosphere. (I would expect an increase in the ozone level in the area due to the increase in oxygen atoms.) The energy loss to the Earth will be from the energy used to split the water molecule, not from the blocking of visible light from reaching the surface.
Herb
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MattH
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Hi Herb, Jerry, The Queens Corgis, and PSI readers.
The first evolving of thinking of what I wrote is that during the eruption a lot of the steam and water vapour would roll out laterally from the eruption and likely become a part of the tropical rain cycle.
What I pondered is would water vapour in the stratosphere cross the equator where in the tropospheric Hadley cells it tends to not cross the equator.
Herbs question leads to thoughts on noctilucent clouds which occur at heights of 103 to 114 km.
Wikipedia mentions hydroxyl radicals. The whole article is interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud#:~:text=Noctilucent%20clouds%2C%20or%20night%20shining%20clouds%2C%20are%20tenuous,water%20ice%20crystals%20near%20the%20summer%20polar%20mesopause.
Have a nice day.
Matt
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Herb Rose
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Hi Matt,
These high clouds bring up the question of how the Earth accumulated so much water. If the Earth formed as a mass of molten rock there would be no liquid water, which means it all arrived after the Earth formed.
The earth orbits the sun in a narrow band where liquid water exists.
If the sun is expelling hydrogen and oxygen ions in the solar winds could the shadow of the Earth allow these particles to combine to form water, then, over time, that water in the form of snowballs eventually fall to the surface? Are these clouds the result of the vaporizing of snowballs as they bring water to the Earth?
I am of the opinion that it is not uv but the gamma and x-ray spectrums (that create the Ionosphere) that are responsible for the dissipation of these clouds as they are absorbed by the atoms, while water molecules absorb IR radiation.
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
I can not understand why you wrote:: “If the Earth formed as a mass of molten rock there would be no liquid water, which means it all arrived after the Earth formed.” and “If the sun is expelling hydrogen and oxygen ions in the solar winds … ” Are you proposing that that these IF’s are possibly a reasoned case based upon unquestionable evidence? If so, please review this evidence which points to these possibilities .
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi MattH,
How is it that a fisherman sees a possible connection between one natural event (Tonga Hunga sub-sea surface eruption in January this year) and the present flooding in Pakistan? And then writes: “When and how this extra water vapour returns to earth’s surface is indecipherable.”
Your comment caused me read about Indian Ocean monsoons. So I question if you intended to refer to El Niño. For it seems most everyone agrees that what has been occurring is the result of an Indian Ocean La Niña event when SST’s are lower than normal but precipitation in Pakistan and India during summer are commonly a little greater than normal. But I read enough to conclude that little is yet certain about the. Northern hemisphere’s La Niña events.
But one thing I am certain about is that no one else seems to be paying any attention to the January 2022 Toga Hunga eruption as you do. And I totally agree with you that its possible influence cannot be ignored. But unlike you, I believe we can possibly observe its influence if we study the historical data that did not exist before WWII, such as that of atmospheric sounding data, Which is still sparse or missing for too large areas of the earth’s surface like Australia and continental southeast Asia.
Have a good day, Jerry
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MattH
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Hi Jerry. I meant to say La Nina, not El Nino. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
More later.
Matt.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Matt and Herb,
The article and our comments are about what I consider NATURAL SCIENCE. Now I am going to review observed facts which might surprise Herb and James McGinn (sp?), who incorrectly claim that the troposphere has no water molecules. It starts with a quote from R.C. Sutcliffe’s 1966 book—Weather & Climate.
Page 48 Sutcliffe wrote: “These results, obtained first by Wilson and broadly confirmed by many later experiments , have a very important bearing on natural meteorology, not because supersaturation occurs in the atmosphere but because it does not occur. …. The answer is that the natural atmosphere, however clean it may appear to be, is always supplied with a sufficient number of minute particles of salts, acids or other substances which serve just as well as liquid water in capturing water molecules from the vapor. These are the ‘nuclei of condensation’, and are effective as soon as the air becomes even slightly supersaturated.”
These ‘nuclei of condensation’ are Herb’s and James’s nano droplets. Which they claim can jump off the surface of liquid water more easily than a single molecule of water. Which idea is nonsense for they do not recognize that the line on a phase diagram represents the ‘equilibrium condition of temperature and atmospheric pressure’ between water (the gas) and water (the liquid). And the temperature of the liquid water on this line is the boiling point at a given atmospheric pressure. This is why chemistry laboratories always have a barometer in the same room because it easy to observe that the boiling temperature of a liquid varies as the atmospheric pressure varies.
The next thing to which I draw attention is we know, but have a tendency to ignore, that all gases in the earth’s atmosphere are slightly soluble in liquid water. So, the nano droplets can never be perfectly pure water as it dissolve nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide gases. sulfur oxide gases, and nitrogen oxide gases However, while oxygen and nitrogen molecules do not react with water molecules to form compounds, these other oxide gases do.
Later I will consider the oxide gases of nitrogen and sulfur, but first I will focus upon the carbon dioxide molecules which react with water molecules to form a larger molecule which is commonly termed carbonic acid. A compound, which in water solution, has an observed chemistry as it dissociates into hydrogen ions, bicarbonate ions and carbonate ions.
I stop here because I want to wait to see what Herb’s, Matt’s, and any other PSI readers responses might be before continuing. Which I will do in day or two even if there are no responses.
Have a good day, Jerry
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