Thanks to Mike Smith for alerting us to this article (and for his insightful weblog “Midwest Floods and Unjustified Climate Change Fear Mongering” on Watts Up With That on this topic).
The Rueters news article by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent on July 1 2008 is titled “Midwest floods show signs of global warming”
This article is an excellent example of the bias that exists in the communication of climate information to the public.
Excerpts from the article illustrate this bias;
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Floods like those that inundated the U.S. Midwest are supposed to occur once every 500 years but this is the second since 1993, suggesting flawed forecasts that do not take global warming into account, conservation experts said on Tuesday.
’Although no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, it’s critical to understand that a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel these kinds of weather events,”’said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.
Warmer air can carry more water, Staudt said in a telephone briefing, and this means more heavy precipitation in the central United States. Big Midwestern storms that used to be seen every 20 years or so will likely occur every four to six years by century’s end, she said.“
This is, unfortunately, not a news article with a scientific basis. Dr. Staudt presents no evidence that this flood event is due to warmer air and an increase in atmospheric water vapor.
Water vapor, for example, has been shown to not have increased over North America
Wang, J.-W., R.A. Pielke Sr., and T. Matsui, 2007: Spatial and temporal variations of precipitable water content using the NARR monthly dataset. Geophys. Res. Letts., submitted.
She also ignored evidence that flood losses are actually decreasing in the United States; i.e. see
U.S. Flood Damage 1929-2003[posted June 16 2008 on Prometheus].
Moreover, she fails to present peer reviewed papers that document an observed change in the weather events that caused this flooding. Indeed, the reason for the flooding was the unusually persistent cool air west of the flood region which provide a strong frontal boundary between the air of polar origin and the humid tropical air to the east. The attribution of the floods to global warming, rather than the actual cause of the flood due to a persistent frontal boundary, exemplifies the misuse of science to promote a particular perspective on climate science. Both Dr. Staudt and th reporter, Ms. Deborah Zabarenko, have misrepresented this issue.