Recently, someone who believes me to be a Global Warming Denier asked me whether I believe weather is becoming more extreme. I hadn’t really thought much about the question and just mumbled a vague “I don’t know”. I now realize I should have answered, “I don’t know if weather is becoming more extreme, but I do know that global warming- induced extreme weather is being hyped.”
The Washington Post offered a good example of this with a front-page article entitled “Is a melting Arctic twisting jet stream into a tornado maker?” The article included this graph:
The graph highlights in red the spike in tornadoes the last two weeks in May, but it also shows that prior to the spike the tornado count was right along the average for the last 14 years. So, the answer to the question raised in the article’s title is “No” or at least “I don’t know”, but how many readers get past the leading, rhetorical headline?
The graph also shows that this year’s count was far exceeded in 2011 and 2008. It remains to be seen whether the final count for 2019 will break these decade-old records, or even come close.
Here’s the count for a much longer time period than that covered in the graph provided by the Post:
If you can see a trend towards more tornadoes with the passage of time, your eyes are better than mine (or worse).
As to tornadoes becoming more violent, here’s the count of EF-3 to EF-5 (most violent) tornadoes over the same time period:
Here the trend seems to be just the opposite of what most people believe, based on global warming alarmism.
Incidentally, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—no slouch when it comes to scaring the bejeezus out of people—admits “for most regions around the world, trends in tropical cyclone [hurricane] frequency and intensity are difficult to discern because of the lack of long-term, consistent observational data,” i.e., nobody knows whether hurricanes are becoming more frequent and intense or not, but that doesn’t keep alarmists from giving the impression they know.
To their credit, the article’s authors, Joel Achenbach and Jason Samenow, point out that tornadoes “have never fit neatly into the climate change narrative” and ”expect the unexpected seems to be the logical meteorological conclusion” considering the year-on-year variability in the number of tornadoes.
So, I stand by my original statement: “I don’t know if weather is becoming more extreme, but I do know that global warming-induced extreme weather is being hyped.” Why extreme weather—and dire consequences from climate change in general—are being hyped is a discussion for another day.
Ken's Blog 
I would think realistic gauges for climate change, man-made or otherwise, would be temperature change and rise in sea levels. Significant, long term rises in either should be irrefutable evidence we might have some problems. Regardless, I’ve never thought it a bad thing to try to cut down on the use of fossil fuel and coal. Maybe even move some green energy industry to West Virginia and Kentucky. Coal mining doesn’t seem to be a healthy way to earn a living. I always enjoy your thought provoking articles.
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Respected estimates of the rise in temperature over the 21st century go from 1.3 to 6 degrees C, the rise in sea level from 8 inches to 8 feet. I don’t know whether it’s a sobering or consoling thought to realize neither you nor I will be around to see who’s right.
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