He would include me on the list of “Deniers,” but I would like to include in this note some Science, where Senator Whitehouse desperately needs education.
First, CO2 is not a pollutant, it is absolutely essential for life as we know it, because it is plants which turn CO2 into the food upon which we and all animal life on this planet depend for our sustenance. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere today, some 400 parts/million, is precariously low when compared over geologic time. During the previous glacial, the Wisconsin, 22,000 years ago, deciduous tree life collapsed in Georgia, and pine trees collapsed from CO2 starvation during the latter part of the Wisconsin as evidenced at the La Brea Tar Pits in California.
Second, the 2011 fires in Texas and the accompanying drought were caused by the large multi-year climate fluctuations over North America, El Nino-La Nina, also called ENSO, El Nino - Southern Oscillation, not CO2. Sen. Whitehouse should see the map at
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensocycle/nawinter.shtml
from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, which shows the dry conditions from Arizona to Florida during La Nina conditions.
Austin TX, near the epicenter of the 2011 Texas fires, has large natural variability in rainfall and drought. In 1954, rainfall was only 11.42 inches, but Austin’s 2011 rainfall was 19.68 inches, almost double the historic drought year of 1954
Third, tornadoes; we have to use terms foreign to Sen. Whitehouse, baroclinic instability, and thermodynamic instability. Baroclinic instability is the process which forms winter storms in the middle latitudes where the USA is located; we sometimes call them extratropical cyclones, meaning they are distinctly different from tropical cyclones and hurricanes. Temperature difference between equator and pole drives baroclinic instability which in turns drives the storms which transport heat from tropical source regions poleward. The stronger the equator-pole temperature difference, the stronger the storm.
If the earth is undergoing “Global Warming” then the equator-pole temperature difference is smaller, making baroclinic instability and winter storms weaker.
US geography allows the collision of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico with cold air from Canada, a clash which is especially strong in the spring, and which is amplified by adding dry air aloft from source regions in Mexico and New Mexico to enter the mix.
Here thermodynamic instability enters the discussion. As the baroclinic instability creates a storm system moving east from the Rocky Mountains, warm moist air can be lifted ahead of the storm. If the moist air has dry air from Mexico aloft, and this air mass is lifted, Thermodynamic instability is greatly increased because the moist air at the bottom of the column cools at what we call the moist adiabatic lapse rate and the dry air aloft cools at the dry adiabatic lapse rate and this situation causes extremely strong and violent tornadoes to form ahead of the developing low pressure area.
When there is an especially cold winter, baroclinic instability will be greater and when the winter is not cold at all, storminess will be correspondingly less; the last three years are instructive. The winter of 2011 was especially cold; a new all time low temperature was set for Oklahoma, -31F on 10 Feb 2011, and it was only a few months later that the devastating tornadoes tore through Tuscaloosa AL and Joplin, MO. Contrast that with 2012 when there was a warm spring and summer heat wave in the US and the number of tornadoes and strong tornadoes was very low.
This winter of 2013 seemed as if it will never end, there has been widespread frost, freeze and snow until very late in the season and a snow resort in New York reported 34 inches of snow over Memorial Day weekend, a few days after the 2013 Moore, OK Tornado. Senator Whitehouse, listen up! It is cooling which causes tornadoes.
