Monday, May 25, 2015

Killer heat wave in India and even extreme rain and floods in the USA don't get a hearing at WUWT...

Anthony Watts almost never reports extreme weather consistent with climate change, unless it's heavy snow (or hail that Anthony mistook for snow!).

Anthony claims he used to be a meteorologist. He used to tell weather forecasts on television and still does give weather reports on his local radio station AFAIK. Which makes it all the more strange that he rarely reports on extreme weather. So far his almost total lack of reporting on the drought and record temperatures in his home state of California is a wonder.


Record-breaking rains and massive flooding across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana


Here's the latest that you haven't seen at WUWT. It's the wild weather and record-breaking rains in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

I started writing this a day or so ago and let it rest for a while. I figured maybe Anthony Watts, ex-meteorologist from the USA, would write something after he'd collected enough you-tube videos and photographs and confirmed all the broken records. There's still no sign of him being aware of the grave situation not far to the east of him.

The Texas drought has finally broken - with a vengeance. Some call it weather whiplash. From extreme dry to extreme rain - with more than 90% of Texas having been declared at risk of flash flooding.

The Blanco River near San Marcos didn't just break the previous flood record, it smashed it:



San Marcos emergency management coordinator Ken Bell reported:
At its fastest, the river was flowing at 223,000 cubic feet per second, more than double streamflows in the 1929 floods, Bell said.

Towns were under water, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and cars and even entire bridges have been washed away:


This flood event is remarkable for being so widespread, for the intensity of the rain and for its persistence.

Here are some sites where you can read more about it:



Killer heat wave in India


Meanwhile, in India people are dying from heat:

From the Hindustan Times:
Humans “boil in their own skin” at 48 degrees Celsius, the maximum temperature recorded at Khammam in Telangana which has become the focal point of a blistering heat wave sweeping through swathes of India on Sunday, killing nearly 500 people.
Allahabad was the second hottest at 47.7°C, six degrees above normal; Nandigama in Andhra Pradesh was a notch under as it sizzled at 47°C while Odisha’s Angul district tipped the scales at 46.7°C.
In comparison, the national capital felt cooler at 43.5°C on Sunday.
The Centre for Holistic Development, an NGO in Delhi, said the searing heat had claimed the lives of 186 people till Saturday, 80% of them homeless. Authorities in the Capital haven’t released any official death figure, though.

Deniers deny extreme weather with global warming


Anthony Watts often denies that global warming makes extremes more extreme. I guess that's why he can't bring himself to report on extreme weather. It would spoil his denial. Ironically, Anthony's two most recent articles are both whines about the fact that nobody believes deniers.


Update


Is it poor taste or a disregard of the homeless in developing nations? On the same day as the killer heat wave in India, Anthony Watts posts another article (just now) about how cold kills more people. So if you do die from a killer heat wave, be comforted by the fact that more people will die more slowly when the weather is cold. Still no sign of any WUWT article about the US floods or the heat wave hitting India.

Sou 2:31 pm Monday 25 May 2015

12 comments:

  1. Well, if ~ 2500 km is a value of "not far." :)

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    1. :-)

      When I was in the States someone remarked to me that I was a long way from home - "must be 2,000 miles away", he said.

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    2. My aunt used to say that 100 years is a long time in USA and 100 miles is a long way in UK.

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    3. You can't get there from here.

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    4. Sounds like you've been to downeast Maine.

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    5. Or San Francisco (it has a lot of one way streets)...

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    6. Or San Francisco (it has a lot of one way streets)...

      Delete
  2. From recent WUWT comments I believe the logic is that the Wutters observe old people retire to Florida so hot weather cannot be an issue, at least for people who can afford air conditioning. And the rest do not count.

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  3. The denialati seem to work much the same way as young Earth creationists. I once saw YEC tactics described as "All evidence in favour of deep time/evolution is speculative. All speculation in favour of YEC is evidentiary".

    This really does seem to be their attitude, backed up of course by wild and unsupported claims of a global conspiracy by all scientists in the relevant fields. They need the conspiracy claim to make themselves feel slightly better when they are getting their arses kicked with size 12 hobnail boots. It helps keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.

    So yeah, the denialati work much the same way, AFAICT. Tactics are virtually identical most of the time: flat out denial, conspiracy theories, a feeling that they must be right even if they can't prove it, recycling of oft-debunked bollocks, refusal to admit that any point of theirs has been debunked, etc, etc, etc.

    And, of course, refusal to even see any data points or examples that show their denial to be completely effing stupid. Par for the course.

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  5. Although I have been aware of Watts and WUWT for years, it's only in recent months that I have visited his site on a semi-regular basis. One of the first things I noticed was how little interest he seems to have in weather for a person who worked/works in meteorology. Unless, as you say, the weather event in question seems indicative of cold in some way.
    That whole reporting hail as snow thing was one of my first first-hand impressions of him, and I thought "wow, he's either really stupid or he's a big fat liar". Of course, he's both, but in that case he was clearly just lying because otherwise he would have corrected the post's title rather than adding a dismissive aside type edit that maybe it was hail.

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  6. In the India heat wave...

    "Elderly people, laborers, beggars and people living on the streets are worst hit." Time

    "...with most record deaths due to heat stroke and dehydration in rural areas in the south."
    "The forecast is for a continuing 'heat wave to severe heat wave' for the rest of the month." Guardian

    This is a low-humidity heat wave (like that in Phoenix). In Hyderabad, India, its been <20% relative humidity during the heat of the day, Google tells me.
    This is a city with its highest temperatures and lowest average relative humidity (40%) occurring in May.

    48oC would also spark precautions in Phoenix, with bottled water being distributed to the homeless, etc. But there wouldn't be many deaths, due to ready access to public air conditioned spaces, in this urban area.
    The only fatality would be an elderly home-alone with a broken air conditioner.




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