Climate and energy

Tornados. I was going to wait to post on these until there was a final tally… but you know what, they keep coming.

Most notably, on Wednesday night Manhattan and Chapman KS suffered a great deal of tornado damage.

An estimated 60% of the housing stock in Chapman is gone, including churches and other community gathering spots. The K-State campus suffered over $20 million in damage. The Wind Erosion Center is completely destroyed (yeah) and the building that houses the nuclear reactor was damaged. The reactor is apparently intact. I have to believe we would have heard about it if it weren’t.

We just heard from CEP buddy Ben Champion (Director of Sustainability at K-State). He was on his way out the door to help volunteer with picking up the debris. He mentioned that it was really impressive how trees are twisted and tangled and torn apart all over the city

The Salina area also recently got hit. Last night there were tornado touchdowns (the kind where the tornado zips up and down like a careless giant slinky – if you’ve ever seen it you know what I mean) from Emporia on up to the Topeka area and even Jefferson County. Flash flood alerts went off on the weather radio all night.

I know there’s more tornados and I am missing them here and I am sorry. There have literally been so, so many. In the most recent spate, two people  have died. In some places there have been problems with looting.

Weather? And/or climate? According to NPR, the U.S. is on its way to a record year of tornados. Already over 100 people have died. The upper Midwest is also suffering greatly from flooding. I think I read somewhere that over half the counties in IA are now disaster areas. Corn. Wheat. Commodities markets. Yeah. Hmm. And all that water has yet to work its way downstream.

So, here’s the question I get a lot – is this extreme weather caused by climate change?

First, let’s make a distinction. Weather is different than climate. Weather is short term and more localized, climate works on much bigger scales.

Weather and climate are different – but they are still related. When it comes to tornados, there are at least (at least!!) two things that could be going on.

(1) Cooler temperatures out in the Pacific due to a La Nina. When cool air travels across the U.S. land mass and hits our horrible heat and humidity at ground level, boom, you have conditions for tornados. La Nina is a long-established weather cycle. Is it being affected by global warming? Unclear.

(2) Climate change is the result of global warming, which is where greenhouse gases (like (carbon dioxide) trapped in the earth’s atmosphere heat it up. When you add to the heat load of the atmosphere, weather patterns can intensify. Heat is a powerful fuel for extreme weather .

There’s a lot of unknowns in this scientific equation. Perhaps the best way to analyze it is in terms of potential risks. If you ask that question a different way – such as, can climate change contribute to risks of extreme weather – then the answer is definitely yes. This is confirmed by the IPCC reports.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org