Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’: U.S. should lead on global warming and prevent more tornadoes

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

Tying climate change to the recent tragic weather events in the South and the Midwest is risky because of the perception one is trying to capitalize politically on difficulties that have struck a massive number of people.

However, on the Fox News Channel on Saturday afternoon, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” didn’t refrain from doing so. Although he said it is difficult to tie this recent run of severe spring weather to climate change, he managed to do so.

“Well, it is very difficult to connect tornado to climate change,” Nye said. “They are small evens relative to the other big picture. But i will tell you this – last 11 years are the warmest 11 years on record, since the 1800s. And there is 4 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere than has been in the past. Four percent doesn’t sound like a lot but it is a huge amount. And if you think of the Earth as a disk in space just receiving sunlight, and there are on the other of one and half billion BTU [british thermal unit]-worth of heat than there used to be. When you get that much extra heat and water vapor in the air, you are going to have more storms.”

Nye explained this extra water vapor in the atmosphere leads to more storms.

[Sanguine]

I listened to that. Shocking.

 

I couldn't decide if he really believed what he was saying and had just switched his thinking abilities off and gone on ideolog-pilot, or if he was just saying it because "it's the thing to say". I still don't know.

 

BTW - I'm no Bill Nye, but I understand that the number and strength of tornadoes this year are caused by the temperature differential. It's the cooling, meeting normal spring heat, that is creating the environment for strong tornadoes. If it were hotter everywhere, we wouldn't be having tornadoes.

[Valin]

[Valin]

[Pepper]

Thus there are more reported tornadoes per unit area in Britain than in the USA although British tornadoes tend to have a lower intensity and duration (Meaden

1985).

 

Meaden, G. T. 1985 Tornadoes in Britain. Report prepared for HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. TORRO, Bradford-on-Avon, UK

 

via http://web.archive.org/web/20070824151103/http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/j.holden/paper80.pdf

 

via Newsbusters

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/05/28/bill-nye-science-guy-falsely-claims-not-many-countries-besides-us-hav