One Meteorologist's Come-to-Jesus Moment on Climate Change

[wtmusic]

"Ever since he was a kid, Stu Ostro has been, in his own words, "obsessed with the weather." One day when he was around 11, he recalls, a lighting strike hit the house across the street in Somerville, New Jersey, while he and his brother watched from their porch—sending fire trucks scrambling, and the French fries that Ostro was eating "went flying." Back then, Ostro's weather fascination manifested as a "phobia" of thunder and lightning; nowadays, as a senior meteorologist at the Weather Channel and head of its team of tornado and hurricane specialists, his obsession takes a rather different form. Try perusing his 1072 slide long and ever-growing PowerPoint on extreme and unusual weather phenomena—and how they may relate to climate change—and you'll get some sense of it.

Ostro will speak at this Thursday's Climate Desk Live on "The Alarming Science Behind Climate Change's Increasingly Wild Weather" alongside Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis, whose work on how the warming of the Arctic is driving wacky weather complements his own theorizing. But Ostro didn't always fit this billing, because he didn't always buy into fears about global warming. As he puts it, he used to be a "vehement skeptic….not only about a human role in global warming, but also the idea that there was anything unusual about any weather we had been seeing."

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/06/one-meteorologistss-come-jesus-moment-climate-change

[Socialistlemur]

1. There's weird weather alright

But there's low confidence in statements that extreme weather events are getting worse. We do see higher humidity. But most of what we see regarding storms is just randomness. Maybe in 10 years we will know for sure.

[Nihil]

2. Ah, no cause for concern then - we'd better wait for more data ...

I suspect that 10 more years of accelerating Business As Usual will produce more than
a little "weird weather" but as long as there's "low confidence" in such statements,
we'll be OK.