It was likely inevitable that President Joe Biden, among other liberals, would emit a lot of hot air about the tragic tornadoes in Kentucky and other parts of middle America being attributable to climate change.
“All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden told reporters on Saturday.
“The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously, it has some impact here.”
But conservative meteorologist Joe Bastardi was not having it.
On Sunday, he tweeted, “Clueless Joe Biden In action again with his weaponization of Tornados. 1) Violent tornadoes not increasing. 2) this year tornados, hail, and wind all together near-record low.”
Bastardi added, “Mindless media should do their dang job and call him on it, I called [former President Donald] Trump out on [Hurricane] Dorian jibberish.”
Bastardi added several charts featuring data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to bolster his point.
One chart pointed out how carbon emissions increased between 1954 and 2014, yet the number of tornadoes each year did not increase. On the contrary, that number went down.
Another graph showed the number of recorded tornadoes through Dec. 11, 2021, and that the number is near a record low.
A third chart noted that the number of local storms featuring hail, as of Dec. 11, was less than half of the yearly average over the past 15 years.
Finally, a fourth graph indicated that the number of local storm reports about damaging winds for 2021 also was below average over the same time period.
Meanwhile, the conservative website Climate Depot chipped into the debate with a quote from climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer.
“A trend line fit to the number of strong to violent U.S. tornadoes has gone down from 60 in 1954 to 30 in 2018. In other words, the number of most damaging tornadoes has, on average, been cut in half since U.S. statistics started to be compiled,: Spencer wrote in 2019.
“The last half of the 65-year U.S. tornado record had 40% fewer strong to violent tornadoes than the first half. To claim that global warming is causing more tornadoes is worse than speculative; it is directly opposite to the clear observational evidence.”
On Monday, Bastardi continued to snipe at the Biden administration.
“Think about it. An Energy secretary laughing at our now dependence on OPEC. An EPA administrator that says a 1 in 96-year event is a new normal. A president who wastes no time in weaponizing weather in the face of facts that show the opposite. 81,000,000 (sic) million voted for this?” he tweeted.
“Insanity. It’s a below-average tornado, wind damage, and hail season. No credibility. No knowledge of past weather. We are in the hands of leftist (sic) who weaponize weather for their purposes. Deceit and deception, piling on the misery … Sociopathic.”
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