Oooooh, scary

John Kerry* 'splains whence tornadoes come:

“[I] don’t want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms,” Kerry said. “And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we’re not paying attention to."

When I was a kid, SCTV** used to have an occasional segment called "Monster Chiller Horror Theatre." The host, a vampire named Count Floyd, promoted a new horror movie each week by showing a preview and then acting all scared. My favorite was always "Dr. Tongue’s 3-D House of Pancakes," during which John Candy, playing the mad scientist known as Dr. Tongue, would repeatedly offer a heaping plate to the camera while Psycho-esque violins screeched in the background. If you just looked at the stage makeup and listened to the music, it could be pretty scary***. But if you looked closely at what was on the plate, it was just regular old pancakes.

Thus it is with the above chart, which seems to be appearing in lots of places and represents the latest offering from the emerging field of ASASDBGW**** science.

If you look closely, all it is is pancakes.

First of all, NOAA's own site, in reference to this chart, says "Tornado numbers for 2008 are likely to be overestimated due to duplicate reports for the same tornado." So the first clue that we're not dealing with a new, angrier Gaia is that NOAA here is simply counting reports of tornadoes, not actual tornadoes. If you and your neighbor report the same tornado, it's two tornadoes. That duplication eventually gets washed out when actual tornadoes are counted.

But that's not the important number. The important number is one that I have not seen a single ASASDBGW scientist (or politician) address, that black line representing the 10-year average. Look where it ends the year. Now look where, in relation to the 10-year average, every year in the past 3 has ended. The past three years have all been lower than the average, with the past 2 years each being lower than the one that preceded it.

That means if there is a causal link between global warming and the number of tornadoes, global warming is going down.

Hey, that's as good as John Kerry's science at least...

* He was Barack Obama when Barack Obama wasn't cool

** It was a Toronto-based equivalent of SNL, which also introduced Bob and Doug MacKenzie to the world.

*** Well, actually, there was no way it could be scary - it didn't even scare Count Floyd no matter how scared he tried to look - but work with me here, ok?

**** As Soon As Something's Different, Blame Global Warming.