The left-leaning Center for American Progress published a blog post Thursday blaming Republicans for the tornadoes that devastated the South earlier this week.
“The congressional delegations of these states – Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky – overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous,” wrote CAP’s Brad Johnson. “They are deliberately ignoring the warning from scientists.”
Johnson’s justification is that climate scientist Kevin Trenberth warned the American Meteorological Society in January that “Given that global warming is unequivocal, the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warning rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”
At the last count, the tornadoes has claimed 297 lives – the greatest number of deaths by tornadoes since April of 1974 when 315 people were killed throughout the South and Midwest. President Obama traveled to Alabama – the hardest-hit state – Friday morning to survey the damage, after signing an Alabama Disaster Declaration.
Johnson has not yet returned The Daily Caller’s request for comment.
UPDATE: Despite attempts to link the tornadoes to climate change, many experts dismiss the theory. Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University said, “If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase.”
“It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often,” he added.
And Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), appeared to dismiss the global warming connection Thursday when he said, “Actually what we’re seeing is springtime.”
CAP, however, released a report Friday, that also tried to link extreme weather to global warming.
According to the press release, the report “gathers, condenses, and synthesizes scientific data regarding extreme weather and its links to global warming to provide context to the recent surge in extreme weather events.”
UPDATE 2: Brad Johnson responds by telling TheDC, “I did not blame Republicans for the tornadoes.”
