US

ABC News: U.S. snow, floods in Australia and Brazil the product of global warming

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

One wouldn’t normally associate heavy snowfall with global warming, but according ABC News, it’s time to consider that causality.

On Thursday’s “World News Tonight,” anchor Diane Sawyer proposed such a correlation, with new data suggesting 2010 is “tied for the hottest year ever on record.”

“And now, what about all this weather?” Sawyer said. “The experts on climate change say the evidence is in: 2010 is tied for the hottest year ever on record. And last year, it was the wettest one in recorded history. And those scientists say that’s why we’re reeling from the deadly weather extremes.”

That has been seen as a political statement by climate skeptics and not particularly relevant by some global warming alarmists, including NASA’s James Hansen, a climatologist that has been outspoken on the risks of climate change.

However, ABC News New York-based correspondent Linsey Davis pointed out these instances of recent “extreme weather” all over the globe, including in South America, Australia and Asia.

“It seems natural disasters are becoming everyday occurrences,” Davis said. “Just today, in southeast Brazil, this woman plucked from raging waters. More than 340 people have died there in floods and mudslides. Floods in Queensland, Australia have ravaged an area the size of France and Germany combined. Many residents are being rescued from rooftops. For some, the only way home is by boat.”

These events would be more frequent in a warming world according to Derek Arndt of NOAA National Climatic Data Center said.

“We are measuring certain types of extreme events that we would expect to see more often in a warming world and these indeed are increasing,” Arndt said to ABC News.

Watch:


“Many scientists say global warming is responsible for the sudden force behind the forces of nature,” Davis added.

Dr. Richard Somerville, a research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a chronic attack dog of so-called “climate change denialists” doubled down on the theory.

“This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models. We’re observing the climate changing,” Somerville said. “It’s happening, it’s real, it’s a scientific fact.”

These predictions have been all over the map. In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore blamed an Australian “1,000-year drought” on global warming. However, the recent record snowfall in the northeastern United States: It’s due to more moisture in the air, from global warming.