Climate expert blasts alarmists trying to link Louisiana floods to climate change

floodsDr. Roger Pielke Jr. has a message for anyone linking #Climate Change with the Louisiana floods: it’s irresponsible and not based on #Science. He even produced multiple graphs showing a downward trend for these heavy precipitation events.

A professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Pielke has been at the forefront of the global warming debate for over a decade. As a climate expert, he’s even testified before Congress on extreme weather events and written a book on disasters and climate change.

Flooding events are down

“Flood disasters are sharply down,” Pielke tweeted on August 23, “U.S. floods are not increasing either.” Pielke was shocked after reading a NY Times editorial by Paul Krugman who blamed global warming for the Louisiana floods.

“How does Krugman get away with this?” he tweeted with a graph clearly showing a downward trend in U.S. flood damage. Al Gore, NBC’s Al Roker, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein have all tried to blame the recent flooding on climate change, despite their statements being in direct conflict with the actual data as illustrated at Climate Depot:

Was overdevelopment key factor?

Andrew Revkin, who runs the Dot Earth blog at the NY Times, noted that many areas of Louisiana that were once covered by land, trees, and swamp are now covered by strip malls and roadways. This prevents water from seeping into the ground as it had in the past.

Ground that wasn’t covered over by cement and asphalt was already soaked before the heavy rains began, which led to even more flooding. Revkin says, “Southern Louisiana is implicitly warm and moist,” adding it has a lot of lowlands and swamps.

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