Spinning Tornados

Adopting Andrew Sullivan's methodology I point you to interesting stuff elsewhere.

There's a huge kerfuffle about attributing severe weather in Alabama to climate forcing. Kevin Trenberth and Peter Gleick come out strongly in favor of "this is the sort of thing"-ism.

Trenberth:

It is irresponsible not to mention climate change. … The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences

David Appel, who gets far too little credit as a pioneer of climate blogging, is, perhaps surprisingly, appalled.

You don't have to look very far to disprove this -- in fact, you don't even have to look farther than the Drudge Report, which today links to this story:

TuscaloosaNews.com
5 P.M. UPDATE: Hundreds treated at DCH
"The loss of life is the greatest from an outbreak of U.S. tornadoes since April 1974, when 329 people were killed by a storm that swept across 13 Southern and Midwestern states."

When are activists going to learn that they will never make their case by falsifying the science, and that, in fact, they only harm their cause when they do so? You cannot draw conclusions about climate based on weather. You can only do it via long-term (decadal or more) statistics.

Please tattoo this on your foreheads, so you don't ruin this for those of us trying to communicate actual, real science, with all its inconvenient unknowns and uncertainties.

Judith Curry, who has many good links, is somewhat more predictably appalled.

I think that we are seeing another instance of excessive attention to "attribution" in a statistical sense. The climate is changing with increasing rapidity. Some of the changes will be anticipated, some not. We shouldn't presume that changes will be locally monotonic. They won't be. Under the circumstances, we'll get extraordinary runs of just-the-sort-of-awfulness-we-get-around-here in various places as the system wobbles about. I mean, what did you expect?

On that basis, +1 Trenberth
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140

Almost Didn't Cut My Hair

Summer's basically here already, and long hair in Texas summer is something to avoid.

But that sort of motivates me not to bother cutting my hair in spring, knowing that I'll be chopping it all off in summer.

But I was tired of my wife's snooty hairdresser, and went into this new place, a chain popping up around town that has a sort of a funky Southwest, Freebirds burritos kind of a vibe if you know what I mean.

I was looking particularly gnarly, unshaven, scraggly, sandwich sauce on my shirt, when I walked in. I woke up with this headache. The haircut I had been longing for was the only useful thing I could think of to do with myself besides spilling a sandwich on me.

I took one look at the the tattooed young barberess and said "don't restrain yourself. Make me look like a Republican". She blinked for a second, then said "oh, sure, you want the Uptighty Whitey." I said I reckoned that I did, "The Uptighty Whitey is just exactly the thing" I allowed.

She said "I'll have you lookin' like Dan Quayle in no time," and I sort of shrugged. Haven't laid eyes on the fellow in years, but he was always kind of good looking that I remember. Unstressed fellow. Golfer. You know.

About three quarters of the way through it I allowed as how it was working. "I am trying to think of a small country to invade" I told her.

As a first timer I got a delicious shampoo, head massage, hot towel on the face and shoulder massage for free, normally $3 extra. Floyd's, the barber shop is called. But it's nothing like Mayberry. Good haircut too, for a UyWy. I recommend the place.