| on May 13, 2008, 10:14 AM E.S.T.
|
NBC
Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Monday evening gave credibility
to the extremist environmental theory that the Earth is reacting to
mankind's mistreatment by spawning a rash of tornadoes. Williams
reported how “this has been one of the most active, deadly tornado
seasons in a long time” with more tornadoes so far this year than
through August last year. He then forwarded to NBC Weather Plus
meteorologist Bill Karins the kind of reasoning he hears during his
daily routine:
I talked to three people, casual conversation today,
all of them smart, saying “I don't know, we must be doing something to
our Earth.”
Karins gently corrected him: “Well, there are correlations that can
be made. Global warming not quite one of them. La Nina, more likely.”
The not so in depth “In Depth” segment on the Monday, May 12 NBC Nightly News:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We're back with NBC News In Depth
tonight. Tornado season, especially vicious this year. As we reported
earlier in the broadcast, this has been one of the most active, deadly
tornado seasons in a long time. So we asked Bill Karins, meteorologist
with NBC Weather Plus, to join us tonight to explain why this might be
happening now.
You heard the stats in Al Roker [soundbite in earlier story].
They're already at August levels. I talked to three people, casual
conversation today, all of them smart, saying “I don't know, we must be
doing something to our Earth.” So once and for all, what's going on?
BILL
KARINS: Well, there are correlations that can be made. Global warming
not quite one of them. La Nina, more likely. I'll get to that in a
second. Let's first talk about the numbers out there so far: 850
tornadoes. Let's just compare that to the last three years at this
point in May. Well above 250 last year. If you look at 2005, we're
about 600 above that. And. Of course, these are just the number of
touchdowns. The important number the deaths, the deaths are also way up
this year. We already had 96. In 2005 everyone was happy saying our
Doppler radars and warning services were doing the job. Now the
question is what are we doing wrong?
WILLIAMS: What do we do in the future? There's no way to predict these numbers trending up and down.
KARINS: All we can really try to do is find what the triggers are,
try to give people the most warning possible. One of the new studies
that came out was talking about the connection to the La Nina. Now
that's actually cooler water in the Pacific. We just got done with
that. What these storms do is they tend to produce larger tornadoes.
This is kind of like a new theory and a new thinking that's come out.
And what happens is we get big tornadoes, the ones that wipe the
foundations clean. It doesn't matter if you're in your safe room or in
you're tub. You have to all be in a storm shelter. You can't survive
those. Those are the ones we've seen this year.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely monstrous. Bill, thank you for joining us,
clearing this up. Something tells me we'll have you back on talking
about the same thing. Source
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