I just finished writing a text on the floods in China in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia (in Czech) when Tom Nelson focused my attention on Andrew Revkin's article on the same issue:



To my eye, you have the importance of the "forcings" of population and human-driven climate change reversed. Consider last year's news from sub-Saharan Africa, where populations are confidently expected to double by midcentury. Natural cycles of century-long superdroughts were revealed in a lakebed.



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So climate super-extremes are inevitable, the number of people is doubling, and greenhouse-driven change, given the uncertainties, is - at best - a tertiary wild card.

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► http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com...



Related to your link on flooding and the Taliban, drought has also shaped politics and conflict in South Asia, including -- perhaps -- aiding the initial rise of the Taliban:



► http://www.nytimes.com...

It's a generic interview with an environmentalist, Robert Verchick, but what's remarkable in my and Tom Nelson's eyes is Revkin's comment #5: Formatting and emphasis added by L.M.That's quite a statement from someone whom we would consider to be an alarmist - although a moderate one - just a few months ago. Frankly, I don't really see any "effective" difference between Revkin's opinions and the opinions of those who are normally considered climate skeptics.Andy Revkin noticed that I (and Tom Nelson!) noticed his focus and informed his 11 thousand Twitter followers about the focused focus by your humble correspondent. :-)Indeed, the industrially driven greenhouse effect is at most a tertiary wild card, one of many less-than-secondary effects that may influence the life on Earth but that will not dominate any important issues. Meteorological extremes are bound to happen, much like the business-as-usual life of the human society which will almost certainly include some further population growth.I think it's time for Joseph Romm or another breathtaking loon of the same kind to declare Andrew Revkin a heretic, much like they recently did in the case of Judith Curry . ;-)Do you remember how Luboš Motl's Reference Frame looked like six years ago? The oldest archived version of TRF from November 2004 was a bit more modest and standardized than the current one. Well, the computers have gotten about 5 times faster than they used to be so it's OK that the design is more demanding these days. :-)See other archived snapshots of TRF and the whole Internet.