Gregg Easterbrook

“Tornadoes are currently on a frightening upswing.” That could have been written yesterday — but was written 12 years ago, by your columnist, in the November 8, 1999 issue of The New Republic.

The onslaught of tornadoes is not some sudden, unexpected bolt out of the blue. I wrote about tornadoes a dozen years ago because 1998 and 1999 were terrible years for tornadoes. Now three of the last 12 years have been terrible for tornadoes, and the 1950-2010 trend isn’t so great either.

This spring’s tornado activity has been awful. At least 116 people died in Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday during an unusually strong and large tornado. A portion of Tuscaloosa, Alabama was destroyed by a tornado last month. Many tornadoes hit the Ozarks region in April. There were 875 confirmed tornadoes in April, triple the previous April high of 267, in 1974. So far 481 Americans have been killed by tornadoes this spring.

In recent decades, the installation of a Doppler radar warning system in tornado-prone areas has tended to reduce fatalities — sirens get people’s attention. But even 24 minutes of warning, which Joplin received on Sunday, may not be sufficient for a tornado that was a hard-to-believe half a mile across. (The touch-down part of a tornado is rarely more than 100 yards wide.) More disturbing tornado facts are here.

Weather patterns include random variation: some recent years have been mild for tornadoes. Before this spring, the worst tornado sequence in U.S. annals came in 1953, when atmospheric greenhouse gas levels were lower than today. Nevertheless, there are reasons to think tornadoes are a harbinger of climate change.

For years, pundits and politicians have claimed that strong hurricanes prove global warming. In this 2005 speech, Al Gore asserted, “The scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming.” Gore went on to compare hurricanes to al qaeda. But not only have four of the last five Atlantic hurricane seasons been quiet, the 20th century showed no trend of rising Atlantic hurricane frequency or intensity.

Pundits and politicians attach significance to hurricanes because they are visual events — hurricane courses can be predicted, and their arrivals on shore televised. Tornadoes come and go so quickly, they are almost impossible to catch on film. But their comings and goings may be warnings of climate malfunction.

What’s causing the tornado tsunami of 2011? This spring, the jet stream has shifted south and east of its typical position. That brings the cold, dry air on the north edge of the jet stream into more contact with the warm, moist air masses on its south edge, around the Gulf of Mexico. The result is rotating thunderstorms — sometimes, as happened in the Ozarks in April, forming day after day in succession.

Surely there have been times in the past when the jet stream shifted east and south: this may or may not be related to greenhouse gases. But greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are rising, and weather variations are rising — not just tornadoes, but droughts and deluge rains. Chances are two plus two equals four.

It is important to bear in mind that climate change, not global warming, is the threat. They seem like the same thing but are not.

The mild warming of the past 100 years — about 1 degree Fahrenheit globally averaged — was good for crop yields, and moderated demand for energy. (Power use for warming on cold days exceeds power use for cooling on hot days). If all that happens is continued mildly rising temperatures, that might be beneficial.

Changing climate is another matter altogether. Climate change can bring more tornadoes, increase droughts in some places while increasing floods in other places — all three impacts are being observed. Long-term shifts in rainfall patterns might turn breadbasket regions into crop-failure regions. Our increasingly globalized economy is dependent on air travel and air cargo. What if storms and turbulence begin to make flying conditions unfavorable not once in a long while, but often?

Despite what the talk radio and Tea Party types say, there is strong scientific consensus that human activity has begun to alter Earth’s climate. Here is the latest statement on this matter, from the National Academy of Sciences last week.

The United States Congress — dedicated to its twin goals of doing nothing, while collecting campaign contributions — needs to act on greenhouse gases. These tornadoes are not originating from Oz.

Photo: Damaged homes and cars are seen after a devastating tornado hit Joplin, Missouri May 24, 2011. A monster tornado killed at least 116 people in Joplin, when it tore through the heart of the small Midwestern city, ripping the roof off a hospital and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Gasoline is above $4 a gallon, a price that makes Americans think the End of Days is approaching. President Barack Obama wants the oil industry to give up a mere $2 billion per year in tax favors, and Big Oil CEOs just told Congress this is out of the question. (Watch CEOs of some of the world’s richest companies cry poor-mouth here).

Huge amounts of shale gas are being discovered in the United States, but does extracting the gas pollute groundwater? In a recent speech, Obama was upfront about all U.S. plans for “energy independence” being just political hot air. And for the zillionth consecutive year, Congress is supposed to enact a comprehensive national energy policy, but instead appears focused on horse-trading subsidies and bailouts.

Is there anything being missed in the endless energy debate?

Yes — methane emissions. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane could be regulated without economic risk, reducing the artificial greenhouse effect and buying society a decade or two of extra time to research ways to control other greenhouse gases.

Instead nothing is being done about methane emissions. This is an orphan issue without a constituency — and the problem is about to get worse.

The primary artificial greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is mainly a byproduct of burning coal and petroleum, and of deforestation. It is carbon dioxide accumulation that most worries climate change researchers. Though carbon dioxide may not be as hard to address as many assume, with current technology, any strict regulation of carbon emissions would risk harm to the economy.

Methane, a byproduct of natural gas drilling and of rice cultivation, is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This means that bang-for-the-buck in methane regulation is much better than in carbon regulation. This recent lecture by James Hansen of NASA, the leading academic on the left of the global warming debate, notes methane regulation has more short-term potential to slow climate change than does carbon regulation.

And here’s the beauty of regulating methane — there would be no economic harm. With current technology, cars and trucks need to burn oil, power plants need to burn coal, which makes some carbon emissions inevitable. Many forms of methane emissions, by contrast, could be stopped without any reduction of GDP. Methane leaks from natural gas drilling, for example, don’t serve any economic purpose. Yet methane emissions are essentially unregulated in the United States.

This paper from Robert Howarth of Cornell University argues that the current boom in production of natural gas from shale formations will backfire by releasing large amounts of methane into the air. Natural gas is promoted as a clean fuel: but if shale drilling for gas causes more methane emissions, global warming may accelerate. (Methane is often found in natural gas formations; the two are similar but not identical, with natural gas preferable as a fuel; an objection to the Howarth calculation is here.)

This excellent article by Jesse Zwick in the Washington Monthly argues, “There are proven ways for industry to capture and use methane from natural gas production. But until this is required, it’s hard to make the case that natural gas production represents a huge improvement over burning coal.”

George W. Bush and Barack Obama have spoken in vague terms about an international effort to reduce methane emissions, but nothing specific has happened. Why?

One reason is that the methane threat to the atmosphere is invisible. Wherever entrenched interest groups exist, the contemporary American political system seems incapable of confronting even completely obvious problems, to say nothing of the invisible. The interest group here is oil and gas companies, which want tax favors but not regulation. Year in and year out, energy company political donations buy Congress’s silence on key issues.

Another reason methane goes overlooked is that environmental advocates want global warming concerns framed as blame-America-first. Because the United States energy economy is dependent on coal and petroleum, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are high. Because the European energy economy is dependent on natural gas, European methane emissions are high. By keeping the global warming focus on carbon dioxide, enviros keep the finger pointed at the United States.

As we enter yet another Washington silly season in energy policy — the White House and Congress talking grand change, then renewing all existing sweetheart deals — something must be done to reduce methane emissions. Keeping methane pollution out of the air is the last remaining easy fix for slowing down climate change.

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq citing two justifications: to depose Saddam Hussein and to destroy Iraq’s banned weapons program. Within a year, Hussein and his accomplices were imprisoned, and it had been discovered there was no Iraqi banned weapons program. Having achieved its goals, why didn’t the United States leave? Seven years later, this question haunts the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, citing two justifications: to find Osama bin Laden, and break up al Qaeda. Bin Laden is now dead, and al Qaeda broken.

So why doesn’t the United States leave?

By autumn, American forces will have spent a full decade in Afghanistan — conducting patrols, bombing the heinous, bombing the innocent. The United States has roughly 100,000 soldiers and air crew in Afghanistan, almost as many as the peak force in Iraq. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan constrains the Taliban, and the Taliban are an awful group. But the Taliban are a central Asian problem afflicting Afghanistan and Pakistan — their existence does not in any way threaten the United States’ national interest.

Having fulfilled its goals in Afghanistan, why doesn’t the United States leave?

Max Boot, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow, writes in the Wall Street Journal that, “Since 9-11, al-Qaeda has never had more than a few dozen fighters inside Afghanistan at any given time.” Boot is a hardliner — he supports the Afghanistan war, and is author of the 2003 book Savage Wars of Peace, a spirited defense of superpower engagement in low-level conflicts. Boot also thinks there are terrorist groups other than al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

But with bin-Laden dead, how could “a few dozen fighters” and miscellaneous criminal bands justify keeping 100,000 American military personnel, plus 40,000 NATO military personal, in Afghanistan? Justify the continuing violation of Afghan sovereignty? The United States has never declared war on Afghanistan — we just attacked.

Most important, how can the United States justify continuing to kill civilians in Afghanistan? U.S. and NATO forces may not intend to kill Afghan civilians. To the dead, it’s all the same.

After the al Qaeda attack on the United States, the United States counterattack on Afghanistan could be rationalized as self defense. With bin Laden dead, that rationale fades away. To think that any country that harbors scattered bands of bad people should be invaded and methodically bombed by the United States is madness.

So with bin Laden gone — why don’t we leave Afghanistan?

When Barack Obama became president, the United States had about 70,000 soldiers and air crew in Afghanistan. Obama promised the Afghanistan “surge,” which raised the force level, would end in summer 2011. So even before bin Laden was killed, U.S. forces were expected to begin leaving Afghanistan around now. Instead, the White House and Defense Department are saying combat forces will remain in Afghanistan perhaps until 2014.

That would be 14 years of occupation — thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands of Afghans dead — in order to accomplish what? In order to demonstrate U.S. muscle flexing, and to postpone the moment when Western forces leave Afghanistan in worse condition than they found it. With bin Laden dead, the time has come to end American military adventurism in Afghanistan — can U.S. forces on the ground there even describe what they are now fighting for? — and begin Afghan reconstruction.

What follows are a few notes on the bin Laden raid, which your columnist thinks was moral and which I defended here on the BBC:

Those “stealth helicopters.” Radar evasion — which is debatable for a helicopter — had little, if anything, to do with their use. Two Black Hawks with stealth features, trailed by two Chinooks, flew toward bin Laden’s compound. The Chinook, a 1960s design, has no stealthy features: on radar screens, it looks like a flying barn. So the presence of the Chinooks would have betrayed the stealth helicopters to radar operators.

The reason for the “stealth” helicopters is that they make less noise than standard rotary aircraft, aiding the element of surprise. No helicopter is quiet: the Pakistani press reported people in Abbottabad left their houses to see what all the helicopter noise was. “Stealth” helicopters are merely loud, rather than ear-splitting. Also the stealth Black Hawk has infrared shielding, in case Pakistani forces fired heat-seeking missiles, which didn’t happen.

Why didn’t the Pakistani military respond to a 40-minute raid near its capital? One reason is that the Pak military is not exactly a well-oiled machine: the Russian fleet approaching Tsushima Strait in 1905 is the right analogy. This is something to think about when pondering that Pakistan’s army must protect atomic bombs. Another reason is that Pakistan’s defense net points east, toward India. The raiders approached from the west, from Afghanistan.

It also may be that the United States was “spoofing” Pakistani radars and communications: causing the raiding helicopters to disappear electronically, without “jamming” (producing static and systems failures), which would announce something unusual was happening. Don’t be surprised if it turns out one or more U.S. electronic warfare aircrafts were in Pakistani airspace that night, spoofing Islamabad’s national security net. And don’t be surprised if it turns out that U.S. ground-attack aircraft, including this heavily armed plane, specialized to fire on advancing soldiers, were above Pakistan in case the raid went south.

Why wasn’t the V-22 used? The Pentagon has spent at least $30 billion on the V-22 tilt-rotor, which is newer and more advanced than the Black Hawk helicopter. The V-22 was designed for a mission profile like the bin Laden raid — fly a long distance through hostile airspace at twice the speed of a helicopter, land and take off like a helicopter, fly back at twice helicopter speed. Yet the V-22 wasn’t used. Though operational since 2007, the V-22 has never been employed near hostile forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This aircraft had a poor safety record in testing, and has been cited by Defense Secretary Robert Gates as an example of procurement waste. If it wasn’t right for the bin Laden raid, the V-22 will never be right. Either the lack of V-22 use was inter-service rivalry of the silliest kind (Navy SEALS staged the mission, the V-22 is operated by the Marines and the Air Force) or the V-22 is a very expensive dud that needs to be canceled before any more taxpayer money is wasted.

Photos, top to bottom: Farmer Jalaluddin, 70, carries harvested vegetables past the compound where U.S. Navy SEAL commandos reportedly killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad May 5, 2011. Pakistan, in apparent reference to old rival India, said on Thursday any country that tried to raid its territory in the way U.S. forces did to kill Osama bin Laden would face consequences from its military. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro; Part of a damaged helicopter is seen lying near the compound after U.S. Navy SEAL commandos killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, May 2, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer

Recently, I was a guest on BBC World Service, to discuss whether the killing of Osama bin Laden can be called “justice.” The BBC podcast is here. My Reuters column on the subject is here.

Should the United States have invaded Iraq? Should the United States be bombing Libya? These are troubling questions. But there is no question the United States had a right to kill Osama bin Laden — and no doubt his death is good news, including for the world’s Muslims, most of whom are law-abiding and peace-loving.

Bin Laden led an organization that attacked civilians in the United States and several other nations. Under international law, under all ethical and most religious reasoning, the United States had a clear right of self-defense regarding bin Laden and al Qaeda. Pakistani national sovereignty may have been violated, which is an issue for Washington and Islamabad to work out. But the killing itself was self-defense. No serious person — and no school of thought — should object.

Some time may pass before important details are known. From initial reports, these thoughts come to mind:

The raid was honorable. Bombers could have dropped GPS-guided bombs from 50,000 feet, without any American being in danger. But that might have killed many bystanders, and the world would never have been sure who was under the rubble. By sending commandos in for a face-to-face fight, the United States chose the tactics that would limit Pakistani casualties, and be sure U.S. soldiers were shooting at the right person.

We may never know the identities of the special force members on the raid. They did the honorable thing — risking their own lives to spare bystanders.

Killing, rather than capture, was correct. There existed no doubt about bin Laden’s guilt, since he himself regularly proclaimed it. Killing him — Reuters is reporting the commandos were ordered to kill, not capture — avoided a trial that could have been a terrorism trigger. Plus, huge amounts of money would have been spent guarding a captured bin Laden. Better to spend the money building schools in Afghanistan.

His followers’ personal vow is now broken. One reason Nazi Germany refused to surrender long past the point its position was hopeless was that Wehrmacht members took an oath of allegiance not to German patriotism but to Hitler personally. Until Hitler was dead, many German military personnel felt duty-bound to honor their vows even if that meant following the orders of an obvious madman. As soon as Hitler was gone, the oaths dissolved and German forces surrendered.

Al Qaeda members take oaths not to any nation or any vision, but to bin Laden personally. Now he’s gone. True, some al Qaeda members may vow obedience to some new murderer. But others, released from their oaths, may leave al Qaeda.

Surely the United States did not tell Pakistan this was about to happen. Though bin Laden is hated by many in Pakistan’s government — al Qaeda has killed more Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan than Christians and Jews in the United States — there are also fanatics in Pakistani intelligence.

As described by Lawrence Wright in his book The Looming Tower, they warned bin Laden about the 1998 American attempt against him. Likely they would have warned bin Laden again.

Pakistani intelligence officials now look like dolts. Bin Laden was directly under their noses — in a pleasant “hill station” town favored by wealthy Pakistani generals and retired military and “just a few hundred meters from Pakistan’s version of the West Point military academy“. Yet Pakistani intelligence either was too dull-witted to notice, or corrupt and knew and said nothing. Had Pakistan brought bin Laden to justice without the help of the U.S., Islamabad would now seem super-competent, and be winning the world’s praise. Instead, Islamabad seems like a ship of fools.

This killing is irrelevant to the targeted-assassination debate. A few days ago, the United States tried to kill Muammar Gaddafi, using bombs. U.S. law forbids the targeted killing of heads of state, making the U.S. airstrike troubling on many levels: among them that American law makes it legal to kill the innocent when bombs miss, so long as no named individual was targeted. That’s tormented ethics, to put it mildly.

But bin Laden was not a head of state, he was a stateless criminal and an obvious threat to the lives of others. There’s no legal concern here.

Was the raid truly perfect? President Obama’s declaration that U.S. commandos “took care to avoid civilian casualties” could mean many things. The White House should clarify immediately.

The correspondents dinner. Saturday night, Obama was yukking it up at the White House Correspondents Dinner — knowing the raid was about to happen, and the situation for America was about to get either a lot better or a lot worse. The president smiled his way through the dinner (arguably the single most ridiculous aspect of contemporary Washington politics), giving no hint. That’s Academy Award acting.

There were no leaks. Nobody in the White House, the Department of Defense or the intelligence community leaked anything. State Department personnel were evacuated from Peshawar in the hours before the raid, and not one of them texted or tweeted the slightest hint. America really can do something properly!

At this time, no one should think of politics. But President Obama can be forgiven for knowing that his reelection odds just skyrocketed.