The media have been feasting on supertyphoon Haiyan but the Bishop is a little sceptical of a link with CAGW – go to www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/11/9/storms-and-global-warming.html … just as the BBC hyped the storm that knocked down a few trees, and the odd branch or two, a week or so ago, they have really gone to town on the typhoon that struck the Philippines. No information about fatalities is currently available and yet they are talking about a tragedy on a par with the Boxing Day tsunami. It's a wonder that wasn't caused by CAGW – but perhaps it was in some quarters.
Without adding to the pantomine of the media slaking on the death and misfortune of poor people in the Pacific, just to make a political point (on climate), we may note the 'drama greens' (a new phrase shortly invented by a commenter at the Bishop's blog) and all these blood lusters seem to have forgotten that this year there have been little in the way of hurricanes in the Caribbean. The Bishop's point is that typhoons in the vicinity of China (which would include the Philippines) were more frequent in the 17th century, and again, in a cool period of climate between 1850-1880.
Be that as it may it doesn't help the people of the Philippines in 2013 – so what was actually going on. In Piers Corbyn's view such freak storms have a connection with solar flares – and it so happens we've had a rash of Earth facing flares in the last couple of weeks. These pour energy, and therefore heat, into the Earth system. In turn this excess heat is driven out of the tropics by being pushed northwards towards the temperate zone. Hence, we have a supertyphoon with an origin in the Sun and the bursts of energy that flow into the atmosphere. However, solar activity, according to the CAGW dogma and the mantra they like to disseminate to the plebs, plays only a minor ole in the climate of the Earth.