Readers may recall yesterday that I posted this story : As hurricane season starts, the FSU hurricane season forecast is the odd man out citing “active”.
This was from the FSU press release at Eurekalert here which headlines “Hurricane season is here, and FSU scientists predict an active one” also backed up by this Google cache screencap at FSU’s web page below:
FSU has now changed the page to read:
Source: http://www.fsu.edu/
From active to near-normal in less than 24 hours. Who says you can’t change the weather?
😉
h/t to WUWT reader “Cam”
ALSO: Don’t forget to place your forecast in the WUWT Sea Ice Poll here
Thank you Anthony, and thank you FSU for realizing that words have meaning.
perhaps ‘active’ is the new normal…
Good one Leif!
It’s hard to fudge the story when people are watching, ain’t it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 2, 2012 at 7:21 am
perhaps ‘active’ is the new normal…
In that case I’m very active!
Pathetic. Science as propaganda.
Leif owes me a new keyboard! Good one !!!
Whether the hurricane season is forecast to be active or near-normal, it is comforting to know that the
Anthony of ten thousand eyes, guardian of our records for posterity.
Well done. Thank you.
Pass the popcorn and can I have a cold one? Now if Anthony can just get the sensor “adjusters” to stop with their homogenizing, we can put this one to bed and get back to the pleasures of life. Only thing is, having a government is a full time baby sitting job isn’t it.
Good catch. But, yup, that’s what happens when science flirts with public relations, advocacy, and the main stream media.
Maybe we should require all scientists to take a vow of celibacy?
Independent individuals volunteering to be alert to the shifting disguises of climatology exaggeration / alarmism.
Thanks WUWT for being a main hub of vigilance on climate science.
John
I guess it’s not unusual these days for a normal/activist journalist to write an enviro-article that gets an inflammatory headline attached to it by a sub-editor. Sometimes I even feel pity for them.
But not very much.
I’m glad to see that they’re reading WUWT and taking notice.
When will they ever learn? The old days of just shovelling out any alarmist drivel, are a thing of the past. It all gets looked at nowadays, and checked. Just transplanting old MSM journalism onto the internet will never work …
“Increasingly, the MSM looks like a tired and broken down old dinosaur, limping towards extinction, while that new and nimble species, the internet, looks to be taking over its niche. You’re watching natural selection in action.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/oh-what-a-wonderful-msm/
Pointman
I can assure you that the scientists involved did not use the term “active-season”. An ACE of 122 is well above normal though — so there is a disconnect between what people perceive as # of storms and hurricanes and their tracks.
FSU’s model (Dr. Tim LaRow) has the storm tracks in the output which is why he can provide an exact ACE estimate.
The power of the alternative media! One has to wonder if the biased professional media as an institution will survive.
Anthony – it is only because of your tireless efforts and other dedicated individuals like yourself that the world has been made to turn a more critical eye on AGW. Unlike most of us, I suspect you will merit mention when historians write of this period a hundred years from now – regardless of how this turns out.
Forecasting what is going to happen in the future is silly and something I will never do.
Oh drat!
These liars are incorrigible; and they work while you sleep.
At the Weekly Standard Chicken Little (a.k.a Janet Napolitano-Incompetano) cries, “The hurricanes are coming! The terrorists did it. It’s all the bushes’ fault.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dhs-warns-hurricanes_646437.html
Dear Anthony,
WUWT will be one of the new standards used in science. Examples are the above hurricane prediction circusses; the excellent entry of atmospheric “depletion” over eons, and the incredible mind of “our” Willis.
many thanks.
Ryan Maue says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:25 am
I’d love to see a post-season analysis of Dr LaRow’s tracks vs. actual tracks.
All you have to do to be unprecedentedly accurate with predictions is to remember the times you were right and forget the times you were wrong. Anthony does not let them forget nor lets them get away with rewriting history so as to improve their record. Obviously then, from their perspective, he is the cause of their being wrong much of the time and should be prohibited from doing what he does. What they didn’t take into account is that the internet never forgets and that Anthony knows how to use the internet to good advantage.
Way to go, Anthony!
Why science perversion is such a hateful thing – the damage is done:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dhs-warns-hurricanes_646437.html
H/T Matt Drudge
O H Dahlsveen says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:38 am
Forecasting what is going to happen in the future is silly and something I will never do.
_____________________
smarty pants
If that is supposed to be unprecedented accuracy, you really have to wonder just how much worse and abysmal the accuracy was previously.
How far away from normal does near-normal need to be not to be normal but near-normal ?
I’ll make my forecast for what will happen tomorrow next week.
I agree with Ryan Maue above, the verbiage error was most likely with the press release agent, not the scientists themselves. I find many examples of this sort of exaggeration in University press releases. Good for FSU for fixing it, though the horse was already out of the barn and well into the back forty due to Eurekalert press releases being serially regurgitated with little if any questioning.
There are 1710 Google results for the phrase: “Hurricane season is here, and FSU scientists predict an active one”
Hiding yet another decline….
Anybody keeping count of how many such word scrubs our AGW friends have done lately?
Mike Smith says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:08 am
> Maybe we should require all scientists to take a vow of celibacy?
Why? So they’ll have more time to keep an eye on the press release writers?
Anthony Watts says:
June 2, 2012 at 9:37 am
> There are 1710 Google results for the phrase: “Hurricane season is here, and FSU scientists predict an active one”
Google results inflation. I see 1720 results claimed, but the last one they display is #532. That one is NRL Monterey Develops More Accurate Tropical Cyclone Prediction Model dated November 18, 2011. The FSU story is just a link on the right side nav bar and goes to Hurricane Season Is Here, And FSU Scientists Predict an Active One which uses that line as the title. (And that has a link to FSU Scientists Use Unique Model to Predict Active 2010 Hurricane Season)
I’m surprised that there are at least 532 links to the story. I guess hurricane news travels fast this time of year. Perhaps the good people at the PR dept will contact all of them with the correction. 🙂
I can guaran-damn-tee you that my lab FSU-COAPS for 7-years and the head hurricane researchers are top-notch & would not have misled anyone with their forecasts. Thanks Anthony for clearing up the snafu.
FSU is calling for an ACE of 122 this year: here is the plot since 1970. 122 would be very active.
From my website (which used to be at FSU-COAPS): http://policlimate.com/tropical/
Dr Ryan Maue,
Are you actively directing the content at your website ‘policlimatic.com’. If so, I’ll add you to my bookmarks and visit.
perhaps someone at the FSU was woken up to the fact that ‘good lies ‘ in the name of ‘the cause ‘ are often see to be in practice not good but just lies in the eyes of most people .
A quasi-official organisation publishes a prediction, which has been actually financed by the taxpayer.
An non-funded, volunteer-only organisation points out how alarmist it is.
The quasi-official organisation tones down the headline back to, it’s actually going to be pretty normal.
Some sort of a honcho from the quasi-official organisation logs in and starts laying some sort of guilt trip on the non-funded, volunteer-only organisation.
It’s somehow their fault. WTF, it could only be climate science. Go figure …
Pointman
It goes to show how much they actually value their soothsaying of the future. It can change on a dime. And if it can change on a dime of reaction psychology politics to WUWT then their predictions have lost all their scientific content and thus value, for predictions, ahem, soothsaying based upon political considerations is not quite the way to predict weather events, and needless to say serious weather events such as these need to have zero political content and 100% science (as much as that can predict) in the predictions.
I just wonder how they were tipped off that Dick Cheney was out in the Atlantic in the “Haliburton Hurricane Machine” ….. and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!
Pamela Gray says
” Only thing is, having a government is a full time baby sitting job isn’t it.”
Excellent, Pamela, and so true (this from the UK side as well).
As we all know, correlation is not causation…BUT…that looks pretty suspicious.
Ryan Maue said June 2, 2012 at 10:55 am
FSU is calling for an ACE of 122 this year: here is the plot since 1970. 122 would be very active.
So, Dr Maue, according to your opinion, FSU scientists forecast is a very active 2012. Then, first front page was correct. What, in your opinion, could be the reason for the change?
johnbuk says:
June 2, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Pamela Gray says
” Only thing is, having a government is a full time baby sitting job isn’t it.”
Excellent, Pamela, and so true (this from the UK side as well).
Another way of saying, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Of interest Australia’s BOM forecasting over the last two cyclone seasons down under….
BOM’s 2010-2011 tropical cyclone forecast: 20-22 cyclones forecast with a high level of confidence.
BOM Summary: Above average tropical cyclone activity expected for the Australian region (98% chance!)
Season outcome: 11 actual cyclones (average is 12).
The 2011-2012 cyclone season Australia’s premier meteorological institute predicted an 80% chance that cyclones would exceed the long term average (12). The actual number of cyclones (8) was 33% below the long term average.
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/cyclone-forecast-bom-part-2.html
and above all, read: Donna Laframboise: “THE DELINQUENT TEENAGER -Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert”. Apart from Amazon (where they do it), the best and cheapest version is the PDF edition which also contains 1,400 embedded links that take you directly to the source material cited. Available from TinyUrl.com/ipccexpose . PDF format will run on any platform incl. iPad. Get the free Adobe Reader, also available for any platform.
“Normal” since 2006 means no landfall hurricanes at all.
Ryan Maue says: FSU is calling for an ACE of 122 this year: here is the plot…
You mean they are being paid to predict a repeat of last year?
It is called people power and we are on the winning side
Does near normal mean more than normal or less than normal….or is it just a platitude?
Ryan Maue says:
June 2, 2012 at 10:55 am
FSU is calling for an ACE of 122 this year: here is the plot since 1970. 122 would be very active.
Ryan, in the last few years I’ve commented on weather records including floods, wildfires, droughts, tornadaos and the like on other threads, noting that when we have had such an extreme event, the news usually says the worst in 60 years (or so) a period when temps were cooler. My concern is that if we go into a cooling period as we may well have begun to, we are likely to see increases in many of these extreme events (wildfires in the southwest and drought, floods in the Red River of the North and other basins, tornadoes in “tornado alley” like in Joplin Missouri, etc.) and since the CAGW folks have been tying these events to the rise in CO2 and have been watching their predictions fail right and left, they will be rejuvenated again in the new cycle of these things. Do hurricanes show this type of cycle related to cooling and warming?
“Hurricane season is here, and FSU scientists predict an active one”
“Hurricane season is here, and FSU scientists predict a near-normal season”
Both forecasts used the same unique computer model with a knack for predicting hurricanes with unprecedented accuracy to boot.
Brilliant out-of-the-box thinking by the FSU!
If the latter forecast (projection?) turns out true they can claim that although other forecasts predicting an ‘active season’ their computer model got it spot on.
If it’s an ‘active season’ they can claim that they were the first to warn the world.
It’s like a bookmaker betting $100 on a 10-1 shot in their own premises and scooping the ca$h if it comes in while offsetting their bet against tax if it doesn’t.
Win,win;pure genius; take a bow Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies!
It seems the new-normal, active, is actually below average!
The forecast mean numbers are slightly below the 1995-2010 average of 14 named storms and 8 hurricanes, and reflect the possible emergence of El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific and cooling surface water temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.
http://coaps.fsu.edu/hurricanes/
Are volcanic eruptions considered active events; or just hurricanes can be active ?
Mike Jowsey says:
June 2, 2012 at 7:37 pm
1995-2010 is not average over the long term, it is average for positive AMO periods. Negative AMO periods have many fewer storms, it might be worth while to refer to two averages instead of trying to come up with a single long-term average.
Are not publication corrections actively/normally accompanied by an explanation and apology to the public for the error? Who will notice a correction in a day old article on a obscure site? The whole matter seems pointless without acknowledgement. GK
George E. Smith; says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Are volcanic eruptions considered active events…?
In Iceland, they’re considered normal…
FSU: bitch-slapped by Anthony Watts! Go get ’em, Anthony!