The hype meter at the Discovery Channel has pegged at full McKibben. See this:
Sandy wasn’t even a category 1 hurricane when it made landfall. Yet somehow, that elevates it for “megastorm” status?
I wonder if AccuWeather meteorologist Henry Margusity (who was heavily relied upon in the show) knew before he got suckered into this show that they’d make such incredible leaps of labeling?
Now, with a storm that doesn’t even come close to storms that have hit the area in the past, such as 1954 Hurricane Hazel or the Great Hurricane of 1938, what will they call a Cat3 or greater storm if it hits the area? Here’s some possibilities:
- SuperDuperStorm
- MegaMegaStorm
- GigaStorm
- SandyOnSteroids
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Storm
- Spawn of MegaDoppler 9000
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Rabbi Daniel Lapin provides an insightful perspective on environmentalism:
Myth #3 Business Harms the Environment
Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money. 2002 ISBN 0-471-21868-5 pp 153-156
Nat Geo also rushed to make a documentary. It premiered last week. The “science” is all one sided, and we are told that atmospheric CO2 is to blame.
http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/TV/2012/11/13/National-Geographic-Channel-to-air-Hurricane-Sandy-documentary/UPI-23901352816278/
PBS Nova ran a show this evening about Sandy entitled, “Inside the Megastorm.” I don’t know whether it’s the same show as the Discovery Channel show, but it certainly sounds similar. I sent them the following “feedback” message.
re: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/inside-the-megastorm.html
Your mostly-excellent program this evening, “Inside the Megastorm,” about superstorm Sandy, ended with a series of blatant misrepresentations about climate change and sea-level. The truth is that global warming has caused no detectable increase in sea-level. Measurements show that the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases over the last 2/3 century has not caused any increase at all in the rate of sea-level rise. In fact, the best studies of globally averaged sea-level measurements indicate that the rate of sea-level rise has actually decreased slightly as CO2 levels have risen.
Moreover, contrary to a statement in your program, warming of the upper layer of the ocean does not affect coastal sea levels at all, even in theory. Because gravity balances mass, not volume, water density changes in the upper ocean do not cause lateral flows; instead, the water rises or falls IN PLACE. This is most obvious in the case of icebergs and other floating ice, but is true of all ocean density changes, including those from warming water.
Plus, about half of the sea-level rise experienced by New York is due to land subsidence, rather than changes in global sea-level. The statement in your program that sea-level at New York has risen about a foot over the last century is technically true, but misleading, because it lumps land subsidence together with global sea change to convey an exaggerated impression of the extent of sea level rise over the last century. Most long term tide station measurements of sea-level rise around the world have measured less than six inches of sea level rise over the last century.
Here’s a reference:
http://tinyurl.com/nhazburt1
Please run a correction informing your viewers that, thus far, scientific measurements have detected no indication of any increase in the rate of sea-level rise in response to human activity.
Sandy qualifies as a megastorm in sheer size and damage it caused.
Daveburton
“The truth is that global warming has caused no detectable increase in sea-level.”
Straight from wiki but it could be any number of informed sources.
“Two main factors contributed to observed sea level rise. The first is thermal expansion: as ocean water warms, it expands. The second is from the contribution of land-based ice due to increased melting. The major store of water on land is found in glaciers and ice sheets.
Sea level rise is one of several lines of evidence that support the view that the climate has recently warmed. It is likely that human-induced (anthropogenic) warming contributed to the sea level rise observed in the latter half of the 20th century.”
I think you might be wrong.
daveburton says:
Good luck with that request, I don’t think I’ll hold my breath until they comply.
Another possibility for the next storm greater than Sandy:
Transsandacious!
Good luck with that, daveburton. Well written, but they’ve already turned off the sceptic channel.
Hermann Goering could not have done a better job of defining an enemy of the sheeple. Well done, mainstream media.
OK, Simon, please. Tell us how a minute fraction of the ocean’s surface layer, warming at best by a fraction of a degree kelvin, is going to expand into a detectable rise in sea level? Oh. Sorry, I thought you could. My bad.
Mike Bromley
The sea is rising. About 3mm a year at present. Are you saying it isn’t?
I followed it on the Accuweather forums. Sandy’s destructiveness was due to a series of co-incidences…
* A tropical storm (Sandy)
* Blocking highs in the Atlantic that forced Sandy to go inland
* It occured at full moon, when lunar sea tides are aligned with, and add up with, solar sea tides.
* The remnants of Sandy merged with a regular low heading east over North America
Remove any of these factors, and Sandy would’ve been a relative flop.
A major issue is the direction of the governmental response to this storm. Will cities, states, and the feds spend billions of dollars helping communities rebuild based on the assumption that such ‘superstorms’ can be controlled by a carbon tax? If so, we are all in trouble. Alternatively, politicians and media could tell the truth, namely, this was a big storm with a coincidence of a high tide and odd path. Damaged families and such need to be helped. But bigger storms have happened and will happen again and rebuilding in certain areas is a recipe for disaster. Blaming Sandy on global warming and encouraging a stupid response is immoral and ought to be criminalized.
Sandy was special because it was a exceptionally strong extratropical storm. I wrote an article comparing Sandy to another very similar storm… the 1962 Columbus Day Storm in the Pacific Northwest:
http://informthepundits.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/superstorm-sandy-vs-the-big-blow/
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Mike Bromley
The sea is rising. About 3mm a year at present. Are you saying it isn’t?
—————————————————————————–
Simon here is an interesting account of historical sea level changes.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
Simon says:
“Sea level rise is one of several lines of evidence that support the view that the climate has recently warmed.”
Flat wrong. The sea level rise has not accelerated. Thus, the false claim that sea level rise is due to human CO2 emissions is proven to be baseless nonsense.
The planet has not warmed at all for the past sixteen years, falsifying your AGW belief system. If AGW exists, it is too small to measure. There are no empirical measurements of AGW. So go peddle your climate alarmist nonsense elsewhere.
“…what will they call a Cat3 or greater storm if it hits the area?”
That’s easy. First, they’ll call it an “unprecedented” storm, like they always do. Then they’ll compare it to the previously unprecedented megastorm Sandy as proof that incidences of extreme weather are rapidly accelerating due to climate change. (Being accurate with the facts always takes second place to supporting “the cause.”)
It was a really big storm. The effects were increased by AGW. Really tough decisions about rebuilding in coastal areas in the face of rising sea levels have to be made now.
But if you want to pretend that nothing much happened, and that even if it did, it was nothing to do with AGW, and that even if it was, it wasn’t actually caused by CO2, and that even if it was, it wasn’t CO2 that we emitted – feel free.
REPLY: “The effects were increased by AGW.” Your are an “academic” so, go ahead, prove it. Otherwise your claim is just like the rest of the noise coming out of Australia’s SkS zealots – Anthony
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Mike Bromley
The sea is rising. About 3mm a year at present. Are you saying it isn’t?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The question is not if it is rising, but if the rise is accelerating. Which it isn’t.
Rather odd don’t you think? Because CO2 emissions are certainly accelerating. They are increasing faster than ever before. Yet HadCrut, GISS, UAH and RSS all show no warming over the last 15 years. If there has been no warming for 15 years, what has caused the sea level to rise since it wasn’t warming? Or are you saying that the world’s four major temperature indices are wrong? Really having trouble with this Simon. Can you explain it to me better?
D Böehm
I didn’t say it had accelerated, I merely said it was increasing and that is undeniably true. I don’t think there is any doubt the oceans sea level rise is because of the recent (last 100 years) warming. And am I wrong in thinking this is an open forum, where one can discuss ideas freely. Is there no room to discuss things here? Have I got this wrong?
@Simon
Sea level was rising at 3mm/yr until recently when contrary to GCM predictions, it has reduced even though CO2 continues to rise at an increasing rate. Do you not find the failure of these modelling predictions alarming? I do. It means the models are not correct and we have funded a boondoggle, multiple times.
The damage caused by Sandy will be exceeded by the next large storm if people of limited vision continue to build on dangerous ground with unreliable foundations. Kinda like CAGW alarmism, wouldn’t you say?
Fairbridge, who studied the seal changes on the E Australian coast said it had risen and fallen by as much as 2 metres in 20 years during the past few millenia. I think we can quite comfortably adapt to a rise of 300mm/century if the recent downturn reverses again.
KiwiSi,
Of course this is an open forum. What are you going on about? Others have a different view, do you expect that your view should not be challenged?
You write: “I don’t think there is any doubt the oceans sea level rise is because of the recent (last 100 years) warming.”
You ‘think’ wrong. The rise in sea level is right along its long term trend line. There has been no acceleration of sea level rise, despite the large increase in [harmless, beneficial] CO2, thus falsifying your belief that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming.
The planet has been warming along the same long term trend line since the Little Ice Age, irregardless of whether CO2 has been low or high. Therefore, the rise in CO2 has had no measurable effect. QED
Sandy caused damage out of proportion to its strength as a hurricane due to the location of its landfall in the USA and by the very fact that it was expanding (in extent) as it decayed into a major rain depression. The extent of the low pressure region caused record high sea levels which in turn brought the flood damage.
The show also wondered if Sandy was “the new normal” because of rising sea temperatures. This was in the last 30 seconds of the show.
Cometh the storm, cometh the climate lies
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/cometh-the-storm-cometh-the-climate-lies-20121107-28ytj.html
Hey, if you live in Manhattan, whatever happens there in your lifetime defines the biggest, worst, best, etc. The Capital of the World is filled with insulated people, whose world view is constantly reinforced with messages from ABC at Lincoln Square, CBS over on W57th St., NBC in Rockefeller, and FOX on 6th Ave. Therefore Sandy must be a megastorm, not matter what reality actually is. To be fair, coastal CA has a larger population of colossal dopes, completely out of touch with the real world. So, you goofballs over there, enjoy the sunset while you can, the party isn’t going to last. In a real disaster, I’d rather be with the NYers, no doubt about it.