Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia is suffering a rare “cyclone sandwich” – two gigantic tropical cyclones, Cyclone Marcia (cat 5 – like Katrina) and Cyclone Lam (cat 4) are smashing into the North of Australia at the same time as seen in the NASA/NOAA satellite photo.
Details here
Since my hometown is near the centre of the predicted track of Cyclone Marcia, naturally I am taking an interest in weather updates. I was more than a little shocked when I read the following:
JT, commenting on the Brisbane Times – February 20, 2015, 6:07AM
These type of weather events could happen further south in future and be more intense with global warming…….if anyone has to suffer out of this one I hope it is a climate change denier, if anyone.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-marcia-live-coverage-20150219-13iuaw.html
Thankfully this level of vicious fanaticism seems to be rare – natural disasters normally bring people together, we instinctively help each other to survive the worst which nature can throw at us.
The fact that such a sentiment could be voiced, in the face of a weather event which may yet cause severe loss of life, in my opinion shows what a toxic philosophy climate alarmism can be. The comment I saw today, is in my opinion no different to the misanthropy which led to the creation of the 10:10 video.
To at least some fanatics, whose lives are consumed by the alarmist message of hatred towards “deniers”, suffering and pain are acceptable, as long as the pain is visited upon the targets of their hatred.
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“if anyone has to suffer…” Well, if it is required that someone suffer, then I understand this perspective. They aren’t insisting that someone suffer. And while their opinion about climate change is loony, this is a perfectly reasonable comment. Get over the false oppression.
…DrTorch’s name is a giveaway…flame bait comment…
For someone posting to a site that encourages thinking for oneself, you fail miserably.
Ever think if just keeping silent instead of proving you’re a fool?
How about, “lets hope no one gets hurt during this storm”? Why do the fascists on the left always have to have someone suffer, or die? Why do they always have to threaten, censor, lie, commit violence to “prove” their point? Seems to me they do nothing but prove they are wrong, time and again.
+10
+20
+30
+42
“Let’s hope that Dr. Torch dies miserably from stomach cancer, if anyone has to suffer.
Have a problem with that Dr. Torch? I’m not insisting that someone suffer, so it’s a “perfectly reasonable comment”, right?
No it’s not reasonable. It’s disgusting. It’s the same as to say: ‘If someone has to suffer I do hope it will be a negro’, and that is not acceptable. So why should it be possible and acceptable ?
@Rolf: Everything you’ve said is what Lancifer is saying.
Dude, you forgot to include the “Get over the false oppression.” part.
Give The dog a bad name and let it hang?
I have a problem w/ your false equivalency. How’s that[trimmed]?
DrTorch. It was on point. It was not a false equivalency. That you cannot recognize the accurate logic proves You are the lackwit
DrTorch, you are disgusting. Simply so. The reason? Despite your herculanean effort to bring yourself up from the benthos, you have failed to clean off the [trimmed]
Don’t forget this is one of the latest season before a cyclone has crossed the Australian coast. I doubt you will hear alarmists note that. Normally by this time we should have had well over 10 cyclones and about half of them severe, so this has been a rather quiet season so far.
If the storm is political then blame the Queenslanders for electing an ALP government. They are alarmist that lot. 😆
Alarmists did note that. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-11/this-cyclone-season-could-smash-all-records/6077726
Notice the heading “ABC Emergency”. It was written on Monday with a strong possibility that they new cyclones could form in the next few days but it was not mentioned. The emergency was the unusual lack of them.
Anyway, the cyclones were downgraded as the winds being recorded were only just gusting to Cat 3 intensity, as some people have been keeping track of the wind speeds (and, accidentally, the rainfall).
Bit of a stretch to label this one as a hate comment.
Back on the science and observation tack though:2015 has been very mild in Australia so far. Cyclones aside (we always get a few) there have been no heat waves, lots of sub 35C days and quite a few sub 30C days both on the East, West and South coasts where it’s usual to hear of something by now.
Yes there was the early November heat wave in Queensland last year, but apart from that nothing to get hysterical about!
I don’t see it as a “hate” comment either. I can hear ambivalence in her words. “If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s a denier, if anyone.”
I must be getting old, but lately I just feel sorry for some of these people. They’re just so wildly off the mark.
If it’s not a “hate” comment, what is it? A valentines day card? Since when can you wish ill will on everyone who disagrees with you and still claim you’re tolerant and void of hate?
+∞
“If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s a Jew, if anyone.”
“If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s a lesbian, if anyone.”
“If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s atheists, if anyone.”
“If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s a European, if anyone.”
Get it? How about this one?
“If anyone has to suffer over this one, I hope it’s someone not like me, if anyone.”
‘2015 has been very mild in Australia so far.’
Indeed, south east Australia has been experiencing cooler conditions because of the unusual number of east coast lows and this ex-tropical cyclone will add to that.
Free speech is “I will defend your right to free speech with my life, even if I disagree.” What is said is that if someone dies I hope it is someone I disagree with. What should have been said is if someone dies I hope it’s Me ? An enemy of free speech?
I guess the extreme snowfall Boston is getting is because of the politics of the folks who live there…
But, why not an Islamic terrorist or some other serial killer should die?
Why not someone who kicks his dog or someone who beats his wife?
A Wall Street thief who steals from old widows and orphans or one of the many dishonest politician.
How about a lying climate scientist. (I’ll ask around and see if there are any)
No, it’s if someone has an honest difference of opinion I hope they suffer a death by drowning as they gasp for a breath of air and water goes up their nose and they start trying to cough and only suck more water in their lungs.
Gee, what a kind, caring fellow human being.
I guess that’s what I get for leaving the /sarc tag off.
You see, these types of things are etched indelibly in my memory:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328232/Oklahoma-tornado-Daily-Show-creator-Lizz-Winstead-faces-backlash-insensitive-tweet.html
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/28/162077/tornado-global-warming/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/09/hurricane-marco-rubio-name-the-storms-after-those-who-deny-global-warming-exists.html
It’s really no different than the Two Minute Hate and Hate Week in George Orwell’s 1984. BTW Orwell’s vision of the future seems to fit the observations a lot better than those of the warmists.
Mea culpa, I overstated my case by a lot in the second sentence. But it would be nice if there was a capability to edit your own comments, at least for a short time after posting them.
Wow, that is amazing. I have never seen a set of storms like that. I havn’t seen this in the news yet; which surprises me. I would have thought that the CAGW loving news outlets would be all over this.
It’s happened before as shown in this climate change documentary.
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a3b9096ec9b9.jpg
/sarc
Those two pics are of hurricanes, not cyclones.
Hilarious – one of my favourite movies 🙂
Mike Jonas…if you check out the scale, you will note why MichaelS ended with a sarc tag. (Hurricanes don’t get to be the size of North America with eyes the size of the state of Maryland.)
Serious weather, dude. Almost as bad as this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/VanGogh-starry_night_ballance1.jpg
For Jeff in C
http://phys.org/news187964618.html
and a google search shows twin cyclones threatening the Australian coast every couple of years. I don’t know how often both make landfall.
@Miki Jonas
The only difference between a hurricane, a cyclone and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs.
Regards
Climate Heretic
In Norway its fu#%ng shit weather!
To understand it we have to start with the Norwegian expression “shitbag or bag of shit”. 4-500 years ago Swedish armies where several times outside akershus castle in Oslo. They never got inside, so the mode inside was positive and it was simply all about waiting it out. They had stored plenty of food and there was plenty water in a small lake in the middle of the castle. Then the swedes started biological warfare with catapulting bags of shit(antroproghenic) over the walls aiming for the lake. When they hit it the mode inside changed quickly and a lot to negative with people becoming stomach sick.
“The only difference…”, hmmmmm, the rotation?!?!
And, once again….@ClimateHeretic….you are mistaken about “the only difference between a hurricane, a cyclone and a typhoon” as being the so called “location”.
Can you say “direction of rotation”?
Don’t know what the sniping’s about, but…
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/cyclone.html
Eric are you sure about those wind speeds.
Nuschool show then to be about 100km/h for Marcia.
See
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=156.03,-24.55,3000
It went over Middle Percy Island this morning, gusts just over 200kmh. Very small destructive core, Samuel Hill only 10km or so from eyewall 76 kmh wind, gusts to 137 kmh 23 minutes ago (9.00 a.m.)
Good sites:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR232.loop.shtml (radar)
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=143.66,-20.38,1821 (winds)
http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/observations/map.shtml (latest obs)
http://www.bom.gov.au/watl/weather/observations/qld-latest-weather-graphs.shtml (graphs)
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20018.txt (technical bulletin)
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ65002.shtml (forecast map)
Looks like heading straight for us in Rockhampton and Cat 3, so hope they’re wrong!
Sorry for all the links Mods but they’re good ones!! Hope we get out of moderation before the storm has passed!
You stay safe too. And thanks for all the great work you and Merohasy have done on BOM futzing with Australian station records.
Stay safe, Ken, and keep up the good work in holding BoM to account. BTW, must be a small eye, as I was monitoring the wind speed here in Brisbane, looking at the pictures coming out of your neck of the woods, and wondering why the catastrophic fuss. ~76 km/hr Winds don’t seem overly impressive if you get my sarcasm … but 200km you report near the eyewall is impressive.
Suspect they were wrong Ken. 113 km/h maximum gust at 3:00pm, 20/02/15 as the category 3 storm passed over, doesn’t sound quite right. Hope Rocky got through OK.
Our son in Yeppoon said it was a very scary event, but the house and most around it came through relatively unscathed, a lot of damage to overhead electric poles and wires also many trees down. Yeppoon was on the fringe, max gust recorded as 156 km/h at 12:30 pm, 20/02/15 of the then category 4 storm.
Warwick Hughes has some comments on Marcia.
“BTW, must be a small eye, as I was monitoring the wind speed here in Brisbane”
LOL 700km away???
Thanks for the reply, I only brought it up because as I commented ovr at Jo Nova’s for the last couple of years all of the Hurricanes, Typhoons, Tropical Cyclones and Storms have been overhyped.
It is almost as if they are reading MPH instead of KPH.
Andrew … funny that one can monitor a storm from a distance based on the online data from the weather stations. Comprehension overload?
Ahhh, Queensland! Beautiful one day, terrifying the next. Good luck Eric.
Thanks Dave 🙂
Hey Eric, I’m stuck in Philadelphia until the end of March, and my boat is moored in the Urangan Marina.
Any idea what is like down that end of town ??
I see the wind speed at the airport is only 6 kts.
I have been getting both barrels of the weather over here too.
Minus 13 C in Newtown right now. Bloody global warming.
The weather is quiet right now, the wind just picked up a little, sunny sky with clouds. I’d make sure my insurance is up to date. There is a chance your boat will be fine, but the prediction is a severe storm surge and high winds, so there is a substantial risk of damage to boats in the marina.
Thanks Eric, All paid up.
I’ve been watching the Gympie Radar as well.
Chris in Newtown, PA.
The media coverage of this is disgusting. They are literally wishing it to be [worse] than it is. I am sitting here watching news coverage, just before I head off to do some volunteer work, and it appears to be just a wet and windy day.
Agree with you, Patrick.
That has always been the case. Thus the term “If it bleeds, it leads.”
24/7 news coverage from multiple outlets only increases the need to hype events. And weather events have always been high on the list of what makes news outlets all gooey inside.
Just checked bomb site. Cyclone Marcia cat 5 situated of coastline. When the tide goes out this will be the que for it to cross onto land upon where it will come down to say cat 3. Bom will show update for a day.
Cyclone Yasi same script.
Exactly, BOM categories are scripted, they play a cynical Orwellian game of double think.
As a result I always check Navy/NRL first to contrast with BOM’s claims and projections as I know from experience that if BOM is presented with opportunity to ruthlessly amp a cyclone’s predicted intensity out of all proportion to reality, it will not hesitate to do so and create a scripted wag-the-dog load of baloney fed to media, that is neither science observations nor development and track model based.
And unfortunately what I now see occurring is that instead of Navy/NRL simply running its models and presenting it’s data in the way it used to (which is what made them so credible), they now instead adjust their presentations to mirror the BOM’s claims and classifications of ‘observed’ (i.e. not observed at all) intensity.
They should stop following BOM and just run their models as these will always be vastly superior to anything BOM ever does.
You have to admire their efficiency. Look how fast the damage control team arrived:
DrTorch: “They aren’t insisting that someone suffer.”
wickedwenchfan: “Bit of a stretch to label this one as a hate comment.”
It’s been a late start and so far a very poor wet season.
Last weekend the area around Cairns was promised up to 500mm of rain (call it 20″ in last century’s units) from the system which developed into Cyclone Marcia, but only received about a quarter of that. I suspect the results this weekend might mirror that performance.
Still, you can’t blame the warmists for hoping. Most of us hope that there will be power disruptions somewhere soon because of the problems caused by mandated renewable power inputs. We all respectively hope though that it isn’t us forced to suffer.
Gnome, to most Australians, the Far North is outside their distance comprehension … they’ll believe anything that the media tells them.
Hurricanes Connie and Diane hit the North Carolina coast only five days apart in 1955.
Somehow I doubt any of the alarmists will mention this.
In 1954 category 3 Hurricane Carol made landfall in Connecticut. 11 days later, category 3 Hurricane Edna made landfall about 100 miles east. You won’t hear about that either.
It shows that “climate alarmism” is NOT about the science, but about personal agendas
GDK – Welcome to one of my geology heroes! 40 years on I still have some of your text books and articles!
Ciao
John Gorter, PhD Geology University of New South Wales
“To at least some fanatics, whose lives are consumed by the alarmist message of hatred towards “deniers”, suffering and pain are acceptable, as long as the pain is visited upon the targets of their hatred.”
The alarmists who are true believers rather than scam artists do hate “deniers” since we seem to them to be trying to destroy the entire world. From their deluded viewpoint, how could they not hate us?
But the fact is CO2 does not heat the planet but rather has a net effect of cooling if the net effect is not zero. The planet’s weather machine is nothing like the Jim Hansen fantasy we have been listening to for these long decades now.
“if anyone has to suffer out of this one I hope it is a climate change denier, if anyone.”
In an odd way they have a point. Think of it this way. If you took say 100 alarmists and put them in the path of a natural event like this, they’d be panicking like headless chickens, probably doing nothing but tweeting and twatting until the thing was on them and there was nothing they could do. They would in short be like animals caught in the headlights.
But take 100 sceptics. And given our practical & altruistic nature, not only would we be sorting out ourselves, but we would be thinking about how to help other people. We’d get through something which would kill alarmists.
So if anyone is to suffer, by far the most capable group to cope and come out unscathed are us sceptics.
Eric Worrall; Stay safe okay, as well as all those with you.
michael
Thanks Michael.
I lived in Townsville in 1971. Cyclone Althea smashed into Townsville just on Christmas. There were three deaths and damage costs around A$50M (1971 dollars). It was a terrifying event to go through.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/althea.shtml
In 1971 there was no “global warming” or “climate change” scare this was just weather in the cyclone season. In fact at that time global cooling had been predicted along with the human population bomb with global food shortages predicted by 2000. There were no warmists or so called “deniers” to suffer from this storm. Everyone in Townsville felt it’s effects.
Cyclones in the top end of Australia are nothing new.
population bomb with global food shortages predicted by 2000.
It’s on my shelf. Try massive, inevitable worldwide famine by 1985.
Regarding the population bomb;
http://drtimball.com/2014/overpopulation-the-fallacy-behind-the-fallacy-of-global-warming/
If a global depopulation event were to occur, who would be the likely survivors?
Darwin was completely destroyed by the Japanese in 1942, then again in 1972 by a cyclone … on Christmas Day no less! Fantastic place. Nowadays, they have levels of cyclone warning, and at each level things are supposed to happen, such as securing all free-floating objects in your back yard and resorting to hurricane safe buildings.
Fantastic place.
http://www.darwinstorms.com/
And I can assure you that flying into Darwin when there are storms is fantastic too. Lightning par excellance.
Hey I was there too! I was 12. It was my first cyclone. We just did what we had to, filling the bathtub stocking up etc. I remember the water supply cutting off, and here we were surrounded by floods. Our house had a broken window but the old people’s place across the road was flattened. We had cyclone bolts. They didn’t.
It was extremely noisy as I recall.
Looks like Cyclone Lam has already come ashore as a Cat 1 storm, and Cyclone Marcia will come ashore soon as a cat 3 storm. Lets hope that the damage and injuries are minimal. I think both storms are being over hyped… I hope….
Certainly was overhyped. Cyclone never was a Cat 5! Politics plays the forecasting during cyclones in Qld. I remember the last super storm predictions…….Fizza.
A religions fanatic calls on god to rain fire down on the unbelievers for their ‘sins ‘ , some things never change.
knr, exactly who are you referring to?
SR
A little while ago I stumbled across a statement made by David Appell, a well known climate alarmist troll. He was observing that the El Nino that was forming last year was unlikely to be a big one, hence (I paraphrase) ‘don’t get out the party hats just yet.”
Clearly the “logic” behind a statement like that is: (1) El Nino causes warming, (2) global warming will therefore be back in force, (3) global warming will cause catastrophes, (4) time to celebrate because my predictions of doom for humanity were right all along.
His worst nightmare would be for the non-believers to be right.
Hey Will, shout out from an old sgu fellow AGW skeptic.
Respect.
Sure does seem like the alarmist mindset is wishing for disaster. And wishing ill on anyone who doesn’t buy the end-of-the-world rhetoric. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
♫♪ FX ♪♫
Nice to see you’re still doing the rounds FX.
I don’t feel slighted by this. He’s simply wishing upon those that disagree with what he FEELS is right…that only they suffer. This is not at all dissimilar to the way realistic people wish upon the greens the hellish, oppressive existence their policies would cause (lack of a regular power supply, massive loss of technology and the technological base, a completely wrecked economy, etc)
Nice try.
Some of us wish the greens would set an example, by living the “natural” lifestyles they seem to want to inflict on the rest of us, instead of being total hypocrites about what they claim to believe – clothing themselves in plastics and other high tech products of a modern fossil fuel economy, and jetting off to exotic holiday spots attending climate conferences.
That is not the same as wishing destruction upon someone.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/friday-funny-fracking-protestors-and-their-petro-sourced-belongings/
what i realist wish are: underfloor heated streets in wintertime; rare elements brought in megatonnes from the asteroid belts – not that rare elements, of course, too.
starting terraforming mars;
but first of all: REstart civilatory + technogical enfolding according 21. century!
to big a vision on a planet hosting 7 bill. inhabitants gifted with reason and a heritage of min. 10.000 years of that kind of development.
Regards – Hans
Made me stop and think….now, how would a skeptic counter this?
…what kind of curse, or what would a skeptic wish on a non-denier??
Without a doubt some green/left politician will come out and say, in the right sentence, that this event is consistent with AGW. Bob Brown said the coal industry had blood on their hands in the aftermath of cyclone Yasi in 2011 – the “man-made CO2 is behind every weather event” superstition is sadly well-entrenched here in Australia. The MSM are desperate to find anything which can keep the ‘extreme weather’ narrative going, lest the public realise that there’s nothing unusual going on. In October/November last year the BOM predicted a sweltering summer for most of the continent, in particular for the south eastern part. They couldn’t have been more wrong. This is the most unremarkable Tasmanian summer I’ve seen for a very long time, and one of the mildest.
Cyclone Wanda which effected Brisbane in a large way was Christmas 1973. It was a few hundred kilometres further south than Cyclone Marcia of 2015.
Boy, did we burn some coal in 1973. No wonder we had such a southerly cyclone.