That god among men and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Al Gore, told us in “An Inconvenient Truth”, his Oscar-winning documentary, that we had to brace for increasing numbers of hurricanes as the result of global warming.
So, where are the hurricanes of 2009, Mr. Gore?
The hurricane season that runs from June through October is about to end with nothing more than one weak to borderline moderate tropical storm that hit Florida’s panhandle, but there have been NO hurricanes.
So, where are the hurricanes of 2009, Mr. Gore?
Trying to predict how many hurricanes there will be each year is probably fun, but is a highly risky undertaking. I have a lot of friends among the meteorological and climatological community, men of science, but I always cross my fingers for them when they take a run at it.
This year, Bill Gray of Colorado State, perhaps the best known among the hurricane forecasters, thought there would be at least 7 hurricanes of which 3 would be major. Weather Services Inc. agreed with Dr. Gray and, over at Accuweather, the prediction was for 8 hurricanes of which 2 would be major.
NOAA and the National Weather Service do not predict hurricanes, but as political as well as scientific entities they have a very bad track record of trying to confirm Al Gore’s global warming claims.
In March, William J. Broad, reporting in The New York Times, noted that Gore’s “scientific audience is uneasy” in the wake of his global warming documentary. “These scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.”
In Great Britain, a judge ruled that the documentary could not be shown in the schools unless teachers read a long list of its erroneous claims.
Since an increase in hurricanes was one of his dramatic claims along with rising sea levels and disappearing polar bears, Gore is batting zero these days. The sea levels have been rising a few inches every century for millennia and it is generally conceded that the polar bear population since the 1950s has been thriving.
In May, hurricane specialist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in Miami disputed theories that “global warming” has caused more hurricanes. His study was published in The Journal of Climate.
Landsea, like all meteorologists who haven’t been in a coma since the 1980s, knows that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998. Thus, the warmth that feeds hurricanes has diminished and is likely to stay that way for decades to come.
Landsea’s research showed that, since the mid-1990s, the average number of hurricanes per year had almost doubled what it was during the few prior decades, about on par with hurricane activity in the early 20th century. “It’s busy, yes, but not anything we haven’t seen before,” said Landsea while attending the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference in May.
For the non-scientist, that should confirm that hurricanes are governed by natural cycles, not some non-existent, dramatic increase called “global warming.”
Though what I know about hurricanes would fit comfortably in a bug’s ear, I am nonetheless tempted to suggest that the cooling cycle the Earth entered in 1998 may be a contributing factor to why this year’s hurricane season is, at this writing, minus any hurricanes.
So, where are the hurricanes of 2009, Mr. Gore?
Known as “the Gore factor”, it is the irony of blizzards or severe snow storms that seem to follow him around whenever he delivered one of his “global warming” speeches.
It is my profound prayer that, in December when the United Nations climate conference convenes to issue an international treaty based on the Great Global Warming Lie, that the city of Copenhagen gets hit by a blizzard so great that the delegates cannot leave their plush hotels for days.
TonyS (01:23:59) :
“What you call a blizzard in the US and what we call a blizzard here in Europe is something completely else: Many European countries, such as the UK, have a lower threshold [for the definition of a blizzard].
Well, we are lucky and have the alps, blocking any really nasty weather trying to move through our corner of the world”.
That depend on which side of the Alps you are residing and where the bad weather is coming from.
Last year I was in a blizzard in Morocco and a blizzard in the North of Spain. How about them apples.
In Morocco at several places the snow layer became so heavy that the roofs of houses collapsed. Driving was very difficult, not only because you could not see the road anymore but also because of the tires under the car.
IPCC Crushes Scientific Objectivity (supported by Al Gore & Co)
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/10/ipcc-crushes-scientific-objectivity-91-0/
It’s not very helpful to claim that there were “NO hurricanes” when there were two (Bill and Fred). Yes, ACE is very near the low point over the past 30 years, set earlier this year. That’s worth talking about! But exaggerated claims only make it easier for warmists and their accomplices in the mainstream media to discredit the article, and use it to try and discredit the websites posting it.
It’s definitely worth a correction, in my opinion.
Allow me to review . . . .
Something like 20 years ago, climate scientists formed a hypothesis: an apparent global warming trend coincided with increasing CO2 levels which provided evidence to suggest that man, through his use of fossil fuels, was bring about climate change. Plausible? Yes.
With a hypothesis in hand, the scientific method calls for evidence to be gathered, sorted, evaluated which can lead to a theory — a tool that can be used to make predictions about some subject area.
That is where we are today, with a “Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.” At risk of oversimplifying . . . .
o Using Mann’s “Hockey Stick,” over the last 1,000 years, temperatures were pretty steady until the mid-20th century when global temperatures began to rise along with CO2.
o That, neither CO2 levels nor global temperatures had ever been higher.
o That CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” which means that increased concentrations will trap more heat.
o Thus, it follows that as CO2 levels continue to rise in the coming years that global temperatures will similarly rise, resulting in, among other things, more frequent and more violent (energetic) tropical cyclones.
And it seemed to work out for a few years but more recently . . . another story. As is so often discussed here global temperatures seemed to stop rising 10 years ago and, as this post describes, those pesky tropical cyclones, at least in 2009, have not become more frequent or grown in intensity.
Now I don’t envy the warmists, having to make predictions and being called to account for them, and all. But with the failure of these predictions, we can conclude that one of the following is true (at increasing degrees of discrediting): the theory is incomplete, the theory is wrong, the theory is nonsense (as Wolfgang Pauli is reported to have said on one student’s work, “that’s not right, it’s not even wrong”).
Try this Thought Experiment . . . in a casino at a Roulette table. A fellow comes up and announces that he has been watching the game and, using his knowledge of mechanics, dynamics, angular momentum, elasticity, etc., has developed a Roulette Theory that predicts that the next number to hit will be “1.” It’s a theory based on hypothesis and investigation and the theory is out there hanging for all to consider all the while that the croupier prepares for the next spin — you know, about one minute. The spin begins and then it ends; and the ball has landed on something other than “1!”
And what about the theory? If you live in a black and red world, landing on anything other than “1” provides incontrovertible evidence that the theory, as stated, is incorrect. So our player explains that he was just a bit too confident — that he should have said that the number was going to be any of nine (a “range” of about 1/4 of the wheel).
The warmists said that temperatures would go up as CO2 went up. CO2 IS up but temps are NOT! And that hurricanes would increase in number and intensity; again, didn’t happen. Their theory, as codified in their models is, simply, incorrect.
Some warmists say something like, “well, our revised theory says that temps could go up, down, or even stay the same for a decade or so. In my casino analogy, this would correspond to the player claiming that his theory guarantees that the next number will be in the range of 00 to 36. Yup! He’d be right every time but theory has no utility — it can’t be used to “win.”
As is so often discussed here, we don’t know what keeps the warmists from acknowledging that their models need work. That there are, apparently, factors and contributions that have not be appropriately codified.
If I had my way, with apologies to Thomas Jefferson, the consensus at Copenhagen would be “Billions for research but not one cent for remediation” until revised the models are validated.
Anyway, that’s what I think.
For an article to be framed around the contention that there have been “NO” hurricanes this year, when there have in fact been two (Bill and Fred), probably does not further the cause of climate realists.
Regards
Lebbart Bilén (20:23:03) : Dear global warmer. Things are simpler than your long and entangled discourse.
Temperatures, as demonstrated by an NU agency, contradicting IPCC, oscillates according to LOD, length of the day and ACI. See:
http://www.giurfa.com/fao_temps.jpg
You see, we´re going down right now and it will go up afterwards.
And don´t worry about the arabs countries. Have you ever asked yourself why is it so that the Amazon Jungle is right in front of The Sahara desert?
This is because Amazon jungle is to the west and the earth, you know, rotates from west to east, so winds and humidity goes the other way.
If LOD were to slow a little rain would fall to the east side of the atlantic.
This phenomena, of course, is affected by mountains, that is why most of the time all that rain does not reach the west coast of south america due to the Andean Cordilleras.
them hurricanes are just hiding . . . up the Goreacle’s wazoo
“Where are the Hurricanes Mr. Gore?”
You better ask the Filippino’s. They had 3 hurricanes in 0ne months….
I never hear anything about the water that is created in a combustion reaction. Fossil fuels all have carbon and hydrogen atoms. The bonds are broken – carbon joins with oxygen to form CO2 and hydrogen joins with oxygen to form H2O. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas also – should it be a pollutant also?? Maybe the newly created water vapor – put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels – results in added cloud cover that cancels out the effect of CO2. I’m not a climate scientist – but, why is there no information about the “other greenhouse gas” that’s formed during combustion of fossil fuels??
John
We can, at least in part, thank AGW promoters for high insurance premiums in the states that occasionally get hit by hurricanes.
Gore & gang have been moving hard wince the Clinton administration selling their apocalyptic prophecies.
Insurance actuaries, who define the risks insurance companies must plan for have been working in a climate that clearly over states risks. And of course, as Gore & gang demonstrate as well, profiteering and AGW hype are also closely linked.
So now, we have four seasons of fewer storms, ACE in a global downward trend, and rising insurance rates.
The inconvenient reality is that apocalyptic clap trap, of which AGW is a great example, is always wrong.
We have been had.
Where can we file for a refund of the billions wasted on AGW fear mongering?
according to Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Atlantic_hurricane_season
it would apppear that Accuweather wins the prize (right now) 8 named storms with 2 major
Stephen Goldstein (06:30:02) :
CO2 follows temperature, not the other way. Open a coke and you´ll see it: The more you have it in your warm hand the more gas will go out when you open it.
CO2 is the transparent gas we all exhale (and Not SUV: That dark is SOOT=Carbon dust) and plants breath with delight, to give us back what they exhale instead= Oxygen we breath in.
CO2 is a TRACE GAS in the atmosphere, it is the 0.038% of it.
There is no such a thing as “greenhouse effect”, “greenhouse gases are gases IN a greenhouse”, where heated gases are trapped and relatively isolated not to lose its heat so rapidly. If greenhouse effect were to be true, as Svante Arrhenius figured it out: CO2 “like the window panes in a greenhouse”, but…the trouble is that those panes would be only 3.8 panes out of 10000, there would be 9996.2 HOLES.
See:
http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
CO2 is a gas essential to life. All carbohydrates are made of it. The sugar you eat, the bread you have eaten in your breakfast this morning, even the jeans you wear (these are made from 100% cotton, a polymer of glucose, made of CO2…you didn´t know it, did you?)
You and I, we are made of CARBON and WATER.
CO2 is heavier than Air, so it can not go up, up and away to cover the earth.
The atmosphere, the air can not hold heat, its volumetric heat capacity, per cubic cemtimeter is 0.00192 joules, while water is 4.186, i.e., 3227 times.
This is the reason why people used hot water bottles to warm their feet and not hot air bottles.
Global Warmers models (a la Hansen) expected a kind of heated CO2 piggy bank to form in the tropical atmosphere, it never happened simply because it can not.
If global warmers were to succeed in achieving their SUPPOSED goal of lowering CO2 level to nothing, life would disappear from the face of the earth.
They KNOW IT, they are not that fool. Their objective is another: To make us the slave workers of a world governed by a few of them, like in Aldous Huxley novel “Brave New World”, so we are destined to be the “Gammas” servants and they the “Alphas” masters.
CRAZY as it is, it is their purpose.
Gee, maybe “D science student” AG can give us a quick science paper explaining his budget busting theories.
Here is a neat video of the 2008 hurricane season, from outer space:
http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail.php?MediaID=75&MediaTypeID=2
Sometimes it’s nice to step back from all the debate, and just marvel over the sheer beauty of weather.
Hoi Polloi (07:45:11) :
“Where are the Hurricanes Mr. Gore?”
You better ask the Filippino’s. They had 3 hurricanes in 0ne months….
Here are 20 years of Western Pacific Category 4 and 5 hurricane counts (http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/w_pacific/):
1990 7
1991 9
1992 10
1993 6
1994 11
1995 6
1996 8
1997 12
1998 4
1999 2
2000 7
2001 5
2002 9
2003 9
2004 12
2005 9
2006 9
2007 8
2008 5
2009 6
Do you see a trend?
If it were 1993 and you were looking at the prior three years you might be pardoned for having an “Oh S***” moment.
But in 2009, looking at 20 years there is no apparent trend.
One can only hope that the hundreds of participants in Copenhagen’s climate conference are travelling by row boat or on foot to minimize their carbon footprint!
In addition to the Phillipines, there was that storm that dumped 100″ of rain on Taiwan. 100″! I consider my home relatively free from flood risk, but… 100″! My word, that’s a lot! Is that a record, anyone know?
Best,
Frank
It’s like the old saying, “worrying works.” If you fret and worry your little head over any given thing, the outcome will always be better than you feared. So, thank you, Mr. Al Gore, for worrying so frantically and curing the ills that threatened humanity. You anxiety has been well spent, the evil warming is in abeyance. Please stop worrying! It’s now getting cold! Al, you’re in danger of worrying yourself to death!
(please note that this is sarcasm and I have no warm fuzzy feelings for Al Gore)
India and Japan close contract to prepare for Copenhagen Climate Treaty:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BHH2F80&show_article=1
And we are going to pay the bill.
Europe and the US in a final Whole Sale before we close the door.
maybe it’s time to exchange your European and American passport in protest.
This could be very lucrative:
http://primapanama.blogs.com/_panama_residential_devel/2009/10/what-its-really-like-to-expatriate.html
How will prayer help anything exactly?
Gregg E. (22:42:23) :
… the range of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, how much area that is and how that change affects the balance of incoming VS outgoing thermal radiation.
The area within each circle is 4.3% of the total Earth surface area – smaller than one would think.
The range of changes that can happen within the circles will only vary the incoming solar radiation by 1% (2% if you include both of them but Antarctica is already one big glacier so there isn’t much impact from any changes there). Sounds small, but it would be over 20 times bigger than the change that occurs during a solar cycle and it is enough to kick us into and out of the ice ages (sometimes) once other impacts are factored in.
Stephen Goldstein; I’m not talking about a trend and don’t try to change me in a skeptic, because I already am a skeptic. I know Americans think they are the middle of the world, but it’s rather cynical or rather ignorant Watts claims that there were no hurricanes, while in this very months hundreds of filipino’s died and thousand lost their homes because of huricanes.
It’s exactly these ignorant and rather stupid messages that makes it so hard for serious AGW skeptics to convince other people about their argument.
Relatively few Atlantic hurricanes were predicted this season:
– low SSTs in the Atlantic
– high amounts of dust coming off Africa suppressing Hurricanes
– emerging El Nino in the pacific causing wind shear in the Atlantic
There’s several problems in looking only at Atlantic hurricanes as a response to global warming, which is that they are influenced by El Nino in the Pacific and by dry conditions in Africa producing more dust. A better metric would be to look at global hurricane frequency. An even better metric than that would be to look at global hurricane intensity (hurricane formation is complicated, the most accepted GW prediction is that AGW will increase the intensity of hurricanes which do form). Even with those metrics there isn’t any real scientific consensus.
>>>The sea levels have been rising a few inches every
>>>century for millennia
Has it?
I do wonder about this claim, because the ancient sites around the Mediterranean that I look at tell a different story. (The Med is good for this study, as it has no tides.)
Ephasus (W Turkey) used to be a harbour city, but is now 2km from the sea. Silting of the river, so they say, but it still does not support sea-level rise.
Pharsilus (S Turkey) still has its harbour, complete with (horizontal) bollards to tie up the ships. They are, as one would expect, a foot above sea level, with the harbour wall a foot or so again above the bollards. Again, no evidence of sea-level rise – the harbour wall is exactly where I would expect it.
Both these towns were founded considerably BC and abandoned at the end of the Byzantine era. Most of the architecture is classical Greek and Roman.
And Greece is supposed to be on a tectonic subduction zone.
Ron de Haan (09:00:48) : Something you should be warned of: In 2008 there was a conference of EU and SA countries (ALCUE) in Lima, Peru. Everything was going apparently OK, until the final draft of the agreement was made: It included an article which was going to make the amazon basin a property of “humanity” (aka THEM). Fortunately the Brazil representative saw this article and, under the menace that Brazil´s president would inmediately abandon the conference as a protest, THEY removed it.