It is because of beyond stupid fear mongering like this: Are Category 6 Hurricanes coming soon?
Really?
Lest people think this is some sort of “new” fear, I’ll remind them of this from 1969, well before CO2 was bogusly posited by Al Gore and other alarmists to be a “hurricane amplifier”:
From Yahoo Answers:
Hurricane Camille in 1969 broke the equipment at Keesler Air Force Base (home of the Hurricane Hunter aircraft) in Biloxi, MS when her winds reached somewhere around 205 to 210 mph. So we’ll really never know just how high her winds were.
Read the complete history of Camille here at NHC (PDF)
Then there’s this that they ignore:
Accumulated Cyclone Energy
Global Tropical Cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy – 1972 to Present
Click to See Full Image: 24-month running sums of tropical cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy Ryan N. Maue PhD – http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/ Click to enlargeFor reference:
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National Geographic blazed the trail years ago.
You would think there would be enough real science out there to fill their pages….
….if they are having to resort to this garbage to fill that magazine, then they aren’t as popular with people trying to get published as they pretend
….or as much as some people give them credit for
REPLY: Err. I’m pretty sure you need glasses – Anthony
I went to the eye doctor the other day. I said, “Doc I think I need some new glasses.” And he said, “You sure do, this is a gas station.”
Perhaps Robinson suffers from protanopia like I do – low red visual sensitivity – which reduces the contrast between red and black. As a result the thin lines ,not being so easily visible, appear like a 2. I thought it was 2135 initially as well!
The Sci Am article seemed interesting and neutral. It is news that some researches want a new category and the article reports other criticisms of the current 5 point scale.
I canceled my sub to Sci Am some twenty odd years ago when it changed from being a long established and distinguished scientific journal to an unrecognizable, pseudo-scientific, politicized, editorializing, slanted, opinion and agenda driven pop-tabloid.
Sci Am died in the mid 80’s when it was sold to the Geman group, Holtzbrinck. It has never recovered. I had been reading it since a kid in the 1960’s when I got hooked on my father’s subscription.
Are more F-Grade, Hogwash, Sensationalist Articles Coming Soon? Well, that is what Sci Am has been all about for a very long time.
From respected journal to trashy sheet in less than 130 years.
Sad.
Scientific American and Nature both belong to the German Holtzbrinck group.
@ur momisugly Manfred, just as Thomson Reuters pushing their green agenda through the Globe and Mail in Canada…
I cancelled my subscription in the mid-90s.
Up to the early-90s, they used to interview luminaries like Kuhn, or Murray Gell-Man, and others. Their articles were by prominent scientists in their fields. Then one day, when I received an issue where their interview was of Jeremy Rifkin, I decided they had definitely changed, and for the worse.
DirkH: You have to recognize that you have been misled before it dawns you you that you need help.
I an too trusting.
Anything that creates a break from the past and allows any new event to be some sort of ‘record’ is fair play in some eyes, it would seem.
On the substance raised, it might be worth a separate measure that combines wind speed and duration (which ACE covers if I’m not mistaken) with wind field size (which I don’t think it does). Operationally difficult to calculate with much precision, but perhaps a better guide to potential destructiveness to a stretch of land.
While Wilma in 2005 had a stupidly low central pressure (882mb), the winds dropped from 175mph to below hurricane strength in the space of less than 15 miles during that period of intensity. Katrina was packing a much smaller punch than that at landfall, but was so large that the hurricane-force winds stretched well over 100 miles from the centre and brought a massive storm surge.
I stopped my subscription years ago, and these days I don’t even bother browsing through one on the newstand just to see if it’s interesting enough to buy the individual issue.
When I got the distinct sense that I was getting a lecture and not straight science, I dumped it.
I used to read Scientific American before it became a tabloid…
By the way was hurricane Camille a Cat 6 hurricane? Yep…big hurricanes…unprecedented…
Posited on the basis of more heat means more energy to dissipate – as simple as that. Of course in the cold hard light of day, this is a gross oversimplification as it is extremely difficult to determine exactly how climate translates to specific weather in any particular place.
hey robinson i thought it was 2135 knots too !! we both need glasses !!!
Category six Hurricanes? You’ve got to be kidding. Let’s be serious. The research out there suggests that if there is an increase in sea surface temperature and if other factors don’t change much, then there would be some increase in intensities of storms. These same studies have made it quite clear that even this hypothetical influence is sufficiently weak that, under scenarios with unrealistic amounts of warming, any increase in intensity won’t even be measurable much less noticeable, for decades. Perhaps SciAM should change it’s name to reflect the fact that it is now publishing more on science fantasy than even fiction.
And let’s don’t forget the Labor Day 1935 storm — also category 5. It had a central pressure at landfall lower than Camille. It also killed many more people, but that’s probably because by 1969 meteorology was capable of tracking storms and warning folks in vulnerable areas to get to someplace safe.
I religiously read SA in the library at Uni in the 80s. When employed in the 90s I got my own subscription. As a business owner in the late 90s I got a subscription for my staff room as well. Then, I noticed what you all point out. As a consultant I just bought the occasional copy from the news stand. Then just a few articles online. Now I don’t even bother to pick it up in the dentist waiting room.
Here is a useful link to the NHC breakdown of damages likely expected for each category of hurricane.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/sshws_table.shtml?large
I noticed trivial differences in wind speed values compared to Anthony’s chart. Probably due to rounding.
I stopped paying attention to Un-scientific American after the professor Bjorn Lomborg incident where they spent 10 pages trashing him, then refused to allow him to respond to their allegations, and threatened him with litigation. It’s nothing but a biased tabloid rag now.
Surprisingly enough, every so often, a genuine science article makes it’s way into the magazine, that doesn’t mention CAGW. However the last one I remember reading was about the formation of the Mississippi Embayment, which is clearly visible on any geologic map of the US. This was about 4 years ago. Sadly not much since then. Alas… *sigh*
Mpaul – That was some well timed and funny stuff. Perfect!
Another ex-SA reader here. A slightly OT comment: There was an article in SA a year before Y2K. This is the citation and a very short abstract:
De Jager, Peter. 1999. “Y2K: So Many Bugs…So Little Time.” Scientific American; Jan99,
Vol. 280 Issue 1, p88, 6p. Abstract:
Evaluates the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem and the amount of time left to fix it.
The cause of the problem; Strategies to solve the problem and their drawbacks;
Windowing, date expansion, and encapsulation; Author’s prediction of the severity of
the disruption. INSET: Problems Embedded Everywhere.
The article starts out like this:
————-
An explanation of the psychology behind the Year 2000 computer problem can be found in a perhaps unlikely place: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In the popular children’s classic, the Mad Hatter asks, “Does your watch tell you what year it is?” and Alice replies, “Of course not, but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.”
There are many reasons why programmers, including me, chose to represent years by using just two digits, 55 for 1955 and 10/23/76 or 23/10/76 for October 23, 1976, for example. Decades ago digital real estate was scarce: computer memory was expensive, and typical punch cards were only 80 columns wide. People also rationalized the shortcut by citing the efficiency of reduced keystrokes. Of course, the absence of standards played an enabling role, and many of us truly believed (incorrectly so) that the software we were writing would long be retired before the new millennium. Thanks to sheer inertia and lingering Tea Party logic (why store more than two digits when the century stays the same for such a long time together?), the practice continued long after computer memory and cost constraints were legitimate concerns.
————-
The rest of the article is behind a pay wall, but as I recall, it said Y2K was going to be a several month disaster, and at worst–much longer. I can’t say that marked the nadir of SA, but it certainly brought the problem home to me.
I suspect that most of the Gentle Readers here may not know a lot about everything but instead a lot about a narrow subject. When you find something contrary to what you do know, an out-and-out lie, you can no longer trust ANYTHING in the publication. Hence, I quit reading the S/A in disgust maybe twenty years ago. But, here is the rhetorical question: When the house of lies finally collapses, will the entire editorial staff be terminated?
Probably not. The S/A is corrupt and will probably always be that way. The only hope is that they will go the same way as Newsweek (sold for $1.00-yes, one dollar). But instead of continuing as just another left wing propaganda rag actually become something respectable, unlike Newsweek.
It breaks my heart that something respected and valuable has become just another empty leftist echo. I remember when it was of value to us interested laymen.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
I purchased a newsstand copy in Calgary Airport on the way baq to Iraq. I opened the magazine and saw the words “climate change” before I could get started. The safety card was more informative.