This cover today is making the rounds in the alarmosphere, where a single storm, a single data point in the hundreds of hurricanes that have struck the USA during its history, is now apparently “proof” of global warming causing bad weather. It is just another silly example of Tabloid Climatology™.
Hurricane expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. says:
The only accurate part of this Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover is “stupid”
There, I fixed it for you.
The US Has Had 285 Hurricane Strikes Since 1850: ‘The U.S. has always been vulnerable to hurricanes. 86% of U.S. hurricane strikes occurred with CO2 below Hansen’s safe level of 350 PPM’
If there’s anything in this data at all, it looks like CO2 is preventing more US landfalling hurricanes.
Data from: www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/ushurrlist18512009.txt
Source of graph, Steve Goddard.
In case you wish to tell Bloomberg about this fix:
Bloomberg Businessweek Editor
+1 212 617 3279
UPDATE: from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
Normalized US Hurricane Damage 1900-2012, Including Sandy
The graph above shows normalized US hurricane damage, based on data from ICAT, which applies an extension to the methodology of Pielke et al. 2008. The 2012 estimate for Sandy comes from Moody’s, and is an estimate. The red line represents a linear best fit to the data — it is flat.
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It’s Global cooling in West Virginia
@AlbertaEngineer
“@Dodgy
The cover provides a bold statement which anyone with even cursory knowledge of Pielke or Goddard’s work would contest. Sure, I could read the article, but then I’d never get those 5 minutes back. Why even waste the effort?
No one ever said proper debate, or, indeed, proper science, was easy. I also suspect, with a headline like that, that the text of the article will be short on balanced judgement based on real data, and long on activist scares. But I wouldn’t want to stir up an editor before I had even read his piece. Note that Steve McKintyre famously does not comment in public that global warming is a scam, though he almost certainly thinks so. He confines himself to pointing out provable failures in the science, and, when this whole mess collapses, he will be in a much stronger position that those who make unprovable statements. I just think we should apply a similar measured approach here.
Otherwise the editor could just turn round and say – “You didn’t even read the item before complaining…”
It should read – Climate Science is WRONG – STUPID
There are lot of people in the New Jersey/New York area now getting a taste of living (temporarily) in a “low carbon” world. And they don’t seem to like it very much.
Well at least now you guys know how it feels when the MSM actually does push AGW.
John Brookes,
When does the MSM not push AGW??
I am actually glad to see such a statement on a widely-read publication. Years from now (if not now to many of us), it will be valid proof of how stupid our elected politicians can be. Which builds the case for LESS government, rather than MORE.
To Pull My Finger, blackswhitewash.com, and others – You are quite right that the extreme warmists will never listen to reason or change their minds. Ever. But when you ‘argue’ with them on a site such as this, or at the dinner table for that matter, it isn’t them you should be trying to reach, it is everyone else. For all the domination of the MSM by the warmists, they are losing the battle for the public mind thanks to the likes of Anthony Watts and the scientific method. So instead of disengaging, keep arguing with the warmists but recognise who your real ‘audience’ is.
People forget, and don’t want to be bothered with history. It’s THIS storm which is the biggest and baddest, and we keep hearing about all these terrible climate-related events world-wide, and when combine the two, voila, there has to be an explaination, and the default is manmade warming/climate change/disruption/chaos/etc. It’s an affliction particularly of the weak-minded. I call it Climnesia.
Mike Jonas hit the nail on the head. It is tedious correcting alarmists like Jan Perlwitz, Joel Shore, Gary Lance and others. But with WUWT’s immense traffic, their pseudo-science must be countered with facts. The readership can then make an intelligent, informed decision. We cannot let the alarmist narrative go unchallenged. Ceding the battleground to the enemy is something I will not do. We have the facts and the scientific evidence. They only have their narrative.
problem: The alarmists are flush with money and media coverage and we are not… no big oil checks, no ngos, no grants, no huge foundation donations, no cover pages, no government backing. bummer. By these factors alone, not the proper science, they will never learn and neither will a limited swatch of public mindless followers. Yet, nearly powerless, we are making huge dents in their pseudo-science armor, tearing up their collective propaganda, just keep plunking and talking to people about you that are intelligent enough to understand the various reasons in science as to why they are so wrong.
This BS is nothing more then the opening shot to try and justify higher insurance rates. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. It is simply greed in the extreem.
Watts refers to Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. as a “hurricane expert.” I’d just like to point out that Dr. Pielke’s doctorate is in political science and, last I checked, that doesn’t make him a meteorologist or authority on physical oceanography.
REPLY: But his peer reviewed papers on hurricanes do. Here’s one with NHC scientist Chris Landsea:
Pielke, Jr., R. A., Gratz, J., Landsea, C. W., Collins, D., Saunders, M. A., and Musulin, R., 2008. Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 29-42.
More:
Klein, R and RA Pielke Jr. 2002, Bad weather? Then sue the weatherman! Part I: Legal liability for public sector forecasts. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 83:1791-1799. (PDF)
Klein, R and RA Pielke Jr. 2002, Bad weather? Then sue the weatherman! Part II: Legal liability for private sector forecasts. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 83:1801-1807. (PDF)
Here’s one more recent:
Normalized Tornado Damage in the United States: 1950-2011
in press, Environmental Hazards
Kevin M. Simmons, Daniel Sutter and Roger Pielke, Jr.
point is, he’s an expert on severe weather in general and damages caused by it. That’s germane to the issue Bloomberg cites of damage. – Anthony
It’s an island on the water, stupid.
Pull My Finger says [at 1:52 pm]
“I don’t use this term lightly, but Bloomberg is a fascist. He thinks he is right about everything and will break the law to his will and force his agenda on all of NYC come hell or, um, high water.”
YES, but this isn’t new. Only the pandering opp for the “ex”Democrat to preen for more politically correct causes like this one, at this time – after a natural disaster – is new.
And stats show that when wealth reaches $20 million and rises thereafter, people become Democrats by 80 to 90%. Why? Mostly because they are guilt ridden by their financial success.
First I would like to say how very sorry I am to hear about the loss of life and damage to what is a beautiful part of the USA.
Secondly I would like to ask Mr Bloomberg is he sure that it is Global Warming that has caused this hurricane?
I think it is due to passive smoking, when people were allowed to smoke wherever they wanted to, storms like this never happened! Now smokers have to stand in the street and look at the result!
Mr Bloomberg this disaster is your fault!
Roger Pielke, Jr.
Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Is there any way to combat the stupidity that comes with global warming theory?
Can you convince a pro-AGW person to be objective and look at the actual hurricane record objectively?
No.
Only the people that were objective to start with, can be swayed and, theoritically, they were swayed long ago if they were truly objective to start with.
So, its a battle that can’t be won. They will use every hurricane, every tornado, every flood, every perfectively normal weather day they can to score points.
They just want people to agree with them and to score points. Its not like they are actually doing anything themselves to slow “global warming”. They have staked themselves to the theory of global warming and the objective people are just stuck with that.
Perhaps we should just agree with them and make a pact that we will both use no electricity for the next 24 hours (to both do our own small part in helping forestall the hurricanes to come – Reverse psychology that is – and then we should extend that for a full year).
Mr. Watts needs to return to West Lafayette and take some science classes at Purdue University.
November 1, 2012 at 4:03 pm | John Brookes says:
—————————————————————
Ignore the troll, he’s just another [snip] from UWA.
Louise says:
November 1, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Are hurricanes common in October?
Is there any measure of energy in those hurricanes so that we can see whether they are more energetic?
I am assuming you are in NY/NJ and don’t have enough power to Google.
You don’t have to look far to find more energetic hurricanes in October. Category 1 hurricane Nadine which became a non-tropical system on October 4th 2012 had an ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) of 25.6 (10,000*kt²) which was more than twice as energetic as Category 2 hurricane Sandy which had an ACE of 12.5 (10,000*kt²).
The difference between them is that Nadine didn’t make landfall at high spring tide and even if it did the storm surge would have been reduced because Nadine had a higher central pressure (978mb) than Sandy (940mb). The inverse barometer effect would make at least 3 feet difference between their respective storm surges.
In fact Nadine never made landfall anywhere.
Nothing to do with CO2. A lot to do with luck, or the lack of it.
For those of you who dont turn in to Huffington Post, this is pretty standard stuff. Stupid is used frequently. But then it cuts both ways.
http://www.edf.org/climate/how-we-know-the-earth-is-warming
It also says in the copy: “Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all,” Amazing theses people have short memories, remember when they refused to debate with us? Josh Tyrangiel is the stupid one as they are going to lose a heap of money here, really mate call me a stupid denier “I want my money back”!
To those who say the CAGW issue is dying:
I want to believe that it’s true. But then along comes a CO2 related issue like the article below from Fox News, and it makes me think twice:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/11/01/eco-taxes-study-financed-by-us-treasury-will-link-tax-code-to-carbon-emissions/?test=latestnews
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.