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.
The only legitimate reasoning goes the opposite way.
Storm have been strongest during the little ice age. Without the little warming, the storm might have been much stronger.
And Piers Corbyn expects more such storms with cooling temperatures in the coming years.
It is disturbing how a billionaire owner of a mainstream media outlet has total control over journalism.
Manfred says:
November 2, 2012 at 12:36 am
“It is disturbing how a billionaire owner of a mainstream media outlet has total control over journalism.”
Well, there’s competition (WSJ, FoxNews, blogs). BTW, a trillionaire government owner ain’t much better, see the public media dominated landscape in Germany.
John Brookes says:
November 1, 2012 at 7:36 pm
“Maybe the “skeptics” can just be quiet for a few years, until the weather returns to normal?”
You must have your history knowledge from the wikipedia. (Which, for every famine in the history of Europe, blames everything but the weather…)
This is a Zero Hedge article regarding Bloomberg.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-01/mike-bloomberg-vote-obama-vote-climate-change
This is a Zero Hedge article regrading Bloomberg. I discovered in the comments that the Mayor had a really nice compound in the Bahamas. One of his neighbors is former Italian PM Berlisconi and we know how the Mafia in Italy loves wind (and has ties to Boston based First Wind). Also, his his other neighbor would be Angus King, former governor, senate candidate and wind speculator from Maine who has really good deals going on with First Wind (His son is a VP there), King also sat on the board of a Bahamas’ based bank. Bloomberg has been contributing huge money for King re-election.
I don’t have time to put the two together right now but compare envelop of the bars on Pielke’s graph to AMO:
http://i49.tinypic.com/xbfqtw.png
The earlier surge in damage was centred on 1944, cf AMO high. The recent surge in damage peaked in 2004, cf AMO.
In fact Pielke’s graph gives a strong suggestion (that can be found in a lot of time series) that global warming pasted its peak around 2004.
We are not cooling.
There’s nothing a businessman likes more than forcing the people to pay tax to the government which is then forced to spend money on huge scale projects on their own doorstep. No arguments, no real competition, no need to keep costs under control. Guaranteed big fat profits.
They’ve been doing this ever since the Hoover Dam. Republicans, Democrats, Labour Conservative – it doesn’t matter. They just have different businessmen lobbying them to raise taxes for their own pet projects. They don’t like Communism but they just love Socialism.
STUPID is living on an island that you KNOW gets hit by hurricanes, then building a bunch of underground tunnels and holes, then making your lives wholly dependent on these, then leaving all the entrances to such things at ground level, then blaming the rest of the world for the inevitable consequences of your stupidity.
J.
Yeah, there’s a ton of money that Obama will be directing, he’d be stupid not to do anything and everything he says. Obama probably can’t win the election, but this whole climate change hurricane thing will give him a huge boost. At the least it will stop/slow the swing against him.
John Brookes
Maybe just once you’ll develop cojones and be a half decent human being, not linking every death and misfortune with your blind beliefs and lies. How can you stoop so low to use deaths and destruction to foster your favourtie lie? Don’t you have any ounce of deceny in your blood?
This site is comedy at its best. Wild guess is that most people here are Christian fundamentalists that are creationists/intelligent designers. A sane rational person knowing nothing about science would be inclined to trust a worldwide body of scientists’ opinions rather than businesses, political parties, think tanks, or the like that have a collective agenda to promote a particular conclusion regardless of the evidence. Of course you will probably claim some sort of secret agenda scientists around the world collude for even though they are disconnected financially and separately research and operate. Science has led to more understanding of the natural world than any other mode of inquiry; This is undeniable. Science through peer review and rational discussion, as well as independent reseArch is self correcting, many times. The knowledge changes with evidence. And the history shows that knowledge is sometimes easy to dismiss– eg galleleo, evolution, etc. Just keep in mind that earth is governed by natural forces and chemical reactions that don’t given a hoot about money, power, or ignorance.
This is so funny! I’m sitting here on an early Friday morning having coffee, and reading these comments. Guess what is playing on TV? Casino. The interplay of the above comments with the Casino script could not have been done better. Art imitates life? Did the casino bosses really just disappear? I think not!
I will leave Bloomberg out of this; he has to be fairly intelligent but that does not mean that he knows anything about the climate and CO2 other than to use this scam, as so many others try to do, and that is to make money off of it and in doing so the average citizen of the WORLD must pay for their increase in wealth.
I do wonder how many of those that line up for gas, complain about no electricity, transportation being down, etc., also totally believe the propaganda about the ”evil” energy companies and how carbon based energy is destroying their lives. It seems that without carbon based energy, their lives are effected in a way that they can actually see and understand while the consequences of an imagined ”boogey man” CO2 are in the land of the imaginary, science fiction realm of the Al gores of the world.
Mayor Palpatine is always right. He saved us all from soft drinks over 16 oz. Don’t you feel better now.
/sarc off
Bloomberg doesn’t know if climate change caused Sandy or not…
“…while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be — given this week’s devastation — should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action…”
In other words; “we’ve had some bad weather so let’s spend hundreds of billions on something that may or may not have any effect on the climate whatsoever.”
And by the way… exactly whom is he calling “stupid”?
Hurricane season lasts until the end of November, Stupid.
Bloomberg is just looking for money. An Obama endorsement can get him some federal aid. Cheeping about global warming could bring in business opportunities. He simply doesn’t care if he is committing fraud.
I’ve probably missed it somewhere, but what was Sandy’s category rating at the time of landfall? I’ve heard Category 2, but was that before landfall?
Apparently my language was too strong, it should have read,
“No it isn’t you cognitively challenged donkey’s rear end!”
There is a shorter two word version starting with d and ending with s that the mods found too harsh for family viewing…hey ho!
Most likely scenario is that Bloomberg got a call from the Whitehouse telling him that since he told Obama to “go to New Jersey” (kind of like telling him to go to hell) and forget NYC, he could forget getting all the FEMA money he might want. So, he did some serious backpedaling using climate change as an excuse. Being just over three feet tall and having a nine foot tall ego, and being a master politician, he may have also worried about his huge liberal base in the city. So he reverses himself on endorsing Romney, endorses Obama and uses climate change as an excuse. Not stupid, just slimey.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/01/helping-bloomberg-understand-stupid/#comment-1132810
John Brooks, Looked pretty normal to me, given the other weather systems, the high tide, the full moon, and the time of year, as well as other factors not mentioned yet.
Roger Knights says:
November 1, 2012 at 9:47 pm
“Regarding buildings, none of them in NYC collapsed from hydrostatic pressure, although none were designed with break-away walls.”
Most likely water entered all of those buildings through broken windows, etc., and flooded the ground floor, relieving the hydrostatic pressure.
I was merely arguing against your idea of attempting to hold back the water with stronger first floor exterior walls. It’s just not practical. Aside from the pressure, there are many other avenues of entry into the foundation of a building, including sewer service, electrical service conduits, service elevators and such.
As for the subways, yes they are always under hydrostatic pressure, and there are weep holes to relieve it. Water is always pumped out of the ones below sea level. 8 feet of additional water pressure would likely have collapsed them, which is why they are allowed to flood. Flooding is bad, but collapsed walls would be much more expensive to repair. The tunnels beneath the rivers may be able to withstand the higher pressures, but those under the city are probably not.
Probably getting OT here, so sorry.
scientificintegrity says: November 1, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Hmmm. I thought it had been renamed ‘Climate Change’.
____________________________________________
(In the AGW pseudo-science patwa.)
You are soo yesterday, dude, its “Climate Disruption” now.
.
Pamela Gray says:
November 2, 2012 at 6:38 am
“This is so funny! I’m sitting here on an early Friday morning having coffee, and reading these comments. Guess what is playing on TV? Casino. The interplay of the above comments with the Casino script could not have been done better. Art imitates life? Did the casino bosses really just disappear? I think not!”
Great movie!! My favorite line is after all the bosses say not to worry that Stone is a good stand up guy,Remo says he agrees but “why take a chance?” Next scene they shoot him in the head. Why take a chance?
JAS says: November 2, 2012 at 5:17 am
STUPID is living on an island that you KNOW gets hit by hurricanes.
_________________________________________________
I am sorry to say this, bro Americans, but:
Stupid is building houses made out of straw and wood. Even the Three Little Pigs discovered that houses should be made of bricks, if there was any wind around.
Stupid is having electric cables on poles. Europe had that system, errrm, back in 1924.
Perhaps this storm should be renamed as ‘Hurricane Wolfie’ – the storm that huffed and puffed and blew the US east coast houses down…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Little_Pigs
http://www.lifebyphil.com/Three-Little-Pigs4.jpg
.
Instead of Obama spending all that newly printed money on stupid renewable energy projects, the US is in desperate need of some decent infrastructure, if it wants to compete with living standards in Europe.
.