Helping Bloomberg understand 'stupid'

@Bill r. – You might start by ridding yourself of the logical fallacies – you do know what those are, right? As for your lecture on science, we know. The trouble is that Alarmist science is pseudoscience based merely on an assumption. I’d say stick around and you might learn, but sadly, like most trolls your only agenda is to throw your little stones and run.

Mike O says:
November 2, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Last straw. Cancelled my BusinessWeek subscription today.

I did so a year ago. It’s easy to do online at their site. Just have the label at hand to provide the exact address, etc.

Silver Ralph says:
November 2, 2012 at 10:21 am
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.

Wind rarely knocks down our wood buildings, tornados excepted. House damage or collapse usually occurs after the roof is blown off or a tree falls on a house–both of which can happen equally well to a brick house, with equally bad results. Brick is a poor insulator of heat/cold and noise. Wood-framed walls can be filled with blown-in insulation. Brick cracks if a house subsides over time; wood-frames flex a bit and degrade gently. Brick is dangerous in earthquake zones, of which the US has more than Europe.

Gary Lance says:
November 2, 2012 at 1:44 pm
I see an increase in the number of named storms and hurricanes over the years and the data supports this chart.

But those counts are inflated in recent years because of improved detection technology. This is acknowledged by all.

Gary Lance says:
November 2, 2012 at 6:58 pm

Roger Knights says:
November 2, 2012 at 4:29 pm

You can compare data during times when reporting was equal and see an obvious correlation between the number of storms and SSTs. That is only logical . . .

Here is a quote from Wikipedia’s article on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Multidecadal_Oscillation, which indicates that the SSTs may decline after 2015 due to a downturn in the AMO.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a mode of variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principal expression in the sea surface temperature (SST) field.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
Relation to Atlantic hurricanes
In viewing actual data on a short time horizon, sparse experience would suggest the frequency of major hurricanes is not strongly correlated with the AMO. During warm phases of the AMO, the number of minor hurricanes (category 1 and 2) saw a modest increase.[9] With full consideration of meteorological science, the number of tropical storms that can mature into severe hurricanes is much greater during warm phases of the AMO than during cool phases, at least twice as many; the AMO is reflected in the frequency of severe Atlantic hurricanes.[6] The hurricane activity index is found to be highly correlated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.[9] If there is an increase in hurricane activity connected to global warming, it is currently obscured by the AMO quasi-periodic cycle.[9] The AMO alternately obscures and exaggerates the global increase in temperatures due to human-induced global warming.[6] Based on the typical duration of negative and positive phases of the AMO, the current warm regime is expected to persist at least until 2015 and possibly as late as 2035. Enfield et al. assume a peak around 2020.[10]

Here’s a quote from your second link, Wikipedia. (Your first link was just a chart):

The North Atlantic Hurricane Database, or … HURDAT contains numerous systematic as well as some random errors in the database. Additionally, analysis techniques have changed over the years at NHC as their understanding of tropical cyclones has developed, leading to biases in the historical database.

But if “the number of storms” is an artifact of the sensitivity of the detection method, then the correlation is spurious. Since 1950, the persons doing the “naming” have set a lower bar on what qualifies as a named storm, including short-lived storms that would not have been included earlier, as indicated by the following past comments (with links) from WUWT. (I couldn’t find a quote to back me up, but I think I recall seeing quotes on WUWT to the effect that the namers have become readier to name shorties as storms in the “naughties” and subsequently than previously.)

Latitude says:
May 28, 2011 at 6:36 am
May 26, 2011
No Long-term Trend in Atlantic Hurricane Numbers
Short-duration storms are presently identified much more readily than they were, say, prior to the satellite era
If the Atlantic tropical cyclone history is divided up into “shorties” and, we guess, “longies,” something very interesting pops out. Over the entire record, there is a big upward trend in the number of “shorties” but there is no trend in the annual number of “longies”
Obviously, lumping the two together would produce an apparent upward trend in the total annual number of tropical storms and hurricanes—and give fuel for the fire which burns for those trying to develop a link to anthropogenic global warming.
This situation is akin to the observed record of tornadoes in the U.S.—the number of weak tornadoes has increased markedly in the last half century, while the number of strong tornadoes shows no such behavior
The positive trend in total annual number of tornadoes is driven not by climate change (as some would have you believe), but instead by changing observational methods.

“”Our results provide a context for interpreting studies exploring trend behavior in the North Atlantic tropical storm activity starting prior to the 1940s. In particular, the conclusions of certain studies reporting large secular increases in North Atlantic tropical storm activity in which shorties are included [e.g., Holland and Webster, 2007; Mann et al., 2007] could be affected by what we interpret as likely spurious nonphysical trends unless an alternative physical explanation can be uncovered for the pronounced increase in shorties starting from the middle of the 20th century. Further, statistical models of tropical storm activity built using century‐scale records that include shorties [e.g., Mann et al., 2007; Sabbatelli and Mann, 2007; Mann et al., 2009] likely include an element reflecting the spurious shorties in the record.””
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/05/26/no-long-term-trend-in-atlantic-hurricane-numbers/

——————-

Cam_S says:
June 10, 2011 at 8:49 am
Surge in North Atlantic hurricanes due to better detectors, not climate change
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/highlights/highlights.cgi?action=show&doi=10.1029/2010JD015493&jc=jd
Is the recorded increase in short-duration North Atlantic tropical storms spurious? (Hurricanes)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010JD015493.shtml

——————-

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/new-peer-reviewed-study-surge-in-north-atlantic-hurricanes-due-to-better-detectors-not-climate-change/
A spate of research has indicated there may be a link between climate change and the prevalence of North Atlantic tropical cyclones. Upon closer inspection, however, researchers have noted that the prominent upswing in tropical cyclone detections beginning in the mid twentieth century is attributable predominantly to the detection of “shorties,” tropical cyclones with durations of less than 2 days.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/05/hurricanes-and-global-warming-still-no-connection/
Alec Rawls says:
August 23, 2011 at 12:01 pm
“It appears to us that more extreme weather events – like floods and hurricanes – are becoming more frequent and pronounced.”
See “Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity,” Ryan Maue, 2011:
http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/2011GL047711-pip.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/19/ryan-maues-paper-in-grl-in-agus-weekly-highlight/
A new research study shows that overall global tropical cyclone activity has decreased to historically low levels during the past 5 years.
Maue analyzes global tropical cyclone data from 1970 through May 2011 to examine the considerable interannual variability of the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) metric. Since 2006, global and Northern Hemisphere ACE have decreased significantly, reaching the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Also, during 2010-2011, the overall global frequency of tropical cyclones reached a historical low. The researcher demonstrates that much of the variability in tropical cyclone energy during the past 40 years is clearly associated with natural large-scale climate oscillations such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Incidentally, here’s a quote from Wikipedia’s entry for North Atlantic Oscillation, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation . It seemingly implies that there is no necessary, or “logical,” connection between warmer SSTs and hurricane frequency, at least in the Gulf, assuming the SSTs there weren’t greatly different during the two periods:

As paleotempestological research has shown, few major hurricanes struck the Gulf coast during 3000–1400 BC and again during the most recent millennium. These quiescent intervals were separated by a hyperactive period during 1400 BC and 1000 AD, when the Gulf coast was struck frequently by catastrophic hurricanes and their landfall probabilities increased by 3–5 times.[5][6][7]

Wind rarely knocks down our wood buildings, tornados excepted. House damage or collapse usually occurs after the roof is blown off or a tree falls on a house–both of which can happen equally well to a brick house, with equally bad results. Brick is a poor insulator of heat/cold and noise. Wood-framed walls can be filled with blown-in insulation. Brick cracks if a house subsides over time; wood-frames flex a bit and degrade gently. Brick is dangerous in earthquake zones, of which the US has more than Europe.
_____________________________________________
Houses in the US seem to be falling down all the time, while UK houses regularly get 50 – 70 mph winds and stay erect.
Brick is a very good insulator, especially with blown in insulation in the cavity.
Brick does not catch fire.
Brick houses are built on a concrete raft, if the area suffers from subsidence (as much of northern UK is). They do not crack.
Mediterranean areas that have seismic activity use reinforced concrete, instead of brick (and concrete walls too, on many occasions). In fact, this appears to be an even cheaper method of construction than brick-on-raft.
Brick and concrete houses would withstand both hurricane and tornado, as has been amply demonstrated on many occasions.
.

Oops–I indented instead of outdented before “If there IS a cavity.”