All one need to do to explode the memes that paid political activists Bill McKibben and Brad Johnson are pushing is to look at a history book. In this case, WeatherBELL’s Joe Bastardi points us to NOAA’s National Hurricane Center history book:
Source: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/images/tracks/majors_1951_1960.jpg
Joe says via Twitter:
Track of major hurricanes, 1951-1960..for the record: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/images/tracks/majors_1951_1960.jpg … How would you like that period (54-60) pic.twitter.com/mIfH8CGt
So what were those 6 IN TWO YEARS ( 5 majors)??? CAROL, EDNA, HAZEL, CONNIE,DIANE IONE, Nothing even CLOSE on east coast since then
Along the same lines of looking at history, what was the CO2 level then? The Keeling Curve tells us:
Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Looks like the CO2 level was less than 310ppm prior to 1958, when the data begins.
So here’s the question, if 350 ppm is the “safe” level as defined by activists Dr. James Hansen and Bill McKibben how did all those hurricanes happen back then?
From http://www.350.org/en/node/48
Regarding the last question, we are only doomed if we continue to listen to opportunists like Bill McKibben that try to spin fear of climate (aka Tabloid Climatology) into every weather event now.
h/t to Tom Nelson
In related news, see why the sea floor geography increased the storm surge, as Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. explains:
New York City is particularly vulnerable to storm surge because of a geographic characteristic called the New York Bight.
See the full post here
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I heard our local radio scientist claim Sandy is unprecedented, but he ads weasel words like ‘in recent memory’ to weasel out of it. Sadly the public buys it hook-line-and-sinker.
Edwards and Gunga Din ask “why NYC’s subway tunnels were not (in Oct 2012) protected by flood gates?”
In particular, given the history discussed in this thread, did the several hurricanes of the 1950’s level the subways unflooded? Are the accounts of those storms now incomplete and so omit reference to flooded tunnels? Or did floodgates exist in the 1950’s which have been removed or allowed to erode in the decades since?
And what about earlier? Recall that the NYC subway system was built by PRIVATE and competing companies. There were three different rail companies operating more or less in parallel for most of the first half of the 20th century. The city increased regulatory price controls until the companies were no long profitable at a five cent fare, then turned the whole system into a “publicly owned” — government — on the promise of holding the fares down. It would not at ALL surprise me to learn that the private companies designed in flood-control measures to protect their capital investments that the city government refuse to spend money maintaining (in efforts to keep the voters happier with unrealistic fares and fees.)
But all this is conjecture. Does anybody actually know what flood prevention measures were where and maintained by who over the history of that system?
This is off topic but for a good reason:
Friday Funny – global warming home experiment kit
Has evidence of Malware in it and should be checked for it as my computer Malware detection software detected it in all three ways of entering the blog post.
I did not continue to enter as I believe it is an infection that is sitting there ready to exploit and spread.
I am not kidding at all!
Hazel, also an October (1954) hurricane that made landfall in the Carolinas, did $1.1B (2009 dollars) damage and killed 81 people IN TORONTO ONTARIO. Hazel’s name was even retired to mark its death and devastation. Wiki:
“Hurricane Hazel was the deadliest and costliest hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm killed as many as 1,000 people in Haiti before striking the United States near the border between North and South Carolina, as a Category 4 hurricane. After causing 95 fatalities in the US, Hazel struck Canada as an extratropical storm, raising the death toll by 81 people, mostly in Toronto. As a result of the high death toll and the damage Hazel caused, its name was retired from use for North Atlantic hurricanes.
In Haiti, Hazel destroyed 40% of the coffee trees and 50% of the cacao crop, affecting the economy for several years to come. The hurricane made landfall in the Carolinas, and destroyed most waterfront dwellings near its point of impact. On its way to Canada, it affected several more states, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, bringing gusts near 160 km/h (100 mph) and causing …”
No comparison at all. A large part of consensus science’s CAGW seems to be to bury history to make things unprecedented. Actually, with all the green movement and lefty politicos aware of the late Stephen Schneiderr’s encouragement to exaggerate, disregard uncertainty, generally subvert science and block dissent for “the good” and their willingness to do so makes for a very disheartening pircture. It is not a few crack pots. It is hundreds of millions of people (admittedly blissfully ignorant) who have bought into and feel good about the lying, cheating, intimidation and destruction of economies. Look at the silence and even the support of the so-called 97% of scientiists on such things as the Climategate affair, the whitewashes and the recent Nobelgate matter. Disheartening except for the equally surprising fact that the comparatively few sceptics have been so successful at confronting and beginning to dismantle this ugly beast.
Although it happened in March, the Ash Wed. storm or 1962, exceeded flooding by Sandy over a wide area because it was stalled by a blocking cold front, and continued to grind on the coastal areas for 5 consecutive high tides.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/ash-wednesday-storm-of-1962-50-year-anniversary/2012/03/06/gIQAkSY4uR_blog.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday_Storm_of_1962
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/10/29/hurricane-sandy-will-join-other-storms-that-were-rare-freaks-of-nature/
Add to that a few seldom remembered storms like the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, and the Great Gale of 1815.
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/events/gh1635.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_September_Gale_of_1815
The subway tunnels flooded in 1992 as well.
A few degrees colder and we would have seen something similar to the Great Blizzard of 1888.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blizzard_of_1888
Larry
I repeat (and Anthony can confirm) — we are continuing the all-time record stretch without a major hurricane making landfall in the United States. Sandy (at least according to the comments above) wasn’t even technically a hurricane at landfall, let alone a major hurricane.
My mother drove home from the NC beach hours in front of Hazel (pregnant with me) to huddle down in our Raleigh home as it roared by overhead. We endured Hurricane Fran a decade or so agowhich came ashore as a category three storm (following almost the same track as Hazel) and was still category one as it roared over my adult head in our Durham home. It was two full days before I could drive out of our neighborhood as pin oaks four to six feet in diameter were picked up by the storm and spun around like toothpicks through power lines and down onto the roadways. Hurricane Floyd a few years later wasn’t much of a hurricane as far as force was concerned, but dropped so much rain into the state that every major waterway flooded, creating riverways that were miles out of their normal shores throughout eastern North Carolina.
The reason Sandy did so much damage is twofold. First, it was physically a very large storm (like Fran) so one could be hundreds of miles away from its center and still experience a lot of damage. The second reason is the eternal one — in the many decades since a tropical storm made a serious hit on the Maryland/NJ/NY seaboard, the coastal population has probably increased tenfold, with huge investments in property simply not designed to withstand hurricanes. That is just dumb, of course — hurricanes happen. In NC we get a reminder of this every few years, because we (like Florida) are pretty much one of the leading pins in Hurricane Alley where the outer banks poke out almost to the Gulf Stream. Even so, people still build ticky-tack houses on what should be unoccupied barrier islands down here and then just wait for the hurricane that no construction can endure. But the long-term communities, the ones that have survived a century or more, survive by building to withstand anything less than a direct hit by the eye or the strongest winds to the east of the eye.
Not so in New Jersey. Atlantic City, famous as a place that exploits an unfortunate weakness in the human psyche to the massive enrichment of its builders, made a “bet” themselves with Nature when they built their garish pits of human suffering next to the ocean. Guess they lost. Not so in New York, largely built ON AN ISLAND in direct contact with the sea. It isn’t a matter of if, when you do such a thing, only when. There has never been a time in human history when it was “safe” to build human habitations on the outer shore (or for that matter, inland). Damn few human structures can stand up to a tornado or hurricane force winds and storm surges, and…
hurricanes happen!
In Hartford, perhaps they hardly happen, but hardly is not never.
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@RGB
Yes. 2568 days since Wilma made landfall on Oct 24, 2005
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?m1=10&d1=24&y1=2005&m2=11&d2=3&y2=2012&ti=on
A year ago Chris Landsea explained it quite clearly:
“The bottom line is that the current very active period since 1995 is indistinguishable from the 1940s to the 1960s – it is busy now, but it was just as active in the mid-20th Century.”
“This is a natural fluctuation driven by the Atlantic Ocean, which experiences distinct warm and cool periods that are not tied to the long-term global warming signal. When the Atlantic is in a warm phase, not only are the waters warmer by ~ 1/2°F (~1/4°C), but the atmosphere has more moisture, less wind shear to tear incipient hurricanes apart, and more vigorous and plentiful thunderstorms that fuel the cyclones. Conversely, in the cool phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the waters are slightly cooler and the atmosphere is drier, has more inhibiting wind shear, and cannot sustain the thunderstorm activity as readily.”
“These multi-year swings in ocean temperature are nearly an exact match to the adjusted number of tropical storms, adjusted hurricanes, U.S. hurricanes, and normalized U.S. hurricane damages. When stratified by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, there is a doubling in the number of major hurricanes, a 50% increase in the frequency of U.S. landfalling major hurricanes, and over three times as many Caribbean hurricane strikes between the warm and cool phases.”
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/
This focus on Sandy is not a bad thing. The true believers of course will scream the news from the roof tops and gather in small excited groups to crow about it.
But there will be many sensible people who have been just going with the flow believing what they are told who will start looking at all the fuss and thinking to themselves that there is a something a bit wrong with the story.
They will do a bit of research see a few facts from history , and realize they are simply the target in a bizarre marketing campaign. The more of this trumpeting of every single little weather glitch there is, the more questions will arise.
I’m reading news reports that are saying Sandy has brought a lot of snow, here is an example;
Nov 2, 2012 “Helicopters pick up distressed NC hiker on Appalachian Trail stranded in Sandy snowstorm”
http://www.newser.com/article/da2a4v683/helicopters-pick-up-distressed-nc-hiker-on-appalachian-trail-stranded-in-sandy-snowstorm.html
Sandy Snowstorm? wasn’t the tropical Cyclone Called Sandy and the cold front that came down was in fact just a large cold front that brought with it the snow. Has the name Sandy officially been carried over to these snowstorms or is it just more tabloid climatology?
2012 – 1954 = 58 years.
If there is heightened hurricane activity up the east coast in the downswing of the 60-ish year AMO cycle the next few years could be painful. Sandy may be first of the new series.
Could someone edit the Hurricane Sandy page to reflect this information since the wiki page says the last hurricane to strike New England was in 1938, Already wiki pages exist to show that the 3 (Carol 54 Edna 54 and Donna 60) all struck New England. People are trying to make the period very long since the last strike
Are people really so stupid that they don’t understand that natural disasters are – ahem – natural?
Don’t worry, I’ve answered my own question. I’m beginning to think my middle name must be Spock.
Alex ‘Spock’ Heyworth
Left this at The New York Times post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/nyregion/after-getting-back-to-normal-the-big-job-is-to-face-a-new-reality.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0&pagewanted=all
Bruce Hall Michigan
So many common sense ways to upgrade infrastructure; so little historical sense when it comes to the reason given: “Climate change and extreme weather are presenting government — and the public — with some overwhelming choices.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/02/next-time-somebody-tries-to-tell-you-hurricane-sandy-was-an-unprecedented-east-coast-hurricane-show-them-this/
Thanks Anthony, I have placed links to every NOAA National Hurricane Center – Major U.S. Landfalling Hurricane Tracks decade, from 1851 to 2005 in my page “Observatorio ARVAL – Meteorology for South Florida and the Caribbean”, at http://www.oarval.org/meteorologFL.htm
Also in the Spanish version at http://www.oarval.org/meteorolog.htm
While Sandy was not an unprecedented in terms of wind, as was mentioned in several comments, the confluence of the tropical storm with the nor’easter made for a rather unusual storm in terms of the area affected.
Add to this the increase in population density since the prior storms, and the extensive media coverage, and a rather nasty storm becomes a “frankenstorm”.
Luckily I personally was not affected by it to the extent of those who suffered, and are still suffering due to the loss of property from the flooding, but the there were a considerable number of large trees downed in my neighborhood.
Understandably, these losses prevent those who suffered damages to put this in perspective.
This storm came close to the nightmare of may meteorologists, running up the east coat to New York Harhot.
@Sparks, Lol, very good.
Kind of funny, but if the Alarmist had actually stuck to their science, they could claim that the LACK of catastrophic weather is a symptom of AGW. While it is indicative of Global Warming, it is not demonstrative of AGW, but at least they would be half way there.
Many people affected by Sandy have lost everything and deserve our sympathy. That is especially true for women who have lost the dear home they have lovingly tended all their lives. These people should not have their misery used as a justification or proof of otherwise unfounded environmental myths or to foster one or another candidate for political office.
People need to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you get! Climate is what you expect. Climate is based on precedence. When there is very little on account of a lack of satelite data before 1950, you take the average which then becomes skewed. Especially in the case where a tropical cyclone is converting to an extratropical cyclone at this time of year. BTW The computer models did an outstanding job with these atmospheric dynamics!
Hello,
We’ve met a little group of tourists yesterday, they have shown us something really cool, just take a look
gerjaison