The hype meter at the Discovery Channel has pegged at full McKibben. See this:
Sandy wasn’t even a category 1 hurricane when it made landfall. Yet somehow, that elevates it for “megastorm” status?
I wonder if AccuWeather meteorologist Henry Margusity (who was heavily relied upon in the show) knew before he got suckered into this show that they’d make such incredible leaps of labeling?
Now, with a storm that doesn’t even come close to storms that have hit the area in the past, such as 1954 Hurricane Hazel or the Great Hurricane of 1938, what will they call a Cat3 or greater storm if it hits the area? Here’s some possibilities:
- SuperDuperStorm
- MegaMegaStorm
- GigaStorm
- SandyOnSteroids
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Storm
- Spawn of MegaDoppler 9000
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The storm came ashore on the high spring tide. Most unfortunate timing to be sure. But let’s not make it something it was not. There is always a chance with late season hurricanes that they can be swallowed up by a mid latitude cold core cyclone. That has happened many times in the past. The “Perfect Storm” in 1992 to which Sebastian Junger writes about is one such example, though luckily (for Boston) it was further out at sea when it became extra-tropical.
ROTFLMAO!
I love the idea of a hype scale with a catagory five torrential panic as a McKibben. Or should that be a category four, with a storming Romm being the big monster at number five?
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 11:01 pm
It’s your imprecise language that is the problem. There has been no accelerated increase in sea level rise. There is ample proof from the physics of heat transfer between gas and liquid to show that it is virtually impossible for a low density gas to transfer significant quantities of heat to a high density liquid. If the gas of influence is only 0.0004 mole (partial pressure, Dalton’s Law) of the carrier gas it cannot under any circumstances heat the liquid. Read the physics and stop listening to the clowns.
If by “survival” they mean the complete extermination of all life on the planet, they are of course right. Statements like these demonstrate how successful warmist propaganda has been at labeling CO2 as a pollutant.
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 11:01 pm
– Simon’s link is to Church & White (2008), probably the most referenced paper in recent years on sea-level rise. He points us to the familiar fig. 3(a) on p12. I point you all to fig. 4 (a & b) on the following page. They show that virtually all the satellite-era (since 1993) rise is in those areas where the upper 700m of the ocean has warmed, manly the western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean. In the main, tide gauge data I’ve analysed confirms the satellite data. There’s no actual discrepancy (in my opinion) between rise measured by gauges and rise measured by satellite. It’s just that most of the rise is localised and remote from most tide gauges worldwide.
The assertion that expansion-driven rise is entirely localised and that coastal gauges won’t show it is generally true, but not borne out everywhere. There’s a fairly convincing correlation between recent rates of rise and SST around Australia, for example, once changes in land height are taken into account. In my opinion wind direction, strength and barometric pressure may help explain why sea level correlates well or partly with SST even in some areas with shallow coastal waters (e.g. continental shelves). Pacific Islands are mostly surrounded by steeply-shelving seabed (almost vertical for volcanic islands and volcano-based atolls).and generally reflect SST (increased or otherwise) in rates of sea-level rise.
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 11:01 pm
Interesting paper. I usually stop as soon as I get to a prominent activist/alarmist (in this case Rahmstorf) but this paper has some redeeming qualities even if (some) papers cited have been, more recently, superseded.
However, the main source for sea-level metrics:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
show that for 200 years not much has changed. Papers full of if, but and maybe do not trump observation.
Simon…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sea-level-rises-are-slowing-tidal-gauge-records-show/story-fn59niix-1226099350056
The BBC, of course, had their own version. I did not, on principle, view it but I did read the resume which confirmed my suspicions that it would be alarmist in the extreme.
Frankenfurter storm? Or is that too Rocky Horror-ish? — John M Reynolds
this is so sensational, it needs its own thread:
***MUST READ ALL. DON’T MISS THE HELEN BOADEN/Andrew Dlugolecki STUFF ON PAGE 3 & KEEP AN EYE ON UNSWORTH, NOW PROMOTED, WHO WAS AT THE JAN 2006 SEMINAR:
3 pages: 19 Nov: UK Register: Andrew Orlowski: How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it?
Dumbed-down climate coverage is just a symptom
Special Report
Blogger Tony Newbery’s pursuit of the seminar’s previously secret attendee list highlights two things of much greater significance. One is that it casts light on a strategy by the BBC’s legal department to shield the public-funded corporation from scrutiny by the citizen, by redefining itself as a private organisation.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows facts and figures to be withheld and kept secret “for the purposes of journalism”, and the BBC’s use of this get-out clause is so pervasive it must be considered strategic rather than accidental. This appears to have the full backing of executives: the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden appeared as a witness during an information tribunal hearing into Newbery’s request; the journalism derogation was trotted out as a key pillar for the BBC’s defence.
And the trust? It appears not to know or not to care about the battle over the climate seminar’s attendees. But the affair also highlights the role the BBC thinks it must perform – and it’s rather different to the one licence-fee payers expect it to perform – that of staying aloof from the fray…
Scientists are clever, they should tell us what to do – right?
A thought exercise. Imagine, if you will, that an astronomer discovered a large meteorite hurtling to Earth. The precise time and date of impact were then calculated. This would leave us with a wide range of moral and economic choices. It would be very strange, in fact inconceivable, if someone handed all these decisions to the astronomer to make.
“Here you go, Man with the Telescope – tell us what to do!”
Yet this is what happened throughout the media and political class in response to the dramatic and simplified tale of climate change. Now we have it from the highest authority, Mark Thompson: he gave three lectures at Oxford University recently, which reveal him to be an intelligent and witty man. But in one lecture he makes a quite extraordinary argument [PDF].
Thompson picks apart a statement made by social scientist Dr Benny Peiser, who stated that the scientific fact of climate change invites a range of policies, economic choices, and moral decisions. Peiser doesn’t quibble with the “science”, but merely points out the obvious, that we have to decide what to do. Thompson doesn’t like this because only “scientists” are qualified to make ethical and economic decisions. Others may get involved, but only if they delegate their authority to the “scientists”. This is the course we’re told to follow on climate change.
There are enormous problems with this. The mitigation policies being advanced (and they came in a bundle – buy the science, get the policy for free) fall largely on the developing countries most in need of an advanced industrial society. These policies, if implemented, will perpetuate poverty, increase unwanted human misery and cause avoidable deaths…
Thompson concluded his Oxford lecture by telling scientists that without the broadcasters they “have no voice” – he is literally saying: “Make us your mouthpiece.” Given that Thompson has completely conceded moral authority on the matter, he really has no other conclusion to make. It’s a return of Comte’s Positivism, in which scientists are the ultimate authority in society on all decisions. Why? Because… well, they do science and stuff…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/the_virus_that_ate_the_bbc/
In November 2010 WUWT posted on sea level rise and the absurdity of the hysterical predictions being made by scientists and a press which delights in scaring people. It was clearly demonstrated, using data from the Battery Park tide gauge, New York, that sea level was rising at only 2.77 mm per year.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/28/freaking-out-about-nyc-sea-level-rise-is-easy-to-do-when-you-dont-pay-attention-to-history/
A graph in the same post showed that sea level rise was not linear and had leveled out in the the last 6000 years after several thousand years of steeply rising.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
Clearly if CAGW was being taken seriously the huge institutions and corporations located in New York would be heading for the hills without delay.
One problem with the CAGW scare is that it is seen by investment portfolio managers as an opportunity to make fortunes. A report last year by global investors managing
$2 trillion in assets considered scenarios to 2030. The report was welcomed by the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) which comprises “95 institutional investors in North America managing more than $9 trillion in assets.”
Some of the findings of the report were that, within 20 years:
“Low-carbon technology investment opportunities could hit $5 trillion. The impact on food security, the physical environment, and health could result in costs that exceed $4 trillion. Carbon emission costs could rise by as much as $8 trillion due to climate change-related policy changes.”
“A statement from Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of INCR claimed, “that no prudent investor could ignore either the portfolio performance risk, as high as 10%, or the potential rewards offered by low-carbon investment opportunities.
“However, Lubber warned, in order for regulators and policy makers to make the right investment decisions, they must have accurate information from companies; they must also, she added, put in place carbon-reducing policies that will allow investors to shift “large amounts of capital” away from polluting technologies and into low-carbon opportunities.”
http://www.advisorone.com/2011/02/21/climate-change-puts-institutional-investors-at-ris
It’s another potentially monstrous financial bubble, based on the results of computer modelling and both climate predictions which are not born out by data and pessimistic financial risk predictions based on flawed science.
And bubbles always burst eventually.
“2012 Season Draws To Close”
“The 2012 Hurricane Season is now drawing to a close and officially ends on November 30th this year. So, we thought we’d take a little look back at why this year has been pretty impressive year for the Atlantic basin…..
….Then came Sandy…. one of the largest systems observed with sustained winds of tropical storm-force which spanned a diameter of 932 miles!
As it draws to a close, we will always remember this season for Hurricane Sandy, however we’ve had no Category 4 or 5 hurricanes this season. In addition if the season ends this way, it would be the least amount of major hurricanes in a season since 1997.”
http://www.metcheck.com/UK/
Maybe not:
I’m in a rush this morning so couldn’t read all of the comments, so apologies if this point has been made.
Being able to call this a “Mega” or “Super” storm and blaming it on global warming is perfect cover for politicians. If this was anything less than the “storm of the century”, then it was less than the engineering design event. And if it was less than the design event, then anything that failed was substandard. And if something failed because it was substandard, then the responsible party is liable. Yet the media continues to provide cover to the politicians who are responsible for assuring that the facilities that failed would be capable of withstanding a design storm. Hazel should be the design storm in NY. Had Hazel stalled where Sandy stalled, rather than over Toronto, the impact would have been much worse than Sandy.
Got to run, sorry for any missed typos!
JE
First, “mega” means “large, impressive, great” in informal usage, so I don’t have that much problem with “megastorm” – as long as through overuse we don’t wind up with a climatological Lake Wobegon effect, where today “all the storms are above average”. Which, of course, they aren’t.
In fact, according to the ICAT damage estimator site (which has estimates of the amount of damage various storms would have caused if they had happened this year instead of whenever they actually occurred – a good way to “compare apples with apples”), half of the top ten hurricanes occurred before 1940, with only two coming since 2000. The top three are all pre-1930: the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 ($180.2B), the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 ($105.6B), and the Galveston Hurricane of 1915 ($84.9B, just edging out Katrina’s $84.6B in 2005).
Assuming Sandy’s damage comes in close to the $50B I’ve seen quoted, that would put her in seventh or eighth place (bumping 2005’s Wilma out of the top ten), right next to the 1938 New England Hurricane ($46.8B).
Simon says:
November 18, 2012 at 11:01 pm
I looked at the page 12 plot and it is a classic example of selective data usage- start that plot at around 1925 and it clearly becomes linear going forward. In this case the quadratic “fit” is simply a result of th data set used. Not sure what happened in 1925 to change the trajectory of sea level rise but if you are being objective you must see my point.
Regards
Massive Waterspout Forms Off Australian Coast
http://news.sky.com/story/1013352/massive-waterspout-forms-off-australian-coast
Finishing off a weekend of wild weather.
McKibben will be McGibber’n!
Never been one like that before! Unprecedented! Megastorm Sandy in the North Hemisphere, now here’s the counterpart on the opposite side of the planet!
Must be climate change AGAIN!
Time to get out the hip boots, and that ain’t water we’ll have to wade through.
Anthony said: “Now, with a storm that doesn’t even come close to storms that have hit the area in the past, such as 1954 Hurricane Hazel or the Great Hurricane of 1938, what will they call a Cat3 or greater storm if it hits the area?”
In terms of intensity, Sandy doesn’t compare. In terms of “damaging-ness”, it beats them both (though it doesn’t edge the 1938 storm by much).
The estimates I’ve seen for damages from Sandy run around $50B. According to the ICAT Damage Estimator, if they had happened this year, the 1938 storm would likely have caused about $46.8B, Hazel about $24.3B. If the $50B figure holds up, Sandy would break into ICAT’s Top Ten Hurricanes at #7, just ahead of 1960’s Donna ($49.8B) and behind Storm 11 of 1944 ($53.9B).
So, using the more informal definition of “mega” as “impressive, large, great” – yeah, “Megastorm” would fit. Of course, sometimes there seems to be a kind of climatological Lake Wobegon effect going on, where “all the storms are above average” today – and that’s nonsense under any meaningful comparative measure. In ICAT’s system, of their Top Ten, half occurred before 1940 and only two have occurred after 1960’s Donna (Sandy wouldn’t change that, since she’d bump 2005’s Wilma out of the list).
KiwiSi says: November 18, 2012 at 8:19 pm
“D Böehm
I didn’t say it had accelerated, I merely said it was increasing and that is undeniably true. I don’t think there is any doubt the oceans sea level rise is because of the recent (last 100 years) warming. And am I wrong in thinking this is an open forum, where one can discuss ideas freely. Is there no room to discuss things here? Have I got this wrong?”
Here comes the sophistry. In Doomsday Cult style, KiwiSi comes out of the gate with an ad hominem attack. My prediction model sez he or she will scurry off to the Critical Studies department claiming that no one was willing to engage in scientific discussion, but trounced aggressively on him or her. Let’s see if KiwiSi can stick to an evidence-based discussion of sea level change, or will play the liberal pseudo-intellectual game.
Bill Jamison says:
November 18, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Sandy qualifies as a megastorm in sheer size and damage it caused.
Then that must mean that if Sandy, a Cat 1 storm, had struck a lightly populated coastline, that was better prepared to cope with the effects of the storm, and had heeded several days worth of storm warnings, then it would not be a megastorm
Donald L. Klipstein says: November 18, 2012 at 9:02 pm
“Anthony Watts said in part: “Sandy wasn’t even a category 1 hurricane
when it made landfall.”
Sandy did have hurricane force sustained winds at landfall, according to
National Hurricane Center determinations. There were merely unusually at an
offshore location on the unusually left side storm – and in an offshore direction.”
At what elevation? According to what data buoy? I looked for this and did not find it. At 20 meters, the technical criterion for a hurricane. Not at 3K meters – the wind is always close to 75mph there. This is another trick to make a storm seem worse than it is – find a wind speed at a great elevation.
It seems well accepted that the unusual feature of Sandy was the curve westward instead of eastward whilst it maintained a very low central pressure and merged with a mid latitude feature approaching from the west.
The BBC show last night made it clear that the westward track was due to a weak Bermuda High (failing to direct Sandy eastward across its northern flank) in conjunction with a powerful polar high pressure cell around Labrador. The combined effect was to block the normal eastward track and push Sandy onto the mainland.
The loss of warm ocean surfaces as Sandy moved north and then north westward was compensated for by cooling upper air coming in from the west thus maintaining the low central pressure.
The interesting thing is that this was all a consequence of a weaker than normal subtropical high pressure cell and a stronger than normal polar high pressure cell during a period of low solar activity and generally negative Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations.
We tend to see such patterns when the climate is cooling rather than when the climate is warming so I think attribution of the Sandy event to a warming global climate is flawed.
Furthermore the storm sucked vast amounts of energy out of a large area of ocean and the huge area of associated cloud cover prevented replacement of that energy from sunshine.
Storms like Sandy are a feature of a cooling process rather than a warming process.
Sandy was a pin prick compared to this:
http://news.uk.msn.com/environment/climate-change/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=150370774&page=1
And that was during the mid 20th century cooling period.
Mid latitude storms are generally stronger during cooling periods.
More detail here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
There are many people who wrongly think that storms are always weaker than hurricanes and therefore always cause less damage. Storms that are not hurricanes can cause more damage than hurricanes. Hurricanes that are weaker than storms can cause more damange than stronger storms. Hurricanes that collide with storm systems can really shake up the population but because all they see in print is “Sandy”, all they know is that Sandy was at fault for all the damage. The labels are causing confusion.
This befuddled thinking and wrong assumptions could be cleared up if required basic science classes included more advanced lectures in weather science. Many textbooks through high school include the hydrological cycle, cloud types, and storm systems but do not include more advanced Earth science centered on micro and macro weather parameter drivers. They should. A case in point: Most people have barometric pressure gauges somewhere in their house but I wonder if they know what the measurement means and why pressure readings are important in understanding severe weather systems?