The “King of Cool” writes in our recent Open Thread
Weather is never just weather
Says Sophie Cunningham in her new book which she is promoting all over Australia at the moment warning us to be afraid, extremely afraid.
Why? Well, guess what – this year marks the fortieth anniversary of Cyclone Tracy which hit the city of Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, killing 71 people, destroying 80% of the houses and leaving 41,000 of the 47,000 inhabitants homeless.
(Expect lots and lots more cyclone hysteria leading up to Dec 24)
Listen here to Sophie’s grave warning on the ABC (17.44 on the download audio):
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/thelist/tracy/5673802
“We can expect more Tracys unless we begin to take climate change seriously” Sophie tells us.
“In the last three decades the number of cyclones and hurricanes has remained constant, but the number of Category 4 and 5 cyclones has increased. Cyclone Tracy, the cyclone that wiped out Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, was a Category 4 cyclone”.
http://thehoopla.com.au/tracys-extreme-weather-lessons/
The number of Category 4 and 5 cyclones has increased? Really!
Hey, hang on for a minute Sophie; this is what the BOM actually says about cyclones:
“Trends in tropical cyclone activity in the Australian region (south of the equator; 90–160°E) show that the total number of cyclones appears to have decreased to the mid 1980s, and remained nearly stable since. The number of severe tropical cyclones (minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa) shows no clear trend over the past 40 years.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml
Ok it also says that:
“There is substantial evidence from theory and model experiments that the large-scale environment in which tropical cyclones form and evolve is changing as a result of greenhouse warming. Projected changes in the number and intensity of tropical cyclones are subject to the sources of uncertainty inherent in climate change projections. There remains uncertainty in the future change in tropical cyclone frequency (the number of tropical cyclones in a given period) projected by climate models.”
And if you go to the technical report link it does state:
“Substantial disagreement remains between climate models concerning future changes in tropical cyclone intensity, although the highest resolution models show evidence of an increase in tropical cyclone intensity in a warmer world”
(Wonder what the lowest resolutions say?)
Sorry Sophie, when am I going to build my cyclone shelter in Sydney?
When we see something different on this trend graph of the REAL world, not the imagined model one:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/images/tc-graph-1969-2012.png
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Cyclone Tracy damage:
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It is true that the modeled weather she writes about is not the weather she lives in so maybe in a creepy crazy blissful down under way she can rationalize she is not a loon because she’s not learned that model results are not data. Not so easy for the rest of us to think she’s anything but a fear mongering climate model-driven hysteric, bless her heart. We should challenge her to defend her book using observed vs modeled input.
Douglas Adams springs to mind.’ Be very very frightened”.
The Hoodoo Gurus song, “Tojo never made it to Darwin”, was written to order for this hysteric.
Writer must have been a Climatologist.
Seems the real useless idiots are being trotted out now, is this a natural consequence or a planned distraction to cover the retreat of the moneymen?
I have to admit, I’m conflicted here. Not about Sophie’s article – it’s obviously complete bolleaux, as they say north of Buffalo, but there’s a deeper finer point to be considered here. It’s that statement the bloodless grammarian in me is agonising over – “We can expect more Tracys unless we begin to take climate change seriously.”
Should that “Tracys” be “Tracies”? “Tracys” is singular and there’s no possessive connotation but obviously Sophie is fumbling towards a plural, so on balance it shudda oughtta be Tracies.
Pointman
“We can expect more Tracys unless we begin to take climate change seriously” Sophie tells us.
We can expect more Tracys even if we begin to take climate change seriously; history, science, logic, and reason tells us.
We can expect more weather whether we begin to take climate change seriously or not; history, science, logic, and reason tells us.
Unfortunately, we can expect more Sophies, whatever we do/
Her website for those who maybe interested: http://www.sophiecunningham.com/
Her singular background in Travel Writing and Fiction clearly elevate her above most of the other Charlatans promoting our Impending Doom. I take back all of the bad things I’m still thinking about her latest foray.
That’s a lot of aluminum and tin. Are the homes in Darwin still built this way?
(In Florida they call that a ‘trailer park’.) And no, trailer parks do not fare well in Cat 4 storms.
She’s obviously outside the mainstream.
Doesn’t she know that the official ClimateScienceConsensus™ is “Weather is never just weather…except when we say it is.”
Not any more Barbee – at least according to the local building codes. http://www.lands.nt.gov.au/building/cyclones
I was there that night in 1974. Unfortunately, I was outside in a vehicle during the second half and it became rather eventful.
The video brings back memories. The police shot stray dogs once things got organized. There was a bit of looting as well, but nothing like Ferguson. I stuck around for about a month working in my civil service (public servant) job until it was time to go south to college (university).
I was only nineteen.
Of course, the severe weather events in 1974 like Cyclone Tracy in Australia, major flooding in Pakistan, and a huge tornado season in the US were taken as evidence for global cooling, with demands that governments must do something to prevent it.
When the 2011 year provided many of the same severe weather events, alarmists cited them as evidence of global warming and demanded that governments must do something to prevent it…
Such tactics are all that the climate alarmists have left, since the Pause continues. Not one climate alarmist, to my knowledge, has dared to predict when the Pause will stop. It has to be predicted in a peer reviewed scientific paper to be valid, so I am told.
I wonder if she is aware of her status as a ‘Willfully Ignorant F**kstick’? Or has CNN’s Bill Weir not read her book yet? Which means President Obama has no knowledge of the impending multiple Tracy Tragedy… good Lord… we’re all going to die a painstakingly slow, unserious, warmer, lush green death.
Sophie’s first novel, Geography, is advertised on her website with a blurb from the Sunday Telegraph saying, “Genuinely erotic…a compelling journey.” (Nothing says “erotic” to me like the word “geography.”) Perhaps she is enhancing her qualifications so she can show how well she does “climate porn” in a bid to replace Pachauri as IPCC Chairman in the future.
Just visited Sophie’s webpage and see she is an author who focuses on advocacy for a number of agenda topics. If she got the science so wrong regarding climate what might she be doing to women’s, etc., issues? Everyone tome she has put pen to is now open to scrutiny and doubt.
“The Government must do something about it!” ( the weather) now if that is not the top dog oxymoron….
And Barbee, Darwin is now the most cyclone proof city on the planet – as it should be, standing where it is ” Where hurricanes hardly ever happen”..but cyclones sure can…
Until people with as much access to the bully pulpit stand up to serial deceivers like Sophie, nothing will change. Until journalists regain their professional standards and actually fact check wild claims by rent seeking fear mongers it will be difficult to have real progress. Until then it is very lucrative for the Sophie’s of the world to (profitably) push their reactionary ignorance on the public.
I remember going out after a tornado in Nebraska in the early 70’s and seeing straw protruding from 8 x 8 posts in the barn. It did major roof damage to the barn and the house as it was a long summer rebuilding them. I have always respected the power of mother nature as it did major damage but did not take either structure, but those pieces of straw I can still see in my mind as if it were yesterday. Grand-dad told us its not generally the tornado that kills, its the derbies thrown out from them at high speed.
I am now looking at alarmists in a similar manner. They go off like a tornado but its the stuff they are spewing that can do the real damage. She is spinning without facts and throwing off debris. If she can get just one or two little things to stick in peoples minds she will have won. Just like the straw could not take down the building, it is meaningless drivel, yet the low information public will grasp on to them..
The alarmists are truly grasping at straws to keep their religion alive.. and they will lie to give them straws to grasp on to.
Weather is what happens, and climate is the average of events that have already occurred.
Weather = Short term Climactic event
Climate = The cumulative of many short term climatic events creating a pattern.
Weather is climate and climate is weather the only difference is TIME…
Climate: The framework within which weather happens and wherein the average weather is centered.
I was in Darwin 20 years ago. it’s a jumping off point for Kakadu National Park. Darwin has been completely rebuilt with far sturdier structures. One reason Tracy did so much damage is that most of the buildings were simple frame. If (or when) another Tracy hits Darwin, there will be far less damage.
BTW it says something about motivated reasoning that the lack of a big cyclone in Darwin during the last 39 years is somehow taken as evidence that cyclones are getting worse.
Here’s another spectacularly fine piece of alarmist claptrap from a post on JC’s latest blog.
Horrific Methane Eruptions in East Siberian Sea
A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions is unfolding in the Arctic Ocean. Huge quantities of methane are erupting from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea and entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/horrific-methane-eruptions-in-east-siberian-sea.html
Aargh – “A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions”!
Doom! Doom! We’re all doomed!
The unfortunate spelling of ‘proportions’ detracts somewhat from the impact IMO.
Sophie’s a sophist, methinks. And not the good kind.
In 1974 atmospheric CO₂ concentration used to be 330 ppmv, well below the level considered safe. Therefore BOM is wrong, Cyclone Tracy never happened. Profound Minitrue action is urgently required.