From PRINCETON UNIVERSITY and the “it’s not a lie, if you believe it” department comes this laughable study. Opinion is not hurricane data, and opinion doesn’t trump physical measurement. The one graphic they cite in the PR is for the last landfalling hurricane in the Gulf Coast area of study. Essentially a single data point. Here’s the real data showing that despite the authors own belief system, hurricanes are not getting worse.
Major hurricane (Cat3 or greater) drought in the USA is approaching 4000 days. The last time a major hurricane made landfall in the U.S., was Wilma on October 24, 2005.
Accumulated cyclone energy shows no upward long term trend [added 8/28 – inadvertently omitted in original]
![global_running_ace[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/global_running_ace1.png?resize=720%2C372)
Hurricane [and tropical storm] frequency shows no upward long term trend
![global_major_freq[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/global_major_freq1.png?resize=720%2C365)
![frequency_12months[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/frequency_12months1.png?resize=720%2C356)
(added) And because they cite more “economically damaging hurricanes”, the actual data doesn’t support that either:
And quite frankly, what value do these perceptions have, except to support fear mongering? What a garbage study. -Anthony
Hurricanes are worse, but experience, gender and politics determine if you believe it
CREDIT Image courtesy of Ning Lin, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Objective measurements of storm intensity show that North Atlantic hurricanes have grown more destructive in recent decades. But coastal residents’ views on the matter depend less on scientific fact and more on their gender, belief in climate change and recent experience with hurricanes, according to a new study by researchers at Princeton University, Auburn University-Montgomery, the Louisiana State University and Texas A&M University.
The researchers plumbed data from a survey of Gulf Coast residents and found that the severity of the most recent storm a person weathered tended to play the largest role in determining whether they believed storms were getting worse over time, according to the study published in the International Journal of Climatology. The survey was conducted in 2012 before Hurricane Sandy, the second-most expensive hurricane in history, caused $68 billion in damage.
Respondents’ opinions also strongly differed depending on whether they were male or female, whether they believed in climate change and whether they were a Democrat or a Republican. For instance, people who believe in climate change were far more likely to perceive the increasing violence of storms than those who did not. The researchers noted that because climate change has become a politically polarizing issue, party affiliation also was an indicator of belief in strengthening storms.
“Understanding how people in coastal regions perceive the threat is important because it influences whether they will take the necessary actions to address that threat,” said Ning Lin, the senior researcher on the study and a Princeton assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
“What you see is that there is often a gap between the reality of the storm trends and how people interpret those trends,” said Siyuan Xian, a doctoral candidate in Lin’s lab and co-lead author of the new paper.
While scientists continue to debate the impact of climate change on the frequency and strength of hurricanes, numerous studies of objective measures — such as wind speed, storm-surge height and economic damage — show that hurricanes are stronger than they were even a few decades ago.
For instance, eight of the 10 most economically damaging hurricanes since 1980 have occurred since 2004, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In constant dollars, Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy caused nearly $154 billion and $68 billion in damage, respectively, according to NOAA.
In comparison, the costliest storms of the 1990s, Hurricanes Andrew (1992) and Floyd (1999), caused $46 billion and $9 billion in damage (adjusted for inflation), respectively. Hurricane Patricia in 2015 was the strongest Western Hemisphere storm in recorded history with maximum sustained winds of 215 miles per hour.
As the intensity of storms has increased, government agencies and coastal residents must grapple with preparing for the next landfall. Residents must decide, for example, whether to invest in storm shutters, roof and wall fortifications, flood-proof flooring and other structural buffers. On a larger scale, coastal planners need voter support to implement land-use policies that take the threat into account and to invest taxpayer dollars into protection measures such as seawalls or sand dunes.
Understanding how people perceive the threat of hurricanes is crucial for predicting whether they will take them seriously, Xian said. Six hurricanes form each year in the North Atlantic on average, although as many as 15 have developed in a single hurricane season.
“If you perceive a higher risk, you will be more likely to support policies and take action to ameliorate the impacts,” Xian said. “We wanted to know how people perceive the threat of hurricanes and what influences their perceptions. This information will help guide how agencies communicate the risk, and what policies and actions are proposed to make communities resilient to these storms.”
Lin and Xian worked with co-authors Wanyun Shao, assistant professor of geography at Auburn University-Montgomery; Barry Keim, professor of climatology at Louisiana State University; and Kirby Goidel, a Texas A&M professor of communication.
To explore what influences perceptions of hurricane threat, the researchers analyzed data from the 2012 Gulf Coast Climate Change Survey to analyze Gulf Coast residents’ beliefs about hurricane trends from 1992 to 2011. Louisiana State University and NOAA conducted the survey.
The survey focused on residents of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, who lived in areas of the Gulf Coast that experienced at least one hurricane landfall over the 20-year period from 1992 to 2011.
In addition to probing beliefs about hurricane trends, the survey gathered information on respondents’ gender, political affiliations, opinions on climate change and other characteristics that might influence their perspective on hurricane trends.
The researchers’ results mirrored a trend seen in other studies of extreme climate events, Lin said.
“The increasing power of Atlantic hurricanes is often connected to climate change, but studies have shown that Republicans and males tend to be more skeptical of climate change,” Lin said. “We found a strong link between disbelief in climate change and disbelief that storms are getting worse — they tend to come as a package.”
The researchers were able to tease out what elements of the storms a respondent had experienced left the biggest impression on them. For instance, while storm surges tend to cause the most property damage, gale winds were more likely to convince people that hurricanes are getting stronger.
Behavioral scientists have long hypothesized the most recent landfall of a storm has a stronger influence on people’s perceptions of long-term climate trends, said Sander van der Linden, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and director of the Social and Environmental Decision-Making (SED) Lab. Van der Linden is familiar with the research but had no role in it.
“This study provides strong empirical evidence of this phenomenon,” said van der Linden, who studies public policy from a behavioral-science perspective. “This finding is important because it suggests that people may not be thinking about long-term changes in climate patterns but rather are paying attention to more salient variations in and impacts of short-term local weather.”
The study’s authors said this information could help governments communicate hurricane risk more effectively to the public. Taking into account that people are more likely to respond to the threat of high winds, for instance, could help agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency motivate the public to adequately prepare for storms. The researchers also recommended that public agencies work to further educate the public about the risk posed by storm surge.
“Public opinion can make or break policies intended to address climate change and ameliorate damage from storms,” Lin said. “Tapping into the state of current perceptions and what drives them will be critical for governments around the world as the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt.”
The researchers are currently conducting other studies related to climate-change perception, including research on flood adaption and insurance-purchasing behavior in the counties along the Gulf Coast, as well as looking at worldwide perceptions of climate change and the willingness to adopt green-energy technologies.
###
The paper, “Understanding perceptions of changing hurricane strength along the US Gulf coast,” was published online June 20 by the International Journal of Climatology. Support for the research was provided in part by NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Coastal Storm Program, Texas Sea Grant, Louisiana Sea Grant, Florida Sea Grant and Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/joc.4805/abstract
So the conclusion is that propaganda sometimes works? Given a lack of real increase in hurricanes, or their intensity, some people can be persuaded otherwise.
So climate change is a “perception” thing now? Man, I guess you CAN hoodwink some of the people all of the time; at least right now as humanity achieves Peak Stupidity.
Don’t kid yourself. You have no idea how stupid we can really reach. I estimate that there is at least 80% of stupid that can be obtained.
I think of it a little like one of those digital storage Laws, the amount of ‘stupid’ per head of the population will double every decade into the future.
Remember that 50% of the population has an IQ of less than 100 – this may explain a lot of things.
I think it was Einstein who said he only knew 2 things that were infinite – the universe and mans capacity for stupidity!! Kinda hard to argue with given the trougher study above!!
In reply to Jon. Unfortunately, an IQ of 100 is way above average for the world as a whole.
https://www.darkmoon.me/2012/world-iq-figures-with-brief-notes-on-ashkenazi-jews-and-the-khazarian-thesis-of-koestler-by-lasha-darkmoon/
You do know that IQ is a relative scale, right? IQ 100 is “average” intelligence. If a majority of IQ test results consistently score above or below 100, the scale is adjusted to match the new mean. So a spread of IQ scores is always going to show roughly 50% as being “below average”, when the overall intelligence of the population may have actually gone up (or down).
IQ tests are also very culture and language bound, especially the written type. It make a decent ranking of similar students of the same culture and nominal education, but tends to give bogus results comparing disparate groups.
Yes, if you’re a Democrat, you’re more likely to believe the disinformation that storms are getting worse.
It’s the great game of dare for marketing pros. They will take on the challenge….for a fee and incentive payment of course.
What groups of people are more easily persuaded? Democrats, CAGW advocates, and….?
Little children just before Christmas?
Those who WANT to believe?
Propaganda works very well, especially with regard to climate science. Why do you think Hansen’s chief propagandist was hand picked to succeed him?
If I am reading correctly the article says “hurricanes are stronger”?
“While scientists continue to debate the impact of climate change on the frequency and strength of hurricanes, numerous studies of objective measures — such as wind speed, storm-surge height and economic damage — show that hurricanes are stronger than they were even a few decades ago.”
More economic damage should take into account the growth of structures along the coast and population growth. Does it? How would you make this adjustment?
“For instance, eight of the 10 most economically damaging hurricanes since 1980 have occurred since 2004, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In constant dollars, Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy caused nearly $154 billion and $68 billion in damage, respectively, according to NOAA.”
And, in both cases, the major damage was caused by political avoidance of infrastructure improvements and/or infrastructure weakness caused by local corruption – NOT a feature of the storms’ strength.
Was Sandy still a hurricane when it did all the damage? I thought it had lost enough steam that it was downgraded to a tropical storm, or am I confusing storms?
Control the sources of information (or misinformation) available and it doesn’t matter whether or not the individual trying to reach a conclusion is stupid, dishonest, honest or just plain ignorant of the real facts.
Just as with computers and computer programs; Garbage In, Garbage Out.
That’s why sites like WUWT are so valuable and hated by those who seek to mold opinion by controlling/restricting information.
…all about manipulating people
no surprise there
As a coastal Floridian for more than 1/2 a century, the hyperbolic propaganda is relentless. Until the CAGW fraud, only hurricanes were named and the term “tropical wave” was yet to be created – we call them thunderstorms. Without an absolutely ideological LW media, crap like this would never see the light of day.
What’s a “superstorm” ?
They didn’t used to exist, those superstorms.
Must be caused by global-warming-climate-change.
JR Port,
You will find the term “tropical wave” in meteorology texts from long before the CAGW scare began.
A tropical wave is simply a kink in the isobars of the easterlies and, as such, is the first stage in the formation of a tropical systems which forms on these easterlies.
Ahead of such a wave, barometric pressure is higher and thus clouds and thunderstorm activity are suppressed, and behind the axis of the wave the opposite is the case.
If such a wave strengthens, a closed circulation may form and this is then dubbed a tropical depression.
It is not a made up term, and is not another name for a thunderstorm.
I do not link to Wikipedia very often, but re such noncontroversial matters of textbook knowledge, it is often a good reference.
A couple of info packed articles to bone up on tropical meteorology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_wave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclogenesis
Since we are discussing opinion
Also as a coastal Floridian for more than 1/2 a century. I remember the 1960’s storms to be the scariest.
Something that is not opinion. My hurricane shutters have not seen the light of day in over a decade.
.
[Have you tested them, run them up and down and lubricated and painted them against rust, bugs, and jams? .mod]
No testing necessary. They are simple aluminum panels held in tracks by wing nuts. A very common system in Florida.
Why don’t we go down to Louisiana and ask them if climate change causes flooding? Now that would be a study on the same plane as this one.
Why not just ask the author?
Correspondence to: S. Xian, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, E-223 e-Quad, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. E-mail: sxian@princeton.edu
The flooding in Louisiana while not common has happened before. Some of it man made by I-12. The concrete barriers created a dam that blocked the water from flowing across it. There are pictures of one side of the highway completely submerged and the other not. If you are saying the flood was man made you are probably right,. Climate? Not so much.
If you want to see some documented history of catastrophic flooding in Louisiana, head over the Tony Heller’s blog.
He has written a great many posts over the past several weeks detailing the enormous number of extremely awful flood events in that state over a great many years.
The idea that the terrible floods there are somehow an event outside of what could be expected is ludicrous.
There have been floods which submerged virtually the entire state in decades past.
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/08/1953-all-of-louisiana-was-flooded-for-three-months/
I wonder how LIGO made out. It’s in Walker, LA.
If I may make a comparison. Once upon a time solar eclipses and other natural events were used by royalty to spread fear among the uneducated. They did this to remain in control of tax revenues, decisions to fight wars, and moral objectives as they saw fit. It is after all, heaven’s will. Look the sun went Out! It’s the end of the world if we don’t do this or that. How can life go on if the sun doesn’t shine ? More severe things will happen if we don’t listen to heavens royal messenger. See, we have to trust the scientists at NOAA/NASA, IPCC, and other learned institutions because some of us are committing heresy by questioning these esteemed scientists. Just because some us who are blessed with IQ ‘s above retardation doesn’t mean we have the capacity to be on the same level as a climate scientist. Climate science in the real world obeys quantum physics. And as soon as I understand it, I’ll build a time machine and tell you about it… in the future.
It’s fear mongering at its best.
..OMG…Liberals simply do not live in the real world, but seem to be lost in some Utopian fantasy !…If only stupidity was painful, then maybe a few would fall back down to the real Earth …
There is nothing liberal in Green fantacies.
…97% of liberals believe in various “GREEN” fanta(S)ies, ..aka, ….Catastrophic Anthropogenic Glo.Bull Warming !
It is the largest cash flow and activist stimulating mechanism for global statists- nothing else comes close.
And there is nothing really “green” in liberal fantasies The color there is red.
Here are annual ACE for tropical cyclones worldwide 1945-2014
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2630932
Dr Munshi, thanks for this. Just what I have been looking for.
Thank you sir for the link.
This article is pure propaganda. What a crock of smelly brown fecal matter. Hurricane Patricia occurred in the Pacific, not the Gulf or Atlantic as the article implies… The CAGW Ministry of Propaganda is getting extremely sloppy.
Maybe the partly-competent people have left already, having seen the looming non-melted iceberg.
Why would they need to do any thorough fact-checking? There was no way a study with both climate change AND gender in it would get rejected by the peer review system. I can just as win a grant and pass peer review if I invent a study that claims denying Muslims refugee status worsens climate change.
Go read “The Bell Curve.” Seems we have millions of people in this country with IQ’s essentially within a few points of official retardation. Useful idiots, indeed–who haven’t the cognitive skills to do other than believe everything they’re told, particularly if framed as something very scary. It certainly explains plenty!
So, you don’t see the people deceiving those with below average IQ as the real problem we face in the domain of deception, Goldrider?
See lyrics to this song, which speaks directly to this :
http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Adam_Freeland:We_Want_Your_Soul
“Go back to bed America, your government is in control again.
Here. Watch this. Shut up.
You are free to do as we tell you.
You are free to do as we tell you.
(we want your soul)
I am sure it is verboten to point out that half the people in the world are stupider than average, and a large number are a lot stupider.
But we are not supposed to take such things into account…we are all the same, even though a stupid person who reads nothing, and pays attention to even less, has a vote that can cancel out your or mine, and people who feel this way who do not mind breaking the law (which many do not) can cancel out BOTH of our votes!
Chew on that a while and decide if it bothers you.
SMC,
The snarky comment is misplaced. While the paper itself was limited to Atlantic basin locations, hurricane Patricia is not mentioned in the paper at all. It is mentioned in the press release, and while it is reasonable to question why it might be mentioned in a press release about a study with a narrower geographic location, there’s no indication that the researchers were mistaken about the location. Perhaps they were but given that they do not mention the hurricane in the paper it seems unlikely.
Fine, I’ll be more specific. This press release is pure propaganda…
So why was it in the press release?
Who wrote the press release?
Most do not read the paper, but many more do read the press release.
The CAGW propagandists know this, and often write alarmist pieces that accompany research papers which are not even supported by the paper itself.
It was, however, a “western hemisphere” hurricane. However, somehow it just evaporated as soon as it hit land.
True but, the study is about peoples feelings regarding hurricanes along the Gulf coast. No matter how you slice it, Patricia was a Pacific hurricane. Saying it was a western hemisphere hurricane, while true, is misleading since it was in the Gulf.
*…wasn’t in the Gulf
what was the cost (damage) of Hurricane Patricia??? Is it not the one that gained great speed from El Nino warmed waters, but fizzled real quick as it approached land fall??
Yes…it was supposedly the strongest ever hurricane ever, but once it hit, did not even tear roofs off of tin shanties.
Very suspicious.
and i’m sure that the non-stop media hype over every tropical system has nothing to do with people’s perceptions
/sarc
and every time two clouds are within shouting distance….they scream cyclone
..knowing that most people have no idea what that word really means
Yesterday even on Druge, they were hyping a system that had 40% chance of turning int a tropical storm in 48h. At first I was confused. The headline was “Florida anxiously watching stor’s track”. Then I looked at NOAA’s hurricane centre, and didn’t see anything… Oh, there’s a yellow ‘X’ (less that 40%chance of forming). Nonstop panic mongering,!
Sorry Jeff but when you live in coastal Florida you want to know about anything that has even a slight chance of turning into a tropical storm. We are relieved to see that many of these systems do not amount to anything but being caught off guard only once can mean major loss or death. Much better to be saturated with info than not.
If your talking about 99L that would be because Joe Bastardi at Weatherbell.com which has a pretty good record at forecasting tropical storm formation and storm tracks had predicted it to become a hurricane. Joe has now admitted his forecast was a bust. Since then Weatherbell.com has changed it’s format and apparently there are no more daily updates or Saturday summaries available on the free side. That’s a shame. I watched every one of them when I had the chance. I’ve learned a lot from Joe over the years watching those videos. So Joe if you happen to read this. THANK YOU.
No sarc tag required. There is alarm fatigue which causes people to become desensitized and basically ignore valid alarms when they do occur. So, yes, the constant stream of crap does influence peoples’ perceptions. The people sometimes learn to ignore the crap. 🙂
“What you see is that there is often a gap between the reality of the storm trends and how people interpret those trends,” said Siyuan Xian
Well I think that’s something that we should all be able to agree on, even if it doesn’t quite mean what he intended.
This is really a study of confirmation bias; of those surveyed and, mostly and hilariously, of the authors.
[snip -off topic, pointless, flamebait -mod]
Princeton is catching up with Yale in the decline curve.
they did the survey in 2011 and are just now publishing the results 5 years later?
The survey was done in 2012, not 2011
Still a while ago.
Were they waiting for the right dramatic moment?
Well The Other Phil that explains why it is wrong.
The study seems to ignore the vast increase in property built in vulnerable areas of hurricane prone regions.
I wonder if a meta study could be done showing how climate hype papers ignore basic statistics and analytic tools?
hunter
Some of the criticisms of this paper are warranted some are not. For example, I disagree that “the study seems to ignore the vast increase in property built in vulnerable areas of hurricane prone regions”.
As noted in the paper, “The economic damage data are normalized to 2014 U?S Dollars adjusted by inflation, wealth and population growth”
The authors themselves cite Peilke’s 2008 work on economic damage trends, admit that no trend is yet identified, but still insist that by objective measures the intensity of storms is increasing. That, I believe, suggests cognitive dissonance. Also, if you look carefully at the summaries of the logistic regressions, there are only two variables of any significance–gender and party affiliation. Even the physical observations, such as winds, surf, trees falling over, and so forth have no significant correlation.
ToP Kevin Kilty,
Thanks. But if they had actually used that data- integrated it into the paper- and also noted that in *objectively* there have been few storms and that normalized losses, deaths, frequency, intensity, etc. are *not* increasing, their report would have been far different.
Instead they have gone Lewandowsky, hiding the science behind a shallow reactionary political bit of hype.
What the authors don’t realize is that they are proving what many commenters here know. That the real politicalization of science is being pushed by the warming agenda, and not by the skeptics. The incredible irony here is that by using their own data, it shows that the party affiliation and political agenda of their respondents is directly correlated with their denial of the science. They want to believe in global warming. They want to believe CO2 causes extreme weather. Yet the actual data which they apparently refuse to look at, indicates how incorrect their positions are.
Who on Earth pays for this crap?
You do
BINGO, Bob.
Well, property insurance companies probably use it even if they don’t pay for it, maybe there’s some way they do pay for it? It’s obviously valuable to them as a market study.
@Bartleby,
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that insurance companies have their own climate models.
There has always been a deep distrust in gubnut statistics by those who actually need data to survive.
‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’ (SIC) has expanded to cover everything from climate science to economics.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS = Group forced ignoring/hiding of facts that disprove assertions that are fundamental to policy decisions. Active distribution of propaganda to push an agenda.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/australian-scientist-calls-for-heads-to-roll-over-adjusted-temperature-data/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/06/noaas-national-climatic-data-center-caught-cooling-the-past-modern-processed-records-dont-match-paper-records/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/a-fascinating-new-interview-with-prof-richard-muller-quote-on-climategate-what-they-did-was-i-think-shameful-and-it-was-scientific-malpractice
The scientific evidence does not support the IPCC predicted extreme AGW.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
The Weather Channel now considers an afternoon shower a “State of Emergency.” I kid you NOT!
Here in Toronto, Canada, we had a “rain event” predicted for last week. We used to call these “rain storms”, and they weren’t very scary at all. Maybe if you got caught out in them it would be a bit messy, but they were actually warning people that perhaps they shouldn’t schedule anything outdoors for this time. What would we do without experts?
BTW, we got a whopping 12.2mm of rain (for Americans, that’s about 12 stacked dimes worth.
And another BTW: I think they were trying to save face, as three days before that, we got 28mm of rain that NOBODY predicted.
12.2mm is about 1/2 inch.
28mm is about 1 inch.
“BTW, we got a whopping 12.2mm of rain (for Americans, that’s about 12 stacked dimes worth.”
A US dime is 1.35 mm. So 12.2 mm takes 9 dimes.
We have the same problem here in The Netherlands. Our national meteorological ‘treasure’ KNMI is calling Code Orange and Code Red (scary!) for every possible ‘weather event’ that may cause anyone any inconvenience: some more rain than normal, some more wind than 4 bft etc. It’s only to keep the population in a state of fear. Most of the time nothing noteworthy happens. Meanwhile everybody is starting to think that the weather and thus the climate is out of control (as if we ever were in control of it…).
They’ve started naming windy days here in the UK.
Half the population has now grown up in this climate of climate hype. It has been pushed on them all through school and in every media article they’ve ever read since they learned how to read. Many people under 30 truly do seem to think that there once was a time when bad weather didn’t happen. They truly believe every flood, storm or drought that we have today is a symptom of abnormality and is our fault … because Carbon.
ABC News (US ABC) only gives “Heat Index” anymore. They don’t even show the temperature or the humidity, just the “dangerous” heat index.
The nightly news used to have “today in Congress…”,
Now it’s just bad weather. There’s always bad weather somewhere. Time was the weather report was on the local news only. Not anymore.
I’ve stopped watching.
David Smith,
What kind of names do windy days get??? WIndfarmy McWindfarm
Perhaps we could name them after people with famously messy hair, with the windier days getting the names of people with the most epically tousled ‘do?
It depends on where you live. I’ve seen folks in southern Nevada panicking at a bit of rain, but then, the storm drains are often about the size of a four-bit piece.
They had two side by side pictures in the paper in Colorado a few years back. Remember when it went down into the 50 s in California. Well they showed the people in California dressed as if it were winter, hats , coats, gloves and scarves. The people in Colorado 10 degrees cooler, short sleeves, shorts and flip flops, barbecuing . They had to brush the snow was off the table.
One way to judge the damage from a hurricane is by the number of deaths. Wikipedia has an article listing hurricanes with a death toll greater than 1000. There has not been such a hurricane since 2005. By that measure, hurricanes are not getting worse at all. I would say that the worst period was 1767 to 1782. The worst single hurricane was San Calixto in 1780 with a death toll greater than 27,500.
commieBob, deaths due to hurricanes is undeniably a metric, but with any metric one has to be quite careful about the interpretation. If the intent is to measure how improved forecasting, longer notice periods (mainly satellite imagery), and improved building codes have reduce the likelihood of death from hurricane of a given strength, it is adequate.
On the other hand you want to measure whether hurricanes are getting worse or not it is an abysmal measure.
Still means we have less to worry about.
Valid point , incorrectly staed. Bob was talking about “getting worse” , it seems that in your objection you mean to say it is not a good metric for getting *stronger*.
In fact neither do I think Dr Maue’s hurricane frequency is a very useful measure of strength. Is a bigger number of hurricanes “worse”?
Would you rather have to cope with two small ones or one big one?
Greg, no I said what I meant. I deliberately mirrored commieBob’s use of “worse”. It is also true that it is a crappy metric if you are measuring whether hurricanes are getting stronger or not, but that didn’t seem to be Bob’s point.
There is no really good metric, they all have problems. I remember lots of hurricanes, the first I remember well being Hazel. The recent hurricanes have damage measured in billions. The older ones have damage measured in the tens of millions, even if you take inflation into account.
I remember some of the old hurricanes as being really nasty but somehow the numbers don’t back that up even though the disruption seemed just as bad as the recent hurricanes.
I suspect that, for hurricanes going back to the 1700s, death toll may be about the only metric we have. It’s interesting to compare The Great Hurricane of 1780 with Mitch in 1998. We have good data for Mitch. For The Great Hurricane, the only real data we have is the death toll.
I think death toll is pretty useless as a metric. The majority of storms are fish storms where only the unfortunate or foolish would be. (the Faro blipped the fatality count but they were stupid to be there) Secondly older storms typically had higher death tolls due to lack of warning and infrastructure. After the Okeechobee storm they diked the lake. After the Galveston storm they raised the city and put in sea walls.
CommieBob, My grandfather was in the hurricane of 1935 that hit Long Island. I gather it was pretty scary for my grandparents and my mother’s family, but at the time that area of Long Island was mainly potato farms. Now almost everywhere that can be built up is built up. The same size storm now would definitely do more property damage now (adjusted for inflation) than the 1935 storm, but what the death toll would be is hard to tell.
Back then my grandfather had just bought a barometer, he returned it to the store becasue it said a hurricane was coming. After the clean up, he went back to the store and bought it back. Now days that storm would be 24 hour news on all channels, even if my grandfather’s barometer was broken, he would know a storm was coming, and would be better prepared. But the much higher density population now might mean more deaths.
I expect the metric should be how many lefty, environmental, indoor panic puppies mess their pants days before any landfall, wind or showers
.“If you perceive a higher risk, you will be more likely to support policies and take action to ameliorate the impacts,” Xian said. “We wanted to know how people perceive the threat of hurricanes and what influences their perceptions. This information will help guide how agencies communicate the risk, and what policies and actions are proposed to make communities resilient to these storms.”
Wow!
A carbon tax “ameliorates” me from my money.
I doubt it reduces storm power and frequency.
I’m already poor enough to not be building a house on the beach.
Oh, I get it.
Impoverishing the little folk subsidizes the sea side mansions.
Xian assumes that if I perceive AGW to be serious I will support carbon abatement policies.
That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Carbon policies shift emissions from Kyoto to non-Kyoto countries. I have to clear about 50 hurdles before supporting carbon policy (I actually itemised 57 questions for warmies).
“Understanding how people in coastal regions perceive the threat is important because it influences whether they will take the necessary actions to address that threat”
They won’t. People who indulge in this magical thinking expect the government to do everything for them. Those of us in the REAL world “do” for ourselves (and help our neighbors).
Does the perception of higher risk really cause people to take appropriate action? Does it, for instance, prevent believers from building homes too close to the surf? I will bet not.
Not building too close to the surf protects one from the first minute. Suggesting a carbon tax in hopes of preventing a hurricane from taking one’s home, can only be a very long term strategy, and that is supposing that CO2 is somehow the controlling factor.
Conclusion: female democrats are the most gullible demographic.
Who knew?
If you have not take a look at the authors listed at the bottom of the abstract.
One seems to be a second year PHD student at Princeton.
Odd mix, and a University that combine geology, Sociology and Anthropology?
No wonder they can’t distinguish the Pacific from the Atlantic Oceans
michael
Wanyun Shao
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography, Auburn University
Quantitative Social Research, Public Policy, Political Psychology
Siyuan Henry Xian
Graduate student in Civil Engineering
Barry D. Keim
Richard J. Russell Professor and Louisiana State Climatologist
Kirby Goidel
Professor in the Department of Communication, Texas A&M University
From HuffingtonPuffington Post:
A sociologist, a communications/PR hack, a Civil Engineering grad student and one actual scientist. However, Dr. Keim still seems to be pushing the weather/climate extremes and climate change agenda.
Sociology – the study of a group of people that don’t need studying by a group of people who do.
Phil R finished up with:
Love it!
Given enough grant money, sociologists will start studying sociologists who will then start studying sociologists who study sociologists who study sociologists, and so on and so on… It’ll be like the snake that eats itself starting with its own tail.
Watch this space!
“Accumulated cyclone energy shows no upward long term trend”
So why don’t we see a graph that SHOWS ACE?
Both of the graphs from Dr Maue are labelled as ‘hurricane frequency” ( sadly with no label or units on the y axis, very poor ).
Here a graph which does show ACE for N. Atlantic:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/11/ace-in-the-hole/
A notable similarity to SST but note the recent slump since 2005.
Note the recent graph of NOCD data for N. Atl OHC, alos dropping over similar time period.
Hurricane frequency may be useful to people wanting to know how many times they’ll need to shutter up each year, but to gain any gauge of climate iimpact or understand cause it seems that ACE is the place to look.
Despite the text I don’t see any graphs of ACE in the article.
WUWT?
BTW I would like to add that I think Dr Maue is a good objective scientist trying to get actual data out to inform the public. However, badly labelled graphs and sloppy “12mo running sums ” which are basically the same a running averages, with all the inherent distortions: he could do better.
I really which he would since he merits being listened to.
“Both of the graphs from Dr Maue are labelled as ‘hurricane frequency” ( sadly with no label or units on the y axis, very poor ).”
What is poor is your comprehension ability. Maue’s Hurricane Frequency Graph do in fact have everything you need to interpret them. This is how they have looked for years, and you are the first to complain, but that doesn’t surprise me.
The Y axis is count and the Y axis is years. It is pretty self explanatory, since frequency is a count over time. If you need to have such things explained to you, then you can go to http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php and read the captions.
I’ve provided them here for you just in case you can’t.
Figure: Global Hurricane Frequency (all & major) — 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane-force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64-knots). The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96-knots+). Adapted from Maue (2011) GRL.
Figure: Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.
Here’s a link for ACE.
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php
“Annual Accumulated Cyclone Energy ARBITRARY SCALING”. Good, very good.
Jamal Munshi said: “Here are annual ACE for tropical cyclones worldwide 1945-2014”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2630932
But let’s ignore all the hurricanes before 1980 as they don’t fit our narrative.
You can tell a sociologist was involved in this ‘study’ as it’s pure junk
Traditional science is beginning to merge with political science because politicians and other partisans are now choosing who gets funding. For many, science is more useful for manipulating public opinion than for gaining knowledge.
“people who believe in climate change were far more likely to perceive the increasing violence of storms” Anybody doing a peer review on this paper would certainly say that you should supply some evidence that storms have become increasingly violent before you make that statement. First of all because it is not a well established fact (its not even true), secondly because even if it is true the reader should be given information on how much of an increase there has been, so they can gauge how reasonable it is to say individuals should be able to perceive the difference. So obviously this paper did not go through any peer review process worth mentioning. From Princeton University? Wow that place has really fallen, they used to be a respected school.
[snip – saving you from yourself -mod]
…Too risqué ?? Your probably right, thanks… ;o)
Recently I read a link explaining how/why most academics are democrats. Lost it, but should turn up. The point was that there was nothing in the job search/application/hiring as to political preference, but academics recognize rational thought involving important scientific principles which are different by party. While the first point may be true, although there may be new subtleties operating, the latter is worthy of considerable discussion.
Examples were given about the better acceptance of democrats for evolution and climate change than by republicans. Sound suspiciously similar to the climate/tobacco arguments. First, evolution is a complex of principles, theories and hypotheses, none of which involve faith. Properly practiced and taught, facts are molded into testable concepts, suffering whatever their fate, and problems, such as the tautology of natural selection (fit survive, survivors are fit), are welcomed. Nevertheless, stating that republicans do not believe, as in the often offered consensus for global warming, for example, tells us very little, mostly in that they do not understand the complexities of evolution. Successful predictions from evolutionary concepts exist, but the large ones, similar to future climates, are still only interesting but fanciful.
As to the climate science, the analysis found it unthinkable to believe that such upstanding scientific organizations, such as the National Academy of Sciences, with their certainty, could possibly be in error or guilty of some sort of fraud. They obviously have not done their homework and this might be the subtle test for hiring.
I taught evolution for over a decade to biology majors which included a high percentage of Catholics. I had few problems but learned that some biologists, even well known ones, do proselytize about evolution much as some do about climate.
Maybe the new editor of Science who has discovered the problem with advocacy will help. He might be surprised that I first heard a generation ago, coming from a Canadian scholar, about Science’s impending loss of credibility.
Similarly, up to a generation ago I had connections (not on faculty) with two of the author’s universities (A & M, LSU). This is not a surprise as both have had true believer advocates about climate and other subjects for a long time, but this discredits the remaining true scholars. The question is the extent and trends in that discussed above, perhaps just another expression of what is often discussed here. It is much bigger than just climate.
Survival of the most fit or more fit individuals is not guaranteed, and that status changes as the environment changes or populations move. There is no tautology here unless your understanding of your subject was very limited.
“Recently I read a link explaining how/why most academics are democrats. Lost it, but should turn up. ”
I like this explanation.
Evan Sayet on how liberals choose and rise in their professions.
Also funny is today’s Dilbert cartoon.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-26
“Compared to Democrats and Independents, Republicans are far less likely to believe that climate is changing and thus they tend to not believe that hurricanes are becoming stronger.”
I don’t see what the big deal is. Assuming that they refer to man-made climate change when they say that “climate is changing,” they’re basically just saying that Republicans are typically more informed. But most everyone already knew that. Even Democrats know this, else they wouldn’t spend so much time and money trying to get the apathetic to vote.
Interesting that all the graphs above give a faithful reproduction of the temperature record – the non Karlized one in which there has been no warming since 1997-98. These should be included in future discussions of the temperature record – they may be necessary to review when the time comes to remove all the political climate from the data of the past 30 years. This independent data never gets a nod when we want to reinforce the reality of the PAUSE. Com’on Bob Tisdale, Lord Monckton, Werner Brozek, etc. Put these supportive graphs out there and you are still playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, gentlemen that you are.
Now for another politically incorrect statement. This supports a recent notion of mine that we have to get more men back into political office because women, bless their hearts, are by nature, on average nurturing creatures and they are not so slowly and surely moving us into a totalitarian nanny world government. I didn’t have these thoughts when Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and a few other women were running the show in their respective countries but affirmative action and the feminist movement got the current ball rolling. I even admired the feminist movement until they, politically correctly didn’t extend their concern to genital mutilation of women in Muslim societies or to the other shackles that their sisters wear.
I think it depends on whether you had a Scientific education. Many women haven’t and now, with the left in charge of education, many men haven’t either. The extreme left have been planning all of this for many decades – preparing the ground, so to speak.
Methinks the lady doth protest about right.
I think so, I think is also a function of age. I got my education before PC was the norm everywhere, a science background certainly helps, but it help that I remember the new ice age scare of the 1970s and and many other scare that turned out to be nothing. I used to think the winters of my childhood were worse, but my father pointed out to me that a snow storm above the head of a 6 year old boy is not nearly as high as snow storm up my navel as adult was. My Elementary school was not nearly as big as I thought it was as a kid.
We still have high hopes for Theresa May, the new British PM.
Yes, Theresa May could be an exception these days. Perhaps the shifting paradigm juggernaut of post normal thought and political science has gone too far. We can only hope. I’ve had my “chauvinist” thoughts only appear in the last `20 years. I came from a family with a powerful smart mother and a certified genius of an older sister, so feminism wasn’t a worry for me in more moral times.
Ignorance still rules the behavioral sciences: “For instance, while storm surges tend to cause the most property damage, gale winds were more likely to convince people that hurricanes are getting stronger.”
If all hurricanes on the Gulf Coast had only “gale winds”, hurricanes could be getting weaker and gentler.
“Gale winds” do not ever reach hurricane strength, which the National Hurricane Center defines as: “Hurricane / Typhoon: A tropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained surface wind (using the U.S. 1-minute average) is 64 kt (74 mph or 119 km/hr) or more.”
The National Hurricane center issues a “Gale Warning: A warning of 1-minute sustained surface winds in the range 34 kt (39 mph or 63 km/hr) to 47 kt (54 mph or 87 km/hr) [ kt = 1 nautical mile/hr ] inclusive, either predicted or occurring and not directly associated with tropical cyclones.”
1 Knot = 1 Nautical Mile per hour
1 Nautical mile = 6076.12 ft. = 1852 m **
1 Statute mile = 1760 yards = 5280 feet
** Nautical mile: [n] a unit of length used in navigation; equivalent to the distance spanned by one minute of arc in latitude; 1,852 meters
A Strong Gale has winds up to 47 knots — and produces minor damage to buildings, such as loss of some roof shingles, and is consider Force 9 on the Beaufort Wind Scale.
Hurricanes are Force 12 winds — with winds in excess of 64 kts and produce “Extreme destruction, devastation. Large waves over 14 metres, air filled with foam, sea white with foam and driving spray, little visibility.”
Sitting ashore in a solid brick building looking out through thick (and taped up) safety glass at a strong gale is exhilarating — doing the same at a full-blown hurricane is scary.
Sitting aboard a sailboat, with three to five anchors out, looking at a Strong Gale is interesting and a little nerve wracking (sailing in one is more than “a little exciting”) — doing the same in a full-blown hurricane is a life-changing experience. (Twice, sitting not sailing, for me and mine so far.)
Wind Force: The difference between wind force of a Strong Gale and a Hurricane is this:
Strong Gale highest winds = 54 mph =~ 7.5 pounds per sq. foot wind force.
Weakest Hurricane winds = 74 mph =~ 14 pounds per sq. foot wind force.
The strongest Gale has half the force of the weakest Hurricane.
You know it’s badly researched when they cherry-pick a statement “Since 1995 there has been an increase in the…number of major hurricanes…in the Atlantic” from a Roger A. Pielke et al study published 12 years ago (2004) that explicitly states that the increase in Atlantic hurricanes from 1995 to 2004 doesn’t ” indicate that anything is going on other than the multidecadal variability that has been well documented since at least 1900″. See here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-86-11-1571
And they ignore the fact that there have been dramatically fewer major hurricanes causing damage since 2004. I guess 1995 to 2004 is a big deal, but the following 11 years is unimportant. Bad science indeed!
“The survey was conducted in 2012 before Hurricane Sandy, the second-most expensive hurricane in history, caused $68 billion in damage.”
That damage Subtropical Storm Sandy caused was simply the result of people getting fat and happy along the shore and NOT preparing for the inevitable storm in their part of the coast. This is the “ant and the grasshopper” and it is a crime to call this storm a hurricane, thus pandering to the idiots who behaved completely unadult and foolish. There is no way that state or Federal should have stepped in to help them rebuild. Help them survive, sure, but not rebuild—they placed themselves in harm’s way.
Yes, Sandy 2012 was not a hurricane at landfall. Sustained surface winds recorded by NDBC buoys off New Jersey show about 55 knots. Similar winds off Long Island and NY harbor are on record. Land stations show lower sustained winds. Photos of wind damage, fallen tree limbs, broken windows, etc. are consistent with damage found after tropical storms. The people who lived in the path of the storm simply were not prepared for the storm surge, which happened to hit during normal high tide. The large area of the storm also covered a large area of shore with lots of people. The Princeton paper also reads like propaganda, and claiming Sandy as a hurricane is just one obvious factual mistake.
Since ACE does not include the size of cyclones, there have been some effort to incorporate the size and duration of storms. One measure is called total integrated kinetic energy, or “TIKE” in this 2013 paper.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00349.1
The TIKE paper shows the methodology for calculating the values. There are enough data to calculate an Atlantic basin annual accumulated TIKE back to about 1990. The plot of the annual TIKE index since 1990 shows basically zero trend. Even 2005 fails to show above baseline. There is also a plot for the Pacific basin. The paper shows the September peak, and how cyclone energy follows the warmest ocean surface temps. There is some analysis that shows that the older ACE index exaggerates cyclone activity since it uses peak sustained winds without using storm size, track duration, etc.
This from a university that wants the term man disappear.
The Princeton University HR department has largely wiped the word “man” from its vocabulary.
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28540/
Very sad that this comes from the place Einstein worked.
you used the word TRUMP in a headline.
that’s funny har har
because political belief systems
distract from the day to day business
of studying climate
So is the study saying Americans are stupid?
It sure seems to imply that.
According to Jon Gruber, one of Obama’s go to guys for ObamaCare…
Absolutely!
They don’t call it “gullible warming” for nothing.
Margaret Smith
August 26, 2016 at 5:13 pm
Right on Margaret! Without saying it, “Diversity” really means everyone but white men who are the culprits for everything. How dare they have invented the the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Method, the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Technological Revolution (garnered almost all the meaningful Nobel Prizes in non-whifty-poofty categories) and even invented individual rights and freedoms. Much to atone for! They even have tried to atone for this: they also invented the Marxbrothers sociopolitical system and the idea that whites must self immolate, offer apologies to everyone else from cradle to grave and vow to deconstruct civilization and economic provenance.
The above is just simple facts. For those who may brand me a racist, I recognize it is also a fact that earlier civilizations were grand in Asia, the Mediterranean/Middle East, South America/Mexico in earlier times by other peoples, but they didn’t apologize for anything or rehabilitate themselves for these awful affronts. Indeed, they are proof (and today’s goings on, too) that civilizations are fragile and need constant bolstering, protection and continued evolution of supportive ideas or they will fall apart, even the greatest civilization the world has ever seen. I suppose people under 40 may see this as an evil notion, having had an education for designer brains (Abby Hoffman coin).
We white guys are really bad.
The Louisiana State Climatologist on the paper has a partial interview here on Public Radio. Seems reasonable. Got some trouble, but interesting comments.
http://lacoastpost.com/blog/?p=50915
Classic climate.bollocks.
My last post seems to have disappeared, so I’ll ask again:
“Accumulated cyclone energy shows no upward long term trend”
Well, is where the the graph showing ACE? What is the point of making that statement about ACE, and following it with a graph of cyclone frequency?
[missing graphic was added to match the caption -mod]
Anthony said:
“Accumulated cyclone energy shows no upward long term trend”
Does that statement still hold true if you look back further than 1970? The graphs Greg presented suggest otherwise, at least for the north Atlantic.
There’s a reason that Dr. Maue does not go back further in his ACE graphs: reporting bias due to improved technology and more people present to observe
When trying to do assessments of entire oceans, prior to the satellite age, and prior to increased shipping there were hurricanes and tropical storms that would go unreported. The storm churning in the middle of the Atlantic right now, Gaston, is a prime example of one that would have likely been unreported before 1970.
Without satellites, spotting and measuring tropical storms was hit and miss. From The GOES program:
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goes-overview/index.html
So you are welcome to think whatever you like about ACE trends prior to 1970, if it supports your belief system, but the scanty data isn’t representative of actual reality.
Ah come on, what on earth was objectionable about my post for it to be disappeared? I just want to understand exactly what you think and why. I understand that we have much less information before the satellite record, but the bit I don’t know is exactly is whether or not you think we can determine anything useful from what we do know, or if you think the information we do have is so flawed as to be totally useless?
You’ve made it clear time and again that answering your direct questions is a waste of time. I choose not to, because I’m simply not interested in engaging in an argument with you. My answer above speaks for itself.