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?quality=75)
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?quality=75)
![frequency_12months[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/frequency_12months1.png?resize=720%2C356&quality=75)
(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
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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.