Despite the fact that he’s “given up on climate writing” thanks to the bizarre treatment he got writing at Nate Silver’s “538”, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has done one very important climate thing today – he’s updated his now famous graph of hurricane drought.
Earlier today, I got one of those pleading “boo-hoo, shame on you” style comments from the irascible David Appell regarding the hurricane drought saying I’m too scared to discuss what he sees as an invalidation of this graph and record of 4001 days, he wrote:
Funny, that David, in his odd way of thinking. For the record, I don’t have any problems discussing science with Mr. Appell, I only have problems with you when you are being a jerk about differences of opinion. That’s why his comments get held for moderation, because he has a history of behaving in a less than cordial manner here and elsewhere. Despite that, his comments do get published when they meet site policy.
Regarding his link to the paper, here it is:
“The Arbitrary Definition of the Current Major Hurricane Landfall Drought,” Robert E Hart et al, BAMS (2015),
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00185.1
I read it this afternoon, and boy, what an effort to make this hurricane drought go away. It’s worthy of the statistical machinations we saw in Marcott et al and Karl et al to make “the pause” disappear.
We live in interesting times.
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He who sets the terms of the argument, wins.
Roy:
Spot on. Most people do not understand that this applies to just about any engagement -be it an academic argument, business deal or a duel. Whoever successfully challenges, dictates the discourse and the terms, and as things stand, the environmentalists have managed to dictate the discourse.
That is an issue in terms of an academic debate – but something quite different when you’re looking at the barrel of a pistol aimed at your head in the case of a duel, or badly grounded political decisions that demonstrably are in the process of killing off your regional economy.
I fear Al Gore set the terms. He pegged the gauge somewhere past “silly.”
In actual fact a dying tropical storm can cause huge damage with feet of rain, though winds are only a breeze and the pressure is high. Danger is what danger does. But Al made the claim we’d get clobbered, as did Bill McKibben And Kerry Emanuel. Therefore the Silly Wars began. And I have to admit the irony of 4000 days passing without a major hit is delicious.
We were very lucky with Matthew. Fifty miles west, and it would be a very different headline.
People shouldn’t forget poor Haiti. In the far southwest the storm surge filled their wells with salt water.
Good thing the Clintons spent billions of taxpayer dollars there, preparing them for the worst. Here comes another Clinton payday!
A great opportunity for the Clinton founadtion to step in and help all those poor Haitian victims… As if
The UN has had years, and didn’t even start a sea-wall to protect them. All they succeeded in doing was introducing cholera into a part of the world it didn’t exist, by using cholera -carriers to do the UN work. But just you wait. They will say the cause of the death is the fact “rich nations” have caused the “seas to rise.” (As if a rise a half inch makes a difference when the storm surge is over ten feet.) The UN will say the richer nations should pay a carbon tax to build the sea-walls the UN never built.
Maybe so. Lets stop funding the UN and start funding the people of Haiti. The UN are leeches, middle-men who do worse than nothing, because all the poor get from them is cholera.
Feet of rain, hands of snow, heads of ice.
Brains of dry ice.
Less succinct, but I like this better. (setting poor terms can lead to a loss)
“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.” … Blondie (Eastwood)
The term ‘making landfall’ is the most important part of all this. There have been hurricanes but they mostly tire themselves out on the Atlantic Ocean’s vast waters so only shipping has to cope with it. The term ‘hitting land’ has to mean something.
For example, this week we saw a good sized, nasty hurricane devastate Cuba and particularly, Haiti and it harmed the Virgin Islands, too. The fact that it skipped along just a short distance offshore of Florida, it is still ‘a major hurricane’ and I would count it as such. Do you?
Indeed, one should include the words ‘Hurricanes hitting the US’ and it has to clarify, not any islands or offshore entities for we happen to have these, for example, the US military base, Gitmo, was very definitely hit by this hurricane. Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit. Do we also include Hawaii and Alaska when talking about the weather?
Absolutely! So we have to define what is the ‘US’ if we want to be honest about this matter, OK?
Generally, “US” in this context means the continental United States (Sometimes referred to as the lower 48) . So Hawaii and Gitmo don’t count. Alaska probably doesn’t either, though I don’t think there have been all that many Hurricanes that were still hurricanes by the time they hit Alaska, so that ones probably mostly a moot point as far a major hurricane strikes go.
No one is saying they aren’t major Hurricanes at one point, but it doesn’t matter, what matters based on the chart, since it’s not about that. There are other charts based on that sort of thing. It’s totally irrelevant to this discussion at hand.
..We fly an American flag in China at the U.S. embassy also…So all their weather counts as American weather ? D’oh !
Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit.
http://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/
By a treaty signed in 1903 and reaffirmed in 1934, the U.S. recognized Cuba’s “ultimate sovereignty” over the 45-sq.-mi. enclave in Oriente province near the island’s southeast end.
GITMO is leased for $3,386.25 per year.
The US doesn’t own it. Your position is absurd.
“Since it flies the American flag, I would suggest it means US territory was hit.”
Cubans would definitely not agree. Guantanamo is Cuban territory leased by the US. The whole legal basis for detaining terrorists there was that they were then not in the US, remember?
Sigh. OK: let’s celebrate the fact that both Cuba and Haiti were hit by a very powerful hurricane which destroyed property, killed many people, and was extremely dangerous but hooray! It stayed slightly offshore when hitting the US causing us far fewer problems. Then you can cling to your belief that hurricanes hardly happen…except if you are one of the pieces of real estate slightly south of the US mainland. Then it is all bad luck to you all.
Can’t you all see how this looks to outsiders? It looks really bad! Think about that.
All of you seem to have forgotten about ……… the U.S. Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, and many other surrounding minor islands.
For the record, the rules of this graph (major hurricanes making landfall on continental USA) is a not a random silly rule. The fact is, that is the only long term record with any degree of accuracy. Smaller hurricanes, or ones that didn’t hit the USA would often be missed in the past.
What an absurd position to take @emsnews. An embassy territory is not, in any way, legal or supposed, sovereign territory. If you were to be born in an overseas embassy your nationality would be that of the country in which you were born, not that of the country which is running the diplomatic mission. To use America as an example, a child born in embassy property to American parents in say, London, is not a US citizen by right but a British citizen by right of soil. You should brush up on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961.
@ur momisugly Craig (@ur momisuglyZoot_C) – October 8, 2016 at 10:28 am
Here ya go Craig, …… click the following “link” and read it, after which you will be better informed to decide as to whether or not an embassy territory is in any way, equivalent to, or considered to be, sovereign territory of the occupying country.
http://www.pathtoforeignservice.com/is-an-embassy-on-foreign-soil-the-sovereign-territory-of-the-host-country-or-the-embassys-country/
I don’t see anyone “celebrating” the fact that Haiti and Cuba were hit.
Your petulance does not become you.
Craig: You are wrong on two counts.
1) Being born in an embassy does make you a US citizen.
2) Being born of US parents, regardless of where in the world it happens, makes you a US citizen.
@Samuel C Cogar I read that before I posted which led me to the Vienna convention. I stand by what I said.
@MarkW No, I’m not.
@ur momisugly Craig (@ur momisuglyZoot_C) – October 11, 2016 at 2:33 am
So, Craig (@ur momisuglyZoot_C), I suggest that you, post haste, re-educate the US Diplomatic Corps because they were taught to believe the following, to wit:
How long has this ridiculous set of arguments been going on about what constitutes the United States?
Silly and irrelevant to anything remotely to do with climate.
Maybe next year some record lows for the United States will be set at the Embassy in Moscow or perhaps a record high at our embassy in Saudi Arabia
A warmist wanting to move the goalposts again. How unexpected! I think we should retain the definition that has been accepted since well before I was born, hitting has always been making landfall.
Incidentally, a rain storm that floods parts of LA does not end the California drought. The same concept applies. Therefore, it will take several cat.3 hurricanes per year in several consecutive years to end this drought.
emsnews seems to me YOU are the only person claiming some celebration about the deaths in Haiti, NOT the honest people that post truth here……..WE dont look bad to the rest of the world no matter how hard DIShonest people like you attempt to FALSELY portray us.
They can – and do – cool past temperatures and raise recent temperatures. Not so easy to re-write the hurricane record.
Jimmy, Wiki is already rewriting Hurricane wind speeds for Hurricane Andrew.
You can change it all you want. I went there. I saw what it did. I have absolutely no idea what the wind speeds were. But one thing I can guarantee, and what the folks that lived through it can guarantee is that the total devastation was much more like a tornado and not a hurricane. A very, very large tornado. All the hurricanes that I’ve been through and all the ones that I’ve ever seen pictures from or evidence of don’t begin to approach what happened with Andrew (except perhaps for Galveston).
Oh, they’ll try, Jimmy. They probably already have, with the help of the MSM lapdogs.
Not so difficult perhaps as methodology changes. IMV, it is simple. The continental US must experience cat 3 surface winds, just as older storms were recorded. End of story. ( Even this makes modern storms more likely to register higher with the likelihood of more locations where wind speed is recorded)
What about if it hits a US Navy ship at sea? Or a private boat flagged as American, or just has an American on board? Perhaps one called the “Reductio ad Absurdum”?
Contiguous United States. Problem solved
Actually, hurricanes menacing shipping are extremely important things to track! And think about, too, no less. I know my caution about all the joy here that we are still free of the most dangerous levels of hurricanes is understandable, it LOOKS BAD TO OUTSIDERS who see a dangerous storm. Trust me on this.
Finess matters! Agreeing that we had a very dangerous brush with a very dangerous storm that killed many people days earlier looks both more humane, more caring, more understanding than the grandstanding going on here. Hate me with passion, just remember: if you look heartless, you will be disliked and not followed by people outside the group here.
hilarious stuff you write claiming such “joy” here contrasted to your SADNESS that a major hurricane did NOT hit the USA and kill hundreds here………..YOU are a FARCE in any discussion among rational intelligent adults.
ems old soul,
I quite agree about hurricane tracking – and predicting, within the acknowledged envelope of uncertainty, certainly 24 + hours ahead.
This for ships and folk ashore – landlubbers, if you like.
‘The Watch Ashore’ is my preference, if it is of interest.
Hurricanes are dangerous. Agreed by all.
H/Matthew, at Cat 3/4/5 – whatever – was very dangerous.
Unhappily many – probably thousands, we will find when comms are fully open, even if the insatiable MSM has moved on – have lost their lives, and hugely more will have lost everything – and I know many had little enough to begin with.
I cannot imagine owning just the clothes on my back, and one shoe. Finish.
*** I am sure it is terrifying for them.
*** Again. As Haiti has had several calamities.
All this in either not in dispute, or, at worst, simple common sense!!
All that said, either a Cat 3 (or 4 or 5) storm has made landfall in the ‘Lower 48′ – or Contiguous States’ or not.
I agree that it was close – fifty miles is not far, and the margin may have been less – but H/Matthew did not make landfall at Cat 3 or above. So far.
Recurving – as POTUS, the Noted Meteorologist, announced – could still change that.
Envelopes of uncertainty – at this time. Big ones.
By the way, I have several American coins upstairs – likely a dollar’s worth in all, and a shirt I bought in Houston.
It rained here, this afternoon.
‘Rain in the US’??
I suggest not . . . . . . . . .
Auto – very glad that I no longer get to put myself [and my crew, and my ship] in the way of Beaufort Force 12 winds. Very glad indeed.
Question:
Has a major hurricane, Cat 3, 4, or 5 made landfall on the Continental contiguous 48 states in the last 4001 days?
No
“HAROLD October 7, 2016 at 9:56 pm
No”
Well then, that’s settled.
What else would we like to talk about?
“What else would we like to talk about?”
Let’s talk about dropping a nuclear bomb on top of an Atlantic hurricane that is threatening to “destruct” the coastal US mainland ……. to see iffen that would make it a non-destructive “tropical depression” …………….. (pun intended).
Not so difficult perhaps as methodology changes. IMV, it is simple. The continental US must experience cat 3 surface winds, just as older storms were recorded. End of story. ( Even this makes modern storms more likely to register higher with the likelihood of more locations where wind speed is recorded)
going by a max wind gust is not doubt heavily biased as well because of the difference in density of readings due to population changes. Just another reflection of the kind of soft unreliable science that pervades climate science, which pretty much is like weather prediction was about a 100 years ago. And its a lot worse that since one cannot even warm up a greenhouse with the greenhouse effect.
Based on recorded sustained wind measurements by surface stations.
1. Mathew was a Saffir-Simpson category 1 hurricane from NDBC station 42058 (south of Haiti) to Freeport, Bahamas. On-line photos of damage are consistent with actual winds speeds measured by surface anemometers.
2. There are no recorded wind data by surface anemometers in Florida of over 56 knots. Many photos of damage on the eastern shore of Florida are entirely consistent with tropical storm scale winds.
The Saffir-Simpson scale correlates surface damage with sustained surface wind speeds. Actual observed damage tells the story if you don’t have actual measured speeds recorded by anemometers.
3. The wind speeds claimed by the national hurricane center are not confirmed by observed facts.
BW… well now, it’s not wind speed after all, but water damage. If CAGW can’t win the argument, they’ll just change the parameters.
I got caught up in the fear mongering. Hard not to do when every news outlet is screaming disaster. Post event (wet finger in the air) seems this storm was not much beyond a cat 1 after Haiti/Cuba. Maybe the cat 3 winds were hiding somewhere in the deep storm. However, thanks to this site I have another tool in the box looking at the National Data Buoy Center site.
Storm apparently broke the moorings from one of the buoys. Wonder where they’ll find that one.
I would give you points for making Appell look like a foolish a-hole, but he does that himself so very well.
That is one hell of a ridiculous pretzel of a paper. Makes me think folks out there in the climategate-ish world were talking, “We need to get rid of this drought.”
You mean, David Appell is still alive? I thought he’d been killed by climate change a few years back? It’s a MIRACLE!
good grief…I had no idea he was still around
Oh, he’s still around – just ask anybody who visits Judith Curry’s or Roy Spencer’s sites.
“Crazy Davy” is what happens when a fat guy lives alone with a dozen feral cats…
They are now claiming three Florida deaths due to Mathew, although a trial of the hurricane
would render such a claim insufficient to convict the cane : a woman died of a heat arrest and the responders could not reach her because of Matthew. Proving Mathew guilty would, of course, require proving that the woman would have survived had the responder reached her, which cannot be proven. Case dismissed.
One woman was killed by a falling tree.
2 falling trees and 2 carbon monoxide deaths. I would argue the trees count and the CO does not…
I live, work, and play on Mount Hood, in Oregon. We frequently experience winds in excess of 100mph, at Timberline Lodge, where I work. (6,000ft elevation) There are 3 buildings at 7,000′, and one building at 8,540′. These buildings frequently see wind speeds in excess of 140mph, mostly during the winter months.
We rarely need to perform repairs due to high winds. All of the buildings but one are huge, more than fifty feet in height, and 100’X100′. The smaller building is our hotel/wedding/convention venue, located at seven thousand feet. It has a shake roof that stays where it should, and was built in 1939.
Additionally, we receive between 400″ and 800″ of snow each winter, 400 people work here, and rarely does anyone call in to say they can’t make it.
Isn’t the atmosphere thinner up there at 8000 feet? Thus, a 100-mph wind might have a lesser impact than it would at a lower altitude. (I’m asking, not as a skeptic of your post, but because I’d like to know, and I don’t.)
John,
You are correct, the impact on structures is also related to the mass of the air, so the denser he air the greater the force. The force is proportional to the density times the velocity squared.
Ever see the ghost of caretaker Jack Torrance roaming around?
Colorado, too, has high wind speeds at high altitudes. I think the record is 201mph on top of Longs Peak @ur momisugly 14,300′. But the City of Boulder at about a mile high gets pretty strong gusts; 147mph is their record.
I find it odd that folk can get into an argument about how one “defines” a hurricane making landfall in the United States as though this is an important matter for the debating team. Kind of silly really. Hurricanes are part of the mix for the South and East coast weather that we need to study and understand in order to more reliably forecast what they are going to do and where they are going to do it in order to save economic resources and lives. Before environmentalists took up the Climate Change Cudgel it was a reasonable discussion.
Well said, fossilsage.
+1000
I believe the definition to be a response to the prediction that global warming would kill billions and billions of Americans because of a raging increase in the number of hurricanes. That implies a couple things that didn’t happen and that is recorded in the current graph. The graph is a simple consequence of the failed prediction and nothing more.
well dp on the face of it; anybody who claims that global warming is going to kill billions and billions of Americans is utterly incompetent to discuss shit or shinola, argument over. As for the rest of your post the implication is you are confused or high and having trouble making your meaning understood.
dp,
Yes, it is a response to the ridiculousness of the blame-bad-weather-on-global-warming crowd. But the Pielke graph is based on the same sort of fallacy. Ike was a major hurricane that impacted the U.S., but it dropped down from cat 3 to cat 2 just before the eye reached land, so it does not count. The eye of Matthew stayed just off shore, so it does not count. Hurricanes that hit Cuba or Haiti or Mexico don’t count. It is all a bit silly. Curious, but not really important.
You have to wonder whether, if the last several years had shown a rash of cat 3-5 hurricanes making landfall on the East coast, any climate scientists would be arguing that it was just a statistical anomaly arising from “arbitrary” definitions of landfall.
I think the center of the eye has to cross the coast, not just an eye band gusting to 107 mph on the Cape Canaveral point.
Not related to the eye, but to surface recorded wind speed. The US land surface must experience cat 3 or higher winds.
The CAGW Deception has consequences, and is causing every official pronouncement to be questioned.. Now, NOAA’s hurricane data is being looked at with a skeptical eye. And who could blame the skeptics for their lack of faith in NOAA?
No one….NHC should have told people how small the eye was….they should have admitted it was going through an eye wall change and would come out a cat 3…etc
…the blame is totally in their court
Sorry, don’t get it. What is the point of the Pielke graph, if not to provide some demonstration of whether or not a warming planet generates more frequent and stronger storms? If that is the point, why rule out hurricanes that don’t make landfall in the contiguous US? And if that is not the point, what is? Thanks.
That pretty much sums it up.
In the 1970s Florida was hit by six major hurricanes in seven years:
http://notrickszone.com/2016/10/07/rare-event-millions-of-children-under-11-see-first-time-major-hurricane-hit-florida/
I live on the Florida “Space Coast” so let me assure you that it is a big deal that 4001 days have elapsed since the last landfall of a major hurricane.
What is wrong with you? Don’t you understand that major hurricanes kill people?
In years past there was no way to reliably count hurricanes at sea. They could only be reliably counted if they hit land. Thus, if you want a time series that extends to before satellites and radar you can only count those that hit land.
You are wrong. Not only could they ‘count hurricanes’ many years ago, they were most careful starting in the mid-1800’s to do so because hurricanes affect shipping tremendously and it was highest importance to track possible hurricanes at sea. Even the infamous hurricane that hit Galveston, ships at sea tracked it and tried to warn Galveston about this dangerous storm. The US has an ‘index of hurricanes’ going back to 1851. There is this gap between 1885 and 1921.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tracks/
@emsnews The Pielke graph is the measure we have. It you feel that a different measure is required by all means do the hard work of collecting the data. The fact that the Pielke graph does not meet your need to show an increase in storm frequency or severity does not give you the right or ability to arbitrarily redefine it. If you are so sure that things are worse, prove it!
emsnews,
Certainly you are not suggesting that plotting storm tracks and speed of wind was as accurate in the 19th C as it is today with the synoptic view provided by satellites, aircraft, and Doppler radar? We have been aware of NH hurricanes since the time of the Spanish galleons, but that doesn’t mean we have a complete or even reliable historical record. The best we can say is that we have a record of some, and usually those that either made landfall or came close to land. To try to say anything about the frequency over time would end up with a strong bias suggesting hurricanes are more frequent today.
If you hold the view that all climate is local, then observing patterns in sub-global areas is relevant to your position. So trends in the US, or Europe, or South America, or …(you name it) are of interest. In this case there is a well-defined (or maybe not-so-well defined) record for the United States. To find a trend, you can’t be ‘adjusting’ the parameters of the record at your convenience. So Dr. Pielke’s graph is fit for purpose.
JMA: … why rule out hurricanes that don’t make landfall in the contiguous US?
If you hold the view that all climate is local, then it makes sense to look at sub-global trends in significant areas, such as Europe, South America, China, the US, etc. In this case there is a long record (hopefully well defined) that can be extended to include ongoing events. But one cannot be ‘adjusting’ the parameters that define that area. Dr. Pielke’s graph is very much fit for purpose.
MODS: Apology for the double post. Feel free to eliminate either.
js
It’s fit for some purpose–just asking for clarification as to what that is. Certainly it’s an interesting historical document, but surely it would be nice for climatological purposes to develop a more global metric? Not sure when the hurricane data became reliable but if the satellite data started in about 1979 it would be interesting to look at global storm index trends since then, as some warming has occurred over the period. If there is no trend corresponding to global warming maybe there are better ones correlated to ocean cycles.
E.g. Chylek, P. & Lesins, G. (2008). “Multidecadal variability of Atlantic hurricane activity: 1851–2007”. Journal of Geophysical Research. 113: D22106. Bibcode:2008JGRD..11322106C. doi:10.1029/2008JD010036
Climate scaremongers, referring to the US after the signature hurricane Katrina, warned sternly “Get used to this. We will have more frequent and more severe hurricanes in the near future as CO2 keeps increasing!”
So how could we have subsequently set a new record interval between such major hurricane landfalls in the US? The graph is supremely ironic and informative, ain’t it? Hey?
You have to give the scare mongers credit. They were half right. Co2 levels did keep going up.
Because reliable records for hurricanes that hit places other than the continental US do not go back that far.
[snippity snip snip]
I looked at the comment for awhile trying to decide if I should put in the effort to salvage some points, most of which I agree with, but the tone was just too over the top to salvage. For those who wonder, the point of the original comment was something along the lines of a bad week for the POTUS. Lots of events around the world mentioned. ~ you-know-who on a guest appearance.
Anthony & Mods: The post above needs some Snips!
Should probably be done away with altogether.
There are legitimate criticisms that can be made about these subjects, but this comment is, IMHO, well over the line and not just because of the sexual innuendo. There should be room for sarcasm, but not without limit. I second the call for some snipping.
.. Savannah, Georgia ….Highest ” Wind Gust” = 49 mph….
http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/georgia/wind-gust/
Somebody got some splainin’ to do….
That paper sure goes a long way to prove nothing in particular. I think most of us know that the drought is mostly luck so who really cares. It’s just a neat anomaly and has a lot to do with the wind shear patterns that don’t favor landfall. Yes, idiots, we know there were ‘lots of typhoons last year in the Pacific.’ Yes, idiots, we know that ‘there’s more to the oceans than just the North Atlantic.’ You don’t need to point me toward a scientistical graphic at Skeptical Science or show me how Exxon funds everybody and their dog on DeSmog Blog. I can see the ACE trends myself and they look pretty unremarkable.
These days there is no chance that a hurricane will go unrecorded. Before the satellite era, it was possible.
The stipulation that the hurricane has to make landfall in America makes it possible to compare with the historical record. You have to have some standard, pick whatever you want. Even ‘hurricane’ is arbitrary … it wasn’t passed down to us on a stone tablet after all. 🙂
Having skimmed the paper in question, I came to the conclusion that if you sliced the data a little differently, it convincingly showed that Major Hurricanes, whether you classify them as >96kn or >100kn wind speed, are getting much more rare. This sparsity extends over the last 30 years, not just the last 10. Thus, it can be classified as climate, not weather.
Funny how the warmistas wrap themselves in the flag of science, until it tells them what they don’t want to hear. Then they turn on science and undermine it with specious arguments.
WaPo: The capitol weather gang deplores Drudge’s claim that Matthew was being hyped by the NHC.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/10/06/drudge-report-posts-infuriating-and-flawed-comments-on-hurricane-matthew/
That cuts both ways.
What the CW “Gang” isn’t taking into account is that lives are also put at risk by “crying wolf.” E.g., because Bloomberg and others over-hyped Irene, some people likely under-reacted the next year when hearing warnings about Sandy.
That’s a bit of a diversion. Drudge didn’t specifically accuse the NHC of hyping, but “the government”–which includes NOAA, which was fairly alarmist, IIRC.
It seemed to me that the message from the WaPo, NYT, etc. deliberately omitted or played down the measured on-land sustained wind speeds from Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, and south Florida, and played up the highest wind-burst speeds from these locations. I don’t recall such strongly unbalanced reporting about any prior hurricane.
PS: Wouldn’t it be a laugh if Matthew breaks the record on its loop-back?
Does the National Hurricane Center receive any tax money? If so, it depends on politicians for that portion of its funding and must, therefore, tailor its public utterances to justify the money it receives. If not, then it is possible to regard its utterances as non-political; but even in that circumstance, I wouldn’t discount political motives.
>>To make matters worse, Drudge took to Twitter and accused
>>the government of purposefully inflating Matthew’s intensity to
>>send a message about climate change.
But Drudge was right.
Is anyone going to apologise to them?
R
The [National Hurricane Center] is the government agency responsible for determining [hurricane intensity] and it is apolitical as it gets.
Make appropriate substitutions between the square brackets: FBI, IRS, Dept of Education, EPA, NOAA, inter alia and you may start to get the picture.
It looks like, for whatever reason, this storm was over-hyped (not to diminish the harm it has caused many). The problem is, if there is a true cat 3+ storm in the future, people will decide to ride it out based on their experience with this storm. People in the future may die because of how they dealt with this storm. That is not acceptable.
No doubt that if this hurricane had hit the US mainland as a cat 4, it would have been proof of CAGW. I’m sure D Appell would have been all over Anthony had that happened. How quickly CAGW forgets that this is weather and not climate, as they have made abundantly clear. Climate is a long term change in the weather, one or two storms in 10 years doesn’t qualify as a change towards catastrophic AGW. It’s a change all right, it’s in the wrong direction for CAGW. Does that mean temperatures are actually dropping based on the lack of hurricanes or the drought in the western US ending ? Doesn’t the models show just the opposite ? And we believe the models, right ?
If I pointed out as a skeptic that a cat 3 hurricane as something normal for that part of the world, oh horrors ! The warmist group still feels justified in calling it AGW ? If not outright, then they have certainly implied it as in the terms they were using, like ” unprecedented ” and ” never seen anything like it ” .
Fortunately, this storm looks like it’ll turn out to sea, unlike the hurricane that buzzed up the Atlantic Coast in 1938. Providence, R.I. was under 20 feet of water. I can’t imagine how the CAGW people would spin a storm like that today. Of course, the real trouble is that if it feeds up into Pennsylvania and sits there for days feeding rivers that are a mile wide and an inch deep. ( not that has ever happened before… sarc ).
If global warming were real, that storm wouldn’t have weakened would it ? Isn’t that the way CAGW tells the story ? So now the fan club of CAGW is waving the flag of the flooding aspect. When wasn’t tidal surge a part of hurricanes ?
Correct, the warmists would have been crowing about a big hurricane. But the contrary is also true: this site must be careful about celebrating very, very close misses whereby hurricanes kill people and destroy property in the US but the eye doesn’t pass over a city. This looks bad, it looks like you all are cynical, cold people who don’t care. It is a publicity disaster, in short. Be reasonable: we just had a very, very close scrape with a very dangerous hurricane. We were very lucky that a cold front shoved the eye barely offshore.
Sigh…the storm was “very, very dangerous” when it was direct hitting, Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas. Cat 5 and 4. THEN it weakened, and followed a more offshore track from Florida. Rick Scott said don’t go outside… South Beach in Miami had 200 surfers out. With another 200 on the beach. I don’t care what NHC, NOAA, NWS or The Weather Channel says anymore, the people I know and trust up and down the Florida coastline reported winds in the 30 to 50 mph range, and that is NOT a “very, very dangerous hurricane.”
All hurricane are dangerous. The way the current argument is set up is designed to make it seem that skeptics are cold and cynical. I read somewhere a tree fell on someone and killed them in this storm. Is it no less tragic that on a clear day a woman was killed when a gust of wind snapped a branch and killed her ?
I’m not arguing the human side of this argument the diaster brought about by storms. What i/we are arguing is the need to destroy our economy based on fly by the seat of your pants predictions. Specifically, ” more frequent and stronger hurricanes ” . I am certain that the differences between this storm and a cat 5 hitting Florida or anywhere else would be significant regardless of flooding. The flooding that occurs in Pennsylvania after a hurricane comes ashore is very common. While terrible, it isn’t something new.
It’d be nice to have some real science being done rather than the alarmist rhetoric blinded by AGW. Until the CAGW community comes foward and acknowledges that the science isn’t settled, we will see more of the same. After all, I’m a criminal in the eyes of a true believer. ( and I think the believers are useful idiots by communists )
A what ? A Cold Front ?
Rishrac, ……. did you know that severe flooding can occur in West Virginia after a hurricane comes ashore ………… in the Gulf of Mexico?
It sure nuff can, when the remnants of that hurricane moves north by northeast up the Mississippi River watershed, …. and then up the Ohio River watershed …… where it is then “pushed or sucked” over to and up-n-over the mountains in WV ….. wherein it rains like a female bovine peeing on a flat rock.
Pielke Fils went out to play,
There’s recess time every day,
We can always hope and pray,
He’ll get bored, rejoin the fray.
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