Energy
10:48 AM 08/29/2017
Former White House national security adviser Ben Rhodes used the devastation that Hurricane Harvey brought to Texas as an opportunity to attack Republican “denial” of global warming.
Rhodes wondered how the GOP would tell future generations about its position on global warming. Former President Barack Obama made similar statements when giving speeches on global warming.
Rhodes is a regular critic of the Trump administration, and recently became the focus of a congressional investigation into the Obama administration’s improper “unmasking” of Americans caught up in surveillance.
The former adviser is now taking aim at Republicans for opposing Obama-era policies aimed at curbing global warming.
How will GOP explain to our kids that it failed to combat climate change or prepare for its impacts because it denied basic facts?
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 29, 2017
Democrats have often linked individual extreme weather events to manmade global warming, despite warnings from scientists that doing so is problematic.
Harvey made landfall in Texas on Friday night as a Category 4 hurricane, the first to hit U.S. shores since Hurricane Charley in 2004. The storm brought record levels of rainfall to the greater Houston area and thousands have been forced out of their homes.
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Remember that old tongue in cheek comment that all you needed to know to past your first college physics course was F=ma and you can’t push on a rope. Curious do you think Rhodes understands any of that?
Uhhh, it’s doubtful Ben Rhodes ever took anything resembling a hard science or engineering course at the college/university level, much less any college physics course. He understands politics and communications, in this case disinformation and propaganda.
note: That last sentence in his bio tells you what his real-world political qualifications really are.
Ben Rhodes is of the product of a Liberal education. He is woefully ignorant of hard science, mathematics and statstics, and civil engineering principles. And Rhodes is a unquestionably, demonstrated liar from his White House tenure as Benghazi-video Liar Susan Rice’s Deputy Liar over his Iran deal statements.
The creative writing course was invaluable for his future employment in the Obama White House presumably.
Doesn’t East Anglia have a highly-regarded creative writing department? Or has that now been amalgamated with its Climatic Research Unit?
Obama had a talent for selecting his advisers – in any discipline. Look at John Holdren.
joelobryan
“political science”
What is that?
There’s nothing scientific about politics.
HotScot asks, “political science” / What is that?
Actually there is political science. It is an offshoot of political of history and certainly among the softer sciences like sociology and climatology in that no controlled experiments can be done, but at least, unlike in the case of (current) climatology, political science studies situations that have occurred more-or-less repeatedly dozens and even thousands of times in recorded history.
It is political ‘science’ rather than political history, because it aims to give accounts not of particular social arrangements at particular times and places but after the manner of a biologist studying social insect communities, to give causal accounts of the survival value of given classes of arrangements under different conditions. Of course the biologist can, for example, perform the experiment of removing the “monarch” insect from the community to see what happens, but the political scientist also can at least look at several hundred cases of a human monarch or dictator being assassinated to discover if the consequences are apparently random or if they tend to fall into a limited number of categories. At least it is a scientific attitude.
Compare Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. Thucydides would see similarities in the character and behavior of numerous leaders and take care to point out, for example, the bad consequences of bad character for the long-term interests of a state. Plato, under the influence of Socrates, attempted to take such lessons into consideration and in his Republic design a regime in which leaders could be guaranteed to be virtuous and subjects obedient. Aristotle wrote at length on ethical issues with a special emphasis on how good character could be developed in small steps, starting with making a habit of simple virtues and graduating to making the more difficult virtues habitual. But he did not think there was a science of virtue. He did think there could be a science of politics.
Aristotle did not finish his Ethics and immediately set to work on his Politics. First he set about collecting and documenting 158 constitutions of various states throughout the Mediterranean basin. He and his students then wrote accounts that connected the political arrangements and subsequent historical events through time for each state. You can still read Aristotle’s one surviving study Constitution of the Athenians, because after being lost for a couple thousand years, a papyrus copy was discovered in 1879 in a very dry Egyptian garbage dump. After the research was done, then he wrote the Politics.
So real political science is political history analyzed with a scientific attitude. It is descriptive and analytical, not prescriptive and ideological. Some real political science is done even to this day, but much of it more closely resembles what Plato was doing: Decide how you would like human beings to behave and design political arrangements to guarantee that they will. To which attitude do you suppose Ben Rhodes subscribes?
Yes, I don’t want to hear another damn word about the qualifications of any Trump appointee. A writer as a security advisor?
At least Ian Fleming and John Le Carre were actually spies…
Well, I never took a geometry course, because I figured “two parallel lines never intersect” and “A**2 X B**2 = C**2” was all I needed about that.
Didn’t quite work out that way, but at the time it sounded good.
Sigh. Of course, that should be “A**2 + B**2 = C**2”. Maybe I should stop posting so late…
Definitely not a Rhodes scholar.
Stan on the Brazos, you can push on a rope in the Antartic.
Show me another cat4 hurricane with no steering currents that sat on the Gulf Coast for 5 days. If one can be found, what were the rainfall totals?
Show me how an increase in global temperature of less than a degree, if that’s really true, caused the absence of steering currents and all the rain.
Twas all the Texas windmills stealing the air currents in Texas that caused the storm to stall.
This inane statement is infinitely more logical then blaming SUVs for causing Harvey to hover.
here, stuff this in your snorkel, preop:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/deadliest-floods-history-gallery-1.2762719?pmSlide=1.2762709
Terry,
Try Camille on for size and loss of life and an even larger affected area – from Mississippi through Appalachia and out Virginia.
But in this case the Cat 4 (at landfall) footprint was almost entirely in Texas, and the steering winds only moved it a couple hundred miles total while dumping copious rainfall on Harris County, Texas.
Camille happened in 1969, when weather experts (there were no climate scientists then, only geologists who studied paleoclimate records honestly) said the planet was headed toward catastrophic global cooling..
Hurricane Flora in 1963 first dropped 57 inches on Haiti and then 100.39 inches on Santiago de Cuba.
That was a CIA plot to get rid of Castro
@ur momisugly Terry clausen
Why show YOU anything?
You are obviously too lazy to find out for yourself, so why should anyone spoon feed you. I doubt you have the ability to understand anyway!
tom0.
Terry is likely a Millennial. (of the millennial generation)
So it is not his fault he is ignorant. He really was handed a bad education by my generation (an education lacking true critical thinking assignments, as his education almost certainly consisted of liberal trope memes to regurgitate and then call it a classical, enlightened education).
And as Mother Nature and reality kicks the Millenials, one by one, in their proverbial balls, they can do what they do best, that is, blame someone else for their failings.
So true.
Tropical storm Allison Hit Houston in 2001, It took an almost identical path to Harvey and dumped 40″ of rain on houston, that’s 80% of what Harvey dumped and it was only a tropical storm. This kind of storm track is not unprecedented
Terry clausen, you show either all the hallmarks of someone that hasn’t bothered to take a simple look in a search engine or a simple tr*ll……
Terry clausen
Please demonstrate to me why, in a non linear, chaotic climate system, it shouldn’t happen.
Yeah, because all those extreme weather events before atmospheric CO2 rose past ~320 ppm were all simply natural events. And all those since >320 ppm are anthropogenic.
Those morons on the Left really believe that I suppose. It’s Liberal logic in action and the outcome of a Progressive education that leaves them incapable of seeing the absurdity, or if they do, then their dishonesty as a justified means. Ben Rhodes is likely though both a moron and dishonest as he was the Obama WH’s lead liar in the Iran deal that will give the nuclear weapons and $150 Billion to build the missile tech to deliver them.
I urge the GOP leadership to use this crisis to come up with a ‘must pass’ budget
bill and add the ‘repeal and replace’ as a rider. It only needs ‘one vote!’
The definition of Category 4 was changed slightly in 2012, so that when the NHC rounds windspeed in knots and in MPH to the nearest multiple of 5, the knots and MPH windspeed figures are in the same category. If I am correct here, Harvey made landfall With NHC’s determination of max sustained wind of 130 MPH. By the pre-2012 definition, this is Category 3.
As for Charley of 2004 being said to be the most recent Cat-4 before Harvey to make landfall on the US: As of the first advisory for Katrina (2005) after it’s center had crossed a coastal barrier island of Louisiana, it was a Cat-4, even according to the pre-2012 definition.
Neoleft changed the Saffir-Simpson scale precisely because there had been no major ‘canes hit for 12 yrs. MSM were reporting water spouts, dust devils and a week without rain.
Has anyone found the windspeed data that shows 130mph at 12ft height, or are they still going with illigitimate speeds at aircraft height?
The change did not affect when a major-qualifying hurricane hit, since that is Cat-3 or stronger. The low end of Cat-3 was not changed. Harvey had a Cat-3-qualifying sustained wind measurement by a surface station at Aransas Pass, as mentioned in Public Advisory #23, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2017/al09/al092017.public.023.shtml?
The standard height is 10 meters not 12 feet, a major hurricane is Category 3 or higher, the low end of the definition of Category 3 was not changed, and Harvey had a Cat-3 qualifying sustained wind by a surface station at Aransas Pass according to its #23 public advisory.
Surface winds in hurricanes have been estimated remotely using the Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) from NOAA WP-3D aircraft. The “radar” does not measure doppler shifts. Instead, “(t)he SFMR measures brightness temperatures (Tb) of the ocean surface and atmosphere at six C-band microwave channels …, and an inversion algorithm is used to retrieve wind speed. When viewed at nadir, the apparent sea surface Tb generally increases with surface foam coverage due to wave breaking …” I was going to post a comment about this, but, given the extent of the disaster, I am reserving comment until afterwards. The only comment I am going to make now is that these wind speeds are referred to as “estimates.” I may comment later in more detail. In the meantime, I have found the following published references:
Verification of Remotely Sensed Sea Surface Winds in Hurricanes, Uhlhorn and Black 2003
Improved Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer Tropical Cyclone Surface Winds in Heavy Precipitation, Klotz and Uhlhorn, 2014
https://twitter.com/Ellsdaddy/status/901565274012438528
I Cama I Saw I Left: The original ANPT2 reading was in knots, and that was 96. I saw that when I was able to do a radial search for recent readings. The Saffir Simpson scale has the low end of Cat-3 starting at 96 knots and at 111 MPH, which are a little different from each other. This sounds like the reason why the low end of Cat-4 was redefined by 1 MPH in 2012.
Followup on the definition of the top end of Cat-2 and the bottom end of Cat-3: The top end of Cat-2 is 95 in knots, 110 in MPH. The bottom end of Cat-3 is 96 in knots, 111 in MPH. Wind readings at weather stations used by NOAA are in knots.
When the NHC makes a determination of a hurricane’s strongest 1-minute-average wind 10 meters above the surface anywhere in the storm (the official number), they extrapolate from the measurements that they have, using mathematical relationships that have been found in hurricanes where more measurements are available. They use flight level wind determinations, SSMR when the windiest part of the storm is over water, and buoy and weather station measurements where they are available – generally closer to the surface than 10 meters. They use satellite readings and Dvorak classification from the storm’s appearance, mostly for when the storm is out on the high seas and they aren’t flying in it. And they make their determination or estimate in knots, rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 knots. After that, they convert this figure to MPH and round it to the nearest multiple of 5 MPH. The multiple of 5 knots closest to the borderline between Cat-2 and Cat-3 is 95 knots, which is 109 MPH to the nearest MPH and rounded to 110 MPH. As mentioned, 95 knots and 110 MPH are the top end of Cat-2, one knot or MPH above these is Cat-3.
There is a little difficulty here, which is the 96 knot highest actual sustained wind measured by an anemometer. Converting that to MPH says a hair less than 110.5. And 110 and 111 MPH, when converted to knots and rounded to the nearest knot, are both 96 knots (Cat-3). Meanwhile, when a hurricane’s “official maximum sustained wind” is reported as 110 MPH, its official determination/estimate in knots is 95 knots (Cat-2). Thankfully (at least as far as I know), buoy anemometers are much closer to the surface than 10 meters, so it is reasonably certain that Harvey had a 1-minute-averaged wind higher than 96 knots at/below 10 meters above the surface somewhere in the right side of its eyewall while it was landfalling. That means there is not much reasonable doubt that Harvey made landfall as a Cat-3 according to a wind speed definition that has not changed since, and Cat-3 is a major hurricane.
Tell Rhodes to go jump in a lake, he’s all wet. The Obama Administration was clueless on climate issues, as they were all politics all the time, and completely void of science.
Trump needs to go from defensive to offensive with CC.
It is democrats who ran Houston infrastructure into ruin, making the floods impacting the metro area worse and worse.
Ben Rhodes is a cynical traitor who helps Iran and terrorists attack America andvtge West.
Do we really need to hear from this monster about his anti-reality ignorance on the weather as well?
Do basic facts include:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/new-insights-on-the-physical-nature-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-deduced-from-an-empirical-planetary-temperature-model.pdf
If so, then ignoring the whole greenhouse hypothesis is the correct path to the future Mr Rhodes is worried about.
Denying basic facts? Maybe. Denying scientific method? That’s the purview of progressives.
But I thought that Obama had looked after all of this?
Really, we are in a Solar Minimum and this one had the rain we needed, but no punch. Just bouncing around like a ball on the hard wood floor. Now, the one coming across the Atlantic is unique in that it is by itself absorbing all those little hurricane things that make up a hurricane. Callus? I choose to live on high ground.
Tired old has beens.
?w=640
(who’s the guy on the left?)
Hard to say. It looks photoshopped in.
None of this would have happened if Trump hadn’t pulled us out of the Paris Accord.
What basic unmodeled facts does he refer to? Facts are not modeled.
In the IPCC narrative, dangerous global warming caused by Mann is a fact.
I thought it was since Hurricane Wilma in 2005??
Just for fun, I grabbed a Houston daily file from the GHCN records and plotted the TMAX anomaly. If you’re going to use temperatures, I prefer that one because an increased TMIN makes TAVG go up without anything actually getting any warmer.
As before, I calculated the 30-year baseline monthly averages using the 1981-2010 period and then subtracted those from the monthly averages over the whole period. The data is from 1930 to April this year, and is very good.
As you can see, there isn’t much going on there. Stays pretty flat until the 1998 and then gets a bit bouncy — but if that’s “global warming” I’ll eat my hat.
Drat, forgot to actually post the graphic…
James, I tried to reply to your post, but WP and the filters obviously didn’t like some of my vocabulary.
There is only one term that should adequately describe Houston’s temperature record…
UHIE, urban heat island effect.
One should expect a hundred year rise simply from that UHIE physical effect alone. Yet NOAA chooses not to compensate for that by lowering the present readings. It chooses to somehow justify its compensation in lowering the past.
To be fair, the SSTs in the NW Gulf of Mexico have been slightly higher this year, and that can make for more intense rainfall through increased evaporation (advection-convection energy).
But 1 year of slightly higher SST is not climate, and that is where the climate hustlers are living right now. So while they honestly cannot say that AGW didn’t contribute to Harvey, they equally cannot say it did. But from the dishonest hustlers like Mann and Dessler, they only report that they cannot discount that AGW/Climate Change made Harvey worse (i.e. they tell a half-truth to support a deception, telling half-truths was a famous Obama-era trademark still in widespread use because the fake news media won’t call them on it, except maybe Tucker Carlson on FoxNews).
If democrats want to blame republicans for Harvey, perhaps republicans should take credit for the hurricane drought! Since 1851, the US has been hit with 6 major hurricanes per decade on average. We just went almost 12 years without a major hurricane hitting the US, and the 2010s are on pace to have the fewest number of hurricanes (all categories) hitting the US of any decade since records began. So republicans should ask the people if they want far more major hurricanes hitting the US like the democrats, or if they kind of liked the hurricane drought that is part of the new and improved man-made climate, supported by republicans?
The question is nonsense, but it may be time to hoist these peeps on their own petard!
It is time to tar and feather those Democrat peeps, put them on a rail, kick them hard in the keister, and laugh them out of public view.
Or even more relevant, the drought in Gulf Coast Hurricanes. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurricane-drought-hits-a-new-record/
How about this story about the TERRIFYING LACK of hurricanes in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/04/the-u-s-coast-is-in-an-unprecedented-hurricane-drought-why-this-is-terrifying/?utm_term=.ebc078a5723d
How will the Democrat Party explain to its grandchildren and great grandchildren that they spent $20 trillion they didn’t have, and promised to spend another $80 trillion they hadn’t even borrowed, just in order to get elected? They bought votes with money they had either borrowed, or worse, had committed future generations to borrow. That is all provable, unlike some baseless speculation about lack of preparation for “climate change.”
As Gregory House would say: “Speculation. It makes a “spec” out of “u” and some guy named ‘Lation.'”
Today’s Democrats are pure Socialists by any critical examination of their current Party’s rhetoric and platforms (single payer, welfare, entitlements, soak the rich).
So MIchael, the answer is:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.””
– Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister
Today’s Socialist Democrats are merely gambling that they can get their pot-O’Gold and skedaddle before the money runs out.
joelobryan, Christopher Booker penned a reasonable summary of Thatcher’s role in instigating the necessary machinery required for the hoax:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html
UK’s role in continuing to promote the scamming probably equals Germany’s nowadays… with Oz and USA (pre- Trump) not too far behind.
(never ASSUME because you make an ASS out of U and of ME)…
Esto solo pretence a los que hablan ingles. A asumir no nos hace un burro de tu y yo.
Let’s see that the pressure pattern is visible even at a height of over twenty kilometers in the stratosphere.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00928/i8vvighgqw6o.png
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00928/1zkuu15g936n.png
The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere is very visible.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_nh.gif
Situation on a regular basis. As you can see low it is still blocked by the jet stream.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_200_nh_f00.png
Lightning storms indicate the range of the front.
http://pl.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30
“Rhodes wondered how the GOP would tell future generations about its position on global warming. Former President Barack Obama made similar statements when giving speeches on global warming….”
Suggestion: There was a fork in the road long ago. We chose to take the path that has led today to greater wealth and better lives. The other path led back to the stone age.
Weather is climate now! We knew all along it was. Thank you news folks for confirming this!