Guest essay by Eric Worrall
James Hamblin of The Atlantic seems to think it is OK to use hurricane disasters to raise awareness of climate change, because most Americans are not currently threatened by extreme weather.
It Is a Time to Talk About Climate Change
A note on the false dichotomy between prevention and treatment
JAMES HAMBLIN
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said that now is not the time to talk about climate change.
“Here’s the issue,” he said. “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm, versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.”
Fortunately this is not a choice that need be made. There is vulgarity in politicizing tragedies for the sake of gaining power, and crassness in pointing fingers and placing blame instead of mourning a tragedy. But of course these aren’t the only options. In the interest of minimizing harm to people, it’s always an important time to talk about climate change. We don’t have to choose between helping current victims and working to prevent the next tragedy.
…
Even amid this unprecedented sequence of hurricanes and destruction, most Americans are not in the path of danger. Those who want to lend a hand—to save lives and minimize harm and do something—stand to do much good by using this moment of awareness to prepare for a severe-weather event that does eventually affect their community.
Doing so does not require litigating the exact degree to which carbon emissions contributed or didn’t contribute to these exact hurricanes. It only means acknowledging that climate change is occurring, and it increases the likelihood of severe weather that will harm people.
In addition to preparing homes and communities accordingly, we make daily and hourly decisions about how much we contribute to that risk, and how much we do to mitigate it. It’s more than possible to talk simultaneously about prevention and treatment; it’s irresponsible not to.
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/fake-dichotomies/539259/
As I noted in a previous post, NOAA doesn’t think the alleged impact of anthropogenic CO2 on storm intensity is detectable. (h/t Benny Peiser)
… It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate). …
Read more: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
Here is what the IPCC says about climate change and hurricanes;
… Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin … In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low …
Read more: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/coverage-of-extreme-events-in-ipcc-ar5.html
You don’t have to be in the path of a disaster to feel its impact.
My opinion, if organisations like NOAA and the IPCC have both concluded there is currently no discernible anthropogenic influence on hurricanes and cyclones, what James Hamblin is pushing isn’t science.
Any movement that survives the refutation of Mann et al and Climategate is not all that concerned with truth.
Never let a good crisis go to waste!, main stream media is complicit with this lie and deceit.
So the last twelve years without a hurricane touching US continental shores is forgotten already? Or more likely never acknowledged by the MSM due to no direct input from their favorite sources?
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-ipcc-on-hurricanes-what-it-says.html
If you repeat the lies often enough people come to believe them. As long as Western media continues to facilitate the spreading of these falsehoods the task of convincing the average man or woman in the street that CAGW is an unproven hypothesis is, sadly, nigh impossible
So a 12 year drought in serious storms doesn’t matter to the committed climate look.
Listening to the kooks talk about the weather is like listening to UFO believers go on about men in black.
Except UFO kooks, unlike climate kooks, don’t worry on suffering people.
We seem to be replacing science with shamanism, and the media and complicit actors find this acceptable.
Seems the leftist greens /Warmunists will do anything, say anything, and use anyone to advance their false cause.
In fact there is a need to study in detail before making statements on extreme weather events: For example, undivided Andhra Pradesh state in India receives rainfall during the southwest monsoon [June to September], northeast monsoon [October to December] — cyclonic storms are the major contributors of rainfall and havoc and April-May cyclonic storms. The annual rainfall simply plotting from 1871 presents a 132 year cyclic variation — 2000 ended the cycle and started new cycle from 2001. The first 66 years presented below the average part wherein 24 years showed 110% of the average with 30 years between 90 and 110% of the average. The next 66 years presented above the average part wherein 24 years showed > 110% of the average and 12 years showed < 90% of the average. Below the average started in 2001 is continuing the same pattern.
However, the individual seasons rainfall presented 56 year cycle with southwest monsoon cycle in opposition to northeast monsoon cycle and cyclonic activity in Bay of Bengal followed northeast monsoon pattern.
This region is divided in to three meteorological sub-divisions. Coastal Andhra is one. This presents a typical pattern for the two monsoons. In the case of southwest starting period showed sharp up and down pattern and then low variations. The same is reverse in the case of northeast monsoon rainfall.
So, we need details studies to work out the extremes.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
As a central florida resident I’ve been following this very closely since Tuesday. One thing that got me looking deeper at this was seeing all the raw data from the planes flying into the eyewall each day.
After digging into the specs and extracting the measurements from the transmitted data it looks like the advisory intensity is purely based on a peak wind speed measurement over a 10 second interval at flight level between 2200-3000 m altitude. I found a decent paper on the measurement equipment aboard the aircraft from 2007 (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Uhlhorn/MWR2007Uhlhorn.pdf) and thought some of their conclusions were interesting.
Prior to 2005 intensity was determined by a model that took the flight level winds and extrapolated 10m surface winds from those. In 2005 the planes were outfitted with an updated SFMR radar that measures the ocean surface emissivity which is correlated to surface wind speeds. Due to lots of tropical activity in 2005 the new radar was able to help derive a better physical model matching the readings with dropsonde data.
In their conclusions the earlier quadratic models consistently underestimated winds at speeds > 50 m/s (111 mph). They also found that earlier boundary layer models were underestimating winds in the eyewall by as much as 10% when compared to dropsonde readings.
So are the storms more intense because of increased SST or because of better models, higher frequency sampling, changes to peak measurements from 1 minute averages, and improvements in the sensor equipment?
For any interested it looks like the historical raw data is available for investigation. Out of curiosity I checked out this: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/andrew1992/pass.html
Looks like peak winds were 74.3 m/s (165 mph) recorded in northern eyewall on pass number 71 with storm center 27 miles due east of Homestead on August 24. NHC advisories listed MSW as 140 mph in the 3 updates before landfall.
So if the Uhlhorn paper is correct the BL model for surface winds should have been about 78% of flight level or 130 mph. The post 2005 model would extrapolate 145 mph and the NHC report on Andrew mentions highest sustained wind speed was measured at Turkey Point Nuclear Plant of 146 mph.
If we look at the most recent Air Force data in Irma the peak flight level wind was 133 kts (153 mph) SFMR surface wind was 120 kts (138 mph) and same 88% linear adjustment would extrapolate 134 mph. NHC 11 pm advisory for Irma is 160 mph.
As others have pointed out surface data from Barbuda is not in agreement with the advisory intensity. Also any watching the NE eyewall pass within 10 miles of the Providenciales weather station in Turks & Caicos last night would have seen gusts of 83 mph and sustained winds just over 50 mph.
I’m just hoping that all along the coast people have heeded evacuation notices and found suitable shelters and high ground away from storm surge.
The Ends justify the Means.
To a ________ (Choose One: ISIS, AGW, socialist, animal rights) fanatic, lying is acceptable, if it serves the greater ’cause’.
Eric Worrall said: “James Hamblin of The Atlantic seems to think it is OK to use hurricane disasters to raise awareness of climate change, because most Americans are not currently threatened by extreme weather.”
Most Americans are not currently threatened by extreme weather? Let’s look at the number of states affected right now. Harvey: Texas and Lousiana. Irma: Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina. Wildfires in the West: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. That’s 30% of all states. By population it’s 45% of the population. Anytime 45% of the population is threatened by extreme weather, I think the other 55% are going to be pretty aware about it.
What is unprecedented about Harvey and Irma?
– We are in the heart of the hurricane season.
-There was a 12 year stretch prior where no Major Hurricanes hit the US mainland that was unprecedented.
– We’ve had a Gulf of Mexico hurricane into the Texas coast, now followed 2 weeks later by a Atlantic/Caribbean hurricane into Florida.
Prior to the beginning of the Climate Change hustle, this was pretty typical.
It takes a weak uneducated mind to believe this is unprecedented.
Hello common core, meet Millennial, I suppose.
The Atlantic article is mostly about the need for more adaptation, which we should all agree with. Indeed, we all have, in the past. And its remark about increasing climate change (i.e., warming) is something we mostly agree on too—i.e., all things being equal, increasing CO2’s direct effect will raise temperatures slightly during this century. Monckton he’s said so several times, and so have other prominent skeptics. I think that Florida could/should have been better “adapted” to cope with Irma and its after-effects.
Does anyone really think that trying to control the weather through trace gas emission constraints is a better policy than storm shelters and flood defences?
Even if the Atlantic is right and it is worse than the IPCC think… there will still be weather.
You will still need storm shelters and flood defences.
Money wasted on inefficient energy production is money not spent on keeping people alive.
I posted this chart on another article. But since it is relevant to this article, I will post it again:
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CO2-vs-Hurricanes.png
There appears absolutely no link whatsoever between rising levels of CO2, claimed Climate Change and Hurricanes.
The longer observation period, the higher record.
Three category 4 plus hurricanes in the region…
Those who study hurricanes using terms like unprecedented
The discussion here?
Trying to prove that some other storm was bigger.
It is enough that these are very extreme storms, surely?
and a prudent person would be looking at why so bad, why now -and not ignoring that an increase in intensity is exactly as predicted by climate science.
Predictions which say there’ll be more of this thing this century… is anyone going to take that as something which is worth planning for, or just continue to prove that these are nothing to worry about?
Because I wonder in the US can take these if, say, they turn up on a regular 5 year basis.
I wonder how much the Clint@n foundation will make from the destruction suffered by some of the Caribbean islands.
We all know how philanthropic the former first family is, so we can all guess what is being discussed around the breakfast table.
The stupid thing is that as a concept climate change only exists because the world stopped warming. It’s actually that in the last 6-7 years when global warming became climate change there have been so few extreme weather events to exploit. The reality is that warmists would feel far better if not only is there billions of dollars damage but lots of people losing their lives, collateral sacrifices to the climate change God.
Irrespective of what the science says – there is a clear opportunity to manipulate the masses.
And to journalists – that’s all that counts.
1954 featured 3’major hurricanes that hit the East coast within 3 months….during modest global cooling.
With regards to the current situation and 2 major hurricanes hitting the US within 1 month……so what?
It was only a matter of time before major hurricanes started hitting the US again. There is no proper perspective on the reality of the current situation if 2 major hurricanes in a month is climate change and no major hurricanes in almost 12 years is not.
The saddest part is that the authentic science in climate science has been obliterated and replaced with a political believe system.
I can acknowlege that luck and natural factors allowed us to somehow go almost 12 years withought a major hurricane making landfall. Matthew, last year came dang close to breaking that streak with the eye barely too far to the east off the southeast coast.
But so what? Where is the perspective?
The view projected is that these last 2 hurricanes acted this way and existed this way from climate change. The reality, however if you want an honest discussion is that we can say things like……a 4% increase in atmospheric moisture from global warming may have caused that record rain total of 51 inches in Texas to be 2 inches greater than it would have been.
Instead, people are given the impression that the entire event or the part that took it into the realm of being extreme was the result of humans caused climate change.
The authentic science can recognize that an additional X amount of rain was likely from a 4% increase in atmospheric moisture. Unfortunately, the ones who want the discussion to focus on authentic science have been labeled as deniers because they don’t follow the sensationalized and exaggerated version of climate science………sold as settled science by authorities who constantly and blatantly violate the scientific method when applying the principles of their area of expertise.
“Preppers” will (or should) get more cred in the media henceforth. Because, at least, they’ll be less of a burden on official responders and facilities. Maybe the state will even encourage citizens in vulnerable areas to create a bug-out bag, have a checklist for emergencies, have rope to tie together loose outdoor items, etc. Maybe the state could even distribute some of such stuff.
Also, a software infrastructure to assist in rescue efforts should be assembled, building on lessons learned from Harvey, and instructions on how to use it should be distributed. Maybe neighborhood-based email lists could be circulated within neighborhoods. (The NextDoor software app could perhaps be tied in somehow: it has the (voluntarily submitted) emails of about 1/3 of the houses in my neighborhood.)
Perhaps there is an important “take-away” from this experience with Irma – how can anyone watching the traffic exodus from Florida not imagine what it would be like without petroleum-powered vehicles. Bad as it now is, if everyone had to depend on plugging-in to electricity to power their travel, it would be a total catastrophe. Chaos would rule. Unfortunately ideology will likely trump common sense and the governments will push their policies despite the evidence to be seen on every TV screen.