Guest essay by Eric Worrall
LSE Grantham Institute Communications Director Bob Ward has written a post for the Guardian in which he admits he’s not sure of how anthropogenic CO2 might be impacting hurricanes, but he thinks President Trump should answer for them anyway.
Irma and Harvey lay the costs of climate change denial at Trump’s door
The president’s dismissal of scientific research is doing nothing to protect the livelihoods of ordinary Americans
Bob Ward
Sunday 10 September 2017 09.05 AEST
As the US comes to terms with its second major weather disaster within a month, an important question is whether the devastation caused by hurricanes Harveyand Irma will convince Donald Trump and his administration of the reality of climate change.
The president’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may escape Irma’s wrath, but with the deaths of so many Americans, and billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses, the costs of climate change denial are beginning to pile up at the door of the White House.
…
Climate change cannot be blamed for the hurricane count in any single season, nor for the occurrence of any single storm, but there are three ways in which it is making the consequences worse.
First, although the intensity of a hurricane depends on many factors, warmer seawater tends to promote stronger storms. Average sea surface temperatures have been rising, and some parts of the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are warmer than average at the moment, which is a key reason why both Harvey and Irma became so strong so quickly.
Second, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, which can result in heavier rainfall. That is true not only for hurricanes but also for weaker storms across the world. Even relatively mild tropical storms can cause great damage by dropping huge volumes of rain over one area.
Third, apart from strong winds and heavy rainfall, hurricanes cause damage through storm surges as their winds push seawater ahead of them. Storm surges can inundate extensive low-lying coastal areas, sweeping away everything in their path. Sea levels have been gradually rising globally, making storm surges bigger and deadlier.
Scientists are still not sure about the other ways in which climate change may be impacting hurricanes. The main reason Harvey created such extreme flooding around Houston was that it stalled over the city and dumped rain for several days without moving on. We do not know if climate change played a role in creating the atmospheric conditions that made that happen.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/10/hurricane-irma-harvey-climate-change-trump
The biggest problem for alarmists like Bob is there is no upward trend in hurricane frequency or intensity.
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
Speculative climate models suggest there should be an upward trend. But that predicted projected upward trend has not been observed in the real world.
Many climate alarmists seem to think we should treat climate model projections as equivalent to real world observations. For example, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth said the following back in April this year;
… With climate models as tools, we can carry out “what-if” experiments. What if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had not increased due to human activities? What if we keep burning fossil fuels and putting more CO2 into the atmosphere? If the climate changes as projected, then what would the impacts be on agriculture and society? If those things happened, then what strategies might there be for coping with the changes?
…
The models are not perfect and involve approximations. But because of their complexity and sophistication, they are so much better than any “back-of-the envelope” guesses, and the shortcomings and limitations are known.
…
The reality is climate models ARE computer driven guesses. Climate models have never been validated in any meaningful scientific sense – an issue which bothers some climate scientists so much, they argue that the definition of science itself must be changed, to accommodate climate models’ lack of scientific falsifiability.
… Climate models are important and complex tools for understanding the climate system. Are climate models falsifiable? Are they science? A test of falsifiability requires a model test or climate observation that shows global warming caused by increased human-produced greenhouse gases is untrue. It is difficult to propose a test of climate models in advance that is falsifiable.
Science is complicated – and doesn’t always fit the simplified version we learn as children. …
Read more: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/10/claim-climate-science-does-not-have-to-be-falsifiable/
I believe it is past time people who attempt to promote computerised guesses as established fact are held to account for their nonsense. The scientific method, falsifiability, is what separates science from superstition. Scaremongering, attempting to lay blame on President Trump for natural disasters on the basis of unproven climate model projections, projections which have no corroboration from real world observations, in my opinion is beneath contempt.
Time to sharpen our pitchforks.
I am not sticking a perfectly good farming tool in THAT!! *shudder*
Ward did everything but call Trump a warlock. I get your drift, CG.
It is hard to tell which is more of an embarrassment: Bob Ward whose laughable attempts to frighten the ignorant and keep secure a lucrative tenure at LSE make the institution look a joke, or the Guardian which appears ready to let any clown regurgitate climate scare drivel in its pages as it relentlessly destroys what little credibility it has left.
Mr. Ward is a ridiculous dufus.
Bob Ward says ‘Hurricane Brexit that just has engulfed whole of the British Isles was caused by Donald Trump’.
see the wind map:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=0.00,54.00,3000/
/sarc
It seems that Irma developed above cooler than average waters:
“We’ve been monitoring this storm for two weeks, since the wave emerged from Africa. Irma developed and intensified to Major Hurricane (Cat 3) in the central Atlantic, over relatively cool ocean temperatures of 26.5C”
from here:
https://judithcurry.com/2017/09/08/hurricane-irma-eyes-florida/
which suggests that its vigour was a consequence of cooling in the stratosphere rather than warming at the surface.
That would be fatal to AGW theory in a logical world.
I submit that a quiet sun leads to reduced ozone in the stratosphere above the equator and thus cooling of the stratosphere which allows a rise in tropopause height, deeper convection and more vigorous hurricanes and typhoons.
It is no coincidence that hurricanes were less vigorous whilst the sun was more active.
The truth is the opposite of AGW theory.
Actually sir does not make surge deadlier. It makes it different.
No one builds in the water itself willingly.
And sir rates are slow enough, even now, that shoreline movements is extremely slow.
People, except apparently climate fanatics, know to stay out of the way of storm surge.
The 12 inches or so of the last century is already factored into where people live.
The speculative dramatic changes the climate fanatics claim for the future are just that: in the future.
The sir of tomorrow cannot effect the surge of today.
So Ward is not only a cynical fear monger, he us counter factual as well.
And now that Irma is coming ashore in Florida as a quite middling storm, perhaps it is time for Mr. Ward to back off yet another bizarre untrue hateful claim.
Please forgive me for typing on a small screen with autospell enabled.
Hilarious. Thanks. I didn’t get it before I read the comments below.
hunter …. WTF is a “sir”? Contextually not English gentry. Why can’ t you speak plain English?
Ross, I typed “slr” and my phone inserted “sir”.
My eyes are old and the phone screen is tiny and I did not catch the typo until much later.
LSE should be embarrassed. This guy clearly does not practice the motto of the school: Rerum Cognoscere Causas, which is on the coat of arms of LES (shown at the top of this article).
I.e., “Know the Cause of Things.”
As Bugs would say, “What a maroon.”
The full quote from Virgil is, “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas” ie. Fortunate is one who knows the cause of things. There is an obvious corollary which is, “Miserable are those who only imagine they know the cause of things.” link
I find the coat of arms riotously funny (or at least ironic). The animal is a beaver, probably because the director of the school was William Beveridge at the time it was adopted. The trade in beaver pelts was studied by Harold Innis who took economics in quite a different direction from the orthodoxies of the London School of Economics.
What sort of “Institute” lets their inmates make press statements? !!
According to MeteoEarth.com tracking, the eye of Irma has not made landfall
Guys like Bob Ward make Rush Limbaugh look like a clairvoyant savant.
To wit:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/limbaugh-hurricane-irma-coverage-is-liberal-media-plot-to-advance-climate-change-agenda
The accusation is all wrong. Hurricanes are NOT Trump’s fault.
Rather, hurricanes are the faults of every single person who voted for Trump, and the faults of every living parent of every person who voted for Trump for not raising their children to know better. … and the fault of every living person who had anything to do with or who are descendants of anybody who had anything to do with erecting Confederate statues, which supported the narrative of racism that helped shape the mindsets of those who elected Trump.
The blame, you see, goes so much deeper.
The Confederate statues were erected by post-Civil War Democrats. The US $20 bill has the image of a US President who advicated for slavery. He was also the founding President of the newly formed Democrat Party. That is the same Democrat Party that exists today. LBJ started the revision of their sordid party history.
The US Democrats are still busy trying to erase their history and re-write a different history. Orwell had this behavior pegged exactly in his 1984 novel.
Spot-on, Joel.
I hope you realize that I was being sarcastic about the blame game. (^_^)
Lincoln was a white supremacist at heart, and this is what is causing hurricanes. We should replace his image on the US five-dollar bill with the image of a hurricane.
Another Climate Scientologist. Guys like this need to have an intervention so they can be free of the cult.
If lefties thought that Obama could stop the rise of the seas, then it’s easy to understand how they would “think” that Trump is responsible for increasing the categories of hurricanes.
The models are not perfect and involve approximations. But because of their complexity and sophistication, they are so much better than any “back-of-the envelope” guesses, and the shortcomings and limitations are known.
Basically, if it and all inputs are good, this will happen -roughly. Nothing wrong if the projections never left the conference but they are being use to create stupid laws, taxes and to slander people.
THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH ABOUT BOB WARD AND THE GRANTHAM INSTITUTE
The Grantham Institute was established in 2008 by Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham, through their ‘Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment’ and with Judith Rees and Nicholas Stern of the Grantham Research Institute behind them. Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics.
The Grantham Institute was set up by Grantham to promote ideas that will make him vastly richer than he already is. It is not part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); it is actually a separate legal entity which does no research and no education of its own . Its ‘task’ is to promote the view point of the person paying its bills. It is actually a marketing company whose sole function is to sell the public on so-called ‘man-made global warming.’
The LSE took the money and turned a blind eye, while allowing an iffy marketing operation to ride on the back of its name, and not for the first time. One day the media may start to call it a marketing company, rather than give it the undeserved scientific credit it pretends to have.
I love the Bob Ward waffle, and his superb ability to hide reality. For instance, his comment that temperature is still rising ‘albeit at a slower rate of increase than previously’ actually translates into between 0.1 and 0.2ºC per century.
Most amazingly, Bob links to the IPCC SREX report claiming that it ‘found an abundance of scientific evidence for increases in heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall.’ In fact, as anyone can check by reading the report, it says no such thing.
You do not need a ‘paper’ to show nearly 20 years of no global warming, just look at the data sets directly. The following tables show the number of years to present when slope is flat or slightly negative and also for when there is no significant warming:
GISS 12, 17
Hadcrut3 16, 19
Hadcrut4 12, 18
But never mind Ward; one might expect a scientist like Chris Rapley to ask himself whether, if something can’t be found, it might be because it is not there.
Rapley is into climate and the unconscious. he recently wrote the introduction (and the Amazon review) for a book on psychoanalysis and climate skepticism.
http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/psychoanalysis-and-climate-change-the-doctors-take-over-the-asylum/
Heat which has gone ‘missing’ cannot cause floods plagues and hurricanes, and without floods plagues and hurricanes Bob Ward is out of a job and the rest of us can get on with our lives without being bothered with politicians blathering about ‘sustainability’ and putting our energy prices up. That is the discussion which Bob Ward (and apparently all the editors sympathetic to the climate hysterics) want to suppress.
Bob Ward declares that there are parts of the media that misrepresent the science. That is certainly what he is trying to say, but he fails lamentably to make his case. There are easily attestable facts about the climate and any reader is free to draw their own conclusions. Ward and others are demanding Parliament intervene and legislate in order to discourage ‘deniers’ from expressing themselves.
By failing to defend his position, Ward demonstrates the weakness of his case. By giving space to Ward to expound his weak and undefended arguments, the broadcasters and publishers demonstrate a contempt for free speech and rational discussion.
Brian Cox has been given several editorials, and a talk at the Television Society in 2012, both of which were largely given over to attacking climate sceptics. Sir Paul Nurse had a whole BBC Horizon programme to himself, largely given over to attacking climate sceptics. If there was a case to be made for dangerous man-made global warming, they could have made it but they did not because there is not. All they have got is Bob Ward, failed palaeopiezometrist, and his call for press censorship.
It is a free country and people are entitled to their opinions. That, however, does not mean that all opinions have the same weight.
Here is my issue with Ward’s view of how things should work: Scientific papers tend (as one might imagine) to be quite rigorous. This means that it is unlikely that you will find scientific papers with strong, absolute statements about catastrophic global warming. They will tend to be descriptions of models with uncertainties or some analysis of data (again with uncertainties). One can, however, interpret what the evidence is suggesting.
Even if you are not interested in climate science, everyone should be interested in the attempt to close down debate proposed by Bob Ward, the PR man for the Grantham Institute and its hedge fund millionaire backer Jeremy Grantham, and which is supported by the New Statesman, the BBC, the Royal Society, The Independent, all six British parliamentary parties, the Socialist Worker, and just about everyone else on the Left.
Is it the job of the government to pass laws to dissuade ‘deniers’ and the skeptics from writing what they like? This is not a debate about science, and that is the point. There are many who claim to want to debate this, but are actually not willing to debate the science. They make claims that do not stand up to scrutiny, and it is being carried out in a manner that is not consistent with good scientific practice.
History will note that not one single IPCC warning has ever said what will happen, only what might happen. They agree that ‘climate change’ is real, but have never agreed that it is a real crisis.
Bob Ward’s livelihood is dependent on keeping the public fooled and poor. He spends most of his time these days conducting ad hominem campaigns against those who (heaven forbid!) question the science and the myth about AGW that it is ‘settled’ or that there is ‘consensus.’ He is paid a great deal at the Grantham Research Institute. He does not feel the slightest bit guilty that his lot are causing so much misery for those who now find it impossible to heat their homes or run their car. Not only is he and his ilk responsible for fuel poverty but he is wrecking our manufacturing industries too. One day, there will be no more money and he will have to go and find a real job – assuming he is capable of doing something honest.
Get lost, Ward. we’ve had enough of your lies and your preaching. Your data is either flawed or totally fake, and you know it. And by the way, there is no ‘current warming trend,’ and nobody believes anything the IPCC or the Grantham Institute say about anything.
“… with the deaths of so many Americans …”
In the U. S., there are about 95 people killed per day in motor vehicle crashes.
Bob (mush for brains) Ward could make a better case for these deaths as a result of Pres. Trump’s policies. Trump’s developments encourage people to travel, spend, and have fun. As president, his policies encourage more economic activity and a high standard of living. More travel, more accidents, more deaths.
Maybe the LSE Grantham Institute will hire me to make stuff up!
It is not worth the effort to refute the rest of Ward’s nonsense.
Traffic deaths increase in lighter cars, which are more common when fuel economy standards are more severe.
Please quote your source
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-road-deaths/climate-change-might-be-cause-of-record-u-s-road-deaths-study-idUSKCN1BB377
(I know it says something completely different but that’s the new paradigm).
Is that how US traffic death rates are four times the UK’s? All those light F150s?
no they don’t.
The lighter cars have other features like crumple zones to protect the drivers.
Source? Hundreds of studies. Plus anyone who understands basic physics.
Rhoda, please stop and think a minute. For once.
Are you arguing that the only difference between England and the US is CAFE?
First off, distances in the US are much greater than they are in England, as a result the average American spends a lot more time on the roads, and at higher average speeds.
Gasoline prices in the U.S. are much lower than in the UK, plus consumers have more money, leading to more driving (and accidents) in the U.S. There’s less public transport in the U.S., because of its lower density, so cars are more needed to get around, so more driving is done in the U.S.
Well it is the lighter one in collision, not weight per se.
And, once again, 12 years without a single, landfalling, major hurricane, and these people are silent. Two hit in a month and they’re panicking about global warming.
As if hurricanes never, ever hit North America before global warming.
Bob Ward then
But there is still trouble with climate change ‘denial’ according to Bob Ward. He criticises Lord Lawson for saying that he denies any link between climate change and the weather events of earlier this year. Bob Ward said the Met Office has laid it out. Yes they have, and this is what their report said:-
In defence of Nigel Lawson, and his fellow climate sceptics
Bob Ward now, after losing a few rounds of vexatious Press complaints.
one is supposed to believe people about global warming when they say hurricanes are caused by global warming. There were tons of hurricanes when the Earth was 1.0C cooler than today.
Irma was much stronger and worser than Camille and Andrew. I mean it’s obvious that a 142 gust is much stronger than 165 and 175 sustained. I mean there are shingles blown off and fences knocked down. My god where Camille and Andrew went through is looked like an H bomb went off. There might be some pretty bad damage in places but nothing like Camille. Which will be recised to a tropical storm at land fall next year due to progressive history.
Part of that is due to the much tougher building codes that have been put in place since Camille and Andrew.
If anything is placed at anyone’s door for failure, it is the massive cost of climate change policies which should be placed at the door of climate modelers who have so utterly failed to produce anything that reasonably matches reality.
I gave up watching the news on Irma. These news people know less about hurricanes than I did at age 10. They are dumb as a box of rocks. I am hoping everyone isn’t that dumb and are tired of the meida’s proud showing of ignorance and stupidity. Does no one know what the eye of a hurricane is??? They don’t—or if they do they feel obligated to explain ad nauseaum that the other side of the hurricane is coming soon and the storm surge. Duh—that happens every hurricane. So do tornadoes, flooding and torrential rain.
As for apocalyptic, a meteor slamming into the earth is apocalyptic. A hurricane is very, very bad but not apocalyptic. We have had hurricanes for millions of years. Generally, you get an apocalypse once in a million or 20 million years, not every time the weather gets extreme. All I’ve learned is how totally clueless and prone to wild exaggeration the news media is. They lie and mislead and disgust me.
Is that miedo? Traficante de miedo!
I saw a repeat of an old (2010) BBC Horizon programme on nuclear fusion.
Whilst the BBC is one of the biggest peddlers of fake news, on this aspect it is probably correct. It stated that worldwide only 1 billion pounds is spent on fusion research (ignoring military spending). Presently the world is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars each year on climate change. we have our priorities completely mixed up.
Under the Paris Accord, the developed world is obliged to establish a US$ 100 billion fund to distribute each year to the climate needy/parasites. The bulk of that money was to come from the US. If President Trump was to invest just half the monies that the US was bound to stump up under the Paris Accord, to the R&D of nuclear fusion, it is likely that this would do more for the reduction of CO2 than any other commitment made under the Paris Accord.
With such an investment, perhaps by 2050 a commercially viable fusion powered generator may be up and running, and in which case the use of fossil fuels would be greatly reduced with the resultant reduction in CO2 between 2050 and 2100.
Whilst i am not one who is concerned by manmade CO2 emissions, and do not consider the claims of doom to be well founded, if President Trump was to divert money out of climate change and into nuclear fusion research. then President Trump could claim to have done more to save the world than any other person including the saint Obama, and the prophet Gore. This would be good PR for the President, and potentially the entire world could benefit.
But in 2011 the BBC question whether ITER may be “The world’s most expensive scientific gamble”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16170550
.. if President Trump was to divert money out of climate change and into
nuclear fusionUS led LFTR commercialisation (instead of just helping the Chinese build on Oakridge’s legacy) …Trump won’t be in office for the 30 years fusion will remain in the future 🙂
I’d become an American and vote for him, if he did that.
He looks a bit simple, bless!
What a bunch of bunk. Just stating the 3 reasons why this author believes global warming is responsible for Harvey and Irma to be mighty hurricanes is no proof at all. He states them as if they are all well established reasons. He speaks of 3 variables that are no different than what has historically occurred in the past.
He’s neither naive nor stupid nor ill-informed. He is doing what he is paid to do.