Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Guardian Reporter Ed Pilkington has been running around Marco Island Florida, desperately trying to find someone who thinks climate change is a problem.
Floridians battered by Irma maintain climate change is no ‘big deal’
On Marco Island, widespread destruction in Irma’s wake is not enough to make believers out of some climate change skeptics
They sat through hours of pummelling by Hurricane Irma, with winds pounding them at up to 115mph and rain driving in a solid white sheet as bright as a snow blizzard. Then on Monday, Floridians woke up to survey the damage, begin the cleanup and get back to carrying on regardless.
By noon, the jet skiers were back on the water, buzzing around the west coast waterways under a blue sky where only hours before Irma had shaken the trees and put fear in people’s hearts.
The catastrophe that had been forewarned over countless hours of rolling cable television appeared to have been avoided. But only narrowly.
For its lucky escape, the US has Cuba to thank, given that the northern coast of the island soaked up an important part of Irma’s energy before the storm reached Florida. Not that the debt of gratitude will be repaid by the current incumbent of the White House.
…
Chris Roche, 52, a real estate lawyer, was taking a long hard look at the damage to his home. Three trees were down in the yard, some tiles had come off the roof and there were signs of grey mud on the road – Irma’s calling card, dredged up from the seabed and deposited right outside his door.
…
This was the fifth or sixth hurricane he had sat through since he moved on to the island in 1979, he said with the nonchalance of someone discussing trips to the theater. He was more than a little skeptical of the warnings to evacuate which he had heard and duly ignored.
“They always tell us we will have a storm surge,” he said. “I know they are doing it for safety reasons, but I’ve never seen it happen.”
As for climate change? “I don’t think climate change is such a big deal.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/11/hurricane-irma-florida-climate-change
Hurricanes kill, but so do blizzards. Every place has its weather hazards. Hurricanes are not getting worse. Building wind turbines will do nothing to reduce the hazards of bad weather.
Only climate fanatics see anything unnatural about this year’s hurricane season.
Hyping up every storm is probably doing more to destroy the credibility of the green movement than anything climate skeptics write.
“Six deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with three in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.er FOX News: “Six deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with three in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/12/hurricane-irma-leaves-millions-without-power-in-florida-as-evacuees-return-home.html
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Well … Chicago crime can beat that record in the US in one weekend! Give it the time frame of Irma and Chicago could win on an international scale. Go Chicago gangland! You can outperform the biggest storm of the century! The MSM should report while wading in pools of blood with a flak jacket and helmets! The talking heads can predict where the most carnage will be and how many . Show gory pics for non-stop clicks for their ratings!
Everyone can play. Let me forecast this upcoming weekend; 15 dead and 25 injured!
Well … This thread is now 7 days old but the results of my predictions are in.
“Ten people are dead and at least 31 have been wounded in shootings across Chicago this weekend.”
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-weekend-violence-september-15-to-17-445173713.html
I called 15 dead and 25 wounded. Figures quoted in news release may/probably don’t include knives, bats, pipes, etc.
The worst hurricane eveh can’t match Chicago when it comes to the death toll.
The impacts that CO2 emissions are directly tied to Irma should be clear.
1) They all drove away and a Hurricane hit them. Ergo, CO2 emission caused it
2) When they were all away, the Hurricane stopped. Ergo, No CO2 emission clear the skies.
Clear as day!
For any of our Florida readers, how have wind turbines survived Irma? I believe Fort Lauderdale has “green” turbines in various places (e.g., on top of Hilton Beach Resort) are they still standing? Anyone collecting pictures to show how well they fared?
rigelsys
The entire SouthEast United States area – roughly from the Maryland border south to the start of the FL Keys, from the 4-5 miles inland of the VA-NC-SC-GA-FL coast all the way west past the Mississippi River to the vertical line between the Red River and Sabine river is subject to many months of near-dead calm conditions as the steady high pressure system known as the Bermuda high just sits there. The warm air rises, but doesn’t circulate sideways as ground winds. Coupled with the pine tree enhanced cloudy haze (the Blue Mountains are named for that low-lay steady discolored ozone-filled air), you get near-zero solar power 11 months of the year, and near-zero wind power for every square mile of 1/4 of the country land area. (The far east coast off North Carolina is the sole exception: The Wright brothers chose Kitty Hawk North Carolina specifically for its steady ocean winds to do their glider testing. But that is the only spot in the SouthEast with constant winds.)
If they get ” near-zero solar power 11 months of the year,” how do they grow crops?
Plants can make effective use of indirect sunlight. PV panels, not so much.
I extracted most of this from an email I sent my friends. I hope it comes through and makes sense. I wrote this for people who may not be up on things.
All this talk from about hurricanes and global warming is really irritating to me. From Wikipedia, I found this listing of hurricanes of the 18th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricanes_in_the_18th_century
It is quite a list. Hurricanes are not a modern creation.
In an earlier article on WUWT I founds some interesting comments about the hurricane in 1780. I repeat the comment here.
“The most powerful Atlantic storm in the historic record was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which stripped bark off of trees, destroyed all structures in its path and killed some 22,000 people. Its winds must have exceeded 200 mph, at least in gusts.”
Here is a brief description of that hurricane from Wikipedia:
“The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Huracán San Calixto, the Great Hurricane of the Antilles, and the 1780 Disaster, is the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. Between 20,000 and 22,000 people died throughout the Lesser Antilles when the storm passed through them from October 10–16. Specifics on the hurricane’s track and strength are unknown because the official Atlantic hurricane database only goes back to 1851.
The hurricane struck Barbados with winds possibly exceeding 320 km/h (200 mph), before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius; thousands of deaths were reported on the islands. Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm caused heavy losses to British and French fleets contesting for control of the area. The hurricane later passed near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola. There, it caused heavy damage near the coastlines. It ultimately turned to the northeast and was last observed on October 20 southeast of Atlantic Canada.
The death toll from the Great Hurricane alone exceeds that of many entire decades of Atlantic hurricanes. Estimates are marginally higher than for Hurricane Mitch, the second-deadliest Atlantic storm, for which figures are likely more accurate. The hurricane was part of the disastrous 1780 Atlantic hurricane season, with two other deadly storms occurring in October.”
Let’s try to put this all in perspective and see the connection with climate change, if there is any.
I used Dr. Evans composite temperature anomaly reconstruction that goes all the way back to the time of Christ. We get the CO2 record from Law Dome in Antarctica. The temperature anomalies are all on the left side of the chart and the atmospheric CO2 levels are on the right side of the chart.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZMDY_U7P2eu7n-aDA
This chart shows that the CO2 levels are essentially flat until the 1800. All that means is that none of the temperature variations you see up to that year are nothing but natural variability. If CO2 really controlled the climate CO2 variation would be needed and there is none.
I have analyzed these data too. That is shown with the cyclical fit. The green line reveals the actual contribution of CO2 to the temperature variation. The ECS that goes with that green line is about 0.25. Note that it is zero until you can see the CO2 level start to change. That is the way it is supposed to work.
Around the year 1000 the rise in temperature is noticeable. That is the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) that I often talk about. England was so warm then they had vineyards. Germany had olive trees.
This chart also shows the Little Ice Age (LIA) that reached its depths in the mid-1600s. The Thames River was known to freeze over.
I furnish an enlargement of the time period we are talking about, the 1700s.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZMEzheilQ4HaG1FFQ
You will note that I spliced in the H4 monthly data at the appropriate time.
For the 18th century note how much colder and how much lower the CO2 levels were than they are today. The green line shows that CO2 added nothing to the temperature.
Here it is in a nutshell. Look at the first link and witness all the hurricanes from the 18th century when it was much colder and CO2 meant nothing and was much lower than today.
When you hear people trying to link climate change and hurricanes together it is nothing but left-wing propaganda which is all the media put out today. Also, please do not forget that fear of hurricanes had a lot to do with our winning of the Revolutionary War. The French fleet did not want to be anchored in the Caribbean during that time. They defeated the Brits off Yorktown and that is why we won. The following comes from Wikipedia:
“The Battle of the Chesapeake, also known as the Battle of the Virginia Capes or simply the Battle of the Capes, was a crucial naval battle in the American Revolutionary War that took place near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September 1781. The combatants were a British fleet led by Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves and a French fleet led by Rear Admiral Francois Joseph Paul, the Comte de Grasse. The battle was strategically decisive,[6] in that it prevented the Royal Navy from reinforcing or evacuating the forces of Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The French were able to achieve control of the sea lanes against the British, allowing them to provide the Franco-American army with siege artillery and French reinforcements—all of which proved decisive in the Siege of Yorktown, effectively securing independence for the Thirteen Colonies.”
Note that this battle occurred a year after the disastrous hurricane season of 1780.
It could be that Florida residents are happy to be alive, glad it wasn’t as bad as the hype, and are perhaps grateful for the relatively gentle weather of the last decade.
Perhaps they’re even impatient with opportunists (unfailingly!) trying to exploit this disaster for political ends.
The Guardian can’t understand that their preachy opinionism just won’t sell . People don’t buy newspapers to be preached to . How does it work when you tell teen agers how and what to think ? That’s right middle
digit every time . But do carry on Guardian you can feel self righteous at your close of business shut down party . Stiff upper lip . They just didn’t get it did they ?
The only people I feel sorry for are the innocent employees being lead by dummies .
I lived through the “Blizzard of ’78” in Ohio.
My kids have never experienced anything like that. But I have. Pretty sure I’ve told them about it.
Most Floridians over, say, 20(?) have memories of a hurricane hitting Florida.
Unusual that Irma’s track effected the length of Florida, but not unusual that a hurricane hit somewhere Florida.
PS Has Mann “et al” tried to blame Irma’s track on CAGW? Maybe he thinks it’s because Florida is shaped like an upside-down hockey stick?
“By noon, the jet skiers were back on the water, buzzing around the west coast waterways under a blue sky where only hours before Irma had shaken the trees and put fear in people’s hearts.”
This makes me happy. The human urge to play is the same as our urge to find knowledge. Curiosity. It bends for nothing. Climate scientists of cagw has none.
For those here that feel hopeful that the myth is diminishing…
I live on Florida’s west coast, about 10mi north of Clearwater, on the Pinellas peninsula. I’ve monitored storms on Wunderground’s blog for years, way before moving to Fl 3yrs ago.
The information on that blog is crucial for many folks during storms, whether it’s a hurricane or a N’orEaster hitting New England.
Naturally, during THIS storm, I was glued to the blog, watching every jog and twitch to the track.
The thing that was incredibly frustrating was the overwhelming number of posters there that continued to post comments that not only supported AGW and claimed that Irma was indisputable proof of it’s existence and influence, but would go on and on about how crucial it was to have the “discussion”, but that people who disagreed with them should be banned from the blog.
At one point I replied to a post by asking if the greatest U.S. natural disaster in history, the hurricane of 1900 that struck Galveston as a Cat 4, and killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people was also due to AGW.
I’m lucky my head isn’t on a pike somewhere. They refuse to see the logical fallacy in their argument.
People were posting things like “We need to get the fat-asses out of their fat-assed trucks and wake their fat-asses up!”
Anyone know if LIndzen drives a truck?
Unreal.
I was on vacation in Orland and got smacked by Irma. Category 2 winds they say. It was scary for me, a Canadian who has never seen a hurricane. But the thing is, I know that it was not caused by CAGW. These things happen in Florida (always have), and the people take it in stride. Sure, there was no water at Walmart (or potato chips, batteries or flashlights), and lots of stations without gas, but no one in Orlando even boarded their windows.
I am not a fanatic, as are many people who believe in science, which also indicates that about 1/3 of these people, these so-called Americans, are stupid as bat shit.