From the “lack of understanding about the cold California Current” department, comes this bit of excessively stupid reporting, via NewsBusters. A bit of history helps too: Since 1850, only seven tropical cyclones have brought gale-force winds to the Southwestern United States, making hurricanes an improbable event.
CBS Scares Viewers With Predictions of Climate Change Causing West Coast Hurricanes
Even as NBC’s Today show recently reported that climate change would actually cause fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic during the 2018 season, on Saturday, CBS This Morning warned viewers that warming ocean temperatures could potentially lead to hurricanes in the Pacific hitting the coast of California.
“Hurricanes are well known in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, but scientists in California are concerned that changing climate conditions could soon bring hurricanes to the west coast,” proclaimed fill-in co-host Elaine Quijano as she introduced the segment. The headline on-screen blared: “Gathering Storms? Warmer Oceans Increase Risk of West Coast Hurricanes.”
Correspondent Jamie Yuccas began her report by invoking images of deadly east coast storms: “Irma, Harvey, and Katrina are among the hurricanes that have ravaged the east coast and Gulf of Mexico. But here in California, hurricanes are virtually unheard of.” She acknowledged hurricanes that regularly form in the Pacific, but pointed out that such storms “usually don’t make it past Baja California,” in Mexico, and that “only one managed to reach as far as San Diego in 1858.”
Sounding the alarm, Yuccas continued: “However, there’s now the potential this rare event could strike the San Diego area again.” Scientist Art Miller, a researcher for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, fretted: “It could happen, especially if the ocean temperatures continue to stay in this anomalously warm state.”
Yuccas noted: “Scientists at the Scripps Pier have been recording historic temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, as high as 79.5 degrees. That’s about ten degrees above normal.” Miller argued: “That potentially increases the likelihood that a hurricane might track just a little bit further north than it would have.”
After Yuccas concluded her report, co-host Anthony Mason worried: “Those rising ocean temperatures are startling.” Quijano agreed: “Startling. And when you think about ten degrees difference, as she pointed out, you think about it’s been a year since Hurricane Harvey. It was this time last year, right? And it was warm ocean waters fueling that as well.”
In August of 2017, CBS repeatedly blamed climate change for causing Hurricane Harvey and intensifying it’s devastation in Texas. In November of that year, Mason, while serving as temporary anchor for CBS Evening News, bemoaned that a lack of environmental activism from the Trump administration meant “saving the world has been harder.”
It’s one thing to claim climate change as the cause when a severe weather event actually occurs, it’s quite another to preemptively argue that any potential future storms would be the result of global warming.
TRANSCRIPT:
8:30 AM ET
ELAINE QUIJANO: Welcome back to CBS This Morning: Saturday. Hurricanes are well known in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, but scientists in California are concerned that changing climate conditions could soon bring hurricanes to the west coast. Jamie Yuccas has the story.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINES: Gathering Storms? Warmer Oceans Increase Risk of West Coast Hurricanes]
JAMIE YUCCAS: Irma, Harvey, and Katrina are among the hurricanes that have ravaged the east coast and Gulf of Mexico. But here in California, hurricanes are virtually unheard of.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN [CALIFORNIA RESIDENT]: What do you do in the case of a hurricane? I don’t know. I can’t imagine that type of devastation hitting the shores here.
YUCCAS: Hurricanes that form in the eastern Pacific Ocean usually don’t make it past Baja California. Only one managed to reach as far as San Diego in 1858. However, there’s now the potential this rare event could strike the San Diego area again. Oceanographer Art Miller.
ART MILLER [RESEARCHER, SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY]: It could happen, especially if the ocean temperatures continue to stay in this anomalously warm state.
YUCCAS: Scientists at the Scripps Pier have been recording historic temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, as high as 79.5 degrees. That’s about ten degrees above normal. What has the temperature gauge showed you over the last week or so?
CLARISSA ANDERSON [EXEC. DIR., SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COASTAL OCEAN OBSERVING SYSTEM]: It’s shown that we have been right at or outside the record temperatures that were already set back in the ’30s, so we know that we are experiencing a very extreme temperature event.
MILLER: That potentially increases the likelihood that a hurricane might track just a little bit further north than it would have.
YUCCAS: Even though California has been battle-tested by fires, mud slides, and earthquakes, the widespread impact of a hurricane on lives and property is still unknown.
MILLER: The risk associated with those high-wind events might be surprising since we really haven’t been tested for that type of natural phenomenon.
YUCCAS: The National Weather Service has found even higher temperatures even in other parts of the Pacific. That’s because the ocean absorbs more heat than it does on the land. Also, the normal southern California winds have not been picking up, which would allow cooler waters to mix in. Scientists believe the warming trend will continue. For CBS This Morning: Saturday, Jamie Yuccas, along the southern California coast.
ANTHONY MASON: Those rising ocean temperatures are startling.
QUIJANO: Startling. And when you think about ten degrees difference, as she pointed out, you think about it’s been a year since Hurricane Harvey. It was this time last year, right? And it was warm ocean waters fueling that as well.
DANA JACOBSON: Yeah, I mean, you also think all of the disasters, as Jamie mentioned, that they have to deal with already. That on top of it? I cannot imagine the destruction.
79.5 F at depth would be the bare minimum temperature. Besides, they could use some rain in California and the desert Southwest.
Hey, at least they got the rotation of the fake storm in the correct direction this time.
Sigh.
They want rain. All they ever complain about is how dry it is. Hurricanes BRING rain.
And yet still they complain? Do they not get it that this would end the drought?
(I do feel sorry for any intelligent/thoughtful people that live in California… They must feel under siege from all the SO-STUPID-IT-BURNS that surrounds them.)
The only issue with that is a fairly ‘wet’ tropical cyclone would bring alot of flooding, mudslides, etc. Like a major winter storm…without the snow.
A true drought ender is a long slow warm front rain that gives the water time to soak deep. Too much rain too quickly and the topsoil saturates, leaving the subsoil bone-dry and causing any further rain to run off it like a tarp. And if vegetation isn’t present or has been recently burned away, you have the threat of mudslides.
Relax folks, August is the Silly Season for news.
Late summer is when the bottom of the news barrel is typically reached, nothing important is happening anywhere, and man-bites-dog is the story of the day.
The only remarkable aspect to the current season is that the silliness evidently now extends right into the brains (/sarc) of news anchors.
Many years of abalone diving(it’s cold) gives me sufficient information to conclude these people a past the dope smoking “tipping point”. I know, I know, I’m being unkind.
One toke over the line, sweet Cali!
One toke over the line.
Fake news makin’ at the TV station,
One toke over the line.
Waiting for your train to go home, sweet Jerry!
Hope the budget’s gonna be fine.
Fake news makin’ at the TV station,
One toke over the line.
(With apologies to Brewer and Shipley)
… “That potentially increases the likelihood that a hurricane might …
Three deep in nested ‘ifs’ already….. That’s a Climate Change item….
Hey, maybe this can teach me something for my spreadsheets!
Maybe they confuse hurricanes with the “rivers” within the atmosphere, sometimes called the Pineapple Express. Unlike west coast hurricanes, the atmospheric rivers have strongly impacted California.
See: January 1862 ,/a>
Warm water and large waves for surfing. Viva climate change!
https://binged.it/2vZG5YI
I think this one statement from above makes a very important point about the oceans absorbing more more heat than land: YUCCAS: “The National Weather Service has found even higher temperatures even in other parts of the Pacific. That’s because the ocean absorbs more heat than it does on the land.”
…..Two factors are at play to make that a true statement: Open water covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface and the albedo of open ocean water is about .05 or so while the average albedo of land is somewhere in the .3 to .4 range. See the table of sample albedo below.
…..But then bare land, such as desert, absorbs much less of the solar energy that reaches the surface but the energy that is absorbed is absorbed into a few mm that are near the surface where as the energy that’s absorbed by the oceans get distributed vertically for about 200 meters or so with the longest wave lengths being absorbed near the surface and the shorter, more energetic wave lengths penetrating much deeper into the water before the energy is fully absorbed. End result: The Sahara Desert has a much higher surface temperature in mid-afternoon even though the ocean is absorbing more energy per unit of surface area.
SampleSurface Typical
albedo
Fresh asphalt 0.04[4]
Open ocean 0.06[5]
Worn asphalt 0.12[4]
Conifer forest
(Summer) 0.08,[6] 0.09 to 0.15[7]
Deciduous trees 0.15 to 0.18[7]
Bare soil 0.17[8]
Green grass 0.25[8]
Desert sand 0.40[9]
New concrete 0.55[8]
Ocean ice 0.5–0.7[8]
Fresh snow 0.80–0.90[8]
Read the CBS quote more carefully.
“….the ocean absorbs more heat than it does on on land”.
So the ocean absorbs more heat over the ocean than the ocean does over land….
Hilarious thoughtless deceitful badly edited crap.
I bet even The Grauniad editors would have caught that.
I’m surprised that they don’t have hurricanes more often since they have Maxine Waters living there.
Oh, did she cause the blob of warm water? :-o)
One thing alarmists like to take advantage of is rare events. So beware a hurricane type storm, called a cyclone IIRC because it was in the Pacific, trashed the OR and WA coast then did major damage in Victoria BC though diminished in strength when it got there. Early 1960s IIRC.
Apparently the climate obsessed are trying to practice the German version of “propaganda”, which involves applying the concept of changing the way people think.
For the purposes of the obsessed, this means making people dumber.
https://www.weatherbell.com Check out Joe Bastardi and his post today for the real story !!!!!!!
It’s sad that unqualified ‘talking heads’ are able to create such a ruckus (and stimulate so much ‘qualified’ response to their inanities). A better strategy would involve pointing out that the extent to which the talking heads are generally unqualified to separate truth from fiction — that is, the news (quasi-entertainment) reporting business needs to be exposed for what it is.