Guest Post by Bob Vislocky, Ph.D.
Figures it wouldn’t take very long into the 2019 hurricane season for journalists to start screaming climate change. In this recent New Republic article by Eric Holthaus, the claim is made in the subtitle that “early season hurricanes is a sign of things to come for our warming world”.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154449/new-orleans-barry-storm-one-two-weather-punch
Further into the article the author, who is a meteorologist, makes the claim that “as the Gulf of Mexico waters warm because of climate change, early-season hurricanes like proto-Barry could become more common.” Let’s investigate that assertion further using actual historical data.
The chart below displays the number of early season (June/July) landfalling hurricanes to strike the U.S. by decade ending in the year shown. Results show that despite 150+ years of global warming the frequency of early season hurricanes has actually declined by a small (but probably insignificant) amount, as evidenced by the dashed blue least-squares trend line. Certainly there is no clear evidence to support the author’s claim that they’re becoming more common.
However, what’s more infuriating is the blatant cherry picking and misrepresentation that also appears in his column. Specifically, Holthaus states that “in the 168 years of hurricane records, a July hurricane in Louisiana has only happened three times, and all of those occurrences have been within the past 40 years.” On the surface this statement is factually correct, but the implication is that climate change is causing the early-season July hurricanes since they all happened in just the last 40 years. However, let’s dig a little deeper, but instead of focusing solely on July hurricanes that hit Louisiana, let’s count ALL early-season hurricanes to strike Louisiana. Here’s the list:
(1) June 1886 (Unnamed, Cat 2)
(2) June 1934 (Unnamed, Cat 2)
(3) June 1957 (Audrey, Cat 3)
(4) July 1979 (Bob, Cat 1)
(5) July 1997 (Danny, Cat 1)
(6) July 2005 (Cindy, Cat 1)
Now the painting shows a completely different picture with half of all early-season hurricanes to strike Louisiana occurring before 1960, which is expected given no overall trend in June/July hurricanes. However, by purposefully omitting the June early-season hurricanes from his analysis the author is guilty of cherry-picking data in the least and more likely guilty of fraudulent reporting to promote an agenda. As a meteorologist, Holthaus should be embarrassed by his research. Guess he figured nobody would fact-check his work.
It sort of looks like a sine wave to me.
Man made changes have made us more vulnerable to hurricanes. We like to live near vulnerable coastlines, and our coastal populations have exploded. Due to subsidence, some coastal cities (Miami and New Orleans come to mind) are seeing relative sea level increases. The more we do to stop beach loss, the more loss we get down stream. I could go on and on – I don’t see the global warming angle.
I’m increasingly appalled by the amount of junk science being published and fake news promoting it!
“As a meteorologist, Holthaus should be embarrassed by his research.”
He should be, but apparently in his world it’s not necessary because everybody gets a trophy. Here’s an eye-opening example of someone with that mindset becoming offended because she was corrected for spelling hamster with a ‘p’ (hampster).
Young woman: “But you don’t know that! I learned to spell it with a P in it so that’s how I spell it.”
https://twitter.com/CarolBlymire/status/1149805563674583040
The “rejecting the dictionary as authority” on word spellings and meanings phenomenon has become more common among the young too, now. Now word spellings and meanings are “whatever men and my friends on the internet say they are, and if you show me I am wrong I cry ‘language drift’!”
Always sad when you realize that certain people are rooting for devastating weather events to occur.
It’s not really hard to find information about storms, the hurricane with the flood was listed here–
LA (New Orleans) 1915 category 3, 275 deaths
THE DEADLIEST, COSTLIEST, AND MOST INTENSE UNITED STATES TROPICAL CYCLONES FROM 1851 TO 2010 (AND OTHER FREQUENTLY REQUESTED HURRICANE FACTS) by Eric S. Blake and Christopher W. Landsea https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf
“…If New Orleans’ levees hold this week, it will be because we were lucky…”
No scientific or engineering basis to make the claim, but he makes it anyways.
IMO it reflects a subconscious desire for the levees to fail, which in his mind, I suppose, would validate some bad life decisions.
He decided to be a climate change activist before he was even done with his education.
http://weather.ou.edu/~holthaus/Columbia%20essay%20-%20Eric%20Holthaus.pdf
I think he dropped out of grad school after getting religion at an Al Gore revival meeting.
One thing they have been doing is naming storms they didn’t used to name, like “subtropical systems”, and then saying “there are more named storms!” We just went through Barry down here. One of my friends who is new to the area was scared ahead of time but afterward said she was unimpressed. It was a hurricane for about 5 minutes before making landfall.
This is quite dangerous because this hyping of every minor tropical low-pressure system will leave people unimpressed by what they have been told are hurricanes. Sooner or later a new 1780/Galveston/Labor Day-class hurricane will make landfall and surprise a lot of people, many unfortunately quite briefly.
This guy is a warmista and makes some pretty dumb statements (like noting that some areas being flooding are above sea level…so?), but he takes the national media to shame. Might as well lump Holthaus in with those.
https://www.bayoubrief.com/2019/07/12/national-news-coverage-of-tropical-storm-barry-is-its-own-disaster/
The record on debunkings around here is close to zero. The only fact-based case to be made is one where the picture is complete https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+hurricanes+by+year+graph&client=opera&sa=X&biw=1253&bih=625&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=n-P5mvYBVv7HhM%253A%252CWHedLQTHCOTIeM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTnrmk6t_oUuqWRdmisVH4xDRoFIQ&ved=2ahUKEwjpl8Lc_LfjAhUEeKwKHbaICZEQ9QEwAnoECAcQCA#imgrc=n-P5mvYBVv7HhM: where ALL stinkin hurricanes are counted, which show what but an increase in frequency and severity… Try again, eh, or better yet, just give it up.
Funny, there were no stats or trendlines showing and increase in frequency or severity. Try again.
Or we can go with something that includes both, like ACE…
(global)
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall16/atmo336/lectures/sec2/hurricanes3_fall16.html (Atlantic, scroll down to 2nd chart)
A few years out-of-date, but NOAA has this to say https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
“…In short, the historical Atlantic hurricane frequency record does not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced long-term increase…”
(not to mention that they go on to say that the number of hurricanes should decrease according to models)
Don’t think you’d like the long-term trend posted by the USEPA, either
Jim, the ALL hurricanes database undercounts hurricanes before about 1970 that stayed out in the ocean and didn’t make landfall. This is well known and is why that database can’t be used for long-term trends. The US Landfall database on the other hand has a solid record back to the late 1800s because the US was populated enough by that time so that a landfalling hurricane would not be likely missed. Lastly, Christopher Landsea has shown that there are no trends in the ratio of landfalling to non-landfalling hurricanes in the years where we have reliable records of both. So your claim is nonsense.
I would be interested in following the line exposed by Holthaus’ proposition focusing on this narrow band of data, since two possible trends may indeed exist. The first is that June/July hurricanes have become weaker ‘as a result of climate change’ and that the hurricane season is becoming shorter (no June hurricanes hitting Louisiana in the last 60+ years) ‘as a result of climate change’.
Of course neither proposition I mention is likely, but one should be careful when cherry picking that one doesn’t uncover cherry picking claims to embarrass their argument.
On a slightly OT subject, why is NOAA still selling Barry on its Hurricane homepage? It’s down to 15mph and there doesn’t appear to be any reason for it based on GOES water vapor animation. In fact, its location appears to be clear skies to me.