Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
Governor DeSantis provided a spectacular example of political leadership while demonstrating his climate science knowledge and credibility when he addressed a news conference regarding the state’s situation and status in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton as shown below.
His significance remarks regarding Florida’s hurricane history and impacts as well as actions being taken to address Hurricane Milton’s outcome merit being displayed in print as best as possible as well as being listened to at several websites that carried his extraordinarily competent news conference remarks.
Toward that end I have tried to summarize and encapsulate his key remarks and capture the many hurricane climate science perspectives addressed by Governor DeSantis as an example of competent climate science political leadership and knowledge.
In response to a reporter’s question attempting to connect “human caused global warming” to increasing numbers and impacts of hurricanes and tornadoes Governor DeSantis noted:
“Tornadoes – I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all human history, for sure, especially in Florida.
How does this storm rate – in kind of – the history of storms.
I think this storm hit with a barometric pressure of – what was it – about 950 millibars when it hit,”
“If you go back to 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric, so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is”.
“I think there have been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than Milton did, and of those, 17 occurred I think prior to 1960.”
“The most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labor Day Hurricane, barometric pressure on that was 892 millibars,”
“It totally wiped out the Keys. We’ve never seen anything like it, and that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida.”
“The deadliest hurricane the state has ever faced was the Okeechobee hurricane in 1928, which killed more than 4,000 people.”
“Fortunately, we aren’t going to have anything like that this time.”
“So, I just think people should put this in perspective there.”
“They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something, there’s nothing new under the sun”.
You know, this is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history, and it’s something that will continue to deal with.”
“I think what’s changed is we’ve got 23 million people, a storm that hits are likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago, and so the potential for that damage has grown, but what’s also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets,”
“I mean, we never did the pre-staging of power assets until I became governor. Now, people like expect that, but that wasn’t what was done in the past.”
“That’s why people would be out with power for three weeks when we have hurricanes, we thought that that’s not good. Now we have to pay to get these guys to come in, but my view is, the quicker you get everyone hooked up, the better off the economy is going to be anyway.”
In response to another reporter’s question regarding the claim that human caused global warming was causing increasing intensification of storms Governor DeSantis noted:
“Oh, I think most people remember 2004, right, where it seemed like we had storms occur every other week”
“You know that we had no hurricanes at all from 2006 to 2016.”
“There was a time period we had a lot of hurricanes in the 1940s.”
“So, this situation has a lot of similarities to what happened in 2004.”
What a breath of fresh air from a competent political leader addressing climate science reality instead of politically contrived climate alarmism speculation and hype.
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This is getting a bit meta. A WUWT post about a WUWT post of just five days ago.
Do you still turn your heat on or does your extra blanket help you with the global warming?
You had no argument then.
You have no argument now.
Poor Nick !
I will hazard a guess the the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the science of the Earth’s climate is a serious hot-button issue with Anthony and perhaps Charles. It is also a hot-button issue with me as it perhaps is with many others here at WUWT.
Nick, I’ve noticed that you come to the defense of wind and solar regularly whenever they come under attack here at WUWT. That suggests that wind and solar are hot-button issues with you. We all have hot-button issues that matter a lot to us.
You are course free to refute what I am saying here, but the media’s behavior as a mouthpiece for climate alarmism will undoubtedly continue to be a serious issue here — and rightfully so.
I don’t know about hot buttons. But there seems to be a lot of promotion of Gov DeSantis here.
He seems to know more about hurricane history in Florida than you do–or those ignorant reporters.
He rattled off a few instances, but didn’t give a quantitative picture. Rpy Spencer did that:
He didn’t include Milton, which would make it 4 in the 2020’s decade. And as he noted, it’s only halfway through. Yes, the had 5 in the 1940’s, none as strong as MiIton.
The Marxist seems mad.
Most intense Florida hurricane was in 1935
There were Cat 4 hurricanes in Florida in 1944, 1947,1948 and 1949 + a Cat 3 in 1945,
There have only been two cat 4 in the 2020’s 2022, and 2024.
Milton was only a Cat 3.
List of United States hurricanes – Wikipedia
Milton was only a Cat 3 at landfall..
… so you are either LYING or IGNORANT or BOTH…. again.
Even Helene only just makes it into the top 10 in either wind speed or intensity.
It barely classified as a class 1 if you use the actual wind measurements from the weather stations instead of the hyped speeds of the NHS. Spencer stating:
“Hurricane Milton wind speeds at landfall: Another case of exaggerated estimates? I went through all the highest sustained wind speeds the Hurricane Center listed for several hours around landfall time: The average observed by stations was 67 mph, and the average of the NHC [National Hurricane Center] official value was 114 mph. That’s a 47-mph difference. The best positioned station was just offshore of Venice Beach, which measured 78 mph at landfall, which was 42 mph lower than the NHC estimate (120 mph). The same thing happened with Helene: our UAH storm intercept team measured only 60 mph at landfall, whereas the NHC value was 140 mph”.
That’s not correct. Wind speeds are measured correctly with airborne instruments dropped into the eyewall at relatively high altitude, and then are mathematically correlated with surface winds at varying locations, altitudes, and times. Land reporting stations are not reliable measures because the intent is to capture maximum sustained and maximum gusts and a land station would have to be precisely at that location at that specific time to record a wind speed, and very few are ever in that location.
The best measure of the strength of a hurricane, as stated correctly by Gov. DeSantis, is lowest recorded barometric pressure inside the eye, which covers a relatively broad area and is not subject to wild changes from time to time and location to location as are winds.
Governor DeSantis stated that the minimum barometric pressure for Milton as it came ashore was 950 mb (I don’t know if there has been wide confirmation of that as yet, but if he said it I expect that he was correct). The Saffir-Simpson correlation for cyclone categories states that Category 3 storms range between 945 to 964, putting Milton’s pressure rather near the upper end of Cat 3 storms.
1. Dropsondes cannot give the one minute sustained wind reading required, as they stay in a given guest far longer than a fixed instrument…
“Turbulence studies have demonstrated that Lagrangian (parcel) wind measurements are inherently smoother than Eulerian (fixed-point anemometer) measurements (Gifford 1955), with dominant periods longer by a factor of about 3–4 (Angell et al. 1971)”.
2. The “surface” readings have considerable variance, and are often “modeled”. And that is controversial, with considerable debate on how best to do that. Currently the high side of the model is, unsurprisingly, ascendant…
“Powell and Black (1990) recommended that an adjustment factor of 63%–73% be used to reduce 700-hPa wind speeds to the surface, based on comparisons of flight-level and buoy data (again, mostly outside of the eyewall). Operational practices at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) have varied over time; in recent years surface winds have typically been taken to be 80%–90% of the flight-level wind”
That is a very large difference where a 100 mph altitude wind can be considered to be from 62 to 90 mph at the surface. Also individual storm profiles are known to be highly variable, so no one model is right.
In addition they are guided by Doppler to the most intense part of the storm, which by the time the eye hits, it is usually already breaking up, and the most intense storm has moved over the water.
Go to the Ventusky site and watch a time series for Hurricane Milton. Scroll through the time bar for the storm as it approaches land fall. Note how broad the eye becomes, and more importantly, even as the eye wall hits land, the most intense parts of the storm are all offshore on the west side, and southwest side. With the eye split over land and sea, all the strong readings are on those sides of the storm, and over the Gulf, and the difference in wind speed to anything over the land is profound. On the site, set for 10 m surface winds, the highest reading, on the west and southwest ocean sides of the storm is 155 Kph, and over land it is 95 kph. Now a hurricane aircraft is going to drop the dropsonde right in the highest part of the storm, not over land, and, as mentioned, that will not give one sustained winds. In addition, while a well formed eye tends to have the same barometric pressure throughout the eye, a collapsing eye like with Milton will have variable pressure, and again, guided by doppler, the hurricane hunters will read the lowest pressure part of the storm.
When Hurricane Ian came through here in Lee County Florida where I live on September 28, 2022, there was another coupla guys who made the same argument here at WUWT comment pages as you do, based on a couple of widely separated land based weather stations and they concluded that Ian was barely (and maybe not) a Category 1 hurricane, and that NOAA was lying about storm strength.
I think I shut him up when I replied that where I live, about 10 miles to the southeast of where the Hurricane Ian eyewall traveled on a northeasterly track as it came ashore on Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island, the neighborhood weather station on Weather Underground just a few blocks from my home was reporting 130+ mph sustained winds (low end of Cat 4) before it stopped reporting (I don’t know if stopped reporting because it was damaged by the storm, or it was the power and internet went out), but considering that the storm had travelled overland quite a ways to get to my neighborhood, (across two island chains and half of the Cape Coral peninsula) that I live on, its peak strength must’ve been degraded a lot from the max. It is certain that the peak sustained winds within the eyewall must have been significantly higher, quite likely near Cat 5 (157 mph).
The minimum barometric pressure for Ian as measured by airborne instruments was 940 mb at landfall, which puts it at low Cat 5 strength, which correlates quite well with the reported max sustained winds at landfall.
Further evidence is the storm surge. NOAA does a great job forecasting storm surge in a given area as a function of peak sustained winds and barometric pressure. They forecast a 15 ft storm surge in Lee County during Ian based upon estimated peak sustained winds in the high Cat 4/low Cat 5 range … and that’s virtually exactly what the coastal islands actually experienced.
Do they measure wind exactly the same way today as they did 10, 20,40, 60+ years ago?
Not even close, in fact until about 1990 Barometric pressure was not taken nearly as often, and was not Doppler guided to the strongest part of the storm…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/16/florida-gov-desantis-schools-media-reporters-hyping-flawed-alarmists-claims-that-hurricane-milton-was-made-worse-by-human-caused-global-warming/#comment-3982594
Many storms recently have not had the predicted surge, and reporters often fail to account for tides.
Also the storm surge should match the scale applied to the storm. Take this storm, well over 100 years ago ” October 4, 1842 – A 955 mbar major hurricane which made landfall on northwestern Florida produced a 20-foot (6 m) storm surge at Cedar Key. This is well above anything from Helene, which coincided with a high tide, and the surge did do a lot of damage.
Also see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/16/florida-gov-desantis-schools-media-reporters-hyping-flawed-alarmists-claims-that-hurricane-milton-was-made-worse-by-human-caused-global-warming/#comment-3982594
Seems the moon is just now passing its closest to earth. Back that up a few weeks and it will still have higher tides.
All the hurricanes mentioned by DeSantis and graphed by Roy were assessed by their NHC rankings. Why try a homemade assessment of just these last two?
Data given above that you haven’t countered.
You know that there is absolutely NOTHING happening with hurricanes…
… so why the continued disingenuous comments??
In North Cornwall we would classify a 60mph wind as a strong breeze. Storm Eunice produced much stronger winds.
Milton was barely a Cat 3 base solely on reported wind speeds. A bit less wind and it would have been Cat 2.
Helene was reported as a Cat 4. There have been questions raised about how that was determined. Accepting as accurate, Helene was barely Cat 4. Interesting within 3 hours or so over landfall it dropped to Cat 1. That is significantly faster that normal according to reports. A typical hurricane drops 1-2 Cats in 12-24 hours after landfall.
Actually Milton was a very strong Cat 3 storm as defined by minimum eye barometric pressure.
Only in the part of the storm over the water. See the Ventusky site, and or show me a reading taken at landfall, and show where in the breaking apart eye wall the reading was taken and how that particular dropsonde got surface winds, and how it knows it was a sustained wind, and if the surface was modeled, what percentage was used for the surface, from what elevation reading.
base(d) solely on reported wind speeds
I wonder what a half hurricane looks like.
Florida is a tiny percentage of the planet. There has been no global increase in Hurricanes or intensity.
Like you do a lot of propaganda for wind factories.?
DeSantis appears to be one of the few (the only one in my recent history) that actually cites the history of hurricanes in Florida instead of blathering about models and projections. Data instead of what climate scientists say. This makes him stand out. Promote away!
I do not think a press conference is a good place to present lots of extra data to satisfy your needs.
More so now than not long ago- because he’s proving himself to be very talented in his job. You might try reading his book.
This post went into quite a bit more detail, many more quotes. Of course you hate to read quotes that refute your warmunist ideology, so you criticize and attempt to shut down discussion of facts that you don’t like.
Typical Dem reaction to anything – always trying to suppress free speech and free thought. “You must assimilate!”
Duhhhh . . . it bears repeating, Nick.
Mr. Stokes: I’m not familiar with the term “a bit meta”, does it mean repeating a very good point you made a few days ago? A point so good, opponents feel the need to deflect to, “did you just say that?” as if that is wrong.
I know you’ll define a term as you see fit, just curious how you define “a bit meta”.
Why are you here?
Mr. 4: He’s here to say we’re talking about DeSantis too much, as if he knows Fla from across the world. He recently tried to tell me what was happening in Springfield, Ohio. He’s got a cause to support, DeSantis opposes the cause, ergo, he’s here.
You understand, but does he?
Like all the nonsense about Trump that gets repeated by the ENTIRE MSM- all day long. Especially the NPR station in Albany, NY.
History matters.
Weather history is essential for understanding our weather present.
Weather history refutes the alarmist claims of Climate Change alarmists, as the “unprecedented” weather they hype, doesn’t exist because storms in the past were just as strong or stronger than those in the present and there is no evidence CO2 has anything to do with hurricanes or any other weather event..
That’s why Climate Change Alarmists don’t like to hear about weather history because it makes them look silly.
The warmunists count on voters having short memories, if any memories at all, along with natural human “recency bias” that amplifies whatever just occurred over any prior experiences, even those personally experienced. This is part of the same mindset that causes so many people to believe the “good old days” did not have the serious problems being experienced today, since people tend to forget and discount unpleasant experiences over time, thinking today’s unpleasantness is somehow worse than in the past.
The warmunists count on voters having short memories
Seems to be a pretty reliable assumption.
Columbus’s four voyages to the New World occurred during the Little Ice Age. On two of his four voyages his fleets of ships and settlements he founded were hit by major hurricanes that caused massive death and destruction. That is not a large data set, of course … but apparently global cooling seems rather conducive to massive tropical cyclones. The correlation holds rather well with recorded temperature data and hurricane frequency and accumulated cyclone energy ever since then.
A recent study of ocean sediments showed Atlantic tropical cyclone activity was MORE ACTIVE THAN CURRENTLY during the Little Ice Age.
I believe the same is true of typhoons – more frequent and more violent during the LIA than today.
In a colder world, the temperature variations are greater, and that causes stronger storms. It’s simple thermodynamics that Mr. Stokes has yet to grasp.
Science is not “received wisdom” chiseled onto stone tablets, it is a method for examining the physical world.
Can someone please construct for me a falsifiable hypothesis that CO2 caused any particular hurricane, or made a hurricane worse?
As of right now, I know of 1,614 journalists that CANNOT do that!
Luckily I wasn’t taking a drink when I read your comment. Are you sure it wasn’t 1,615 journalists?
“Can someone please construct for me a falsifiable hypothesis that CO2 caused any particular hurricane, or made a hurricane worse?”
No, they can’t.
That says all one needs to know about the claims of the Human-caused Climate Change Alarmists. They can’t provide one shred of evidence that what they claim about CO2 and the Earth’s climate and weather is true.
Here’s the opportunity to prove me wrong.
But that won’t happen. Not one peep will come from the Climate Change Alarmists around here. Which just goes to prove *my* point.
I have asked alarmists many, many times to provide evidence (not computer models nor the IPCC’s assertions) that CO2 causes warming. Not once have I ever had a cogent reply. Not once.
“Not once.”
That’s because they don’t have any evidence to provide.
The easiest way to shut a Climate Alarmist up is to ask that person for evidence that CO2 is causing any change in the weather.
That’s the last you will hear from them on the subject.
There is no evidence that CO2 is doing what Climate Alarmists claim it is doing. Climate Alarmists have been looking for evidence for over 50 years and haven’t found any yet.
Considering that, it is insane for Western nations to bankrupt themselves trying to reduce CO2 when there is no evidence showing that CO2 needs to be reduced.
When I saw this the day he said it I was encouraged by his historical and data knowledge. My second impression was it wouldn’t be seen on the MSM.
I was impressed with DeSantis, too.
He seemed to have the history of Florida hurricanes down pat.
I’m wondering what he thinks about CO2. Does he thinks CO2 needs to be regulated? Does he think CO2 can change the Earth’s temperature and weather?
DeSantis didn’t directly address CO2. I would love to hear what he has to say about it.
Too many Republicans think CO2 needs to be regulated. Let’s hope DeSantis and others don’t share that belief.
There is NO evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, and there is no reason to try to regulate CO2.
Read his book- it’s pretty good.
bingo!
For what it’s worth, Fox News carried the item.
Where was this guy in the primaries.
DeSantis was up against an irresistible force, DJT, this time around.
He’ll get his chance in four years. JD has some work to do. I’m sure Trump will assign him some impactful jobs. We’ll see how he does.
Republicans have a large talent pool.
Many of them are part of the uniparty
Uniparty? I think not. Not too difficult to notice the differences. 🙂
Funding for Ukraine and the Middle East 😉
I think Trump is also for funding and supporting Ukraine, he just wants to make the financial assistance a longterm loan to Ukraine, rather than a giveaway, like was done with allies in World War II. And the allies repaid the United States in full.
Trump is not a Republican Isolationists. Republican Isolationists hope he is, and try to put words in his mouth, but he’s not an isolationist, and if a war is necessary in some part of the world, Trump will prosecute that war.
Look what he did to the Islamic Terror Army that was rampaging across the Middle East. Look what he did to Russian jets in Syria while having dinner with China’s leader Xi.
He surprised Xi by notifying him that he had just lauched missiles at Syrian military forces.
Trump says he knows Xi speaks English because when Trump told him, through his interpreter, about the raid on Syria, Xi said immediately: “Say again?!”. :).
It would be good for the country for President Trump to give DeSantis an important job- help his training for the future.
I think he has a very important job right now. And is doing very very well.
I agree. I thhink DeSantis would do a good job whereever they put him.
I’m looking forward to Elon Musk being appointed to review the spending and the federal bureaucracy of the United States. Elon is not going to pull any punches.
Elon really is a unique human being. Yesterday I saw the first time one of his returning rockets get “captured” on the launchpad. I think it was the first time. I saw animations of it previously not realizing they were animations- but this was real. Dam mind blowing.
Definition: Climate – long term (modern definition is 30 years) average of weather in a locale or area or region. There is no single planetary climate per the definition.
Definition: Climate change – long term shifts in weather patterns.
Neither climate nor climate change can cause anything. They are based on historical records.
MTG says we can change the course of hurricanes. We can’t. If we can’t control a hurricane, how can we control the climate? We can’t. We can’t change the past.
As a side item of note: scientists in the 1800s measured CO2 at 420 ppm in 1920.
As a side item of note: scientists in 1880 measured CO2 at 290 ppm +/- 3%.
Isn’t it funny how the lowest level measured in the 1800s was used as the starting point?
Correcting a typo… 420 ppm in 1820.
“modern definition is 30 years”
Should be at least 100 years. In any one long lifetime, anyone will always be able to say it’s changing so we need something longer than a lifetime.
Agree or millennia or eras.
scientists in the 1800s measured CO2 at 420 ppm in 1920
(correction noted)
As long as I’ve followed this topic I have never heard that. Any chance you could point me to something for more info?
Use Google to obtain the essay: “Climate Change Reexamined” by
Joel M. Kauffman. The essays is 26 pages and can be downloaded for free.
You should keep the essays as reference work
Shown in Fig 10 is plot of CO2 concentration in northern hemisphere from 1812 to 1961. The graph shows a CO2 concentration of 450 ppm in 1820.
Fig.10 was based on a paper by E.-G. Beck, Energy and the Environment,
18(2), 259-282 (2007). He recently published a second paper on CO2 analyses
but I can’t remember the E&E issue, which I recall was behind a paywall. Try
Google Scholar. You might be able to read the abstract.
You should check out Fig. 7. Shown in the Fig. 7 is the IR absorption spectrum of Philadelphia city air from 400 to 4,000 wavenumbers. Integration of the spectrum determined that H2O absorbed 92% of the IR light and CO2 only 8%.
The claim by the IPCC that CO2 is a cause of global warming is a lie. The purpose of the lie is to provide the UN the justification of the distribution of donor funds from the rich countries, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, to the poor countries to help them cope with global warming and climate change. The amount of the funds is many, many millions of dollars. This is what all this global warming and climate change rhetoric is really is all about: the money.
My starting point was a link I filed a while back.
https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/180CO2_summary.pdf
IPCC’s scientific report AR5
“It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged”
Chapter 14 page 1.249