A forthcoming article from the November issue of Environment and Climate News (which this author serves as senior editor), published by the Heartland Institute, quotes the past president of the American Association of State Climatologists as debunking the notion that hurricanes are increasing in intensity because of global warming. Pat Michales points out that the circumstances that cause the fiercest hurricanes have not changed at all in recent years:
“It is a contravention of science to attempt to link Katrina’s intensity to global warming,” said Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
“Since 1982 we have had weekly records of sea surface temperature,” Michaels noted. “During this time period we can examine on a fine scale the relationship between hurricanes and sea-surface temperature. The threshold water temperature for category 3 hurricanes is 28 degrees C. Interestingly, for category 4 or 5 hurricanes, there is no statistical relationship with the amount of elevation beyond 28C. The Gulf of Mexico reaches 28 C every year, whether or not the planet has warmed or is cold.”
“The most intense tropical cyclone to ever strike the United States was hurricane Camille in 1969,” observed Michaels. “Camille landed very, very close to where Katrina landed. Significantly, Camille occurred when the temperature of the northern hemisphere was at its low point for its last 80 years. Camille simply needed an ocean temperature of 28 C. Clearly, it is irresponsible to link severe Gulf of Mexico hurricanes to global warming.”
The article goes on to quote Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow and statistician Iain Murray confirming that the sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico reaching 28 C is nothing new:
“For hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, sea surface temperatures need only get above 28 degrees C for them to help make the hurricane Category 4 or 5,” Murray said. “Sea surface temperatures there regularly go above that level, and have done so for as long as we can remember.”
Of course, we need only await the next incidence of severe weather somewhere in the world if we wish to hear the next crackpot theory about how human-caused global warming is causing previously unimaginable catastrophes. The scenario Michael Crichton outlined in his excellent novel State of Fear is still being played out in the U.S. and European media.
Maybe this guy is a crackpot too.
ReplyDelete"Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricanes will likely be quite small."
"My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadershipsaid that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual, even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author. I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity at this time. The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4."
First, all of the thousands of scientists you refer to are not humble professionals but are partisans in the debate as well.
ReplyDeleteThis is a truly frightening comment. When you diminish all contrary data or opinions to the status of political/ideological partisanship, you are diminishing the very ideas of rationality and reason. If everything is partisan, then nothing can be wholly correct or "right." If nothing can be right, then you have descended into the very depths of undisciplined, shallow relativism that your fellows profess to deplore. In effect, all you're doing is what the rabid, less-thoughtful feminists and multiculturalists did in the '80s and '90s. It's PRECISELY the same. If it was wrong (as in incorrect and quite possibly stupid) for them to do so, then the same holds true for you. You sound like a person with a persecution complex. "They only say that because it aids their agenda!!!"
That said, does anyone else find the name "El Nino" to be depressingly inadequate for a hugely influential aspect of our climate? "The child" took your home away? Heck no! It should be called "The Motherf---er!"
"If everything is partisan, then nothing can be wholly correct or "right."
ReplyDeleteWelcome to our postmodern age, James, and walk a mile in my shoes. (I'll be a mile away, and you'll still have my shoes...)
It is only because of my respect for your humanity that I've resisted the urge to deconstruct you. And likewise, I'm sure.
But as a great man once said, philosophy is the queen of the social sciences. When one's weltanshauung sees the human experience reducible to the calculator, he gravitates to the social sciences, and being human, pursues theses like this.
But there is more to man that what can be typed into a keypad. As CS Lewis, who is sometimes accused of wasting his time on philosophy, wrote those many years ago...
Tom, you kind of missed the point. Climatology is hardly a social science. When you reduce "hard" science to partisanship, it doesn't even become about the statistics you use, as in the social sciences. It becomes solely about motivation. And therefore, anyone who's motivations don't match yours, must be lying. It's absurd.
ReplyDeletePeople who apply the scientific method in social science (such as myself) and then elevate it to the level of "hard" science (such as a number of my colleagues) are really fooling themselves. It's like economics: It's all in the figures you select. When you're talking about areas that involve human actors, those crazy, irrational, unpredictable folks, you can't expect concrete results similar to a hard science like chemistry.
That said, philosophy is about as much a social science as literature. Which is to say, not at all.
Once one expurgates life of all meaning, that is to say decides that man does indeed live by bread alone, your proposition is of course true.
ReplyDeleteIn Hominickesque style: Koch, you're a koch. You completely missed the point in a desperate attempt to be pithy. In your rush, you passed wit and arrived at stupid.
ReplyDelete