Monday, November 27, 2006
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Quietest Hurricane Season in 10 Years
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Posted by:
Mary Katharine Ham at
9:07 AM
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But the beauty of global warming is that you can blame anything on it! It's just like Bush.
Warmer than usual? Global warming!
Colder than usual? Global warming!
That little irony caused the enviros to change the "it" term to "climate change."
More hurricanes than usual? Climate change!
Fewer hurricanes than usual? Climate change!
Someone accused me the other day of being "anit-science" when it comes to global warming. Nah, not anti-science, but I am pro-skepticism, and climate change fanatics really push the envelope when it comes to narratives I'm willing to buy.
The idea that every single change in the environment and weather patterns can be attributed to global warming and human activity despite the fact that we've only been measuring such changes reliably for a couple of generations is about as believable as the idea that Bush is to blame for every single unfortunate incident to befall the United States and its denizens over the past six years. Of course, it's the same people who believe both, which makes me even more skeptical of the climate change fanatics. If your neighborhood climate change activist is wearing a "Buck Fush" T-shirt, it makes him somewhat less credible.
Anyway, no matter the cause, the good news is-- fewer hurricanes:
Barring a last-second surprise from the tropics, the season will end Thursday with nine named storms, and only five of those hurricanes. This year is the first season since 1997 that only one storm nudged its way into the Gulf of Mexico...
Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say the storm-snuffing dust was more abundant than usual this year.
In the season's peak, storms were curving right like errant field goals. High pressure that normally hunkers near Bermuda shifted far eastward, and five storms rode the clockwise winds away from Florida.
Finally, a rapidly growing El Nino, a warming of water over the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifted winds high in the atmosphere southward. The winds left developing storms disheveled and unable to become organized.
Update: Global warming causes alarming nationwide outbreak of on-time flights over holiday weekend!
A dry and relatively mild weekend made for calm airports, railyards and roadways from Boston to Atlanta to Chicago to Dallas.
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Peer Review in the field of climate science is a catchword. You should notice that it is only the Left that uses it. As a matter of fact, most people who believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), bandy it about like a sludge hammer in order to close the debate; show me a "peer reviewed climate scientist who has published a peer reviewed paper opposing AGW, and I will listen to you", they say. What is interesting is the creeping realization by much of the public that there is something dreadfully wrong with the entire endeavor of Climate Science. As the chorus gets louder, it also gets more shrill. For the last 5 years or so, everyone is jumping on the wagon. And it isn't just climate scientists who are screaming the loudest doomsday predictions. To the average Joe, Climate Science looks just like another advocacy effort to a)get more public money, and to b)extract more money from the taxpayers (pay more taxes now or you will be resonsible for the future extinction of half the worlds biosystems.
Anyone who follows the science of Climate Science knows that AGW is just an unproven theory. The foundation of the AGW theory lies with a now disputed 1000 year themperature reconstruction known as MBH98/99 (Mann-Bradely-Hughes 1998/99 Multivariate Proxy Temperature Reconstruction). This was supposedly peer reviewed. The UN IPCC used to show that the 1990s was the hottest decade in a 1000 years, and 1998 was the hottest year since AD1000. MBH98/99 portrayed the famous Hockey Stick graph. All of a sudden there was no Little Ice Age(LIA) or Medevil Warm Period (MWP).Beginning in the 80s, the graph took on a very sharp spike (the blade of the hockey stick), with the late 90s being downright hot. NOAA, the WMO, every university and scientific organization accpeted this representation as Gospel. Most advocacy groups used MBH98 to push Kyoto. It is ironic that MBH98 was published the same year Kyoto went to the Senate for ratification.
The only problem was MBH98 was wrong. It took 2 non-peer reviewed Canadians (statistician, and mining engineer) to uncover a whole host of error as well as a data mining algorithim( they plugged in random numbers into MBH98s code and got hockey sticks. That is the deck was stacked in a favor of the Hockey Stick) in the MBH98 reconstruction. When they published thier findings a door was slammed in thier face by the Peer Reviewed Community. A media offensive was launched against the Canadians, and the biggest complaint or sneer put against them was that they were not "peer reviewed climate scientists". Yet, it was 2 unpeer reviewed scientists who uncovered one of the biggest frauds ever produced by scientists. By 2004, public peer support for MBH98/99 vanished, even though the climate community sticks to MBH98's conclusions. The Hockey Stick is still posted at many university websites, and was is still used by ALGORE.
The embarrasment to the climate science community hasn't prevented them from making more outrageous predictions. Last year, in the aftermath of Katrina scientists from all over the world rushed to prove that Katrina was caused by AGW, and that more Katrinas were on the way. All of a sudden hockey stick graphs of tropical storm occurances sprung out of nowhere. Predictions for 2006 were dire. And it wasn't just univsersity and NOAA scientists who gaming the system; The Weather Channel, Accuweather, Discovery Channel issued special presentations predicting that from now on we could look forward to more destructive Hurricanes, tornadoes, and huge shifts in our weather patterns. Peer Reviewed Climate Scientists came out of the woodwork to lend thier name to these studies and get thier 15 minutes of fame.
One way to clear the air is for the IPCC to set up a seperate, independent audit process for climate and research papers. The Climate Science Community should require that scientists divulge all of thier data sets, computer code, and proxy information to the public; all of thier information should be put in a public FTP clearing house. This is something that will never be done, however. To this day, Dr Mann refuses to divulge all of his data for MBH98 to the public. He counters that that information is private and not for public consumption. The Climate Science Community should place an astrik on any studies that are published this way telling the public that the study is unverified.
Until the Climate Science community grows up and does what other fields demand (Engineering and Medicine), it cannot be taken seriously. The Peer Review Process in climate science is nothing but an echo chamber.
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gforce,
You are wrong about the Russian Academy. They as well as the worlds most respected Academies have signed a consensus statement as well extolling the truth of man made climate change.
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Academia Brasiliera de Cie^ncias
Royal Society of Canada
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Academie´ des Sciences
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher
Indian National Science Academy
Accademia dei Lincei
Science Council of Japan
Russian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society
National Academy of Sciences
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The most amazing thing about Ms. Hams post is that the person who made the wrong predictions on the number of hurricanes, Dr Grey, is an outspoken critic of global warming. On top of that she , borrowing from Drudge, explains why the season was lighter then expected. And it wasn't because of cool Atlantic temperatures. Fortunately, other events conspired to save us ...this year...and still New Orleans will never be the same.
Bottom line understanding climate change and the complexities of hurricanes there seems to be no reason to doubt that the overall severity of hurricanes effects on our eastern coasts will continue to rise.
A complete denial of the climate change effects on the future will certainly be one of Bush's most prominent and notorious legacies...overshadowing even his total botch of the fight against terrorism and the disaster in Iraq. |
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How can the peer review process be dead? It's the time-tested basis of checking new scientific discoveries, and 97% of the time, it works perfectly. If the peer-review process is worthless, what do you propose as an alternative? |
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gforce might want to start by noting that it was Dr. Gray who originally predicted a much higher incidence of hurricanes this season than occurred (at least in the Atlantic Basin). This doesn't speak well for him, unless you want to say that one seasons results don't disprove his expertise. In that case, you must explain why you would ignore the preponderence of evidence from many sources worldwide that temperatures are up, storm trends are more violent, ice pack is decreasing, species are dying off, droughts are becoming more severe and the list goes on. The rest of gforce's post is confused as peer review is working quite well in the real world of science research and he can't point to the the specific passage in the NAS review of Dr. Hansen's work that disputes this because it doesn't exist. For readers interested in what CLIMATE researchers are saying about global warming I suggest http://www.realclimate.org as an antidote to ignorance. |
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I don't know about anyone else, but in science class they taught me the earth's climate has been changing for as long as it has existed.
What I want to know is, how was it determined that the climate of the pre-industrial age is the "best" climate for the planet? Not only for humans, but for all life? Can somebody ask Al Gore that next time they see him?
In the higher level science classes they teach theories like evolution, and that climate change is one of the largest driving forces behind evolution. Lack of climate change could be the worst thing that could happen to life on this planet -including humans. Or has someone decided life has finished evolving on planet earth?
Can someone explain to me again why we want an artificially maintained static climate, even if we could do it? |
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You field a strawman's argument. Your question should be rephrased as: "Find me a peer-reviewed scientist who does not believe that the majority of recent warming (last 100 years) is a)caused by human activity, and b)that the current global climate is the hottest since the beginning of the Holocene Era.
1)Dr Gray PHD, NOAA, Univ of Colorado
2)The Academy of Russian Science (Completely ignored by the MSM)
3)Dr Ross McKitrck, Professor of Mathematics and Enviormental Science, Toronto Univ
4)Dr Wegeman Member of the National Academy of Sciences
5)Dr Hans von Storch Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Max Plank Univ, Germany
6)Dr Linzen, Professor of Physics, MIT
This is just the top of a list that goes in the 100s
And please, get off that Peer Reviewed Schtick. The Peer Review Process is DEAD. The 2006 NAS Reports called it a "Social Networks" which is nothing more than an echo chamber. The 1998 and 1999 Mann-Bradley-Hughes Temperature Reconstruction, which was supposedly "peer reviewed" was so full of inaccuracies, cherry picked data, and poor math that no one even mentions it anymore. Dr Hansen's "climate thoeries", which were again "peer reviewed" are a joke. Since late last summer, "peer reviewed" climatologists have come up with so much garbage concerning Tropical Storms and Global Warming, that in another era, they would have been fired from thier tenured chairs. |
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It's true about blame. I blame all my co-workers' dumbassness on global warming. Most of the time is helps me get through the day, but sometimes I have to blame the Jooooooos. |
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besides dating yourself (although it was a good cartoon): please provide us with links showing that the world's scientists are ALL agreeing.
Then, explain to us why, exactly, this season was only 1/3 of last year's? Did not Gore say things would be worse this year? Was he right or was he wrong? |
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seriously, find me one respectable, peer reviewed climatologist who actually beleives this isnt happening?
Did anyof you ever think, what if your wrong? What the consequences, as the worlds scientists are all agreeing it could/will be!
Get out of your SUV's and just get off the politics for a second, this goes beyond that. |
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Most of our medium range trends(50-100 years) in climate behavior is tied directly to teleconnections. These oscillations in tropespheric, and ocean temperatures have an immediate affect on global climate.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a 25 year ocean temperature oscillation. Fluccuations in North Atlantic Basin tropical storm activity is directly connected to this teleconnection. Dr Gray, the leading researcher in tropical meterology says the AMO has been in a positive cycle (ie warm cycle) since 1990. Based on this alone, the next 9 years will continue to see above average tropical storms in the Atlantic Basin due to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures. Other parameters that effect tropical storms is the temperature of the North African deserts during the winters, and the strength of the Polar Jet, as well as ENSO.
North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has a direct affect on European climate. When the NAO is in High mode (High Pressure over Iceland), Europe has frigid winters and dry summers and springs. The storm track shifts south across the North African coast. When the NAO is in low mode (Low pressure over Iceland), Europe enjoys mild, stormy, wet weather. The NAO can oscillate over seasons, but there are many instances where it will stay in one mode or another for 5-10 years.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), is a 30-40 year oscillation (it was discovered only 10 years ago), is a sea surface temperature oscillation that resides in the North Pacific. This oscillation mirrors the temperature over N. America. During the last mini cold spell (1945-1975), it was in a negative mode (cold). ENSO events were capped, and N.America had some of its coldest years in recorded history (1962,1974). The El Nino event of 1976 spelled the beginning of the high or positive mode of the PDO. Since 1980, ENSO events have been intense, surface temps have climbed, and winters have been mild to warm. During the positive cycle, ENSO seems to determine our weather.
ENSO (El Nino, Southern Oscillation. A 4-7 year oscillation of sea surface temperatures across the Central Pacific. During positive years (El Nino), large amounts of warm energy is transported north and westward. Droughts from Austrailia to East Africa result, as does storms over the West and East coasts of the US. High Pressure dominates the middle of North America, and tropical storms over the Atlantic are surpressed. Some climatologists believe the strength of ENSO is determined by the PDO. When the PDO is low or negative, ENSO events are of low intensity.
When have only begun to understand climate cycles, and what determines them. The science and math are dull and difficult for most people. The belief that Man determines our climate is what I would expect from the most narcisstic generation in History (most of the senior scientists in the World are boomers). |
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They are part of the heat engine. They spun up for a while- last year especially- to deal with global warming (the Natural variety, not the tiny amount humans have added), and currently things have evened out somewhat. Lather, rinse, repeat. This has been going on since the Atlantic opened wide enough for hurricanes to form.
The heat engine moves on. The only real Hot Air is what the likes of algore make of it. |
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Global warming -- the measurable increae in average temperatures -- is very difficult to refute. One can't ignore meteorological records from around the world. It IS occurring.
Identifying human activity as the cause of global warming, however, is the height of human arrogance. Examine those average global temperature records as far back as scientists have been able to extrapolate the data and you will see that global temperatures have risen and fallen many times in the past -- when man was even more insignificant on this planet than he is now. I seem to recall a cartoon published a few years ago in which one cave man chastised another about how their cooking fire would cause global warming. In the background, of course, is an active volcano. |
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Ah! The wise and all-knowing scientists were 180 degrees wrong in predicting this hurricane season.
Could it be that God decided to show all their wisdom as foolishness by announcing quite publicly who ACTUALLY controls the weather.
P.S. Watch our for His "global warming"... |
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