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Dale at 05:34 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Jim @ 57: Yes, Atlantic hurricane intensity has risen, offset by a reduction in Pacific cyclone intensity. Which results in a global trend of nothing. I thought only deniers cherry-picked? @Dikran: I've learnt over the last few years to take the IPCC reports with a pinch of salt. It's been years since AR4 and a lot of research has shown the IPCC not correct on a number of things. Recent research into cyclones shows no trend change in major storm activity. Individual basins change, but globally there's none. Yet you want me to take the word of a single paper over the many. (-snip-) (-snip-). Have you wondered why meteorologists were able to call this storm a week out, say its path, its force and what impact it would have? Yet (-snip-).Moderator Response: [DB] Note that you have previously been given a final warning for sloganeering (snipped above) and other things. Reverting to type will assure corrective action. FYI. -
wili at 05:34 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
Don't believe every Fox (aka Faux) News blurb you read or hear. "Opponents of renewables in North America are pouncing on the news of a new coal plant in Germany, especially because German Environmental Minister Peter Altmaier cut the ribbon, so to speak. Altmaier said Germany will need the conventional fossil power plants for "decades to come," though he did not say it was, as Fox Business put it, to "complement unreliable and intermittent renewable energies such as wind and solar power." In fact, he stated that "fossil energy and renewables should not be played as cards against each other" and that we have to move beyond "making enemies of the two." It took six years to build the plant, meaning that the process started in 2006. It is by no means a reaction to the nuclear phaseout of 2011. And as Altmaier himself points out, the new plant can ramp up and down by 150 megawatts within five minutes and by 500 megawatts within 15, making it a flexible complement to intermittant renewables. In the area, 12 coal plants more than 40 years old have been decommissioned, and the new 2,200 megawatt plant is to directly replace 16 older 150 megawatts blocks by the end of this year, so 2,200 megawatts of new, more flexible, somewhat cleaner capacity (the new plant has an efficiency of 43 percent, whereas 35 percent would be considered ambitious for most old coal plants) is directly replacing 2,400 old megawatts. Germany has a target of 35 percent renewable power by 2020, rising to 85 percent by 2050 – meaning that 65 percent of its power supply will be conventional in 2020, and the country will still have 15 percent conventional power by mid-century. Obviously, Germany needs to build some new conventional power plants to reach even that ambitious goal for renewables." http://www.renewablesinternational.net/is-germany-switching-to-coal/150/537/56081/ -
Chris G at 05:32 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
I'd be pleased if there were more general acknowledgement in the U.S. that a problem exists; dealing with reality in other words. It's hard to have a discussion about how best to handle a problem if half the people won't acknowledge that a problem exists. I wonder if part of the problem is that nothing really bad has happened to the U.S. for too many generations for the general populace to realise that bad things can happen. Universally, no one wants to believe that bad things will happen to them as individuals; and if the cultural memory of past events has grown dim, maybe there is a cultural reluctance to believe what is happening. I mean, for example, WWII was not a good time for anyone, but the U.S. never experienced substantial bombing or foreign troops on its soil, and a lot of countries did. Most of our wars that anyone can remember have been fought on television in some remote place. You have to go back to the 1930s to find large impacts felt at home, and there isn't much living memory of that time. -
wili at 05:17 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy: Neither weather nor tide nor sea level can be legislated
Adelady, was it Edward Blakely, by any chance? : http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3622437.htm?site=tropic "You see these major floods - these floods wouldn't be there if they hadn't filled in all the swamplands and lowlands and given permits to build in areas where the so-called 100-year flood occurs, and this is the 100-year flood that is now coming every five years. This is a time to reposition, and not say, "We will rebuild". The smart thing to say is, "We will reposition"." -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:16 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - no problem, I look forward to your answer. -
Dale at 05:15 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
doug @ 58: Not sure if you're aware, but due to the spherical nature of our planet, and my location in relation to yours, that whilst you are awake, I am asleep. So I apologise for finding it difficult to address the IPCC question whilst I was in sleep mode. -
wili at 05:12 AM on 1 November 2012Hurricane Sandy: Neither weather nor tide nor sea level can be legislated
Good point, adelady. As usual, $$$ is likely to be the only reality that significantly changes habits and habitats. IIRC, last week SwissRe increased it's rates for insurance companies doing business in North America because the rate of pay outs for disasters was going up so quickly. They also made it very clear that the kinds of disasters that were increasing so dramatically were specifically weather, heat and drought--the ones most closely linked to GW. -
vrooomie at 05:05 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Sorry: this was the link I messed up, in 53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjfxEejS2Y -
Jim Eager at 04:43 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
The media speculation about how long it will take for subway service to resume in the flooded tunnel sections are laughable. Salt water and electrical equipment are incompatible. The entire train detection system, signal system, Automatic Train Stop system, switch motor control system and all switch motors in the flooded tunnels will need to be completely replaced, not to mention any substations and main bus junctions for the power third rail. In short, we're talking months before through service can resume in the tunnels that were flooded. When was the last time that happened again, Dale? -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:21 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote "if this system had've hit a much less populated area, and much less financially and politically important area, would the same media hype have been seen?" That's an interesting statement, really. It could be analyzed at many levels, but let's just consider the physical one. The storm's diameter was about a thousand miles. Where in the US could such a storm hit and not affect any major financial and political center? Forget the West coast. At that kind of dimension it could affect all of California, or everything From Seattle on South. In the South? All of the Golf's oil production, shipping and refinery, everything on the Texas coast, all the way to Florida. Let's hypothesize a storm centered smack on the four corners: it still would have affected Denver, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort-Worth, Phoenix, etc, etc. It's becoming awefully hard for populated areas to hide away from storms these days... Of course, one could argue that, when such storm piles heaps of bodies somewhere in Central America, the US media barely budges. Just goes to show that the message has to be hammered home to the reality impervious types. Yet, even at that, they still try to wiggle out of the obvious. -
jyushchyshyn at 04:14 AM on 1 November 2012The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
If Germany were serious about tackling global warming, it would phase out coal rather than nuclear power. Suppose that renewable energy sources could supply all of our energy needs in 50 years. If we phase out coal and continue to use nuclear power we could stop using coal in 25 years. If we phase out nuclear power and continue to use coal, we will be puting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for all 50 years. Until renewable power can supply all of our energy needs, the choice is not between nuclear power and renewable power. Why not use both? The choice is between nuclear power and coal. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:47 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Further to KR's point and distilling to the essential: it's all about energy. Global warming is about retained energy and energy can't be hidden. Expecting atmospheric phenomena to behave identically as they did before despite now being driven by more energy is just silly. Teasing out the precise differences in behavior of given weather phenomena as available energy changes is not easy but the absence of perfect description doesn't mean energy has disappeared or somehow can't manifest itself until it's been reduced to equations. -
Bob Lacatena at 03:24 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
To clarify my comment: 1) I was talking about current food prices that are up and are going to continue to rise, given the bad wheat crop after the bad corn crop, and then the inevitable rise in meat prices that is going to follow this winter (and hasn't hit yet). 2) I was also talking about food prices going up and staying up, above and beyond what the recent drought has brought (given that such droughts will be more frequent and just as bad, and will pile onto the previous droughts). 3) I was also, mostly, talking about the geopolitical ramifications that such changes would have in the developing world, again something we are not actually seeing at the moment (except for the possible causative influence on the Arab Spring), but we will... and that may be one of the scariest implications of all. Imagine riots, rebellions, wars and chaos, rivaling Somalia of the 1990s, but striking across the globe in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even perhaps weaker developed countries (Greece comes to mind, and maybe Italy, given their position, similar to Texas and Oklahoma, at the edge of the northern Hadley Cell, subjecting them to both their own droughts combined with their own debt crisis). -
Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater
Curiously enough, here is the West Side Highway as of 10/30/2012:
[Source]
This is due to the "Sandy" storm surge, not a steady-state sea level rise. But both historically unprecedented - and with continued global warming, perhaps something to expect again...
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2012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - "Sandy wasn't even a category 1 when it made landfall. ...Katrina and Yasi sized cyclones/hurricanes eat Sandy size storms for breakfast and don't even flinch. Sandy wasn't even a small hurricane. It was a big storm, that is all." It has been noted elsewhere, however, that:In terms of sheer kinetic energy -- a measure of the windspeed integrated over how wide an area the winds are blowing -- the super-storm also shattered records going back to at least 1969, said [Jeff] Masters, a former "hurricane hunter" with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a phone call with The Huffington Post Tuesday morning. "That includes Katrina, Andrew, Wilma -- all the Category 5 storms -- Sandy had them beat," Masters said. "If you take the size of it -- it was so vast and it had winds blowing over such a wide area of ocean -- it put a tremendous volume of ocean water in motion and carried it with it as it moved northwards. And guess what? When that water hit land, it had nowhere to go but on the land and generate a record storm surge."
(Emphasis added) Dale, this "wasn't even a category 1" storm may have done somewhat less damage than the category 5 Katrina - we'll have to see what the costs add up to. It wouldn't have been anywhere nearly as powerful or damaging without the anomalously warm offshore waters feeding it energy, or the off-track jet stream. Both of which are factors known to be affected by global warming, I'll point out. Details matter, Dale. Your dismissal of storm Sandy seems to miss a few. -
vrooomie at 02:51 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Thanks, DSL: I'll read up on it. Tangentially, you must be within 15K feetof me; otherwise, I could not receive DSL...;) (sorry, mods, I *had* to say it...you can snip me, if you want!) -
vrooomie at 02:49 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
My "Frankenstorm(s) moment arrived in the 'noughties,' notably in 2006/07 when Denver had ~7~, count'em, *seven* blizzards in a row (one/week, all on weekends!!). Born and raised here, I had NEVER seen so much snow. I was snowed in for days, diggin' like a mad man to get out (..to get to work: I said I was mad!!). There were drifts around town exceeding 8 feet in depth, and in areas where the snow had lain down flat, some exceeded 4 feet deep. We had an April blizzard this year--not terribly unusual for here, save for the fact of its intensity and depth of accumulation--and with the focus on the *intensity* of these winter storms and fire events, I've prepared accordingly. I'm sure are all aware of our not-quite-past yet fire season which was terrible, here and all over the West: Along with that, and a number of other weather extremes, all since 2001, have made me aware of the patterns changing, and in my mind, it's beginning to approach what I can see as serious climate change. -
ajki at 02:48 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Let's not forget that the City Officials of NY knew about the risks. See for example: New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn NYT, September 10, 2012 Some of the comments look quite bizarre - now. -
DSL at 02:48 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
ACE uses storm velocity--essentially a measure of max sustained wind. It does not incorporate storm size/structure. The ACE for Sandy will show it to be a hurricane of weak to average strength--with most of the strength coming from its duration. ACE will not account for strength across volume. There have been other measures proposed, of course, and better instrumentation will allow even more measures to be developed. See Powell & Reinhold (2007) on the subject. -
John Hartz at 02:34 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
“The terrifying truth is that America faces a future full of Frankenstorms,” said Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., the Center’s climate science director. “Climate change raises sea levels and supersizes storms. The threat of killer winds and crushing storm surges will grow by the year unless we get serious about tackling greenhouse gas pollution.” Here’s how scientists say climate change feeds the superstorm triple whammy: 1. Global warming loads storms with more energy and more rainfall. 2. Storm surge rides on higher sea levels, so more coastline floods during storms. 3. Melting sea ice and accelerating Arctic warming are causing changes in the jet stream that are bringing more extreme weather to the United States. Source: Climate Change Feeds Superstorm Triple Whammy , Press Release, Center for Biological Diversity, Oct 30, 2012 -
Doug Bostrom at 02:29 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Can't help but compare Dale's speculative fiction with what the real, non-fiction NYC mayor is confronting. Bloomberg:You did not have ocean water, salt water, breaching the banks the way you’ve had it in Manhattan, you know, in my lifetime….. When you start to fill the subway tunnels with salt water—much of the Con Ed equipment is in the tunnels, is underground—when hot electrical equipment hits cold salt water, that is a bad combination. And that is a design flaw, I believe, for our system now, if you anticipate these extreme weather conditions. Obviously we didn’t when we designed this system. We did not anticipate water coming over the Hudson River, coming over the banks, being five feet deep on the West Side Highway, and filling subway grates and every opening and filling that massive infrastructure we have below ground. Going forward, I think we do have to anticipate these extreme types of weather patterns. And we have to start to think about how do we redesign the system so this doesn’t happen again. After what happened, what has been happening in the last few years, I don’t think anyone can sit back anymore and say “Well, I’m shocked at that weather pattern.” There is no weather pattern that can shock me at this point. And I think that has to be our attitude. And how do we redesign our system and our infrastructure assuming that?”
The Mayor of New York City understands the concept of longitudinal change, a good thing because what Bloomberg sees and understands today will shape the lives of future New Yorkers for better or worse. Bloomberg's job is in part to create a better New York in days to come. If he chose to pretend nothing unusual happened in the past few days he would miss the opportunity to have a positive benefit on the New York of tomorrow. Why people like Dale are so invested in throwing sand in the wheels of progress is deeply mysterious. -
M Tucker at 02:26 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Albatross, @49, I think we should also add the influence of changes to the NAO caused by the unprecedented melting of the Arctic during the summer months. "Here’s where climate change comes in. The atmospheric pattern that sent the Jet Stream south is colloquially known as a “blocking high”—a big pressure center stuck over the very northern Atlantic Ocean and southern Arctic Ocean. And what led to that? A climate phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—essentially, the state of atmospheric pressure in that region. This state can be positive or negative, and it had changed from positive to negative two weeks before Sandy arrived. The climate kicker? Recent research by Charles Greene at Cornell University and other climate scientists has shown that as more Arctic sea ice melts in the summer—because of global warming—the NAO is more likely to be negative during the autumn and winter. A negative NAO makes the Jet Stream more likely to move in a big, wavy pattern across the U.S., Canada and the Atlantic, causing the kind of big southward dip that occurred during Sandy." "The arctic climate system is changing so dynamically that the rules of the game are changing," Greene says. "This is not the same Arctic Ocean we've known. The Arctic and North Atlantic oscillations are changing in ways we hadn't anticipated." The interplay, which has always been fairly consistent, he says, has now become "a wild card" affecting our weather." (from a couple of articles on the Scientific American web site) Favorite denialist tactics: downplay every extreme weather event and the relentless summer Arctic melting. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:10 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
BTW, Dale has still not replied to Dikran Marsupial's significant earlier question asking for Dale's opinion of the IPCC's remarks on hurricanes. -
Jim Eager at 02:09 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote: And finally don't forget Dr Ryan Maue's graphs, showing no increasing trend in global tropical storms or hurricanes/cyclones since 1970. Wrong metric, Dale, try looking at the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index time series. Why you can even find it graphed on Maue's own site: http://policlimate.com/tropical/north_atlantic_ace.png Oh look, it's not the total number of storms that is increasing, but rather the number of intense storms and therefore average storm intensity that are increasing. Did you think no one here would call you on such a transparently straw man argument? -
Son of Krypton at 01:58 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale - But I don't apologise for sounding "sceptical" of the climate change claims affecting Sandy While it's impossible to say for certain, there is the distinct possibility that global warming-caused decline in sea ice contributed the course Sandy took. Taken from a presentation from Dr. Jennifer Francis: Arctic sea ice loss may significantly affect the upper-level atmospheric circulation, slowing its winds and increasing its tendency to make contorted high-amplitude loops. High-amplitude loops in the upper level wind pattern (and associated jet stream) increases the probability of persistent weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially leading to extreme weather [Source] This wavy, blocking pattern is exactly what we expect from decreased sea ice, so it’s very possible that this block may have been boosted in intensity and/or duration by the record-breaking ice loss this summer. Further, as Master's pointed out, the waters off the Northeast coast are a full 5°F above average, adding to the amount of energy and water vapour available. You also brought up the devestation caused by Katrina; yet look at the factors that contributed to the real extent: Failing levies, in some cases due to a lack of upkeep Sections of New Orleans are below sea level, a result of the Mississippi not being able to replenish sediment for a few hundred years, needed to counteract subsidence. Mangroves and natural buffers to storm surge have been severely depleated surrounded New Orleans -
Doug Bostrom at 01:50 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Yeah Vroomie. The effect of being wrong on something so easy to discover is terribly corrosive to credibility and naturally leads us to wonder what else is incorrect or wildly exaggerated. -
vrooomie at 01:44 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
DSL@40, you state: "ACE is simplistic and doesn't directly account for a storm's energy or destructive power via precipitation/movement of mass." Given that I'm completely clueless about this ACE stuff, could you elaborate upon your assertion? Asking as a skeptical..scientist, natch! If (when) the denialati are going to come after "us" with the alleged nonsense, I'd like to be schooled in why it *is* nonsense. -
vrooomie at 01:36 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
There you go again, bostrom, with FACTS and DATA.... [;-/ -
DSL at 01:36 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Vrooomie -- Accumulated Cyclone Energy -
John Hartz at 01:32 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Climate scientists warn that global warming is likely to increase the incidence of serious events like Hurricane Sandy. Warming water and rising sea levels may be contributing to what New York politicians are calling their 'new reality.' For details see: Did global warming cause superstorm Sandy? (+video) by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press (AP), The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 30, 2012 -
Doug Bostrom at 01:29 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale on the '38 storm: 14-25 foot storm surge (also during a full moon) which if occurred today has been estimated would cause $40 billion in damage to New York. NOAA:Storm surges of 10 to 12 ft inundated portions of the coast from Long Island and Connecticut eastward to southeastern Massachusetts, with the most notable surges in Narragansett Bay and Buzzards Bay. Heavy rains before and during the hurricane produced river flooding, most notably along the Connecticut River.
Even if Dale is truly desperate to sway opinions it's still better to stick to an accepted standard of facts. Otherwise we're likely to forever hear about the famous '38 storm and its ever-growing surge, always bigger than the biggest surge yet. -
vrooomie at 01:23 AM on 1 November 2012Climate of Doubt Strategy #1: Deny the Consensus
I ran across this comment, by Bernard J, from a few months back: it bears repeating in this thread. "On the matter of denialism itsef, as embodied by Minchin, Palmer and so many others, it's like this... ...There's a corspe, formerly known as Ms Ecosystem, lying on the ground, and the corpse has a CO2 bullet in its head - a bullet fired at point-blank range from a Coalington-Oilchester rifle. There's a medico autopsying the corpse, a Dr Climatologist, and she concludes that the cause of death was an AGW brain injury resulting from the impact of the dissected CO2 bullet, now lying in the bloody kidney bowl. Watching the autopsy is a member of the NRA, a Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr, who (although he has no experience in medicine) variously asserts that: 1) there is still a scientific debate about the capacity of CO2 bullets to inflict serious damage to brains 2) well, OK, bullets might cause small bumps, but something else caused the corpse to actually die even though the autopsy showed no other plausible factors 3) that the corpse isn't really dead anyway 4) that CO2 bullets are good for the brain 5) alright, so maybe the bullet did kill Ms AGW, but if you control firearms, my life will fall apart, it just will. Nothing that Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr asserts has any objective relationship to the science that determined the cause of death. Several are ideological knee-jerks in response to the implications of the investigation, but these knee-jerks do not alter the fact of cause and effect. The debate isn't about the cause of death, no matter how strenuously Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr attempts to make it so. The debate is simply about Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr's unfettered ability to continue to do what he's always done, no matter that control of this activity would result in less harm in the future. If Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr wanted a genuinely honest discussion, he'd openly admit that CO2 bullets will kill most, if not all, of Ms AGW's family if they are all thusly shot, and he would argue that his right to shoot those CO2 bullets at these folk outweighs the rights of Ms AGW's family not to be shot at. Of course, that is a much harder argument to win, so Mr W.A.S.P. Warming-Denier Snr is going to avoid it at all costs, even if he can never admit it even to himself..." Indeed.Moderator Response: [Sph] Sorry, vrooomie. That was a bit too loud, I think. I toned it down (one strong tag, not two). -
Albatross at 01:18 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) does not spawn weather events/systems per se. So people arguing about whether or not Sandy was caused by global warming are missing the point, and that includes some of the media. With that said, AGW can (and does) influence the background setting in which the storms develop and does affect the odds of the storms/events being more intense/extreme than they would otherwise have been. Analysis of observations has demonstrated that fact repeatedly. Recent research has suggested that in a warming world we could see fewer tropical storms but those storms that do develop will likely be more intense (and as noted by gws @28 wind is not the only metric for quantifying the severity). Also, those arguing that Sandy was "only" a category one storm fail to take into account: 1) The enormity of this storm, it was huge 2) The fact that it passed over waters that were as much as 3 C warmer than average 3) That the atmosphere is now capable of holding more water vapour than it was in the past (which translates into more precipitation) 4) That because of the longer growing season, more trees were likely in leaf than would have been decades ago. 5) Last but not least, the system develop atop a rising ocean (again mostly because of AGW) So of course Trenberth is not going to say that AGW caused Sandy. Eric's interpretation or paraphrasing of Trenberth is wrong and misrepresents his position and the science on this issue-- it is essentially a strawman argument. Here is a Nature article that, IMHO, provides a balanced look at the situation. More to come on this matter from SkS soon. -
vrooomie at 01:11 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
CBD@47: Given I live in the middle of ~30K acres (which a small fraction of total farmland here) of some of the most productive farmland on the plains (Weld County, CO is something like 3rd nationwide, in grain production) I see this going on: We weren't hit as hard as the Midwest wrt drought, and last year's winter wheat crop was *OK*. I've seen (literally, out my windows!) the crop yields from this year's production, for corn, beets, pinto beans, and sunflowers quite a bit lower than in years past. We just got a decent snow cover, which the winter wheat loved, but it will require lots more, and more persistent. snow cover till late April for the yields to be decent. Give the happs of the states to our east, farmers her are on pins and needles; the inputs have ALL gone up, and I watch my well like a hawk, givn a great deal of farmgn around me is center-pivot irrigation, which draws on the same aquifer as I am on. In short, I see food prices remaining high from now on. And let me say this unequivocally: Fuel-from-food is an asinine, stupid, idiotic idea. As you say, the primary and most hurtful effect of that is on the world's poor. -
CBDunkerson at 00:38 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Composer99, while there has been an increase in food prices over the past few years I suspect Sphaerica was referring to what is expected to happen next year as the impact of abysmal US crop production this past Summer starts to hit the global marketplace. The 'midwest' of the United States produces a significant portion of the world's food supply. Mandates that some of that food be converted into ethanol have already been hitting prices, but the sharp drop in available supplies will cause a more significant rise. If poor farming conditions continue in many years this will become a 'new normal' which will have a devastating impact on poor areas around the world. -
Composer99 at 00:32 AM on 1 November 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Well, I can definitely state that the misinformation spread by Mr Harris has had the desired effect, based on a discussion just a few minutes ago regarding the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy here at the office with a Carleton alum who, it transpires, took the course. -
Composer99 at 00:27 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Sphaerica: As far as "food prices go up and stay up" goes, I suspect we have reached that point already. -
vrooomie at 00:08 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
DSL....."ACE?" -
DOOMDAYS at 00:07 AM on 1 November 2012Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
@Rob Painting Thenquiu Very Much for you answer ROB. Is true that in short timeframes (less than a decade or so) ENSO dominates the other forcings like GHGs or Aerosols, so if not misunderstood your words, it is misleading to take this decade as a real trend of what would happen in a dimming world ..Iam right ??? ...Questions? As we would expect that the aerosol forcing is seen reflected in the surface temperatures of the HS??? 15 to 20 Years ? -
vrooomie at 00:07 AM on 1 November 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran@41: ...OK. I'll also await an answer and avoid any more responses to Dale till we get that answer. -
Bob Lacatena at 23:53 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Deniers annoy me, but I have always known that the day would come when deniers would literally make me sick, when they would cross the line as the effects of their denial began to really, really demonstrate itself by directly impacting and hurting people -- lots and lots of people. We have Sandy, soon we'll have food prices whose effects will ripple through the developing world, we have more than that and it's getting worse with every passing day. People are getting hurt now. I also knew that when this day came, their denial would only get stronger and more aggressive, much as a little child will more and more adamantly claim he "didn't do it." They scream so loudly that they convince themselves of their innocence. And I also know that the day is going to come when this stuff is no longer remotely arguable, when we've seen four or five Sandy's, and Texas and Oklahoma farmers are abandoning their farm land for good, and food prices go up and stay up. And on and on and on. And when that day comes, some people are going to have to live with themselves (even though, so far, they've demonstrated an uncannily unwavering ability to spin lies into gold, to stand the facts and the physics on their heads to create a bizarre world where they are right and everyone else is wrong). The day is going to come when their complete idiocy is laid bare to all, including themselves. I hope they'll at least have the courage to do as Myron Ebell already did (denier-style quote mining purposefully executed here):"I’m sorry and I wish we could speed up our efforts to reverse the policies that we have supported here at CEI."
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DSL at 23:36 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, you can dump Maue. He's an ACE fanatic who does what the WeatherBell people tell him to do. ACE is simplistic and doesn't directly account for a storm's energy or destructive power via precipitation/movement of mass. -
Dikran Marsupial at 22:59 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
To keep the discussion fixed purely on the science, can I suggest that Dale answers a question that demonstrates that he has a good grasp of the science of which he appears to be skeptical, namely: What does the IPCC say about trends in tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) and mid-latitude storms, both in terms of the historical records and projections of future climate? And perhaps not respond to his posts until he has demonstrated that he knows what mainstream science says on this issue by giving a direct and unambiguous answer to this question. -
idunno at 22:50 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
This article from 2011 is not, strictly speaking, about Sandy. Still, it looks fairly on-topic... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/16/climate-change-report-new-york-city?CMP=twt_gu -
bill4344 at 22:19 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale, I suggest you're angry and aggressive because you feel your world being torn out of your grasp by the very winds whose strength your denying. And rightly so - in the world outside your fanatical cast of mind virtually no-one swallows the 'this is all just a coincidence' line after decades of predictions of just such events as this, along with record melting sea-ice, record melting glaciers, egregious sets of broken temperature records, unprecedented event after event after event. We've even had McCain's daughter tweeting 'So, are still going to go with climate change not being real, fellow republicans?' It's that bloody obvious. The strategy of desperate cherry-picking, nit-picking, and general obfuscationist pedantry is falling apart. This was supposed to be a Type 1 error thing so you could sneer about a bit of water sloshing over the breakwaters, ha ha, stupid alarmists fussing over nothing, now let's all elect Mitt, wasn't it? And instead it turns out your Type 2 errors are coming home to roost, and it's blatantly obvious, even at the level of a Fox News audience, just what pollyannaish BS the whole 'isn't happening and anyway even if it is we'll adapt' thing is! Turns out reality really does have a strong liberal bias... And, Christ, man, how did this not really-impressive-at-all, barely-even-merits-the-name storm manage to do so much harm? Where did those barometric records come from? What's going to happen when some satisfactorily-higher-category proper full-on hurricane does hit? Shall we wait until then, and then we can all wring our hands with crystal conviction knowing that we should have done something thirty years ago, shall we? You don't know anything about risk. Get it? At all! The bulwark of your arrogance has been breached along with the sea-walls. You want to take up the whole trends thing? Go see Tamino discussing Grinsted. He'll thrash you, but you won't know it. And, as I said, do keep up the tone-deaf 'it was nothing I tell you' zealotry - it ain't our cause you're harming with it...Moderator Response: [DB] Passion for science and accuracy is appreciated, but let us not lose control of how we pitch our comments. The discussion is veering into comments policy adherence territory. Let us remain respectful without losing that passion for the science and the dialogue will benefit accordingly. Thanks! -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:55 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
@Dale, yes, a reference to a peer-reviewed paper is a big improvement, which was the point I was making. Now if you want your argument to be really convincing, you should explain where these papers sit in the context of other studies. Do more modern studies agree with those conclusions? What about the severity, rather than the frequency of storms? What does the IPCC WG1 report say about this (which is a reasonable assessment of the mainstream scientific position). Does the IPCC cite reports that contradict the ones you cite? By the way, the first paper seems to me to overstate the conclusions, where they write "The hypothesis that hurricane strike frequencies are increasing in time is also statistically rejected.", which is not supported by the analysis as far as I can see. Not being able to reject the null hypothesis does not entitle you to reject the alternative hypothesis. To be clear, I was pointing out that your argument was flawed, not necessarily the conclusion. However strong claims (such as that mainstream climatology is wrong) requires similarly strong evidence. The ball is in your court. -
CBDunkerson at 21:44 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dale wrote: "if this system had've hit a much less populated area, and much less financially and politically important area, would the same media hype have been seen?" Tell me. Why do you suppose this particular area is so financially important? Could it be on account of the deep water ports and major rivers that are rarely hit by natural disasters? Earthquakes, tornadoes, wild fires, and (until recently) major storms all generally give the northeastern US a pass. Now we've seen widespread power outages lasting several days three times in the past year. You think turning the biggest financial center in the world back to third world conditions is not a news worthy event? As to the actual storm... you seem not to comprehend the difference between 'hurricane strength' on the Saffir - Simpson scale, which measures top wind speed, and the total energy of the storm. Sandy's top wind speed was nowhere near as high as Katrina's, but it was a massively more powerful storm. Katrina had a devastating impact on one city and did significant damage in a couple of states. Sandy hit the east coast of North America. See the difference? On the ground report: Partial power has been restored in NYC, Newark, and other major cities. Oddly, traffic lights are still out in many places even where the surrounding buildings have power. Most water pumping stations and communications are back up, but electricity is another story. They seem to be concentrating on getting the cities restored before the surrounding areas. Which means that a lot of people (me included) now have power at their workplaces, but not at home. Only damage at my place was a 35 year old Magnolia tree which got crushed by a huge limb coming off a much older Oak in the neighbor's yard. Trees are down all over the area. They had done a lot of work after the prior outages to clear branches away from power lines and I didn't see any downed lines this time, but obviously it didn't solve the problem. Projections are that many areas could remain without power for a couple of weeks. -
Dale at 21:37 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran @ 31: You mean like this statistical analysis from 1900-2006 finding no increasing trend in US Atlantic basin hurricane strikes? http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2007JCLI1772.1 Or this one (which includes the Pacific basin) from 1851 to 2009 also showing no trend in US hurricane strikes. http://moe.met.fsu.edu/~jcossuth/others/ And finally don't forget Dr Ryan Maue's graphs, showing no increasing trend in global tropical storms or hurricanes/cyclones since 1970. http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png So yeah, let's look at trends.Moderator Response:[DB] As commenter bill notes below, you need to evaluate Grinsted et al 2012:
"We demonstrate that the major events in our surge index record can be attributed to landfalling tropical cyclones; these events also correspond with the most economically damaging Atlantic cyclones. We find that warm years in general were more active in all cyclone size ranges than cold years. The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years (P < 0.02)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/10/1209542109
Add in the warmest 17 years in the instrumental record are all the most recent 17 years...
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:47 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Eric (skeptic), you are not correct in thinking that the analogy require the die to be rolled more often due to climate change. The die has a "one" on one face that corresponds to the absence of a storm worth recording. Loading the die could mean that there was a change in the probability of rolling a one corresponding to a change in the frequency of reported storms. As happens quite often when using analogies in the climate debate, you are over-complicating a simple analogy and hence missing the point. Loading a die means to change the distributions of the outcomes away from being equiprobable. Loading a die says nothing about how often the die is rolled, so there was no reason to introduce that complication. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:36 PM on 31 October 20122012 SkS News Bulletin #1: Hurricane Sandy & Climate Change
Dikran, it seems we are talking about two things: the rolls of the dice and how often the dice is rolled. Science does not know if the dice will be rolled more or less often. I was simply assuming the same number of rolls. When the event happens (a roll), the dice are weighted to a more severe outcome.
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