Friday, September 01, 2006
New forecast: Below average hurricane season
The nation's leading predictor of hurricanes, William Gray's team at Colorado State, now believes that this season will be "slightly below average."
Hmmm. Last year leading Democrats claimed that severe hurricanes -- as evidenced by Katrina -- were the product of Republican environmental policies. Leading mainstream media organs argued that Katrina was evidence of systematic global climate change. Click here for a long list of links to similar allegations.
What does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. think now? Is there an enterprising reporter out there with the inclination to ask him? Will Time magazine issue a correction?
Don't hold your breath.
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Sep 01, 01:23:00 PM:
I hope RFK Jr. thinks the same thing that I do - that it is silly to attempt to blame the effects of a single hurricane on anyone's environmental policy.
If you have data on 10+ year timescales, then that is a different story. I'm sure there are convincing arguments based on the data to be made in favor of the US reducing its emissions drastically. Hurricane Katrina is not one of them.
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Fri Sep 01, 03:11:00 PM:
Using a single year's data for a highly stochastic phenomenon is just silly. It's like watching tickers for a stock you plan on holding for years.
Last year we had an abnormally high number of hurricanes. This year it's pretty much average. That doesn't mean global warming doesn't exist or that Time owes everyone a correction. In part because you've completely misstated their argument. For the benefit of people who haven't read it: the article suggests that globally, the number of storms hasn't risen, but their intensity may have. That hypothesis is based on data from a MIT study of 50 years. Note first: the numerical quantity of storms this year is immaterial to the argument. Second: the magnitudes for this half a season of storms would have to be factored in with the other 50 years to determine how it affects the results of the study.
As for global warming, when you change the thermostat in your house it can take hours for the temperature to change. The Earth is bilions of times larger than your house, and takes a lot longer to respond to subtle atmospheric changes. Probably the shortest meaningful unit of time is a decade. Thus, there's no point in fixating on individual years, not even the remarkable 2005. Unless you go back to at least Reagan, there's no reason to critique Republicans for existing conditions. But you can still tell them to pay more attention to the thermostat because you don't want to be hot in 50 years or underwater in 100. They won't listen, because most people don't see the threat as significant enough to determine their vote, but you can try.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Sep 01, 03:23:00 PM:
OK, so the snarking on Time was a little unfair. But RFK Jr. is a fool. You gotta give me that.
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Sat Sep 02, 03:40:00 AM:
Could be. I have a standing policy never to read Huffington Post because it's so frequently stupid. Also, there may not exist a Kennedy who isn't screwed up. At least not a male one (JFK's daughter seems pretty cool). I'll agree by default if you'll let me off the hook for actually having to read it.
By the way Tiger, that last link refers to studies published in Nature and Science. You do know those are the two most reputable scientific journals in the world, right? I mean for news organizations to piggyback off them and deliver news of their studies isn't so outrageous. (Specifically: less outrageous than an amateur blogger trying to discredit peer-reviewed, published, 50-yr climatology papers with superficial data from 4 months.)
Not to discourage independent forrays into climatology, (it's an important field and will become more so as glacial ice melts) but you're in a bit over your head.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Sep 02, 07:42:00 AM:
Not to discourage independent forrays into climatology, (it's an important field and will become more so as glacial ice melts) but you're in a bit over your head.
No doubt. I should have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.
By Gordon Smith, at
Sat Sep 02, 08:05:00 AM:
RFK Jr. is a gadfly and rhetorical bomb-thrower, but I would say that the fools are the ones ignoring global warming. Or ignoring voting irregularities for that matter.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Sep 02, 10:50:00 AM:
Way to stay on topic, Screwy!
LB, I do not discard what is published in Nature or Science lightly. In fact, I do not discard it at all. The issue is indeed complicated. It seems likely, though not definite, that warming is occurring; it seems possible, but not (yet) probable, that there is a decisive human factor. What we can and should do about that is even murkier.
But I would point out something that I do know that even a non-expert like me can absorb. MIT's 50-year study supported on tentative conclusion. If one adds in the data from the North Atlantic for the 50 years before that, the effect vanishes. Why did MIT use only the last 50 years as data? Not for political considerations, as the more fevered on the right might suggest, but because we only have good data for the other oceans for that time period. They wanted the global comparison.
So it leaves a further complicated picture. They study the oceans for 50 years and conclude greater hurricane intensity most of which is in the North Atlantic. But taking the NA alone on a longer time scale, the effect vanishes. What are we to make of that? It provides ambiguous evidence.
On the issue of AGW, the center-right blogosphere usually gets torqued off at a)wildly overblown claims and b)moderately overblown claims that make it into major media outlets. I think that is more a public perception battle than an AGW battle per se.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Sep 02, 12:17:00 PM:
Oh yeah? Well I would say that the fools are the ones who try to play down the Islamist threat and treat it like regular crime! Pft.
"I would say that the fools are the ones ignoring global warming."
Which, as AVI as noted, has yet to be proven to exist. It's entirely possible that the earth is still warming naturally from the last "little Ice Age." (implying the fact that the global climate of the earth is constantly in flux anyway)
Throw this is in with the point I've mentioned before, a couple of months ago; I've been exposed to so many shrill, overblown, ridiculous 'the world is ending' claims regarding global warming in my life that have proven to be false that I just don't pay any attention anymore. "The ice caps will melt by 2000 unless we do something!" I was told. They're still there. "The O-zone layer will disappear and fry the planet!" Not only is it still there, it's regenerating. "Natural disasters are getting worse! Look at Katrina! Look at the recent drought and heat wave!" Look at Andrew. Look at the Dust Bowl.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
The strongest hurricane on record to have hit the US was in... 1935. 70 years before 2005.
Explain to me how ignoring similar claims is foolish.
"Or ignoring voting irregularities for that matter."
You mean like the ones in Illinois that got JFK elected? (since the discussion was about a Kennedy) Or... what?
By geoffgo, at
Sat Sep 02, 03:36:00 PM:
Lankey Bast*d,
But, but..
My earlier-than-boomer gereration is still waiting for the ICE AGE predictions to come to pass, as we all went out and spent a great deal of time and energy and money to be ready.
Now, I have to sell my snow blower and buy a rototiller?
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Sun Sep 03, 12:24:00 AM:
AVI, you betray your pseudonym. I agree with your first paragraph in it's entirety. To the second, I imagine the study found it difficult to get reliable data for the 1950's (satellite technology is a beautiful thing); going back further would introduce yet more uncertainties. As for the last, I admire use of the word "overblown" in this discussion. I suggest that the right is more defensive than torqued. Defensive is a peculiar, but not unprecedented, response to science.
Dawnfire, you cannot neglect cause and effect in your ozone discussion. The actions of environmentalists to enact a worldwide ban on CFCs is what led to restoration of the ozone layer. Far from evidence against climatalogical sciences, it is the perfect case study of how we can avert a bad situation through awareness and engineering. I offer sincere thanks to any members of that generation who have helped reduced my chance of skin cancer. I appreciate the actions you took to give us a less hazardous sun.
Geoffgo, I have the same issue with doctors who first claimed eggs were good, then that they were bad. In the Atkins craze they were good again but only in large doses, and now most doctors say they are only ok in moderation. I respect your time-honed skepticism, but allow me to propose an idea. You've lived through the space race, and seen a man on the moon. You were alive when Watson and Crick first discovered DNA as the carrier of genetic material, and are on the cusp of a medical revolution from the complete sequencing of the of 3 billion base human genome. You've seen the development of the laser, commericalization of the microwave, and avdent of the integrated circuit. There have been countless advances in chemistry, physics, biology, and virtually every branch of science. As you sit wherever you sit, typing on a computer that couldn't have existed a generation ago and pour your thoughts into this marvelous device called the internet, don't you think that science and technology have advanced our knowledge and our world to the point where modern scientific claims should be taken very seriously? Scientists today aren't any smarter, but they are more numerous, more knowledgable, and have a hell of a lot fancier tools. Those people are now painting a pretty bleak picture. So let me pose the question to you. From a youthful generation to an older (and presumably wiser) one: should we worry that we are able to destroy our children's world and act to prevent it?
(PS: Regarding the snowblower, any changes will take decades. However, you might consider selling the snowblower and hiring a neighborhood kid to shovel. It's more expensive, but it has a lower carbon impact, and gives the child exercise and spending money.)
By Fabio, at
Sun Sep 03, 05:47:00 AM:
Lanky,
There was conclusive evidence that CFCs caused ozone depletion. The decision to ban them probably had its own drawbacks, but at least the ozone depletion problem has been solved.
The same conclusive evidence does not exist for AGW. A slight warming has been observed, but I'm not convinced that human activities have a big impact on it.
Predictions of future climate need so many assumptions about unknown variables that they are little more than educated guesses. Moreover, climate is a chaotic system, nearly impossible to model with any reasonable degree of accuracy.
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Sun Sep 03, 01:55:00 PM:
Fabio,
What was the conclusive evidence? We had elucidation of the chemical pathways that showed a free radical fluorocarbon could break down numerous ozone molecules in a chain reaction...but we didn't have any direct proof that there were CFC's up there doing exactly that. It was a largely theoretical construct.
Similarly, we know from basic physical properties that CO2 reflects infrared and is therefore a greenhouse gas. We know that higher CO2 levels will trap heat in the Earth. We also know that global CO2 levels have changed and that we've put a lot of additional CO2 into the air since the industial revolution. This is also a largely theoretical concept, but it makes sense.
As for the chaotic nature of climate, I could argue the analysis of trends and characterization of data within stochastic limits, but there's no reason to. It's really easy to do a global energy balance on the Earth:
Change in energy = Amount of Energy in - Amount of Energy out.
This equation comes from the first law of thermodynamics stating that "energy cannot be created or destroyed". If you can follow it, you pass Freshman chemical engineering. The energy coming to the Earth is radiation from the giant continuous fusion reactor a few lightminutes away. It comes in different flavors: ultraviolet, visible light, and infrared (and others). The energy leaving the Earth is also radition, though we don't emit the higher wavelengths, so infrared is the workhorse of our energy export. If you insulate infrared transmission, you decrease our radiation from the earth, and the planet will increase in energy. Practically speaking, "more energy" means "more temperature". If atmospheric changes result in a change to our energy balance, we're going to get warmer.
By Fabio, at
Mon Sep 04, 05:18:00 PM:
Lanky,
I passed my Chem Eng Exams some time ago already, and I know about energy balances.
But I also know about DeBeer's law of absorbance: when saturation is reached, a concentration increase won't make any difference.
I should dig up the relevant papers, but IIRC some research group found chlorinated and brominated compounds in certain high-altitude polar clouds and was able to observe the mechanism of ozone depletion in the field.
