It's Global Warming's Fault!

I read an editorial blurb in the local newspaper last week regarding how the "enviros" figure maybe the US should acknowledge "global warming" as responsible for Katrina. The blurb also cited some credible statistics. The last two colums would support "global warming" to be the best defense against hurricanes! :green:

Larry

umm, no. global warming isn't necessary to cause any of this. This is an upswing of a very well known and observable cycle that hurricane severity and frequency goes through. recorded history of hurricane activity is quite clear on the matter.

not commenting on the existence or not of human activity related global warming, but this hurricane was not related to it one way or the other. Saying anything else is actually pretty funny when you read the figures.

Actually, global warming is a guess of how energy trapped in the atmosphere will behave. All energy reaching the earth and the atmosphere will either be reflected, absorbed into some type of potential-energy balance, or result in an energy manifestation. Even the energy manifestation will eventually be absorbed into a potential-energy balance of some sort. The question, should more energy be trapped on earth or the atmosphere than has been in the past, is what form of energy manifestations will result. The most basic and least involved guess would be a global warming. Trying to say that hurricanes, as part of the manifestation of the balancing factor, is created as a result, is as complex as any other guess.

Personally, if a global warming isn't noted, yet the energy reflected back into space is lessened, I'd be wondering where that energy would be manifest. I wouldn't personally draw any comfort from James' assurance that "this hurricane was not related". I wouldn't even draw comfort from such a statement from a qualified meteorologist. Energy can't be destroyed. It's going to go somewhere.

Hurricanes happen every year. Of course they don't generally level such a volley of destructive force at the U.S. as they have for the last couple of years. That doesn't mean we're not in some sort of cycle, though. It's a complicated matter.

It makes sense when discussing it here that more heat is more energy and more energy is larger storms. Empath is correct that a hurricane is an attempt at equalization of temperature. There were modeling studies done that if we seeded the rain out of the storms and didn't let them grow to huge storm status that the temperate zone on the planet would retreat to just a few degrees on either side of the tropical zone.

How about an article in the New york times then. Certainly not a mag that normally bows to decisions made by George W. I'll quote a few paragraphs:

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

From 1970 to 1994, the Atlantic was relatively quiet, with no more than three major hurricanes in any year and none at all in three of those years. Cooler water in the North Atlantic strengthened wind shear, which tends to tear storms apart before they turn into hurricanes.

In 1995, hurricane patterns reverted to the active mode of the 1950's and 60's.

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Further information from the UN's "World Meteorological Organization" says:

data since 1940 indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.

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Using statistics and measurements to find recurring cycles and trends is accepted and good math. Trying to discover the reason for these things is ludicrously complicated with a system as big and inclusive as the climate.

Interestingly this is exactly the reason why I generally support reducing green house gas emissions. No sense experimenting with the only climate we've got. But the point of these cry's of Global Warming is purely political finger pointing trying to say that America should have signed Koyoto and see look what happened to them. So it's our own fault. That just isn't born out by the data.

This storm was not caused or increased in fury by any increase in global temperature. Much less the fraction of that increase that might be attributable to human activity and specifically not due to George Bush not signing the Kyoto protocol. Someday there may be such storms, which is why we need to throw away the rhetoric and work to actually understand these systems so that we can do something about it that will actually make a difference.

After reading Michael Chriton's latest book, "State of Fear", I find I take a new interest in Global Warming and its placement in the news these days. :thinking:

His book is fiction, but................. :nana:

Weeeeell... yes and no. Empath is right in that "global warming" is one piece of Earth's energy balance. Placing blame for *this* hurricane on "global warming" is not a very solid statement; there might be some scientific true to it, BUT:

Regardless of what the effect that the current change in Earth's global energy balance has on hurricane frequency, intensity, and location, the fact is that more and more people are living in areas that are susceptible to hurricane damage. So, more hurricanes or not, we're stuck with more people living in the path of the ones that do happen. More people = more damage = more financial loss.

so... yes and no

there was a hurricane in 1935 that supposedly had sustained winds of 200 mph and the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded. In my short lifetime I have seen 3 Category 5 storms that just died out, or did a holding patterns by doing circles in the Gulf of Mexico and then slammed into the most remote parts of Mexico that you never had the press from the US even report on them. Some times they can completely form from nothing in the Gulf and be Category 3 in less than 24 hours and catch you unaware.

Errr. On second thought, never mind. :wave:

I always kinda' thought it was Jeb Bush's fault, and if they threw him overboard the storms would stop.

:laughing:
Just jokin' guys. Really, I'm just joking. Don't take it serious.

In 1900 the largest cotton port in the country was Galveston, Texas. The island city was beautiful and a prestigous place to live. It was known as "The New York of the south". The future was bright.

On September 8th of that year it took a direct hit from a Cat 4 hurricane. A 12 foot storm surge whipped by 135 mile an hour winds all but destroyed the city of 35,000 people. Death toll reports were between 6,000 and 12,000. History has settled on 8,000.

The storm was so horrific it seemed mystic. Many would only speak of it in quieted voices or whispers or not at all. Many people believe if it weren't for this hurricane Galveston would be one of the largest cities in the US today.

After the hurricane, construction began on a ship canal going 50 miles north to an oil boom community of 45,000. That would be Houston, Texas, today the 4th largest city in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900

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- Jeff

I always kinda' thought it was Jeb Bush's fault

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Could be! It went right over his state, he obviously did something to it to make it so strong and aim it in the right direction

Experts say global warming is causing stronger hurricanes

Fuel For Global Warming Debate

Greatly simplified summary: disruption of global energy balance ---> increase in ocean temps ---> stronger storms; can't prove causation, but there is correlation.

I can't access the original Science article from home, but if someone's interested in reading it, I can e-mail it to you once I get to the office.

It's impossible to attribute any one hurricane to global warming. But there's good reason to believe that global warming is and will be responsible for a statistical increase in the number hurricanes.

So you might be able to say that an increase in CO2 emissions over the next 30 years at some rate would cause some number of large hurricanes above what you'd see otherwise. (not to mention the accompanying rise in sea level, and how that plays into hurricane damage)

Viewed that way, the very real cost of greenhouse gas emission reduction could be viewed as an investment - the payoff being reduced storm damage costs. A big hurricane will cost tens of billions of dollars in damages. Katrina will cost an estimated $200 billion.

Bush says greenhouse gas emission reductions will put a strain on the economy. How much strain is Katrina putting on the economy? I'm not just tying to bash Bush. I'm saying that when you put everything in terms of dollars, using people's best projections and cost estimates, there might be some real financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I would love to see a study on this.

In the 1970s, the leftists were claiming that evil capitalism was affecting the planet's temperature, with disasterous consequences to follow within 10 years.

Global warming, you say? No, the lie back then was global cooling. All manner of false statistics were cited as evidence of an impending ice age. Just as they are now in cited as evidence of global warming. See here. Snake oil, packaged and sold by the American left.

Its all a huge load of horse crock. These anti-capitalist goofballs simply want to attack America's economic engine, whether its the fake fear tactic of so-caled global cooling or so-called global warming. In either scenario, the "fix" just happens to be more gov't control, diminished freedom and less capitalism. Socialism hiding behind fake glasses and a rubber nose. What a shocker! The same crowd that puts on different fake glasses and rubber nose and attacks tobacco companies, pharmaceuticals, oil companies, Haliburton and any other manifestation of capitalism. The tie that binds the targets of the American "environmental" left is the hatred of capitalism.

More evidence is found in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, America's refusal to sign being cited as another cause of so-called global warming. But the world's biggest polluters weren't called to sign it. Because, well, they aren't capitalists - at least not the flavor found in the evil western world. Communist China's pollution magically doesn't affect so-called global warming according to the American left. And by some strange coincidence, Communist China just happen to share political ground with America's "environmental" left. Another shocker.

Thanks for listening. Its not PC to speak the truth, but someone has to do it.

Gotta go fill up my SUV! :nana:

Ironically, the "leftists" may be right on both counts. I've heard that global warming may eventually lead to an Ice Age once enough polar ice melts to shut down the gulf stream (which moderates temperatures in the northern hemisphere). While I personally would love to have summers in NYC with temps not much above freezing such a climate would play havoc with our agriculture.

Also, I get really annoyed that those who seek to reduce our fossil fuel usage have used global warming as their poster child. I can think of a bunch of other great reasons to stop using them without even bringing dubious science into the equation. For starters, you have 650,000 annual cancer deaths from air pollution. That costs a lot of money. You have acid rain which destroys infrastructure. The smell from internal combustion engines reduces the quality of life in many areas, as does the noise from them. And I could start a whole other thread on the geopolitical consequences which include spending a quarter of a trillion to stabilize Iraq, and giving some $6 billion annually to Israel just for starters. Add all this up. To add insult to injury, once a lot of the alternatives were mass-produced they would actually cost way less to buy/use not even counting the incidental savings. Take BEVs, for example. $6 worth of power (at high NY rates) can take you at least 200 miles. Repairs are much less frequent. They would even cost less to build than ICE vehicles if mass-produced, and would offer better acceleration. Solar panels? Same thing. If mass-produced they would cost less than buying your power.

Let's forget global warming and focus on the myriad of other great, economically sensible reasons to reduce fossil fuel usage. If global warming is real and we reduce it that's just icing on the cake. If it isn't we still will have saved a bunch of money and will have a cleaner environment. To me that's a win-win situation, and the only people who will lose will be the oil companies.

balazer said:

Bush says greenhouse gas emission reductions will put a strain on the economy. How much strain is Katrina putting on the economy? I'm not just tying to bash Bush. I'm saying that when you put everything in terms of dollars, using people's best projections and cost estimates, there might be some real financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I would love to see a study on this.

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Actually, it's a pretty interesting notion that reducing our greenhouse emission will put a strain on our economy.

Hmmm.... Let's see. At the $66/barrel price for imported petroleum, we are sending $318 Billion outside of our country every year. If we replaced that amount of imported petroleum (all of which drives up our greenhouse gases) with locally produced energy from wind, solar and biofuels (which do not increase greenhouse gases) we'd drop our greenhouse gases by about 25%reduction. And... we'd hugely stimulate our economy with construction jobs, engineers, plant operators, retail (solar panels, etc.), etc.

Hmmm... reduce greenhouse gases by 25% while hugely stimulating our economy and paying for it with money we already spend for energy but just not sending it outside our economy. Plus we'd increase our national security at the same time.

I dunno, sounds pretty radical. Maybe this idea is inspired by communists pretending to be environmentalists.

jtr1962 said:

I can think of a bunch of other great reasons to stop using [fossil fuels] without even bringing dubious science into the equation. ...If global warming is real and we reduce it that's just icing on the cake. If it isn't we still will have saved a bunch of money and will have a cleaner environment. To me that's a win-win situation, and the only people who will lose will be the oil companies.

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Right, right on!

There are already SO many reasons for reducing the use of fossil fuels that whatever possible improvement in Global Climate change just rides along at "no extra charge"!

Current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is 34% higher than it was before the industrial revolution, and 30% higher than any point in the last 350,000 years.

Global warming is a fact. That is not in dispute. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a fact. That is not in dispute.

The only question is just how the two are correlated. There is almost universal agreement now among scientists that global warming is probably caused in large part by the increased carbon dioxide.

If you can't see a correlation, you are to held up in your political ideology to face the truth. If you think most scientists have a political agenda, you are foolish.





Simply, it is a problem we all have to deal with it. I'm not suggesting we squash capitalism or give up cars and electricity.

balazer, those are impressive graphs. However, I notice a couple of things about the first one. While there's a nice correlation between the two curves, there's the sharp inclione in the CO2 curve. Curiously, there's no sharp incline in the temperature curve (hm, it says "Temp. change". Change from where?). Ok, now the bottom axis is in Thousand Years, so maybe the resolution isn't high enough to show the incline. However, in each of the three sharp inclines the temp curve goes up before the CO2 curve, and the CO2 curve stays fairly high longer than the drop-off in the temp curve (see especially the 240 thousand year and 125 thousand year incline). It looks more like the temp change causes the CO2 change, not the other way around.

Maybe it's all adressed in the original publication, which you unfortunately didn't cited.

I'm not qualified to analyze the finer points of those graphs. What's worth noting is that there's a fairly strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, and that the CO2 levels of the last 150 years are way outside anything seen in the 400,000 years before.

Here are the pages for those two plots:
http://www.stanford.edu/~weston/Environment/RapidClimateChange/RapidClimateChange.htm
http://www.whole-systems.org/co2.html

And another reference that appears more complete:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

In general when looking for this kind of information I try to stay away from organizations that have an agenda, like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, and look for hard science organizations - like the National Academy of Sciences.

Suffice it to say scientists have some understanding of climate change processes, supported by lots of observations and analyses and computer models. There is now little disagreement among scientists that humans are causing most of the global warming that we're experiencing.