New Orleans and Global Warming

[Bkeela]

Osama must be behind the hurricane.

Bush to enact the War Against Nature.

[:) Smiley]

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Bkeela
Osama must be behind the hurricane.

Bush to enact the War Against Nature.

That's already been done. It's called Operation: Clear Skies Initiative.

[Drake Tungsten]

So much for the theory that global warming is increasing the number and severity of hurricanes (in America, at least)...

http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/08/eu-environmentalism-score-another-one.html

[Boris Godunov]

Reuters is reporting about Bush that he said:

"He defended the federal government's response so far to the growing crisis amid urgent pleas for help from stranded victims. He said the breach of the levees that led to the submerging of much of New Orleans had not been anticipated."

Really, George? So all those articles and papers I can easily dig up from the past several years in which experts were stating that a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans would cause levee breaches that would flood the city...

[Sava]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
So much for the theory that global warming is increasing the number and severity of hurricanes (in America, at least)...

http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/08/e...other-one.html

I love it. Drake has some idiot's blog for everything.

I love his stats... too bad he doesn't realize that "Hurricanes to strike US" does not equal TOTAL HURRICANES IN THE WORLD.

So please Drake, just like you did with Terry Schiavo threads, keep on posting these right wing blog links with zero credibility. They're always good for a laugh

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
So much for the theory that global warming is increasing the number and severity of hurricanes (in America, at least)...

http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/08/e...other-one.html

Of course, 2001-2004 is not a complete decade.

3 years, huh? Well, if we have 9 every 3 years (as the graph indicates), I guess that means we should have 27-30 over the decade (if the rate sticks).

That'd mean this decade saw more than any other decade.

And major hurricane strikes? Well, at 3 in 3 years (none of this counting this year), that should make 10. Highest ever, tied with 41-50.

Good job Drake.

[Boris Godunov]

Two separate threads in which Drake gets schooled over a single link. More bang for the buck, I suppose.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Reuters is reporting about Bush that he said:

"He defended the federal government's response so far to the growing crisis amid urgent pleas for help from stranded victims. He said the breach of the levees that led to the submerging of much of New Orleans had not been anticipated."

Like father, like son.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

In the western Pacific, now Tropical Storm Talim that slammed Taiwan as a typhoon on Wednesday with strong winds and flooding rains has moved into mainland China. Typhoon Nabi has top winds of 145 mph and is forecast to become a Super Typhoon with winds of 160 mph or higher. This typhoon has passed the islands of Saipan and Tinian. It is now expected to head toward the islands of southern Japan near Naha and then turn up toward the southern mainland of Japan and possibly South Korea. All residents and people traveling to the region will need to monitor this very dangerous storm the next few days.

http://www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=wxcenter_news

[chequita guevara]

Everyone point at Drake and laugh.

[chequita guevara]

http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-05/departments/discover-dialogue/

[Kuciwalker]

IMO Discover is crap.

I'm not weighing in on this though.

[chequita guevara]

Frequently it is, but this particular guy is the guru of hurricane season prediction.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Frequently it is, but this particular guy is the guru of hurricane season prediction.

It's worth quoting his views on climate change in full:

You don’t believe global warming is causing climate change?

G: No. If it is, it is causing such a small part that it is negligible. I’m not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and ’40s, and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle ’40s to the early ’70s. And there has been warming since the middle ’70s, especially in the last 10 years. But this is natural, due to ocean circulation changes and other factors. It is not human induced.


That must be a controversial position among hurricane researchers.

G: Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing. But no one asks us. If you don’t know anything about how the atmosphere functions, you will of course say, “Look, greenhouse gases are going up, the globe is warming, they must be related.” Well, just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn’t mean that one is causing the other.


With last year’s hurricane season so active, and this year’s looking like it will be, won’t people say it’s evidence of global warming?

G: The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the least 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960s to the middle ’90s, when greenhouse gases were going up.


Why is there scientific support for the idea?

G: So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more. Now that the cold war is over, we have to generate a common enemy to support science, and what better common enemy for the globe than greenhouse gases?


Are your funding problems due in part to your views?

G: I can’t be sure, but I think that’s a lot of the reason. I have been around 50 years, so my views on this are well known. I had NOAA money for 30 some years, and then when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn’t get any NOAA money. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.

He clearly deserves respect for his work and credentials. But are you saying that you buy his explanation for global warming? That its a big boogeyman invented by scientists to secure funding? If so, it's a huge shift in your position, based on one expert's opinion.

Whether or not he is correct about global warming's effect on hurricanes, the vast majority of climatologists agree that human activity is dramatically influencing world climate. And there is lots of evidence - just look at what's happening to the Canadian arctic.

I'm sorry Che, I think this guy is an old school meteorologist, sticking to old school ideas.