Yasi - Be scared, very scared of this storm

[ricketyclik]

Not all sceptics (deniers is an aggressively emotive term) are rightists. There are Marxist humanists who celebrate the progress of humanity and also challenge the eco-warriors.

Are you equating acceptance of the science as anti progress? Au contraire. The right is always scaremongering about the cost to the economy of converting to renewables, and in the same breath harping on about the massive investment that would be required. Can't you see the inherent contradiction in this?

And to deny that there is a clear left-right divide on this issue is, well, you know which word describes it.

As for the money, I understand that there has been a lot of money in research grants for climate scientists who promote alarmism. Climate alarmism is one of the few areas that many governments are able to exert any sense of authority these days. I remember our own Oerdin saying how he wanted to get on this gravy-train, as it looked like a safe job for life.

This is simply laughable. Think about what you've said for just one minute and it will come to you. (Hint: compare total international research budgets, assume a percentage for research into global warming, any percentage, then assume 0.0001% of oil/coal revenue goes into PR).

We've recently seen a much less subtle than usual example of this in Australia. Kevin Rudd (previous Australian PM) wanted to tax the mining (the biggest sector by a mile here is coal) more. The industry spent up big on an advertising campaign selling the idea that it was unfair for them to pay more for pillaging public resources and sending the huge majority of profits to wealthy overseas fatcats, next thing Kevin's out, and his replacement strikes an "acceptable" deal.

And here's the punchline: the majority of Australians think this is a good thing. (They didn't before the ad campaign and spread of propaganda through our Rupert's right wing media outlets).

[BlackCat]

Check your facts. It is common fallacy amongst denialists that warmer weather and increased frequency of extreme events was observed and a theory found to fit. The truth is quite the reverse - scientists wondered what the effect of massively increased CO2 would mean, studied the subject and made their projections, the beginnings of which we've seen played out during the noughties.

True, except for one ting - the predictions about stronger and more frequent incidents hasn't come true.

Here is an interesting prediction made by one of the worst scaremongers :

New York are going to drown

If you are really interested in the subject, then I reccomend this :

http://climateclash.com/2011/01/15/g...y-temperature/

Edit: there are more here : http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/19/pi...-temperatures/

That's because we were 8,000 years overdue for an ice age. Now we know why we didn't get it.

I think that it would be a good idea that you check your sources one more time - we are not 8.000 years overdue - we are expecting an ice age sometimes in the next 10.000 years.

Oh, and just to be sure - the predictions of an ice age back in the 70'es wasn't made due to the normal ice age cycle, so CO2 hasn't saved us from an ice age. Fact is that high CO2 can't prevent an ice age.

[BlackCat]

Just curious - are someone drowned physically or mentally ?

[MattBowron]

well it looks like its going to be a sad banana option, all the crops were wiped out in Queensland, or enough to make them worth $15 a ****ing kilo.

[ricketyclik]

Coincidence or climate change?

MATT GRANFIELD

Thirty-seven years ago, on Christmas Eve in 1974, 70 per cent of Darwin’s buildings were destroyed, 41,000 people were left homeless and 71 people died as Cyclone Tracy reduced the city to rubble.

The same year, 6,700 homes were flooded and 14 people lost their lives as floodwaters swept through Brisbane, devastating the city.

Both events were caused by a weather pattern known as La Nina.

A ‘La Nina event’, as weather people refer to it, is when ocean surface temperatures heat up on our side of the Pacific and cool down in the other bits. The result is higher than average rainfall in Australia. There's lots of science involved. It's tedious and not very exciting to read about but the Bureau of Meteorology website explains it in more detail if you're interested. For the purposes of this article the two most important things you need to know are:

La Nina heats the Western Pacific Ocean, which contributes to cyclones
La Nina makes it rain more than usual in Australia
La Nina is why Queensland, as you may have noticed, has been a little damp lately.

Not only has Queensland been a little damp, it has been damper, windier and more dangerous than anyone can ever remember. Tropical Cyclone Yasi has been, according to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, the "most severe, most catastrophic storm that has ever hit our coast". No-one in Mission Beach is arguing. The combined damage bill from floods and cyclones in Queensland alone is now well over a billion dollars – that's more than a thousand dollars for every person in the state.

I asked Dr Andrew Ash, who is director of the CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, if perhaps it didn't just used to be really wet and windy before the drought and maybe we'd just forgotten about it and now it seemed worse because we've lost our gumboots and umbrellas. He said we hadn't forgotten. He said it really was very windy and wet right now.

"We have had stronger cyclones in history and we have had cyclones just as large in size, but it is rare to get both a very large and intense cyclone," he explained.

"The flooding we have experienced to date on the whole has been within the bounds of historical events though in some areas, such as the Western Downs in Queensland and parts of Victoria, all time records have been broken.

"While extreme events like flooding and cyclones are an expected feature of La Nina events, the oceans around eastern and northern Australia are particularly warm at present. It is usual for the ocean in the Western Pacific to be warm during a La Nina event but the ocean temperatures are currently the highest on record."

It's data which is backed up by the Bureau of Meteorology too. In December 2010 the Southern Oscillation Index, a measure of the extent of La Nina, recorded a level of 27.1. It sounds boring, but 27.1 is a big deal. Twenty-seven point one is the highest recorded December value in history.

Exactly why ocean temperatures are currently the highest on record is the $3 billion question – that’s the amount of money the Government thinks it will save each year by figuring out ways to acclimatise to climate change. The answer, according to Dr Ash, the man in charge of finding a solution, is:

"The record warm temperatures are most likely a combination of La Nina and additional warming from human activities." Quote, end quote.

The fact that the two biggest natural disasters on record to hit Queensland have occurred within three weeks of each other is not a coincidence. It is a direct result of the Pacific Ocean being warmer than we've ever known it to be.

"While the flooding events and cyclones experienced this year aren't caused by climate change, the record warm ocean temperatures provide conditions more conducive to exacerbating these naturally occurring events associated with La Nina," Dr Ash explained.

And things are likely to get worse, if you believe respected scientist and 2007 Australian of the year, Professor Tim Flannery.

"The individual severe weather events you point to are the kind of thing climate modelling predicts will become more frequent as greenhouse gas concentrations increase," he told me.

Climate change is not the reason for the disasters, but according to the people in charge of providing solutions in Australia, climate change caused by human activities has made the floodwaters higher and the cyclones bigger and more powerful than they otherwise would have been.

Bigger cyclones and higher floodwaters cost lives. If the brightest minds in Australian science think we’re at least partially to blame, surely climate change really is – to quote our former prime minister – the greatest moral challenge of our time.

The moral compass of our Federal Parliament is now in the eye of the storm.

Matt Granfield is a freelance writer, thinker, vagabond and volcanophobe from Brisbane.

.

[MOBIUS]

While on the other side of the continent, bush fires have destroyed at least 40 homes on the outskirts of Perth...

[ricketyclik]

OK, so maybe I was a little cocksure in my assumptions...

Was Yasi Australia's biggest cyclone?

Many people have called Cyclone Yasi a 'monster cyclone'. Was it the biggest cyclone Australia has ever seen? Was it a super-cyclone?
Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which hit North Queensland last week, was one of the more intense cyclones in Australia's recent history.

A massive category 5 storm over 600 kilometres wide, it clocked wind speeds of 295 kilometres per hour at its greatest intensity.

But it was no super-cyclone, nor was it the biggest cyclone Australia has ever seen, says Dr Jeff Kepert, head of the High Impact Weather Research Team in the Bureau of Meteorology.

"To me super cyclone would imply something off the scales and you can't say that about Yasi."

"It was a larger than average storm, in the top five or ten per cent, but that's all. Storms of similar intensity have hit Australia and elsewhere in recent years."

"Events like Yasi are just an extreme part of normal weather patterns. The Western Australian coast and the Northern Territory tend to have more intense cyclones than Queensland, but Larry was a category 5 at sea before weakening to category 4 as it made landfall," says Kepert.

Professor Jonathan Nott from the Australasian Palaeohazards Research Unit with James Cook University agrees.

Nott says there's no formal definition for the term super cyclone and only uses it very loosely to describe an extremely powerful event with intensities below 910 hectopascals, a measure of atmospheric pressure.

"We don't get those often. The strongest in Queensland was 914 hectopascals Tropical Cyclone Mahina in 1899 which hit north of Cooktown."

Its 350 kilometre per hour winds killed over 400 people, the largest death toll in any natural disaster in Australian history.

"But for Queensland, Yasi is the most intense since Innisfail in 1918."

Cyclical cyclone seasons

Cyclones are an annual event across the Australian tropics, but some years are worse than others due to seasonal weather patterns.

According to Kepert, Australia has more cyclones during La Niña weather patterns because of warmer sea surface temperatures, however this won't increase storm intensity.

Other contributing factors can help generate cyclones including a surge in easterly trade winds which could increase cyclonic rotation, he says.

"There's also the Madden-Julien Oscillation weather pattern blowing east along the equatorial belt slowly moving clouds and rain. Scientists are still debating the origin of these winds."

"The oscillation is linked to a doubling of cyclone activity, but is neutral at the moment, so we can't blame it for Yasi".

Nor can we link Cyclone Yasi to climate change, says Kepert.

"As for global warming, things are complicated.

"[Climate change] certainly increases sea surface temperatures, but other changes such as atmospheric circulation might possibly offset this.

"The theoretical evidence indicates a gradual increase of about 10 per cent in cyclone intensity. But it could mean a slow drop in the number of cyclones, especially the weaker ones."

Queensland goes through periods of intense cyclones following relatively quiet times lasting one or two centuries, says Nott.

"We have two types of records on past cyclone activity. Sand deposits going back five thousand years (the period sea levels have been at current heights) tell us how big and where a cyclone hit, based on the amount of sand left above the highest tides.

"The other uses limestone stalagmites in caves to tell us about different chemical signatures in tropical cyclone rain compared to normal and monsoon rain".

Using these techniques, Nott and colleagues have found that cyclones with winds of up to 300kmh cross the Queensland coast every 200 or 300 years.

Dr Jeff Kepert , head of the High Impact Weather Research Team in the Bureau of Meteorology and Professor Jonathan Nott from the Australasian Palaeohazards Research Unit with James Cook University were interviewed by Stuart Gary

[Aeson]

well it looks like its going to be a sad banana option, all the crops were wiped out in Queensland, or enough to make them worth $15 a ****ing kilo.

I have tons of bananas at P15/kg. Now all I need is a giant catapult

[MOBIUS]

Alby says "Send 'em to Africa!"

[N35t0r]

Maybe all this **** hitting Queensland is nature telling us we should abolish the monarchy already?

[BlackCat]

OK, so maybe I was a little cocksure in my assumptions...

Well, please bend over and ... oh, wait, just stand straight and accept a little or two

[MOBIUS]

I give him for being man enough to post that when he could have kept quiet about it - unlike the majority of poly posters...

[BlackCat]

Well, we are a few that admit our errors

Btw, did you read the Pierrehumbert article ?

[MOBIUS]

Yeah, just as well for me that it hardly ever happens...

Which one?

[BlackCat]

Well, I did it yesterday

http://climateclash.com/2011/01/15/g6-infrared-radiation-and-planetary-temperature/