Resisting Climate Hysteria

[trainspotter]

Methinks people should do a bit more research on typhoons in the Phillipines.

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

Quite a regular occurrence apparently and this "super" typhoon is not the deadliest/strongest/most rainfall producing blah blah blah ... not by a long shot.

On a side note ... the Phillis have only just banned strip logging (deforestation) in February 2011. Maybe if they left the trees the windspeed on the ground would not have been as severe as well as preventing erosion and landslides.

Typhoon Pablo smashed up the joint in 2012. Not a peep from the media then? Oh that's right ... it hit the least populated areas and the death toll reached 1,067 people. Where were the alarmists then?

It is the humanitarian aspect we should be focusing on and NOT the ocean rising.

Anyone remember cyclone Tracy in 1974? Tracy killed 71 people, caused A$837 million in damage (1974 dollars) and destroyed more than 70 percent of Darwin's buildings, including 80 percent of houses.

THE WHOLE WORLD KNEW ABOUT THIS ONE !! Why? Cause it happened on Christmas eve and there was total devastation. NO GLOBAL WARMING MONKEY POO FLINGING THEN ! Media is the key ... if it hit around Bynoe harbour area and wiped out a few settlements and knocked over a boab tree or three no one would give a ****.

 

[basilio]

This is actually a thread on CC. The calamity in the Philippines deserves massive, urgent current attention. Lets hope its given and used.

But the question with CC is whether we can expect more extreme climate events as a result of increases in ocean temperature and increases in sea levels. Whenever there is a tragedy either human or natural we have the opportunity to take a close look at whatever happened and take measures to prevent/manage similar incidents in the future. Thats why they are called "learning moments" . That is what this conversation is about.

I noted Trainspotter that you chose to comment on any of the questions I raised except for the typhoon in Philippines. (By the way on all current reports it was the biggest one yet) . Any thoughts ?

 

[trainspotter]

This is actually a thread on CC. The calamity in the Philippines deserves massive, urgent current attention. Lets hope its given and used.

But the question with CC is whether we can expect more extreme climate events as a result of increases in ocean temperature and increases in sea levels. Whenever there is a tragedy either human or natural we have the opportunity to take a close look at whatever happened and take measures to prevent/manage similar incidents in the future. Thats why they are called "learning moments" . That is what this conversation is about.

I noted Trainspotter that you chose to comment on any of the questions I raised except for the typhoon in Philippines. (By the way on all current reports it was the biggest one yet) . Any thoughts ?

You were the one crapping on that the intensity of typhoons will get worse cause the sea is rising has everything to do with the Phiilipines as they are regularly hit by the damn things ERGO it will get worse ... my point is that the MEDIA is all over this cause this time the typhoon hit a heavily populated area. SHEEEEESH !!

You asked me what the naughty polluting countries were doing about Global Warming. I posted up a nice picture of the world with the countries clearly defined in pretty colours for you to understand as to which ones have signed up to the Kyoto Protocol They are DOING something about reducing their carbon footprint.

I posted quotes and links to SCIENTISTS who began believing global warming then after they had done the research .... WHOOOPS !! Earths temperature has risen 0.06 degrees in 20 freaking years !!

STOP ...... READ ...... THINK ........ UNDERSTAND ....... in that order please.

This is a thread on CC right? So why did you post this in response to one of my comments?

Wow! I was totally amazed when you quoted that figure trainspotter - so i went to the source.

Absolutely spot on. But lets think about the implications for all this.

1) In 8 years our GDP goes up 350%!!! can anyone see where this 3.5 fold increase in wealth is reflected in our society ? Obviously the richest few cent have done very well but where has the rest gone?

2) I'm guessing the lions share of this GDP increase has come from the mining boom and the property market. Lets say the property market went up 150% over the time. Does this actually represent an increase in value to the community ? A house is still a house whether it costs 100k or 300k . And the mining sales seem to have gone to many O/S investors and a small core of local businesses. And of course a decent flow on to local employment and taxes. (but surely nothing like the extra trillion dollars indicated.

In fact when you look at the other indicators of GDP it is all far more sensible. We can see how GDP has gone up an average of 3% a year since 2004. So over 10 years that should result in say 45% overall increase ? All a bit funny.

 

[basilio]

Hey lets drop the aggro shall we TS ? It doesn't make this any fun.

Points

1) The Philippines is a disaster area. We are really aware of it now (rather than say 50 years ago) because of the world wide media. Apart from doing everything we can to help current survivors we owe it to them and us to learn from the disaster.

Some examples of learning from disasters? After the Victorian bushfire tragedies of 2009 the entire firefighting system rewrote the book. We went from stay at home and defend to leave if the situation is going to be catastrophic. That was the new language of bushfire danger. We built community shelters.

That event was fuelled by years of drought, 5 days of 40C plus temperatures and a hot northerly wind. All the factors that make a bushfire dangerous went off the scale and the authorities recognized that CC had fundamentally increased the severity of summer weather conditions and this had to be factored into their firefighting equation. Much like the Blue Mountains NSW bushfires in October this year...

The hurricane off New York has also resulted in massive planning change to deal with more intense hurricanes fueled by CC. This is not rocket surgury.

2) Countries "doing something" about CC. Sorry the signatories to the Kyoto agreement are spitting in the wind. No one. absolutely no one believes the mere signing of the Kyoto protocal is more than a baby step on the way to effective action. I didn't respond directly at the time because I was thinking a more comprehensive answer than the above.

3) Temperatures stopped rising for 15 years ? I'll offer you the most appropriate analogy. This is the equivalent of being diagnosed with cancer, watching the symptoms for 5 years and then because it doesn't get any worse for 3 months declaring it has gone away.

The world is still warming Train Spotter. The oceans are absorbing heat. The Arctic is melting faster than anyone could have imagined a decade ago. The last 10 years have still produced the warmest years on record. Is this the behaviour of a change that is going away ?

4) My response to your figures on GDP. I was amazed by the figures. I was interested enough to follow them up. I acknowledged you were quoting them accurately and offered some other examples of data from the same source.

Was it off topic? Maybe. But I thought your comment was interesting and worth offering a constructive response. And I learned something from the activity that I believed was worth sharing.

If you are interested in seeing the bigger picture on how the world is still warming check out the URL. After all measuring the health/wealth of nation is not done with only one graph is it ?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-since-1997-more-than-twice-as-fast.html

http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm

______________________________________________________________________________________

PS I also checked out your Wiki URL on most powerful and costliest typhoons in Philippines.
Did you notice that 6/10 of the deadliest storms happened since 2000?
That ALL of the most costly have happened since 1990 with six happening since 2008 ?
Any thoughts on why this might be so ?

 

[basilio]

Strength of Typhoons

Typhoon Haiyan pushed the limit, but bigger storms are coming
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

Nov. 11, 2013 at 5:58 PM ET

Video: Typhoon Haiyan may be among the biggest ever recorded, peaking at more than 200 mph with a 20-foot storm surge. N
Experts say Typhoon Haiyan was about as strong as it could theoretically get when it swept through the Philippines, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. But intensity limits have been rising over decades past ”” and climate models suggest they will keep rising over the decades to come, with the potential for bigger and more devastating storms.

"The tragedy of this particular storm is that it reached its limit just about the time it made landfall," Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NBC News.

Based on satellite imagery, the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated that Haiyan's winds reached a sustained peak as high as 195 mph shortly before it made landfall, with gusts rising to 235 mph. Estimates from Philippine weather officials were lower, suggesting that the storm packed sustained winds of 147 mph and gusts of 170 mph when it hit land. Either way, the typhoon ranks among the world's strongest tropical storms and appears to have been more powerful than Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

If the higher estimates are correct, the warning center said Haiyan's maximum strength would exceed that of its previous record-holder: Hurricane Camille, which hit the northern Gulf Coast in 1969 with sustained winds of 190 mph.

"This is at the top end of any tropical system that we've seen on our planet," said Bryan Norcross, The Weather Channel's hurricane specialist.

The definition of that top end has been shifting, Emanuel said. He was part of a team of researchers who predicted climate change could make tropical storms more intense, particularly in the Pacific.

"That part of the ocean, the Western Pacific, in November is pretty juicy," he said. "It has a high thermodynamic limit. That limit has been going up in time, perhaps in response to global warming. It's a little hard to say that for sure."

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/typhoon-haiyan-pushed-limit-bigger-storms-are-coming-2D11577486

 

[sails]

...The increasing number and intensity of storms is a worrying trend to those who have closely observed the weather and nature all of their lives.

The charts I have seen don't indicate that these storms are increasing either in number or intensity.

It is immoral to use the death or suffering of people for political point scoring. It's the first thing AGW extremists do as soon as there is a natural disaster and it's shameful, imo.

They are desperate to turn public opinion to keeping a useless tax. How much do you think Australia reducing co2 by 5% in a few years time is really going to lessen a storm in the Philippines which has a history of similar severe weather? We could always take a teaspoon from the ocean to say we are reducing sea levels too.

 

[basilio]

The charts I have seen don't indicate that these storms are increasing either in number or intensity.

Perhaps you are looking at the wrong charts Sails.

Check out the Wiki URl that Trainspotter left highlighting typhoons in the Phillipines. As I noted above the last 10-20 years has seen the vast majority of the big and deadliest storms ie the ones that will really knock your socks off.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon...he_Philippines

 

[trainspotter]

Hey lets drop the aggro shall we TS ? It doesn't make this any fun.


______________________________________________________________________________________

PS I also checked out your Wiki URL on most powerful and costliest typhoons in Philippines.
Did you notice that 6/10 of the deadliest storms happened since 2000?
That ALL of the most costly have happened since 1990 with six happening since 2008 ?
Any thoughts on why this might be so ?

Hey lets drop the "Whiskers" approach then shall we basilio? It becomes droll after awhile and baiting is not my style.

Ummmm population expansion means more housing/infrastructure means more devastation when a cyclone hits it? Deadly as in deaths I am assuming? So in 1867, on the September 22nd a typhoon named Angela wiped out 1,800 lives in the Phillipines. Pretty sure there would not have been many inhabitants in 1867 SO working it backwards with extrapolation I am thinking this cyclone was pretty awesome as it HIT a densely populated area perhaps? Not newsworthy for cyclone Pablo in 2012 as it did bugger all damage to infrastructure and was not "deadly" enough (no alarmists or media frenzy on this one) I am repeating myself here .......

1) Phillipines is a disaster area - (for cyclones) BIG TICK !! AGREE HERE !!! HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE !!
As for the NSW bush fires ... 5 years of build up of undergrowth is the fault of tree hugging greenies who should allow back burning etc to properly manage FIRE RISK !! Also due to population expansion with people living in these areas ... it is more likely to get on the news.

During the severe, Australia wide, 1902 Federation Drought the total sheep population dropped to fewer than 54,000,000 from a total of 106,000,000 sheep. In the 1891 drought cattle numbers fell by more than 40 per cent.

New York hurricane - once again severity due to media and population. Transit Authority due to lack of maintenance squealing they need more money from the government.

2) Kyoto Protocol - Europe will meet their targets due to them being in a recession. Reduction in CO2 is the name of the game is it not? Now IF we can only get the nasty polluting countries in the red to do something about it !

3) GLOBAL Temperatures have risen 0.06 degrees in 20 years But but but it was supposed to be getting hotter faster cause of CO2 and stuff .... right? Can you please provide some evidence via a webpage or a scientist with some credibility please rather than making statements?

4) This is a CC thread - You chip me first then I respond and then you go all Chernobyl on me? CC thread remember ... let's keep it that way please.

 

[wayneL]

New paper finds Pacific cyclone activity is at the lowest levels of the past 5,000 years

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/new-paper-finds-pacific-cyclone.html

 

[wayneL]

New paper finds sea level rise has decelerated 44% since 2004 to only 7 inches per century

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/new-paper-finds-sea-level-rise-has.html

 

[sails]

Perhaps you are looking at the wrong charts Sails.

Check out the Wiki URl that Trainspotter left highlighting typhoons in the Phillipines. As I noted above the last 10-20 years has seen the vast majority of the big and deadliest storms ie the ones that will really knock your socks off.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon...he_Philippines

Bas - since when is Wikipedia an absolute authority? Interestingly clicking on your link produces this:

 

[sails]

Never mind - you have posted a broken link. This is probably the one you want:

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

Not all experts agree with what's written in Wiki - article below by Physicist Lubos Motl:

Some excerpts:

Today in the morning, I was stunned by the dishonesty of the professional climate alarmists again. Their moral defects are just shocking. It seems completely obvious to me that they must know that they are lying 24 hours a day.

This controversy is about the claim that the typhoon Haiyan was the strongest tropical cyclone that ever made a landfall, and so on. You can see this preposterous misinformation almost everywhere. For example, start with the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on Typhoon Haiyan....

All the mistakes are completely obvious and demonstrable, as I will argue below, but it is impossible to even fix basic errors on the Wikipedia page, or elsewhere. Such pages are being controlled by obsessed hardcore climate alarmist trolls and crackpots…

So let’s look at some real numbers and the origin of the flawed numbers…

So have a look at the list of the most intense tropical cyclones ever.

They are geographically divided to 8 regions ("basins"). Starting from the lowest pressure (strongest cyclones), they are (the minimum pressure of the strongest cyclone is added):

870 hPa: Western North Pacific Ocean (Tip 1979)
882 hPa: North Atlantic Ocean (Wilma 2005)
890 hPa: South Pacific Ocean (Zoe 2002-03)
895 hPa: South-West Indian Ocean (Gafilo 2003-04)
900 hPa: Australian region (Gwenda 1998-99)
902 hPa: Eastern Pacific Ocean (Linda 1997)
912 hPa: North Indian Ocean (BOB 07 1999)
972 hPa: South Atlantic Ocean (Catarina 2004)

Most of the basins are dominated by cyclones in recent decades because reliable and continuous measurements of the pressure only began recently…

I wrote the strongest basin in the bold face because that’s the region in which Haiyan belongs. If you focus on the table for that basin, you will see than Haiyan is between 21st and 35th strongest cyclone in that region since the 1950s or so. In 60 years or so, one gets 21-35 cyclones just in that region that are equally strong or stronger. In other words, every 2-3 years, one gets a cyclone of the equivalent or greater magnitude…

CNN wrote (via Pielke Jr) that the storm surge was 40-50 feet; the actual figure from the meteorologists was 13-18 feet. CNN probably had no sensible source for the huge (doubled or tripled) figure at all.

Read more exaggerations exposed: Typhoon Haiyan: similar unspectacular cyclones arrive every 2-3 years

 

[trainspotter]

Sister has just come back from Vietnam after 2 weeks holiday there. Interestingly enough not a word was spoken about typhoon Haiyan and most of the locals were blissfully unaware there even was a typhoon heading towards them. Not newsworthy enough?

Neither was Bangladesh in 1970?

As terrible as the Haiyan typhoon has been for the Philippines, it is nowhere close to being the “worst storm ever,” as some media outlets have alleged. Current stories on Haiyan are describing it as the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history based on its extraordinary wind strength of 195 mph. However, in terms of loss of life, a cyclone that occurred 2,000 miles west of the Philippines some 40 years ago was far worse.

In November 1970, the Bhola Cyclone smashed into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal (India) and killed at least 500,000 people -- although the true death toll will never be known. That is at least 50 times the number of deaths recorded in the Philippines over the weekend.

http://www.ibtimes.com/philippine-t...adesh-cyclone-killed-half-million-people-1970

 

[spooly74]

While there is continued uncertainty surrounding future changes in climate (Knutson et al. 2010), current projections of TC frequency or intensity change may not yield an anthropogenic signal in economic loss data for many decades or even centuries (Crompton et al. 2011). Thus, our quantitative analysis of global hurricane land- falls is consistent with previous research focused on normalized losses associated with hurricanes that have found no trends once data are properly adjusted for so- cietal factors.

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2012.04.pdf

No prizes for guessing the hot zone.
It would seem the science is pretty clear about applying any anthropogenic signal to large hurricanes and cyclone disasters. Its just the alarmists with their skeptical hats on versus the consensus, again.

Hurricane tracks and landfall location points for storms that make landfall at hurricane intensity (maximum 1-min sustained $64 kt) for the (a) NATL and EPAC (1944-2010), (b) WPAC (1950-2010), (c) NIO (1970-2010), and (d)SH (1970-2010). Each TC track line connects the 6-hourly best-track positions, with red squares indicating a hurricane-force landfall location point and blue circles indicating overland observations of tropical storm strength (wind speed between 34 and 63 kt).

 

[wayneL]

Interesting article "The Super Storm Meme"

http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/super-storm-meme

SNIP:

Storm intensity is measured by central pressure, the atmospheric pressure at the core of a cyclone. The lower the core preasure, the more intense the storm. Haiyan, at its peak, was measured at 895 hPa (hectopascals). In the North Atlantic, Hurricane Wilma, in 2005, was measured at 882. You have to go back to 1979's Typhoon Tip, to find the most intense storm ever recorded in the Western North Pacific””it pulled 870 hPa and tops the list of all time most intense storms. In fact, when compared to that region's list of most intense storms, Haiyan ties with a clutch of other storms””most recently Yuri in 1991””for an ignominious 21st place. Not only was Haiyan not the most intense storm ever seen, it's not even in the running.

 

[wayneL]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_intense_tropical_cyclones#Western_North_Pacific_Ocean



Hat tip - http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/

 

[wayneL]

Japan gets real

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/j...etback-to-un-treaty-talks-20131115-2xlzf.html

 

[springhill]

Japan gets real

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/j...etback-to-un-treaty-talks-20131115-2xlzf.html

Can the last country that leaves please turn out the lights....

 

[sydboy007]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...al-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half/

Cowtan and Way apply their method to the HadCRUT4 data, which are state-of-the-art except for their treatment of data gaps. For 1997-2012 these data show a relatively small warming trend of only 0.05 °C per decade – which has often been misleadingly called a “warming pause”. The new IPCC report writes:

Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to +0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade).

But after filling the data gaps this trend is 0.12 °C per decade and thus exactly equal to the long-term trend mentioned by the IPCC.

 

[Logique]

Let's be proud as a nation for standing against this nonsense. If we're being mocked by that crowd of rent seekers, then we are surely on the right track.

Canada, Japan, Australia, more to follow.

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=924834
Australian govt mocked at climate summit Friday November 15, 2013

"...Australia has won its third 'fossil of the day' award at the UN climate talks in Warsaw, as international environment groups attempt to embarrass the Abbott government on the world stage over its decision to scrap the carbon tax.

The dubious honour has been awarded each day of the annual talks to a so-called 'dinosaur' deemed by environment groups to have stalled progress on climate change.

...The Climate Action Network said the Australian government's reluctance on climate financing, 'obtrusiveness' in negotiations and Wednesday's tabling of the carbon tax repeal laws had earned it three gongs.

Business groups at the summit are questioning recent policy changes in Australia.

Baker and McKenzie climate lawyer Ilona Millar said she had fielded questions from business delegates asking about the future of carbon pricing in Australia, and when the repeal was to occur.

'A lot of people who are working in that space are a little bit perplexed about why you would move away from a market-based approach,' she told AAP from Warsaw on Friday.

Those excited about Australia's carbon market linking with Europe's emissions trading scheme had expressed 'some disappointment' at the prospect of it being dismantled, she said..."