The last category 5 hurricane to hit the US was 16 years ago.

But the facts didn't stop the IPCC from ignoring the science and publishing gross misinformation about the relationship between CO2 and hurricanes. As documented by Chris Landsea in his resignation letter.

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html

Funny, I didn't see this reported in the paper or on the network news. Maybe they missed the story?

This is common sense.

Similarly, the reason there were more deaths due to hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters in the old days is because of the lack of advanced warming systems. Deniers like to point out how many more people died due to weather events of yesteryear as evidence that weather was more extreme in the past. Only those with cognitive deficiency would believe that.

As the world's population and economies increase, severe weather impacts do also. So, "no s--t!" is quite an understatement.LOL

Let's see if I understand PH's proposition.

Landsea was selected to be a key contributor to the report. He didn't like what the lead author did in an outside forum, and Landsea therefore decided to launch a "preemptive surrender". Then he published a broadside attacking the lead author for all the things Landsea feared that author might be do. Finally, three years later, NOAA -- the very voice of Satan, according to PH, announces that Landsea's intuition was correct.

Where is there any bias against Landsea here?

He was invited to contribute, and chose not to. He instead acted like a spoiled child, picked up his marbles, and went home. If Landsea had stayed on the project, attempted to contribute his views, and been silenced (such as was done to Hansen or Gerberding) then PH's complaints would be more justified.

Landsea quit a battle he apparently should have fought. PH once again attacks the wrong target.

In my part of the neighborhood (Puget
Sound) we have seen the affects of over building along the coast, shorelines and high banks (with spectacular views) over a number of years. And those affects have often been negative. Beach erosion, bank erosion, and run off from too many roads and driveways carrying pollution into shoreline habitats is a severe problem here. But if you tell someone with money that they can't build on a piece of view property you are "infringing on their rights". Be that as it may, I own a piece of property about 1/8 mile from the shore and, by the time my granddaughter grows up, it will be shoreline!!

Hi BT,

Hansen levels charges that politicians are behaving like politicians, and he gets unlimited press coverage. Landsea levels the vastly more serious charge that key scientists are ignoring the science, behaving like politicians, and publishing baseless information - and his story never gets mentioned.

Any no-name grad student publishing a "global warming is going to cause ....." paper makes the front page of the BBC, but the Science and Operations officer at the NHC is ignored.

AGW is 99% politics, and this is just another example.

"What's science got to do with it"
Apologies to Tina Turner

Brett, you said "There is just way too much building going on along exposed, low-lying coastal areas in this country."

Duh! Yeah! I also can't find one iota of sympathy for those morons who build in flood prone lowlands along rivers or on steep, sandy hillsides or in woodland tinder boxes or the idjits who live below sea level in the shade of levees. Don't even get me started about the cretins who live in aluminum box kites in tornado country.
Must be the Darwin Effect!
Let insurance rates float in accordance with known risks, get the Feds to stop coming to the rescue with our money and watch the insanity stop.

Ignorance can be cured but stupidity goes right to the bone.

Everybody's been looking for the "latchkey" effects of global warming, those incremental changes which defy a gradualist vision of world weather.

Averages just don't express what is actually going on out there, but here's a possible explanation for recent Northern Hemisphere winter weather events for those who are expecting sudden and widespread changes in climatic patters due to global warming.

It's been the rule, for the past fifty years that I've lived in New Jersey, that winter storms, once heavy with snow, "ignited" over the Delmarva Peninsula where the Chesapeake, a huge bay, warms a pocket of air that otherwise would remain colder until it reached the coast, and creates a focus or eye for a low-pressure vortex mixing.

The "eyes" of these storms, which once occurred regularly at the rate of three or five per winter, then scoot up the Delaware River valley, cross the neck of New Jersey to the Hudson, and then are forced out to sea (or "die" to the north), and drift out to sea over Connecticut and Massachusetts. The low will usually continue up the Coast, always feeding off the cold-dry air, cold-moist air boundary found along the Northern Atlantic Maritime Coast.

It's been decades since we've had consistent, heavy snows in New Jersey of the magnitude and frequency that I experienced as a child, but looking to the north, I've noticed that this same "river-valley" effect is occurring far to the north of us. Winter storms appear to be regularly starting up over Lake Michigan, and then following the Great Lakes until they exit the continent along the Saint Lawrence Seaway

Now, the effects of this alternative route for low pressure systems on the climate of the Northern Hemisphere are not simple to divine, but in the old days, it was said that the worst storms to hit Europe originated over the American Great Lakes. It appears that the trajectory taken by the storms which hug the East Coast, or originate over the Chesapeake Bay (or the East Coast of Florida and the Gulf and follow the East Coast up and out) is northerly, and these end up either west of Greenland, or bogged down over the "warm" sea to the west of Norway, hurling their fury at the northern tip of Scotland, the Orkneys and the western coast or Norway for weeks at a time.

On the other hand, the storms which follow a more easterly trajectory, and stick to the St. Lawrence Seaway, appear to "jump" the Gulf Stream, and after roiling the Bay of Biscay, slam into the cliffs of Cornwall and then plow into Normandy and the Low Countries (Holland, Belgium), sometimes with disastrous effects.

These will then deteriorate into strong west-east winds, carrying rain and moist air deep into Europe through east-west running valleys. In Eastern Europe, the low may reform over Poland, along the edge of the Siberian-Arctic cold air mass, and take a dive into the Ukraine and the Turkic Republics, and "end" pushing up against or pumping Atlantic and Mediterranean moist air up into the northern and western foothills of the Himalayas, for massive snowfall totals.

With the switch from an East Coast trajectory to a St. Lawrence Seaway trajectory for winter lows over North America, the change from expected weather in Central Europe-Asia may be measurable, causing heavy snows over broad belts where light snow is the norm, and pulling very cold air as far south as Pakistan and Turkey.

I don't think that pulling out one's wallet with opportunistic investment in mind is quite the way to go with this theory, but for water-starved denizens of the Himalayan foothills and Central Asia, a big break may be in sight as global warming changes the way winter lows are formed and develop over North America, and end up over Central Asia.

John

"There is just way too much building going on along exposed, low-lying coastal areas in this country."

Brett, this is kinda silly.

As a population grows, you will just have more money involved in any event.
Tornados, fires, floods, ice storms, snow storms, heat waves, be thankful there has not been a major earthquake anywhere lately.

Where would you have people live where there are no threats of any kind.

Brett, you talk about coastal low lying areas, and then use Hurricane Andrew as a visual.
Where Andrew came shore, there was very little coastal development.
Andrew did it's damage well inland.
Reply: you are very correct. I only put that picture online since it was showing a landfalling hurricane through the radar image. Nothing more than that.

That is unless you consider the entire state of Florida, coast to coast, a low lying coastal area.

Nice reply Brett. Very appropriate.

Wonder how much money was spent by the geniuses at NOAA to figure this totally common sense tidbit out?

Say, while they're on a roll, can we get them to tell us why their forecasts suck eggs so much of the time? I mean I have two dogs and a goldfish that are better at long range forecasts. You guys hiring, they work for kibble.

And NOAA has become so chicken little that I suspect they will start issuing wind direction change and clouds above warnings in the near future. What a waste of our money.

FYI, Brett, the reason this paper hasn't gotten much attention is because it rehashes a point that's been made in a variety of publication over the last few years. See here, e.g., and note references 10 and 11 in particular.

On the substance, the scientists who think they've detected increased Atlantic tropical cyclone activity resulting from AGW also think the signal is still small (or of course there wouldn't be a debate about it). Landfalling U.S. TCs are a small subset of Atlantic TCs, so unsurprisingly a small signal in the latter implies an undetectable signal in the former.

That debate aside, all TC scientists agree that at the present time the effect of increased development along vulnerable shorelines dwarfs the effect of any possible AGW-induced increase in landfalling TCs.

Mark:

Let me get this straight. You're claiming that the reason more people died from extreme weather in the past was the lack of advanced warming systems? Excuse me, but I just don't see what home heating technology has to do with extreme weather. I'm thinking a high efficiency furnace won't protect me from a tidal surge.

All kidding aside, I fail to see how the two issues: economic damage and deaths caused by extreme weather are similar.

All the best,

Aaron

Dear BT,

You might have noticed that the IPCC went ahead and disregarded the opinion of it's leading hurricane expert. Perhaps he wisely chose not to silently legitimize the IPCC's report?

Also, your comment about Dr. Hansen being "silenced" may be the funniest thing I have seen you write yet. Thanks for the laugh.

I lived in South Florida when Andrew hit and I also lived there 3 years ago when Hurricane Wilma hit. For Andrew, I got the fringes, but for Wilma the eye went right over me. South Florida is one of those over-developed places that will have a major economic disaster should a cat 4 or 5 hurricane hit right around the Broward/Miami-Dade county line. Of course, where I live now in Long Island could also have a major problem with a storm like that. However, I'll take a calculated risk living here where hurricane frequency is about 1 in 15 years and a major hurricane is about 1 in 75 years than in FL where a named storm hits nearly once a year on average.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Katrina, the poster child for global warming in the mainstream media, was actually a category 3 Hurricane at landfall. I would've hate to have seen what would've happened had it been a 5.

One thing people on both sides of the argument are guilty of from time to time is jumping all over a short term trend and attributing it to global warming (or lack thereof). During 2004-2005 I was in a Hurricane watch or warning area nine times in Florida. The media couldn't get enough of the global warming catastrophe. Things have gone back to normal, even below normal the last couple of years and all we read is lists of excuses as to why the predictions aren't panning out. Dr. William Gray and Max Mayfield have both said that the high hurricane activity from 1995-2005 is due to cyclic patterns and cannot be directly attributed to global warming. We saw the same thing with Hurricanes from the 1940s through 1960s.

Mark: Deniers like to point out how many more people died due to weather events of yesteryear as evidence that weather was more extreme in the past. Only those with cognitive deficiency would believe that.

I haven't seen "deniers" claiming weather was more extreme in the past. What I have seen is alarmists blaming every harmful weather event (Katrina, droughts, tornado outbreaks, etc.) on AGW, and claiming weather has gotten more extreme; and skeptics countering with examples showing the same types of weather have occurred throughout history.

Global Warming is BS
Climate Flucuations is caused by the sun ie. Solar flares

As a follow-up to an earlier thread that is brought up here again:

� attempted to contribute his views, and been silenced (such as was done to Hansen or Gerberding) then PH's complaints would be more justified�.

Funny, if Hansen was silenced, why do we keep hearing what he has to say? Why does NASA have a web site for his writings?

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/jhansen.html

If he was to be silenced, why didn't the Administration let him go and re-appoint someone to their liking? If the answer is that they could not, then isn�t the system working as some people argue it should be? Isn�t it pretty obvious to everyone that the Legislative branch can get his views anytime they like? For all I know, Hansen and his crew are right about AGW, but this chronic warrant-less whining discredits him and all who continue this argument because it does not stand up to common sense.

As to the topic at hand, I vividly remember as a young man how experts warned that all the over-building on our shorelines was a recipe for disaster. They warned that we were in a lull period for hurricanes, and they were right.

General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2237297620080222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

I hate having to drive cars, but if I ever have to get another I know what kind it will be.

I can't beleive there are so many people that still think we are the cause of global warming! It seems that global warming causes everything these days; from hurricanes to skin cancer and yet there is no "scientific" proof that we are causing any of it!
Oh sure, we can perform lab experiments that prove we can break down O3 and somehow that is supposed to prove that man is causing the planet to warm up? I was intrigued that NASA recalled their reports of rising temperature when they discovered that their data was flawed because they were measuring temperature in densely populated cities instead of rural areas where the temperature information was collected years ago. In some cases their measuring equipment was in close range to buildings whose exuast was actually causing readings to be much warmer than were actually the case!
Most "actual scientists" that I've talked to say that human beings have an actual CO2 effect of about 10-14% of what the earth itself puts out. Ie. one volcano explosion will emit 30-40 years worth of man's CO2 output. If we cut our CO2 output in half, it still wouldn't have any effect on the total output!
Why do we keep listening to these enviro-nuts that aren't basing anything on "actual climate science?" I was told as a teenager that we only had 10 years left to stop burning fossil fuels or the earth would be too hot for us to live on. And here we are 20 years later and we have doubled the amount of cars on the road and factories emitting CO2 and we still can't prove that man is even having a measurable effect on warming up the earth. In fact, experts can't even agree that the earth is getting warmer at all! That's why you're starting to hear the phrase "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming!" The Enviro-nuts know that pretty soon the earth's natural heating and cooling cycles will continue and they can't afford to be debunked when the earth starts cooling again.
It's all just so absurd that we could be causing the earth to warm or cool.
Al Gore should've stuck with his "internet" story!

On the topic of foolish building, I become an Alarmist and shrill environmentalist. People in New England are simply asking for trouble, and it is likely because the people who actually remember what the 1938 hurricane did to New England are dieing off. We lost half our trees, and lumberjacks had to be imported from Minnesota.

In the 1990's there was a big hurricane coming up the coast, (Eduard?) and up until 18 hours before it curved out to sea it was expected to bicect New England. It had winds well in excess of 100 mph, and I was trying to warn people to prepare. (I thought I was Paul Revere, but wound up looking like Chicken Little.)

What amazed me was how blithely unconcerned people were. They seemed to feel they could weather a major hurricane by buying an extra gallon of milk and a couple of TV dinners. Yet if we lost half our trees then some of our subdivisions, (down long wooded roads,) might be without power for weeks, rather than days. It might be days before they could even chainsaw a clear road to the store.

Even our biggest hurricanes tend to be weakening when they hit New England, and one attribute of such storms is that their winds weaken first at low levels, but still howl only a couple of hundred feet up. The Old-timers all talked about how the 1938 hurricane completely flattened the trees atop the hills. That is exactly where people have built modern McMansions, "for the view."

In 1938 Boston's peak ground-level winds were around 75. 600 feet up and 20 miles south, atop the Blue Hills, winds were over 160. Boston's skyscrapers are built to withstand winds of 125% of the highest recorded local ground-level winds. Cell phone towers are stronger, but if a dish is bent even slightly out of line, phones quit. Phones also require recharging.

Historical records, (and also the record of salt-marsh peat bogs,) show New England can expect such storms every 60 to 75 years. It may link with warm cycles of the AMO. Salt marshes show that every now and then the area is spared, and a period of up to 150 years between storms occurs. I hope we are spared, this time around, because many people who have moved to New England simply haven't got a clue how to prepare.

All that preperation would involve is the brains to store food which doesn't spoil, extra water, and perhaps extra tanks of propane for a barbacue. (Also plan for 2 weeks without a toilet that flushes.) However I fear many will be taken by surprise, and, dazed and bewildered, will pathetically look to the sky for helpful helicopters.

At that point they won't give a hoot about NASA data. Two weeks later they will be....well, let's h