That's probably because those statistics yield one inescapable conclusion: If global warming has had any impact at all on hurricane activity, it's lessened - not increased - the frequency of major hurricanes.
Posted on 09/25/2005 12:20:30 PM PDT by wagglebee
Environmentalists who claim global warming has caused an increase in U.S. hurricane activity obviously haven't checked with the National Hurricane Center, which has kept statistics on major storms over the last 150 years.
That's probably because those statistics yield one inescapable conclusion: If global warming has had any impact at all on hurricane activity, it's lessened - not increased - the frequency of major hurricanes.
From 1901 till 1950 - when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size and fossil fuel consumption was next to nil - there were 34 hurricanes rated at Catagory 3, 4 or 5 in size on the Saffir Simpson scale.
In the latter half of the twentieth century - when U.S. manufacturing exploded, automobile use skyrocketed and rampant consumerism was the order of the day, hurricane activity actually decreased by nearly 20 percent, declining to 28 Catagory 3-5 hurricanes from 1951 to 2000.
That's almost as low as the last five decades of the 19th century - when the overwhelming majority of Americans lived on farms, manual power was generated by watermills and cars had yet to be invented. From 1851 to 1900 there were 27 major hurricanes in the U.S.
The stunning numbers didn't faze ABC "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos, who attempted to counter panelist George Will when Will raised the Hurricane Center's findings during Sunday's broadcast.
"We're only half way through this decade, barely, and we've already got six very intense hurricanes," Stephanopoulos argued, as if to suggest that global warming's impact began in 2001.
The sun getting hotter? Wasn't a plot in one of then TV Sci-Fi shows?
You're not keeping up with the science here. The way it works is that it causes cooler temperatures when cooler temperatures cause bad things, and it causes warmer temperatures when warmer temperatures cause bad things. It can never result in anything good. All the UN-connected scientists say so.
It's funny how much science has changed since January 20, 2001.
Our friends at CNN's take on it is here:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/09/23/hurricane.cycle/?section=cnn_space
This paragraph sums it up:
"The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations (and) cycles of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming,"
Must have killed them to put that one out. It's not Bush's, SUV's, conservatives, or anything else's "fault." It's mean old Mother Nature.
While i do not believe that human caused global warming has been proved, this is a badly researched article.
For one thing global temperatures declined during the 1800's and stop increasing between 1945 and 1976 so the periods of time being compared are not the right ones if you want to see tha changes.
Another problem is that the article does not consider hurricane cycles.
A final problem is that he fails to look at the strength of hurricanes. Category 4 or 5 stoprms have increased from about 10 a year to almost 20 a year since 1970.
I think it is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty for one to jump to the conclusion that global warming causes more hurricanes but the weak minded don't need much proof to be convinced of something they already believe. We might as well be talking ufos. Notice how they did not wait to jump on the political bandwagon once disastrous Katrina hit. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about Teflon, pesticides, aspartame, or global warming; it clear we are living in a Hypochondriac nation where the facts mean less and less and ones propensity to act on irrational fear and ego becomes the greater governing force.
All it takes is to look at movements that were born out of an extreme minority views to see how infectious they become, abortion rights, separation of church and state, gay rights, extreme environmentalism, all have their foundations in premises that were from the outset false but it certainly hasn't stopped them. Global warming is one of those things that I fear is reaching a point where all rational opposition will be disregarded because even now conservatives are retreating from the battle lines against the ignorance that will ultimately cost us in greater bureaucracy, loss of freedom and economy for the sake of conclusions based upon what is at best flimsy interpretation of evidence.
Then John Stossel visits a third grade class room to discuss this subject and the children scream in unison, "NO! They're lying!"
During the 60's and 70's when "global winter" was the fad, one of the major reasons for projecting an increase in population and industry in the South was the steady decline in the number of hurricanes... Go look it up.
In any give day, month, year or decade:
1/3 of the earth is above average.
1/3 of the earth is below average.
1/3 of the earth is average.
But when the 1/3 above average shifts from Africa to South Atlantic to S America to S. Pacific then the weather patterns will shift.
BTW Why was the Dark Age called the Dark Age?
> Must have killed them to put that one out. It's not Bush's, SUV's, conservatives, or anything else's "fault." It's mean old Mother Nature.
EXACTLY SO. On Friday I emailed that article to a couple of liberal friends with a request for comment, and so far all I've heard is crickets....
Of course, NewsMax's title is equally bogus -- there is no "equating" the two things. But it's nice to have some more pointers to the original article out there.
Because they didn't have any light bulbs yet!
susie
The movie "The Day After Tomorrow". I loved it! The special affects are incredible but the dialog/subject matter was hysterical. It was supposed to be serious but I thought it was a very funny comedy.
Yeah it reminded me a lot of "Independence Day." It was totally unrealistic, the story sucked, but the special effects were great.
20 category 4-5 per year since 1970? It is a big year if we have 20 per year of all categories, let alone 20 category 4-5.
While that may be true (I don't have figures in front of me), there are multiple things that can contribute to increased recorded strength of storms. First, the surface water temps in certain areas (such as the Gulf) -are- higher, which gives storms the ability to get to Cat4 or Cat5; but there's no relationship between those temps and what we think of as global warming. Also, we have much-improved ability to measure and view storms now -- our metrics have effectively gotten better changed. Was Rita a Cat5 storm (she was, at her peak) or a Cat3 storm (when she landed)? All depends on whether you're able to get that transient Cat5 reading at the right time in the right place.
We're looking through a very short-interval window, viewing the "noise" wiggles on a function (global weather patterns) that has multiple interacting earth-temperature cycles, some of which are significantly longer than recorded history. It's just silly (and IMO unscientific) to go around with such a short-term view of something as big and slow as the earth.
Sure, the "noise" is of concern to us -- we're living in it, and it affects us. But there's not a damn thing we can do to change global weather patterns, realistically.
Personally I think the earth -is- in a warming part of a cycle, though not due primarily to human activities. While reducing pollution and emissions is a nice goal, it's because the air will be more pleasant to breathe, not because it's going to make a perceptible difference in global weather. Thinking we have that much effect on Mother Nature -globally- is just so much arrogant p*ssing into the wind.
It's a big deal that we're going to run out of names this year (21, they don't use a few letters) and have to go to Greek letters (Alpha, Beta...) -- and that includes all named storms. But I think that's just for ones that affect the US (could be wrong).
I presumed he was speaking of -all- typhoons, hurricanes, etc. world-wide. I suppose it's possible there are that many, though I don't know the exact figures.
"In the totality of the pattern we have seen, we are likely to be at the end of a warm period and may plunge into coldness very soon.~Dr. Harm de Blij"
I remember that from the 1970s: the next ICE AGE is coming!!
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