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sirs

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Ooops
« on: November 27, 2006, 11:50:31 AM »
Hurricane Predictions Off Track As Tranquil Season Wafts Away
11/27/06

It was not the hurricane season we expected, thank you.

With cataclysmic predictions that hurricanes would swarm from the tropics like termites, no one thought 2006 would be the most tranquil season in a decade.

Barring a last-second surprise from the tropics, the season will end Thursday with nine named storms, and only five of those hurricanes. This year is the first season since 1997 that only one storm nudged its way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, Florida was hit by two tropical storms, Alberto and Ernesto. But after the pummeling of the previous two years, the storms barely registered on the public's radar.

So what happened? Lots.

Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say the storm-snuffing dust was more abundant than usual this year.

In the season's peak, storms were curving right like errant field goals. High pressure that normally hunkers near Bermuda shifted far eastward, and five storms rode the clockwise winds away from Florida.

Finally, a rapidly growing El Nino, a warming of water over the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifted winds high in the atmosphere southward. The winds left developing storms disheveled and unable to become organized.

As they say about the stock market: Past results are no indication of future performance.

This year's uneventful season provides no assurance that next year will be as calm:

•The Atlantic remains in a 20- to 30-year cycle of high hurricane activity that started in 1995. Water temperatures are above normal.

•El Nino probably won't be around to decapitate storms.

•There's no promise that the Saharan dust will be as abundant.

BY THE NUMBERS
9: The number of named storms this year

17: The number of named storms predicted May 31 by a team at Colorado State University led by Professor William Gray

45 mph: The wind speed when Tropical Storm Alberto hit the Florida Panhandle near Adams Beach on June 13, the strongest winds over Florida all season

56 percent: The average homeowner rate increase Citizens Property Insurance Corp. requested even after no hurricanes struck Florida

27 percent: The Citizens rate increase approved to start Jan. 1

$100 million: Estimated damage in the United States from Tropical Storm Ernesto

0: The number of storms that formed in October, the first time since 2002 that no storms formed that month. Also, no Category 4 or 5 storms formed this year for the first time since 1997.


http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBHKNBE0VE.html

« Last Edit: November 27, 2006, 11:52:11 AM by sirs »
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Amianthus

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2006, 11:54:28 AM »
Hurricane Predictions Off Track As Tranquil Season Wafts Away

Hmmm. Since the bad seasons were caused by global warming (according to some), does this mean that global warming has gone away?

Or could it be that something else was at play?
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

sirs

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2006, 01:30:13 PM »
Hmmm. Since the bad seasons were caused by global warming (according to some), does this mean that global warming has gone away?
Or could it be that something else was at play?


The more likely scenario is that this tranquil season is a direct result of Global Warming.  I mean that snowstorm that hit NY, when Gore was giving his big Global Warming speech was supposedly due to the Global Warming.  If the weather stays consistently good, it's undoubtedly due to Global Warming.  If we have another bad Hurricane season or Winter Whitewash, that's proof positive of Global Warming.  Anything & everything is now due to Global Warming.  What are we to do, Ami?? 
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Brassmask

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2006, 01:51:14 PM »
You guys are funny.

Plane

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2006, 02:40:03 PM »
So Hurricanes can be suppressed by a little dust in the right part of the atmosphere?



Lets burn some coal.

Brassmask

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2006, 04:40:55 PM »
Sirs officially outed as a DRUDGE reader.

Tsk, tsk...

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/27/drudge-gore-global-warming/

Lots of relevant rebuttal to Drudge's, Sirs' and others' out right willful ignorance at the link.  And by the by, I watched An Inconvenient Truth yesterday for the first time.  It is a tremendous presentation and full of lots of crazy things called FACTS.  And the whole time I was thinking, "This guy could have been the president but instead we got a moron who wouldn't know the first thing about a PowerPoint presentation, let alone FACTS."


Drudge Blows It: Latest Attack On Gore’s Global Warming Stance Falls Flat
This morning, the Drudge Report has an enormous headline implying that Al Gore got it wrong in his movie, An Inconvient Truth, when he said that global warming would create more intense storms:


First, Gore never predicted that there would be more storms in 2006. He said that global warming made it more likely that there would be more intense hurricanes in the future.

Second, the fact that there were fewer hurricanes in 2006 does not suggest that global warming is not real or not dangerous. There are other factors — on a year-to-year basis — that can reduce the number and intensity of hurricanes. The article Drudge links to makes it clear that these factors were in play:

Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say the storm-snuffing dust was more abundant than usual this year.

In the season’s peak, storms were curving right like errant field goals. High pressure that normally hunkers near Bermuda shifted far eastward, and five storms rode the clockwise winds away from Florida.

Finally, a rapidly growing El Nino, a warming of water over the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifted winds high in the atmosphere southward. The winds left developing storms disheveled and unable to become organized.

Notably, none of this suggests that future years will be a repeat of 2006. The Saharan dust, for example, may not be around in significant quantities next year. The Tampa Tribune notes, “This year’s uneventful season provides no assurance that next year will be as calm: The Atlantic remains in a 20- to 30-year cycle of high hurricane activity that started in 1995. Water temperatures are above normal.”


Brassmask

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2006, 04:43:48 PM »
Also, next year, when/if we have the mother of all Hurricane Seasons and Bush loses ANOTHER US CITY, I want all of you to be posting something along the lines of...

"Well, since I said that a light hurricane season is indicative of NO global warming, I guess this horrible hurricane season in which we lost the whole southern tip of Florida means that global warming is real.  I should have paid attention."

Amianthus

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2006, 04:52:31 PM »
we got a moron who wouldn't know the first thing about a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint is Evil.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

Brassmask

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #8 on: November 27, 2006, 05:02:47 PM »
we got a moron who wouldn't know the first thing about a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint is Evil.
\

Humorous despite its' strawman purposes.

Plane

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #9 on: November 27, 2006, 06:22:31 PM »
Also, next year, when/if we have the mother of all Hurricane Seasons and Bush loses ANOTHER US CITY, I want all of you to be posting something along the lines of...

"Well, since I said that a light hurricane season is indicative of NO global warming, I guess this horrible hurricane season in which we lost the whole southern tip of Florida means that global warming is real.  I should have paid attention."

Is it a fact that warmer oceans that stay warmer later in the season and further twards the poles could cause increased snowfall?

Is it a fact that increased snowfall increases the amount of Solar heat reflected to space rather than adsorbed?

Is it possible that increased Ocean tempretures can lead to decreased land tempretures?


Is it a fact that the interrelation of weather systems and processes is caotic and complex and hard to predict?

Diane

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #10 on: November 27, 2006, 09:25:30 PM »
Also, next year, when/if we have the mother of all Hurricane Seasons and Bush loses ANOTHER US CITY, I want all of you to be posting something along the lines of...

"Well, since I said that a light hurricane season is indicative of NO global warming, I guess this horrible hurricane season in which we lost the whole southern tip of Florida means that global warming is real.  I should have paid attention."

you have to be more specific .....If you are speaking of the land of the chocolate mayor.... Bush didn't lose that city, nor did the hurricane 'Katrina', it was the damn fools that just stayed in that bowl with their fingers crossed.  That event was predicted decades ago.  Let's put the blame where it belongs.  Now you could say that it is Bush's fault (looking at the liberal thinking big government is gonna bail my ass out yet agin).  Since it is the Federal governments job to run the Federal government so that federal policies and services are unilateral over all states, you may want to blame it on the Governor of Louisiana for not doing her job and making sure the State has its proverbial ducks in a row.  You can follow that up with Nagin who clearly just kept on skimming with one hand behind his back, fingers crossed.   BUT when all is said and done, for New Orleans, anyway...it is the fault of the people because they encourage the likes  of Nagin by re-electing him.

I didn't notice me being any closer to the Keys this year so what southern tip are you talking about.  Jeb has done a fine job with the handling of hurricane emergencies.

Regarding the cost of homeowners insurance... you are right... it ain't pretty

sirs

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #11 on: November 27, 2006, 09:29:23 PM »
Sirs officially outed as a DRUDGE reader.

A) What the hell is a "Drudge reader"?  someone that looks at links collected at a particular sight that has stories and news reports from all over the globe??

B)  Gore and the Global Warming nuts were falling all over themselves claiming how last year's Hurricane season was just the tip of the iceberg as it relates to how destructive Global warming was becoming, and just wait for the next season.  Here it is, here it was, and there it went.

C)  Does it mean Global Warming doesn't exist? no.  Does it mean we won't have a bad Hurricane season next year? no.  Does it mean if we do have a bad Hurricane season next year it's proof positive of man-induced Global Warming?  Hell no
« Last Edit: November 28, 2006, 12:42:30 AM by sirs »
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

sirs

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #12 on: November 27, 2006, 09:40:10 PM »
Gore's 'Truth' splits hurricane scientists
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 29, 2006


Al Gore's new movie on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," opens with scenes from Hurricane Katrina slamming into New Orleans. The former vice president says unequivocally that because of global warming, it is all but certain that future hurricanes will be more violent and destructive than those in the past.
    Inconvenient or not, the nation's top hurricane scientists are divided on whether it's the truth.
    With the official start of hurricane season days away, meteorologists are unanimous that the 2006 tropical storm season, which runs from June 1 through November, is likely to be a doozy. The first tropical storm of this season showered light rain yesterday on Acapulco, a Mexican Pacific resort, but forecasters said the weather could worsen. Tropical storm Aletta was stalled 135 miles from Acapulco, with maximum winds of 45 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, which said the storm could move toward land today.
    The 2004 and 2005 Atlantic hurricane seasons broke many records, and as forecasters predict 15 named storms, nine or 10 making it to hurricane strength and four or five of those major, 2006 is shaping up as another bad one.
    The top names and brightest minds in hurricane science are divided, writing papers and publishing rebuttals regarding the nature and causes of the current "active period" that began in 1995 and is expected to run at least another 10 to 15 years. They study the same facts, but draw opposite conclusions.
    Scientists disagree
   
    In one corner, subscribing to the theory that the Atlantic Basin is in a busy cycle that occurs naturally every 25 to 40 years, are Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, and William Gray and Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University, who pioneered much of modern hurricane-prediction theory.
    "There has been no change in the number and intensity of Category 4 or Category 5 hurricanes around the world in the last 15 years," Mr. Landsea said, in a telephone interview from Miami.
   
    On the other side are Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most respected hurricane scientists in the world, a team of meteorologists from Georgia Tech led by Peter Webster, an MIT-educated monsoon specialist, and Greg Holland, who earned his doctorate at Colorado State under Mr. Gray.
    "You cannot blame any single storm or even a single season on global warming. ... Gore's statement in the movie is that we can expect more storms like Katrina in a greenhouse-warmed world. I would agree with this," said Judith Curry. She is chairwoman of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and is co-author, with Mr. Webster, Mr. Holland and H.R. Chang, of a paper titled "Changes in Tropical Cyclones," in the Sept. 16 issue of Science, a weekly publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
    The paper concluded that there has been an 80 percent increase in Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes worldwide.
   
    Balancing the atmosphere
    Tropical cyclones, rotating wind systems that include hurricanes, are heat engines -- nature's way of balancing extremes, mechanisms for taking heat from one place and taking it to another, as part of balancing the Earth's atmosphere.
    All agree that in the past 30 years, the waters off the West Coast of Africa, where most Atlantic hurricanes are born, have warmed by about 1 degree, to about 81 degrees Fahrenheit, and as much as two-thirds of that increase is attributable to greenhouse gases, or global warming. Where the scientists disagree is what that means for the number and intensity of hurricanes.
    Mr. Emanuel of MIT said that, globally, the number and intensity of hurricanes are unchanged over the past 30 years, and that according to Japanese models, global warming could even lead to a modest decline in the number of hurricanes worldwide. However, he said that in the Atlantic Basin, where just 11 percent of all tropical storms occur, there is a "quite nice correlation" between the rise in sea surface temperature (SST) and an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes.
    Mr. Emanuel, author of the book "Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes," said that while the 1-degree rise in ocean temperature has been recorded globally, the correlation between SST and hurricane frequency does not appear in other parts of the world.
   
    Hurricanes double
    "Since 1981, the number and intensity of [Atlantic] hurricanes has almost doubled," said Mr. Emanuel, based on his research published in a letter in the Aug. 4 issue of Nature, which surveyed 55 years of hurricane and ocean-temperature data in the Atlantic and Pacific. "In my mind, the jury is not out. The upswing since the 1980s is largely a global-warming signal. But if you polled my colleagues, I think you'd find they are divided on the issue."
    The Georgia Tech meteorologists used data collected around the world and arrived at similar conclusions.
    "The best available data shows that the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes globally has almost doubled since 1970," said Ms. Curry at Georgia Tech, in an e-mail response to questions. "In the North Atlantic, there has been a comparable increase in intensity, and also a 50 percent increase in the total number of North Atlantic hurricanes. This increase in hurricane activity has been linked to a 1-degree Fahrenheit increase in global tropical sea-surface temperature since 1970. This global temperature increase since 1970 is attributed to global warming."
    Asked about Georgia Tech's findings regarding Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes, Mr. Emanuel said that he had reviewed their data.
    "I came up with the same result. I think they are right," Mr. Emanuel said.
   
    Rebuttal published
    But Mr. Landsea of the National Hurricane Center vigorously disagreed with Mr. Emanuel in a rebuttal to his paper, published in Nature in December, saying, in effect, that Mr. Emanuel tortured the data until it confessed what he wanted to hear.
    Regarding Georgia Tech, Mr. Landsea's argument is that primitive measuring techniques, here and especially in Asia, where most of the major tropical storms occur, made for imperfect data, and inaccurate "data sets" generate incorrect conclusions.
    "At the beginning of the [Georgia Tech] study, in 1970, there wasn't even a tool for determining wind speed and how strong a hurricane was. The Dvorak Technique [for measuring wind speed] did not come into being until 1972," he said, adding that it wasn't perfected until 1984. "The incomplete data sets artificially causes the number of Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes to go up."
    Asked about the increase in Atlantic hurricanes, he said: "I think that is real, but the largest component of that is the natural cycle," he said.
    According to NOAA hurricane records going back into the mid-1800s, hurricanes come in cycles. There have been quiet periods, with less hurricane activity, followed every 25 to 40 years by active periods, that last about 25 years. The current active period began in 1995 and is expected to last another 10 to 15 years.
   
    Greenhouse gases
    Mr. Landsea agreed that the 1-degree rise in ocean temperature is largely a product of greenhouse gases -- that is to say global warming -- but he said it was not a primary factor in determining the size and intensity of recent hurricanes.
    "Models show a 2- to 4-degree temperature increase by the end of the 21st century, and hurricanes will get about 4 percent stronger for every 2-degree increase," he said, citing Princeton's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory and Tom Knutson for the research in this area.
    In other words, the 1-degree water temperature increase off the coast of Africa could fuel a Category 3 hurricane at landfall, like Katrina, with 130-mph winds, to increase by about 2 percent. Two or three miles per hour of Katrina's winds could have been the result of global warming, Mr. Landsea said.
    "One or 2 percent stronger? That is a very tiny change today, and even in 100 years from now, it is very small," he said.
   
    Offset in Pacific
    At Colorado State University, Phil Klotzbach wrote a rebuttal, published in the Geophysical Research Letter last week, to the Georgia Tech and MIT papers, and concluded that where sea-surface temperature has increased, there is in fact a slight decrease in hurricane activity.
    "With regards to the number of Category 4-5 hurricanes, there has been a large increase in North Atlantic storms and a large decrease in Northeast Pacific storms," wrote Mr. Klotzbach in "talking points" for the paper on his Web site. "When these two regions are summed together, there has been virtually no increase in Category 4-5 hurricanes."
    Like Mr. Landsea, Mr. Klotzbach attributes the Georgia Tech findings to bad data. Ms. Curry of Georgia Tech says that while there have been inconsistencies in processing the data over time and in different regions, no one has demonstrated that there is actually a major problem with the data itself.
    "The key issue is whether you can distinguish a Category 4 from a Category 1 hurricane from satellite [data], the answer is almost always yes," she said.
    Clearly, it is a busy period for the number and intensity of academic research papers being published on global warming and hurricanes, but Mr. Landsea said all remains collegial in the meteorological community.
   
    Polite disagreements
    "These are my friends and colleagues. The disagreements are civil. This debate is essence of science that is alive. Everyone here is doing science. This debate is confusing for us. I'm sure it is confusing for everyone else," said Mr. Landsea.
    Mr. Emanuel said that for all practical purposes, the real problem of hurricanes is not number and intensity, but demographics and the desire of people to live by the sea.
    If a hurricane blows itself out over the ocean or hits an unpopulated area, there are few consequences to life or property. However, if a major hurricane hits a populated area, like New Orleans, Miami or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, it can be catastrophic.
    "By regulating insurance, by holding insurance rates down, we are subsidizing risky behavior. We are underwriting the drive to [build and populate] the coastline. That is the big hurricane problem in the United States," he said.


http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060529-124851-7254r.htm
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

BT

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #13 on: November 27, 2006, 09:43:16 PM »
Quote
What the hell is a "Drudge reader"?  

I thought it funny when he posted that , immediately followed by a link to thinkprogess, which i believe is Soros funded.


sirs

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Re: Ooops
« Reply #14 on: November 27, 2006, 09:49:57 PM »
Quote
What the hell is a "Drudge reader"?  

I thought it funny when he posted that , immediately followed by a link to thinkprogess, which i believe is Soros funded.

 :D
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle