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Global Warming Expected to Intensify Hurricanes
DoraLives writes "Think this hurricane season was bad? Well according to the New York Times, a study was published online on Tuesday by The Journal of Climate indicating that warming ocean temperatures are going to make for stronger, wetter hurricanes in the coming years and decades. An abstract of the article concludes cheerfully enough that 'greenhouse gas-induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms.' Oh joy."
If you think Florida had it bad, they don't even know how many thousands of people died in Haiti yet, they'll have to dig through the mud to find the bodies. Once they get food that is...
The estimates are one or two thousand dead these days.
You can't take the sky from me...
the hurricanes have been nothing more than intense storms when they make it up to my area (Philadelphia), but they have made a mess. just this last week all over PA, DE and NJ had lots of mess i watched on the local news. there was a few feet of mud from runoff on I-76 just outside the city. they had to get people off a bus using an xtension ladder from the other side of the road (the jersey wall acted like a dam). in all 30 cars and one bus were destroyed. countless houses and stores flodded out. sinkholes all over the place opening up. a lady was killed in the city because the water coming down the sidewalk was so strong it knocked her over and washed her down the street, she got stuck under a car and by the time people pulled her up she had drowned!
Do you know how many senators voted not to ratify the treaty?
98 out of 100. Two senators did not vote.
So even John Kerry voted not to ratify Kyoto. Hell, even fathead Ted Kennedy did. Because it's not about "the environment", it's about shackling the economies of the west. And if you look deeper, you will see the huge trade concessions made to Russia (by EU member states) in order for them to sign.
Apparently, 98 senators who are normally split along party lines figured that one out. There's 1+1=2 for you.
Just for the record, hurricane season lasts until the end of November.
This (more hurricanes) comes as a surprise to anyone? The atmosphere is a heat engine. You put more heat energy in, you get more wind energy out. It's as simple as that. Of course you're going to get more high wind events. In the Carribean, you call those Hurricanes.
What's bemusing to a European eye is that it seems to be the places which are most likely to be devastated by global warming that are most likely to vote for Bush.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
With the way people are blaming everything else in the world on Bush.. I'm surprised.
Bush is getting part of the blame for it, and rightfully so. President Bush and his advisers maintain that reducing emissions through costly near-term measures is unjustified. The White House argues that forecasting climate change is too imprecise to agree to long-term, international, mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
In April of 2001, ten of the world's most prominent citizens wrote a letter (published in Time magazine) urging President George W. Bush to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas produced by the United States. Signatories included Stephen Hawking, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Senator John Glenn, Walter Cronkite, George Soros, and Jane Goodall. The letter was initiated by Charles Alexander, environment editor of "Time," while he was collaborating on the magazine's project to explore the scientific evidence for the existence and extent of global warming and the political furor over Bush's withdrawal of U.S. support for the Kyoto climate protocol after nine years of international negotiations.
Actor Harrison Ford, who is a board member of Conservation International, signed as did J. Craig Venter who decoded the human genome. Venerable zoologist, ecologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward O. Wilson added the weight of his signature.
Bush apparently round-filed the letter.
Gee, doesn't that sound like he should be shouldering some of the blame?
miniscule amounts of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere
Since the industrial age has begun, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from around 280ppmv to 380ppmv. You can argue about the effects of that carbon dioxide, but this does not strike me as a "miniscule" change; we've modified the carbon dioxide in the entire planet's atmosphere by almost a third!
The fact that humans can have such a drastic effect on an entire planet is pretty amazing.
(Kerry voted against the Kyoto agreement in the Senate in 1998)
You know, I've seen so many Republican talking points that come in the form of "Kerry voted against X", that turn out to be based on procedural details and similar bullshit. So I did some Googling and found this article from December 1997 (smothered in an avalanche of right wing blogs essentially parroting what you said). In January 1998 the Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto because the exemptions for developing countries were widely viewed as unfair.
Interestingly, of course, even if increased solar output or whatever else is causing the global warming (and these theories are being looked at and discounted by very respectable scientific reviews), the correct response is the same -- increase the IR transmittance of the atmosphere by decreasing the levels of CO2 and various other gasses to allow the Earth to lose heat faster.
The 30ish year hurricane cycle is well established, but global warming cuts across that -- if the sea is generally warmer there will be more hurricanes compared to the same point in the 30 year cycle when the sea is cooler.
Mod parent up. Kerry authored an ammendment to the bill:
KERRY (AND CHAFEE) AMENDMENT NO. 987 (Senate - July 24, 1997)
[Page: S8101] GPO's PDF
(Ordered to lie on the table.)
Mr. KERRY (for himself and Mr. Chafee) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by them to the resolution (S. Res. 98) expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; as follows:
On page 4, line 13, after `period,' insert the following:
`(ii) provides countries with incentives and flexibility in reducing emissions cost-effectively by using the market-oriented approaches of emissions budgets, emissions trading, and appropriate joint implementation with all Parties,
`(iii) includes credible compliance mechanisms, and
`(iv) provides appropriate recognition for countries that undertake emissions reductions prior to the start of the mandated reductions;'.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
Haiti was grazed by a tropical storm (not strong enough to be called a hurricane) and around 2000 people have died with another 100000 or so left homeless and starving
A lot of this has to do with the rampant deforestation in Haiti. Notice that the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island, did not suffer nearly as badly, as it still has much of its forest remaining. There's a picture where you can pretty clearly see the border of Haiti and the DR -- DR is green, and Haiti is not.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
In fact, it's damn near ridiculous. These arguments always are.
I'm not making an argument; I'm presenting evidence, gathered by NASA, measured several different ways, all of which agree.
You, on the other hand, are an anonymous coward making some unsuppored claims that disagree with all published data I've ever seen. Very convincing of you...
In any case, look for the phrase "Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities." on this USGS page. Or you can choose any of the other pages you find on volcanic CO2. If you're too lazy to read it, let me summarize it: humans add about 100x the CO2 to the atmosphere than volcanos do.
One, we not only withdrew from the 'protocol' (the treaty) we withdrew from the negotiating body that is still working to define future 'protocols.' I said that in my post; we withdrew from the PROCESS. We withdrew from having input into future proposed treaties. Two, on a per capita basis (or national basis, for that matter), the US emits MUCH more carbon than China and India. They were exempt precisely because their per capita emmissions are relatively very low compared to ours. The opposition was because it targeted the US as the major emitter of carbon, and that would hurt our economy. The Kyoto treaty was flawed, and could not have been ratified. But the process for modifying that, and working toward a more palatable treaty was extant, and Bush withdrew from THAT.