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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."
Perhaps this is nature's way of saying "I hate you."
Even the most complicated computer models for weather systems can only approach less than 5% of the actual variability and density of the atmosphere. Consider that most forecasts are less than 50% accurate at 48hrs+. I am not dismissing the research, far from it, I just don't think the models are there yet.
http://www.busyweather.com/
The environment seems to solve the Bush problem at least in Florida itself.
I'm really sad that residents of Florida, Cuba, Haiti, and all those other hurricane-hit places will have to face more severe and more frequent hurricanes in the future. However, global warming is bigger than just Florida; as terrible as extra hurricanes are, this just might be the wake up call that the rest of the world (especially those of us in non-Kyoto countries) needs to really appreciate the significance of global warming. Maybe now people will realize that global warming isn't an issue put forth by tree-hugging hippies, but rather a serious concern with serious implications.
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...
I think that this, once again, shows the faliure of closed source.
If we had access to the source code for the weather module, we wouldn't have to wait for god to fix the bug, do some sort of mediocre quality control, and then release it after 6 months.
Democrats blaming Bush in 5, 4, 3, 2 ...
(Kerry voted against the Kyoto agreement in the Senate in 1998)
I'm currently living in Florida, and let me tell you what we had this season was bad. If in the future, we're going to have these types of hurricanes on even a stronger level we're going to lose a lot of tourism.
This year our damages are estimated at $18 billion because of the hurricanes (that's $3 billion more then Andrew). I can only imagine how much we will loose if we get stronger and more frequent hurricanes.
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!
In other news, the State of Florida has changed its name to State of Emergency.
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
That's not a conclusion. That's a hypothesis. When they conclude 'greenhouse gas-induced warming probably lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms' or something equally as strong, let me know.
I mean, anyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject could have you told that this _may_ happen. What's needed is someone to get a good idea of how likely it is to be true.
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.
"Hotter summers, colder winters, and more intense hurricanes. But we can't rule out a sudden (say, within a century) plunge into a little ice age, if the ice caps at the poles melt, causing the earth to lose too much albedo from the loss of the reflective ice caps. Also, glacial runoff from Greenland could stop the warming North Atlantic current and make northern Europe uninhabitable, like in the last big ice age, which ended 11,000 years ago."
So far he's been right. Not that that's a good thing.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
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?
One important thing to remember is that this is nothing the planet hasn't seen before. Things have gotten no worse than they were 200 million years ago. There have been plenty of studies in dendrochronology that prove this and that while the earth might be heating up, its nothing the planet can't handle.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
you mean, there is no evidence that Dubya will admit to.
... which has since been clearly proven.
.. someone who gets great benefit through the selling of greenhouse gas producing Oil, hmmm and Dubya is someone who would benefit greatly from high oil prices produced by pinching world oil reserves through destabilizing oil markets with the false fear of terrorism, and by taking the Iraq supply off the market.
In fact there is much much evidence, that perhaps you have chosen not to see.
Funny how Dubya can invade Iraq, killing 10's of thousands of innocent civilians, and over a 1000 americans on NO ACCURATE EVIDENCE of there ever being ANY WMD's in Iraq
yet at the same time, he can totally ignore the decades of research that show the world is getting warmer (whether or not its by our own hand).
hmmm coincedentally, Dubya is an Oil man
damn I dont know why you Bushies can't see the damage Bush has done for his own personal greed. Instead you blindly follow him, ignorantly thinking he's saving you.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Ignorance is bliss isnt it?
Actually thousands of scientists have come out and stated our CO2 emissions ARE a significant factor. You've chosen to ignore them.
I guess you are ignoring that we've nearly doubled atmostpheric CO2 since our industrial revolution. (I bet you didnt even know that)
I guess you are ignoring the huge greenhouse effect of methane, which we spew into the air in tremendous amounts through Oil/gas production and through the raising of Billions of cattle each year. (I bet you thought that burnt oil just disappeared, that it didn't make CO2)
I guess you have chosen to ignore the large percentage of the planet where we have eliminated trees and other plants, removing a huge carbon sink. (did you even know that plants absorb CO2 as part of their metabolism?)
dumbass.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
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.
Or, we could quit trying to blame everything on "global warming" and realize that hurricane severity is cyclical. Florida's been due for a couple of years now.
The problem is that you're clouding the issue with facts. You just can't let the facts, or God forbid actual reasoning to interfere with a perfectly good anti-USA hate-Bush rant.
Besides which you read the article. That's cheating.
Florida has very little to worry about.
Hurricanes do NOT kill people. The supply strong winds and lots of rain but people actually die from pore planning, stupid choices, ineffective government and most importantly large scale poverty.
I.e. Florida lost less than 40 people in Hurricanes this year. They were directly hammered by 3 big ones (Category 3 to 5). A single category 4 passed 30 miles south of Jamaica and killed 16 people (.jm is small, 2.7 million). Meanwhile, 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 (I.e. Likely to die if massive amounts of help isn't forthcoming).
PS: I am writing from Jamaica. In case that matters.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
- Polution produces greenhouse gasses and puts holes in the ozone layer. Atmosphere allows more radiation in and traps more of it as heat.
- Planet warms up.
- Ocean tempatures rise.
- Tropical storms, including hurricanes and typhoons become more severe.
- Increased lightning activity means more ozone is generated, patching the ozone hole.
- Wetter inland weather means more plant life is active to use some greenhouse gasses, thus reducing their atmospheric amounts
- Things cool off a bit and then the cycle starts again, leaving the world not a whole lot different than it started.
It could run deeper and somehow the warming of the earth is what is starting volcanos to trigger again, producing carbon monoxide which in turn eventually helps form ozone, but I can't think of a way those two events could be directly related.CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
If only the Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt would shut down so the colonialist European pigs would freeze to death.
I keep seeing this theory hopped up in every discussion about global warming. How cold water runoff (from melting ice sheets) from the North Pole and Greenland will mix with the North Atlantic and cause the Gulf Stream to suddenly stop. Then there's all these horrible scenarios about ice ages and such.
Perhaps someone can answer this for me, but isn't the only reason there is a Gulf Steam/strong current in the Atlantic Ocean anyway is because of the Coriolis Effect? So technically, unless the Earth stops rotating, the "Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt" should still work (albeit, the northern latitudes may be colder because of the melting ice sheets, but you'd still have the current there).
There are many models for the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmostphere being proposed by scientists. Our best, most extensive computer models show that increased C02 will lead to climate change, and our best records show that humans activity has increased atmospheric C02 by about a third.
But the models all disagree exactly how much. And there are other sources of C02 (although there is no evidence any of them are responsible for the increases since the industial age). And since models always have to take a few shortcuts (instead of modelling every atom) they may have ignored something that could affect climate. Unfortunately, there are things we don't understand; our computer models don't explain all historical climate changes (even though every model has more C02 = climate change). And who knows, maybe the sun is hotter (even though the evidence for this is sketchier than any of the other data).
Some people turn these little bits of uncertainty into a complete lack of action. They argue that climate change is
natural", ignoring the fact that it's catastrophic and we might be able to do something about it. They choose to do nothing, and rush us ever faster into the abyss in our giant, wasteful SUVS.
A large climate change is bad news for humans, and we have some evidence that we are responsible for some of it, and we have some evidence that we might be able to slow or reverse it. Do we need more evidence? Hell yes. But if we wait for the climate experiment known as "the earth's atmosphere" to finish, we'll be doomed. I believe that human ingenuity will be able make the world a place where humans can continue to thrive.
P.S. I don't understand why "less pollution, less waste" is seen as more as a burden and not an opportunity for business.
It seems that no matter what happens it is the cause of global warming.
Lots of hurricanes, global warming. No hurricanes, global warming.
Big hurricanes, global warming. Small hurricanes, global warming.
Drought, global warming. Flooding, global warming.
Hot weather, global warming. Cold weather, global warming.
Different weather, global warming. Same weather, global warming.
Obviously the planet is warmer than it was 50,000 years ago and at least he in California it has been wetter and cooler in the last several thousand years than it has been before that. One super volcano or asteroid and we may be trying to warm the planet up or it will be very, very cold.
Of course, no one in Haiti is going to do much about it. They will just continue to chop down what trees remain for charcoal, etc.. They are digging their own graves. This is not a troll, this is reality.
more info
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.
Try looking at the facts. Every major indpendent study for years (for instance the US National Academy of Sciences study) has concluded that beyong reasonable doubt:
A: the planet is warming faster than it has done for millions of years
B: human releases of CO2 is almost certainly the main cause
and I would observe that B actually doesn't matter. If the planet is warming, we should release less CO2, to try and cool it, regardless of the reason.
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.