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Landfall Nears For Strongest Hurricane In Recorded History (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Patricia — the strongest hurricane ever recorded — barreled closer and closer Friday to Mexico's Pacific coast, where residents have been told to brace for its 200-mph sustained winds and torrential rains. The early Friday central pressure recording of 880 millibars (the barometric pressure equivalent is 25.98 inches) "is the lowest for any tropical cyclone globally for over 30 years," according to the Met Office, Britain's weather service. One other thing alarming about Patricia is its rapid rise in intensity. It rated as a tropical storm early Thursday, but 24 hours later it had become a Category 5 hurricane. Among other effects, El Niño has contributed to ocean waters off Mexico being 2 to 3 degrees warmer than usual. "That warm water from El Niño probably just pushed this slightly over the edge to be the strongest storm on record," CNN's Myers said.
Science knows this would happen. Ever since we started unlocking the secrets of chaotic systems this has been well understood. Climate’s the biggest chaotic system there is.
There is nothing weird about this at all. This is the new direction. Not the new normal because that implies they’re all going to be like this from now on. The reality’s worse.
The new normal is for each new weather disaster to be ‘unprecedented and weird’ and it’s been happening for years already and not slowing down but speeding up.
Alarmist? Fuck yes. Alarms are necessary and this is what they’re for. We are soon going to need to concentrate on clinging to life on this fucking planet, never mind ‘fighting climate change’. Climate’s WAAAAAY bigger than us. We’re pretty smart humans and we’ll succeed in adapting, but it’s gonna look like colonizing Venus and Mars put together, and one hell of a lot of innocent people will die in vast numbers trying to survive this.
Maybe we can string up some Koches at some point to make ourselves feel better, because this was DONE by the decisions of stupid people, much like an avalanche can be kicked off by a person pushing over a snowbank.
Failing that, somebody film this. Media might not want to undermine vested interests, but media can’t help but drool over footage of outrageous unthinkable destruction. Use that. Which is to say: please, dronebros, go and get your wealthy asses famous. It will be awesome footage, guaranteed ;P
This is no pissing contest, this is called 'hard experimental evidence'.
This is what large scale chaotic systems do when you steadily add energy to them.
Don't believe me? There will be the same headline next year, same 'unprecedented and strongest on record', but next year we're talking cat 6 or 7. Just as Patricia exploded into cat 5 faster than ever seen before, our global climate is exploding into new categories of storm with exactly the same trajectory for the exact same reason.
Understand climate. Study chaos. Learn. There's very little more important than that at this point.
Strongest in history, it must be climate change! /s
The strengthening though is interesting, and the tie in to El Nin~o does make for interesting weather geeking.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
> This is no pissing contest, this is called 'hard experimental evidence'.
This is called "a single data point". Hurricanes have been down in recent years.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Adjusting previous figures to show the current as maximum is a tried and true technique.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There ain't a lot you can do to prepare when Mother Nature's been chugging too many hydrocarbon espressos and goes into a seizure.
You really are a Climate Change zealot aren't you?
This is El Nino. It is entirely expected. This is not an unusual weather pattern, nor is it the strongest storm ever. You really need to calm the rhetoric.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Let's cut all the crap about global warming/climate change and remember that there are people living where this storm is making landfall. It doesn't matter if this is the strongest storm ever or if climate change caused this, there are real people in harm's way. This is not going to be pretty, between storm surge and rainfall over mountainous terrain and the flooding that will bring. So please keep these people in mind.
Do whatever you think best to help. whether that be prayer or cutting out a Starbuck's run to donate to the Red Cross. What are we put on this Earth for if not to help one another?
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
The Earth is BILLIONS of years old.
Humans have been making and recording global weather data for about 50 years (the first actual weather satellite, TIROS-1 was very crude and launched in 1960. Human records for global weather in the hundred years before that were from local weather guys in various spots around the globe and ship captains and floating buoys at sea plus the odd adventurer. Global weather before about two centuries ago was mostly in Europe or by a few captains of sailing ships at sea using mercury thermometers and barometers read often by candlelight on a pitching and rolling deck.
200 years (at best) of data out of only 1,000,000,000 years (a fraction of the Earth's existence) is a 1/5000000 sample (and even THAT is a gross over estimate of the significance of all of the weather "all-time records" we occasionally break. We are not hitting all-time temp highs (or lows) or seeing the biggest earthquake ever, or the biggest storm ever, or the strongest winds ever, or the biggest waves ever, etc - we are just occasionally seeing the most extreme things WE HUMANS have seen and recorded in the past 200 (approx) years out of billions of years of history. It takes a remarkable degree of dishonesty and/or willful ignorance to do what all the 24-hour news networks and the climate activists and big government advocates do with every such event and claim it is the most extreme EVER. These people willfully mislead the public by saying "worst on record" or "record breaking" while knowing the public will infer "worst ever" when it really just is an illustration of how poor our weather and climate records truly are.
And how many million years have dinosaurs fart? How many million years have plants and animals decomposed? How many million years have forest fires raged for months, and maybe even years, on end?
What kind of dumbass argument is that?
Throughout the world, in a year all volcanoes combined (above and below water) emit around 145 to 255 million tons of CO2. In the US, forest fires release around 290 million tons every year. That's great. Maybe people have contributed to worse fires in recent decades, maybe overall not so much. Either way, it's in the range of several hundred million tons of CO2 every year.
The largest coal power plant, in Taiwan, releases 40 million tons per year. That means that, at the low range of estimates for volcanoes, only 4 of those power plants would emit more CO2 than all volcanoes on the planet. China alone emits over 10 billion tons per year. That is far more than all forest fires. The US is about half that, about 5.3 billion tons. Overall, people emit over 30 billion tons in CO2 through burning of fossil fuels (power plants, cars, etc), and that level has nearly tripled in the past 15 years.
Since the 1880s we've been burning coal, fuel oil, and natural gas for power, non-stop. Since the early 1900s we've been driving gas-powered cars, non-stop, and also been flying gas-powered planes, non-stop. Since the early 1800s we've been driving CO2-emitting ships around, non-stop. Since the early 1800s we've also been operating CO2-emitting trains, non-stop. That's several hundred years of steam ships, steam trains, power plants, cars, and planes, and if you crack open one of your history books you'll notice that since the introduction of those until today the usage has actually increased. They have gotten larger, hungrier, and more numerous.
And you're talking about dinosaurs walking around farting several hundred million years ago. Get a grip. If you want to compare something, then compare a forest fire that started 200 years ago and has grown larger and larger each and every year, culminating in the doubling of size every few years for the past couple decades. And keep in mind that the stuff that was burnt doesn't extinguish, it keeps burning, all 200 years. Then you'll have a comparison with the human effect on CO2 production. Save your farting dinosaurs for your kids.
Let me know if you got my point, or if you need me to rewrite that while capitalizing random words.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black