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Hurricane Irma Reaches 185 MPH, Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are quickly running out of adjectives to describe the destructive potential of Hurricane Irma. As of 2pm ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's sustained winds to 185mph. This is near-record speed for a storm in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Such high, sustained winds tie Irma for the second-strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, along with Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gilbert (1998), and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Only Hurricane Allen, which reached 190 mph in 1980 before striking a relatively unpopulated area of Texas, reached a higher wind speed. Globally, the all-time record for hurricanes is held by Patricia, which reached a staggering 215 mph in the Pacific Ocean in 2015. Although sustained winds capture the most public attention, meteorologists generally measure the intensity of a storm based upon central pressures, which are considerably lower than sea-level pressure on Earth, 1,013 millibars. Typhoon Tip, in 1979, holds this record at 870 millibars. For now, at least, Irma has a relatively high central pressure of 927 millibars. Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear. According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma is expected to bring catastrophic winds and potential storm surges to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the UK territory of Turks and Caicos this week. The Florida Keys could get hit by late Saturday night or Sunday.

318 comments

  1. Camille by cirby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...probably reached 200 MPH, but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi, so they can't count "sustained wind speed."

    1. Re:Camille by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I remember Camille. My mom woke me up at 2am, and told me to grab everything I own and take it upstairs. The flood waters from the neighborhood creek were already at our front porch. About 10 minutes later, muddy water started gurgling out of the heater vents on the floor of my bedroom. The water rose another 30cm over the next few hours.

      My room was a muddy mess the next morning. But it was worth it because school was cancelled for a week.

      This was more than 400 km from landfall.

      I happened almost exactly a month after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

    2. Re:Camille by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      That could have been a tornado. Same happened with Andrew in 1992 where brief 300 mph winds were reported before instruments got ripped out. That was not counted as it was a tornado spawned draft

    3. Re:Camille by Nethead · · Score: 0

      Damn! When I was at KAFB back in 1979 I was surprised that they were still talking about Camille 10 years later. Now here we are 48 years later still telling stories.

      What the hell measurements are you talking? Those sound like science words. Real 'mericans in the South use that side of the ruler as a file.

      I can truly say that Biloxi is one town I never wanted to go back to.

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    4. Re:Camille by triffid_98 · · Score: 1

      but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi

      the same can also be said for America's deadliest hurricane...which lacks an official name since we weren't doing those back in 1900

      "The highest measured wind speed was 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) just after 6 p.m., but the Weather Bureau's anemometer was blown off the building shortly after that measurement was recorded"

      the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston, killing between 8 and 12,000 people

    5. Re:Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi

      I just moved out of Houston and I was there for Hurricane Harvey. When it hit Corpus Christie, every weather station from there to Galveston was just blown away. And that was "only" a Category Four.

      I never want to be near a hurricane like that again. It scared the crap out of me. We were supposed to have moved (driving to the California Central Coast) the day before Harvey hit, and it obliterated our schedule. Couldn't leave town until a week later when the water receded enough off the highways that one lane of traffic could get out. Tons of people were still evacuating, because the "controlled" release of water from the reservoirs was flooding neighborhoods that hadn't flooded during the initial 50+ inches of rain. It took us the entire first day of driving just to get out of Houston city limits and all together, after a day of driving, we only got as far as College Station.

      We just arrived in our new place in Cali today. There are wildfires a few hundred miles away, but here where I am, right on the coast, there's no danger of burning. At least that what I'm told. Screw natural disasters. I don't like 'em one bit, no sir. Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Camille by Evtim · · Score: 3, Funny

      Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?

      Sure do. I live in the Netherlands. Why do you think they have coffee shops..

    7. Re:Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Sure do. I live in the Netherlands. Why do you think they have coffee shops..

      I thought that was why you had hashish bars.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    8. Re:Camille by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      I can live with rain for 5 days. Wait until you don't see direct sunlight for 2 months because you're either too far north, or it's always overcast. The kicker is it'll occasionally be clear at night, not that it really helps when night is 20 hours long.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    9. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Enjoy the new digs!

    10. Re:Camille by Muros · · Score: 1

      the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston, killing between 8 and 12,000 people

      That's a rather large margin of error.

    11. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That 300 MPH ... hard to believe, yet I heard ski-managers quote such measured wind-speeds atop PLUTOS PLUNGE outside of Truckee Ca.

    12. Re:Camille by nasch · · Score: 1

      Forget natural disasters, I'm going to where they only have earthquakes and landslides! ;-)

    13. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Three drizzly months W/O sun ? Sounds very like Seattle winter. I lasted one year, then took a paycut & returned to crisp, sunny Ca. Sierras.

    14. Re: Camille by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

      In a very real sense, Andrew's eyewall basically *was* a 15-mile diameter EF-3 stovepipe tornado ringed by hundreds or thousands of transient stronger vortices.

      I grew up in Miami & was told by a friend who lived further south that if you went outside during the eye to look around, you could actually SEE a ring of tornado-like vortices along the approaching eyewall's inner edge.

      This also explains the damage pattern. Areas even a mile beyond the eyewall path had lots of damage, but the area INSIDE the eyewall path was utterly *destroyed*. Driving south on US-1 from UM (Coral Gables) afterwards, you went through about a mile of bad seemingly-random tornado-like damage that suddenly turned into "oh my FUCKING GOD!" - level damage between sw 80th street & sw 88th street (Kendall Drive), and rapidly got even WORSE over the next mile until you got to the point where even concrete walls & roofs collapsed (around sw 104th street, continuing all the way down to Homestead).

      A brief tornado is also the only real explanation for the car that got flipped in the NHC parking lot... neighboring buildings had damage, but nothing like what you'd expect to see from a storm capable of overturning a car (I think Venturi effect was a definite factor). The building actually HAD an underground garage in addition to the surface lot where the car was located, but was prone to flooding even during a bad summer rainstorm. The whole reason why I even *evacuated* for Andrew was because I had a brand new car & lived in a building with a semi-underground garage... everyone just took for granted that it would flood.

    15. Re: Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wooooosh.

    16. Re: Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Wooooosh.

      Oh.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    17. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The water rose another 30cm over the next few hours.

      This was more than 400 km from landfall.

      What kind of faggotry is this?

    18. Re:Camille by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Funny, I spent about 8 months at the Keesler "triangle" back in '77. There were still damaged structures around the area.

      And yes, I have never wanted to return to that shithole.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    19. Re:Camille by dcw3 · · Score: 2

      The highest recorded speeds have been just over 300mph.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    20. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      5 days!? Piffle. Typical number of wet days per week in Scotland.

    21. Re: Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't need a tornado to upturn a car. I remember camping on the Nordkapp in Norway when a Landrover was blown of the cliff. It was a severe storm but nowhere near record breaking wind speeds.

    22. Re: Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the Netherlands a 'coffeeshop' is a place where they sell hashish. You can get a cup of coffee while deciding what you want to buy but drinking coffee is not the reason for going there.

    23. Re:Camille by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Screw natural disasters. I don't like 'em one bit, no sir.

      Why'd you move to California then?

    24. Re:Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Why'd you move to California then?

      Ain't no natural disasters where I live on the Central Coast. The closest thing to a natural disaster here is when the surfing conditions aren't prime.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    25. Re:Camille by JimSadler · · Score: 1

      Maximum sustained means very little when gists or tornadoes inside the hurricane reach 300 mph. Twelve years ago you should have seen the twisted steel I beams looking like a giants soda straw all bent and twisted from a storm that was a class three in Stuart,Fl.. Some places looked like a bombing raid had smacked them head on. Some people were mumbling while standing where there home was now completely absent. And even wind speed is not where it is at. Imagine a Cadillac getting airborne at 200mph and hitting your living room wall at that speed? Sometimes its a nice heavy yacht that lands on your home or penetrates the walls. those wonderful hurricane shutters can act like an umbrella, turn inside out and become an arrow head going through you glass windows.

  2. Local meterologist by OffTheLip · · Score: 1

    Reported, hopefully the storm slams some Caribbean island with mountains to take the edge off before hitting the US. Lovely.

    1. Re:Local meterologist by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Uh, that's not quite the way hurricanes work. They don't "slam into" something and stop. Caribbean islands are small compared to hurricanes!

      They stop when they traverse a region where they are separated from the warm ocean, which is (in essence) their power source.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    2. Re:Local meterologist by OffTheLip · · Score: 2

      Understood. It was the cavalier attitude of let the pain be elsewhere that was striking.

    3. Re:Local meterologist by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 2

      So, Cuba, a large mountainous island in the Caribbean, then.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    4. Re:Local meterologist by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 1

      And Hispaniola, too. Has messed up quite a few storms.

    5. Re:Local meterologist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No Caribbean islands don't stop a hurricane. However they can help weaken it due to the land mass taking away some of the warm water that they feed on, and Caribbean islands are usually mountainous which causes friction to the winds which disturbs their flow and slows things down a bit.

      I can mean the difference between a cat5 and instead a cat 4 or 3 storm coming on shore somewhere in the gulf.

    6. Re:Local meterologist by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

      Are you honestly hoping it slams into your area rather than somewhere else, to spare those other people the pain? That'd be mighty magnanimous. Except for your neighbors, of course.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
  3. Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Two storms of unusual magnitude, exceptional temperatures in parts of CA, but hey, climate change is worldwide con, right?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    1. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The past decade has seen very few major Atlantic hurricanes. We were due for a regression to the mean.

    2. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Last year's hurricane season was unusual. This year is back to normal.

    3. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Informative

      First it was Global Cooling until that fell flat on it's face.

      What fell flat on its face is your knowledge of history. In fact, scientists did not predict cooling: that was only the media.

      However, these are media articles, not scientific studies. A survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total). Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming (Peterson 2008). The large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than 1970s scientists predicting cooling, the opposite is the case.

      Let me suggest that you crawl back under your bridge.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    4. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doctor A: If you don't stop smoking, you'll die within 10 years.
      Doctor B: If you don't stop smoking, you'll die within 5 years.
      Patient: "Sheesh, I knew all the smoking paranoia was hokum... the doctors can't even agree"

      You tell me, how does a scientist describe increased variability in climate changes? Yes, it's still going to rain, it's still going to snow. There will be hurricanes. But long-term trend changes are observable and they are alarming. The highs get higher and severity of events will increase. And even when models are inaccurate, they are consistently inaccurate pointing to the same concern. No, humans can't destroy the earth, but we can make it a pretty damn difficult place for us to live on.

    5. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Weather not climate.

      Oh wait, this is to the benefit of the AGW alarmists so that rule doesn't count. Just like 12 years of no hurricane hits didn't count, it was only weather.

    6. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 0

      Last year's hurricane season was unusual. This year is back to normal.

      Normal is the second most powerful storm on record? You have a strange notion of normal.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    7. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by e_pluribus_funk · · Score: 1

      >Two storms of unusual magnitude

      After 12 uneventful years, clearly global warming now!

    8. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where were you last year with your global warming trumpet when we had no major hurricanes? You have a strange notion of timing.

    9. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know! There have never been bad hurricanes in the past before humans had to come and fuck it all up. There has never been any bigger or stronger hurricane in the history of the earth.

    10. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Climate change... we don't make the storms that fuck you over. We make the storms that fuck you over much worse.

    11. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What aspect of the word "Change" are you having difficulty with?

    12. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to be cautious about such comparisons, but I heard a decent analogy this morning.

      Let's say a bunch of baseball players start taking steroids to boost their performance. Sure, you can't say any individual home run they launch over the wall was "due to steroids", but if the stats by the end of the season had double the number of home runs of previous years you'd probably say "something" had changed. Granted, with insufficient information you could argue about whether it was an "artificial" increase in performance or due to ordinary "natural" hard work and better training, but if you start breaking records frequently rather than rarely after a century of statistics have been accumulated then it means something real is happening.

    13. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Change is constant. What aspect of that are you having difficulty with? I would bet it's a problem with recognizing that the paradox exists and Climate Change doesn't mean anything (literally nonsensical) in context.

    14. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Climate change is a Chinese invention!

    15. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing to do with climate change. Individual storms can vary in intensity and damage significantly. Weather is not an indication of climate change. You should actually read what real scientists write (not fringe deniers, but people who do this for a living) and stop promoting bullshit.

      All you do is fan the flames for the freak show deniers and their funders. Stick to facts not fantasy. Educate people and yourself.

    16. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Wake me up when your understanding of AGW isn't just a series of strawmen.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    17. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The only question you need to ask the pseudoskeptics is "Where do you think all the extra energy is going?"

      That CO2 absorbs solar radiation and traps it in the lower atmosphere is not debatable. These absorption patterns of CO2 have been known since the 19th century. So, increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, increase the amount of energy (heat) being trapped.

      That CO2 interacts with ocean water and alters its pH has been known probably even longer. Increase the amount of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, increase the amount of absorption of CO2 in salt water.

      So we can dicker about which storms are being made more powerful by climate change, we can dicker about whether a colder winter in one part of the world or a warmer winter in another part is caused by climate change, but the fact is that the steady increase in CO2 concentration inevitably, by the physical laws of nature, will increase the amount of energy trapped in the lower atmosphere (increase overall surface temperatures as a mean) and increase the acidity of the oceans. There is no questioning this, unless one wishes to throw out well over a century of physics and chemistry.

      Now, if these folks have some magic heat sink that blasts all that energy off into space, then by all means, point to where it is, otherwise all we're doing in debating with these liars and idiots is dignifying their fraud and stupidity. They are the Creationists of the 21st century; not pseudoscientists, no pseudoskeptics, just plain old morons and liars.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    18. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is irresponsible. I certainly believe humans are causing global warming. However, these storms are not without precedent. Look at 2005, which had Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. We don't have good records of storm intensity decades in the past. Global warming likely will increase tropical cycle activity in the Pacific, but that's less clear in the Atlantic. Sea surface temperatures will increase, but so will vertical wind shear. It's just not clear that Atlantic tropical cyclone activity will increase. By the way, if the large scale conditions were favorable for Harvey, it's logical that they might remain favorable for other storms in the tropics in the near future. The Madden Julian Oscillation can enhance tropical thunderstorms, and the wave moves west to east over a period of weeks. It happens to be in a favorable phase right now over the western Atlantic basin. This is an extreme event, and global warming may make such events more likely. Warming sea surface temperatures will increase the theoretical limit for hurricane intensity, which Irma is very close to in the Atlantic (the limit is higher in the Pacific). It's not nearly so simple as to blame global warming for Harvey and Irma, and it's somewhat irresponsible to do so.

    19. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually it appears the past decade has been pretty normal for the number of major hurricanes. It's just that when they don't hit the Continental United States nobody here pays much attention to them.

    20. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      El Nino and La Nina play a big role in the intensity of storms. That said, you do realize that there were plenty of hurricanes besides the ones that you listed that hit the U.S. mainland. Most just weren't as intense. Although keep in mind internationally there absolutely were other powerful storms.

      Additionally while hurricane speeds are used to determine if it is a Cat5 or not, they are dumping more and more water when they do strike. This is why Texas was so devastated. The gulf is warmer than it has ever been and is continuing to warm. This will feed more and more storms.

      It is also incredibly rare to get two powerful storms in one season, the season isn't over yet either.

    21. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You wouldn't be getting these horrible hurricanes if you hadn't elected Trump.

    22. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      And to lamely reply to myself here are tables that show statistics for Atlantic hurricanes:

      Hurricane season statistics by year.

      And here is a nice bar chart that shows the number of named storms and hurricanes by year since 1851.

    23. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to be cautious about such comparisons, but I heard a decent analogy this morning.

      Let's say a bunch of baseball players start taking steroids to boost their performance. Sure, you can't say any individual home run they launch over the wall was "due to steroids", but if the stats by the end of the season had double the number of home runs of previous years you'd probably say "something" had changed. Granted, with insufficient information you could argue about whether it was an "artificial" increase in performance or due to ordinary "natural" hard work and better training, but if you start breaking records frequently rather than rarely after a century of statistics have been accumulated then it means something real is happening.

      Did you know that there were more high temperature records set across the US during the 1930's than any other decade? According to you, something real happened at that time. Source: http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/07/extreme-global-warming-noaa-confirms-modern-us-warming-not-as-hot-vs-1930s.html

    24. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you credit global warming with preventing hurricanes in the recent years of less-than-expected activity? No? Well, that's called confirmation bias.

    25. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      12 years of no hurricane hits only counts if all you care about is the Continental US. Other places certainly have had hurricane hits.

    26. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Might want to check the weather in the rest of the planet before you spout stupid non-sense. Tell me, why did Thailand flood and more than quadruple the price of hard drives about 5 years ago? If you're going to say its 12 uneventful years you should probably understand that that is complete bullshit.

      Just because a Cat4 or 5 doesn't hit the U.S. doesn't mean there are plenty of severely damaging storms elsewhere.

    27. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And of course our ability to spot and document any and all storms has dramatically increased since the mid 1970s, when satellites became prevalent...

    28. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It remains to be seen if Irma will dump as much rain has Harvey. Harvey dumped more rain than any other storm in history. So while the winds weren't record breaking, the majority of the damage came from the flooding afterwards.

    29. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by jbengt · · Score: 1

      * several years pass without one

      There hasn't been a single year without at least a couple of North Atlantic hurricanes.

    30. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Possibly somewhere where they did have extra hurricanes. Don't worry though. Trump will build a wall to keep global warming, which is a hoax invented by the Chinese, out of the USA.

      Good luck with that in the gulf states.

    31. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by cirby · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, but when the prediction in the late 1990s was "we're going to have several large, Category 4, landfalling hurricanes hit the East Coast each year due to global warming," the relative drought in them for the last decade or so is pretty embarrassing for the people trying to pretend otherwise.

      There isn't an upward trend, overall. If anything, we've been seeing fewer such nasty storms than there were during the first half of the 20th century.

    32. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      one huge hurricane doth not a season make.

    33. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      There hasn't been a single year without at least a couple of North Atlantic hurricanes.

      How many hurricanes every "single year" drop 50+ inches of rain?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    34. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read any science much?

      The earth is not a perfect black body and does not require a special heat sink to dissipate the trivia amount of extra heat that -might- be absorbed by the tiny increase in co2 we've seen.

      When a volcano erupts do you think the planet permanently heats up?

      When I burn gasoline in my car that produces heat. Does the planet permanently heat by that much?

      Do you seriously believe no heat naturally escapes to that really cold place our planet floats in called "outer space"?

      Stop spewing perfect physics black body nonsense. This isn't first semester physics class.

    35. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most if they park on top of you. It's just that they usually keep moving.

    36. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Actually the first weather satellites went up in the early 1960s but with the increase in naval traffic starting in the 1940s with WW II I doubt we missed much since then.

    37. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Uneventful in the USA?
      You know the world id actually a little bit bigger?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    38. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Oh, and I forgot to mention: biggest atlantic storm ever recorded: winter 2015/2016.
      Did not make landfall though, so except for nautic enthusiasts it made no news.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    39. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Where do you think all the extra energy is going ?"

      Extra energy ? You dumbwit. Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme.

      There cannot be extra energy, unless the sun would suddenly brighten.

    40. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dywolf · · Score: 1

      The difference between weather and climate is one of scale. Either in area or time. Hurricanes and their affects are sufficiently large enough and long lasting enough to count as both weather AND climate.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    41. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Where do you think all the extra energy is going?"

      To even begin to answer your question they would need an understanding of the First law of thermodynamics.

      This is way, WAY above the grade of most people who are climate change deniers. Asking your question is mostly pointless (which is pretty sad!) because it will have no influence on most people you ask.

    42. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're going to pray it away.

      Like they pray away the gay, or pray away the poor, or pray away appendicitis. You cannot reason with unreasonable people.

      AC

    43. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me suggest a simple expreiment for you. Get a large tank, half full of water, with inlet and exit valves both allowing through the same volume of water per second. Close the outlet valve and observe the result.

    44. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where were you last year with your global warming trumpet when we had no major hurricanes? You have a strange notion of timing.

      He was trumpeting over some other bad weather somewhere else. He only pauses to empty out the spit.

    45. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Mab_Mass · · Score: 1

      the relative drought in them for the last decade or so is pretty embarrassing for the people trying to pretend otherwise.

      What drought of hurricanes? Seems like we've had plenty. Yes, there has not been the huge uptick of category 4 storms, but casting this as a "drought" is disingenuous at best.

      Climate is complex. Nobody disputes that. The trouble is that when best-guess efforts turn out to be wrong, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to leap to the conclusion that all of climate science and measures of climate change must be wrong.

    46. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Ah, caught you. You call the amount of extra heat being trapped "trivial". It most certainly is not. The whole point of increasing CO2 causing trapping of energy is that it is fucking trapped, it doesn't dissipate quickly at all.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    47. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Huh? That doesn't even make sense. The point isn't that the sun is producing more energy, the point is that increasing CO2 PPM in the atmosphere a significant amount means more of that radiation is absorbed and trapped in the lower atmosphere.

      I suppose this goes under the pseudoscience category "I have no idea about thermodynamics and physics, but I need to respond, because by responding, somehow I've disproven the theory."

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    48. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      they are dumping more and more water when they do strike. This is why Texas was so devastated.

      Please stop with the either uninformed or misleading bullshit. Texas was so devastated because the storm got stalled. A high pressure area blocked what would have been a normal progression north and then northeast. We have seen multiple storms in the past that followed the same pattern, with comparable results. Texas was not "so devastated". Houston was. And, that is a very important point to remember. Houston got what would have been spread across the entire state under more normal circumstances.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    49. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Most of them. They just don't usually do it in one place.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    50. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      It means there was an even stronger one in the recent past. And there were 5 others that were not that far off. I'd say her notion was spot on.

      Besides, this is not necessarily the second most powerful on record. Power is not just measured by highest sustained wind speed. How large is the hurricane? What is the pressure drop?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    51. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Oh! I get it now. It was just the media lying then.
      So, who is it blowing the climate warming hysteria at us now?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    52. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Going from 190K to 190.7k is, in fact, trivial.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    53. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      And recognizing the insignificance of the minor change you're relying upon but believed by many to have been manipulated, 0.7C, is less than 0.5% change in the system entropy is lost on the cultist.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    54. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      What does that chart look like if for modern times, you take out all those that would only be visible via satellite? Because before that, only the chance of a ship spotting one in the far ocean told us about those out of sight of land... ...or over lightly populated land... did anyone pay attention when Lydia passed over southern Baja last week? It was WAY bigger than Harvey.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    55. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      Not sure what your point is, but you are aware there were several category 5 storms in 2005, right, not just Katrina? Also, there hasn't been a year without a hurricane since like WWI. They're not "new normal" they're just "normal." But the intensity of storms is expected to worsen as global sea temperatures rise.

    56. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Just look at the chart and ignore everything before the mid-1960s which is when the first weather satellites went up.

      I disagree that Lidia was bigger than Harvey. Maybe it was bigger in size but certainly not as strong. Lidia's winds only peaked at 65 mph, less than hurricane/tropical cyclone strength.

    57. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Alternatively, it's the end of the world coming, and God will smite the people who don't believe just as they do. No worries.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    58. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dywolf · · Score: 1

      false.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    59. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Duh. First, the US is not the globe. Second, high local temperatures in the 1930s makes it harder to break records.

      When you start measuring something, the first measurement is a record. The second is either a record high or a record low. Assuming no systemic change in the something, records get fewer and fewer. After ten measurements, a record high is higher than ten other measurements, which will happen sometimes. After a hundred, the record high has to be higher than a hundred other measurements, and that's going to be a lot rarer.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    60. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Which conclusion was that? Was it from a scientist or a journalist or politician? What was the degree of confidence?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    61. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Katrina was a cat 3 at landfall in the gulf.

    62. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dywolf · · Score: 1

      not when youre talking about across the average across an entire fucking planet it's not, you fucking moron.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    63. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 1

      Your article compares media observations in 1974 and 1975 with studies between 1965 and 1979. Why 1979, you ask? Why not 1975, to show the comparison between contemporaneous media articles and studies?

      Oh, that's right -- because the cited Peterson paper shows that the vast majority of the warming studies were published between 1976 and 1979. So the supposed divergence between the studies and media happened after the media articles were published.

      You can't make this stuff up, folks.

    64. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      1975? You meant the year that there were 7 studies predicting warming and zero predicting cooling. Or perhaps 1974 (3 warming, 1 cooling).

      If you look at the cumulative lines, you can see that there is no time that the cumulative number of studies predicting warming is anything other than significantly larger than the cumulative number of studies predicting cooling.

      I fail to see the point you are trying to make, unless it is to highlight your own stupidity.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    65. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 1

      If the numbers are so convincing without the significantly backloaded series of warming studies published after the media articles to which he was comparing them, Peterson could have made the same point without appearing disingenuous.

      He didn't.

      Presumably because the paper wouldn't have sounded nearly as one-sided and convincing had he done so.

      Which is the epitome of the problem in the business of climate "science."

    66. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      You appear to be pushing a strawman that the media reports that falsely predicted cooling were only published in 1974 and 1975.

      Did it ever occur to you that articles in these years were highlighted merely because they were published in the middle of the 1970s? Nowhere does the article (or the study that it was based on) limit the incorrect media reports to those two years. Instead, those merely represent examples, not the entirety of the media reports.

      You are wrong and grasping at straws to try to distract from your own failings. Let me suggest that you follow the first rule of holes.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    67. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 1

      You are wrong and grasping at straws

      You're projecting. The source you haughtily cited contains such a fundamental logical flaw that I'm comfortable you could readily see it and cheerfully explain it to the rest of us if it was on a different topic.

      As it stands, you're making yourself look ridiculous by repeatedly trying to rewrite your source to say things it doesn't say, and then crow that the way you rewrote it doesn't fall prey to the logical flaw I pointed out.

      I'm sure it's embarrassing to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, but you're not making it any better by going to such contortions trying to fix it.

    68. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Ah, the last refuge of someone who knows they have lost the argument: claim that there is a flaw in the argument or source information, but fail to detail what it actually is.

      You lost. Stop digging, and crawl back under your bridge.

      Welcome to my "foes" list: you don't have anything useful to add to any discussions.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    69. Re: Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would rather see an engineering project to conquer the climate. Move an iceberg to the atlantic or something like that to reduce the possibility of a hurricane starting.

    70. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      And yet NOAA says that it's premature to make any claims about hurricane increases in numbers/intensity. Google it.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    71. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      The trouble is that when best-guess efforts turn out to be wrong, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to leap to the conclusion that all of climate science and measures of climate change must be wrong.

      I don't disagree, but let's not pretend that when a storm like Harvey pops up, there isn't a knee-jerk reaction in the other direction.

      Here's NOAA's statement on the topic...

      It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    72. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Most of them don't stay stationary picking up additional energy/water from the Gulf due to other pressure centers, which has zip to do with climate change.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    73. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by Mab_Mass · · Score: 1

      I don't disagree, but let's not pretend that when a storm like Harvey pops up, there isn't a knee-jerk reaction in the other direction.

      Agreed. Ignorance and jerking knees knows no political bounds.

      Here's NOAA's statement on the topic...

      Is this a pre- or post- Trump statement? I ask since one of his early actions was to scrub government websites that talked about climate change. In other words, given the political atmosphere, I no longer trust gov't sites to reflect actual scientific views.

    74. Re:Two storms of unusual magnitude .... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      It's current...revised 30 Aug. 2017

      https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/glob...

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
  4. Don't sweat it. This is just a phase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nuclear winter is coming soon.

    1. Re:Don't sweat it. This is just a phase by Grog6 · · Score: 0

      Assface Runnynose in North Korea HAS to know he gets ONE shot.

      Then (at least one) Trident Sub converts most of NK to plasma.

      Yeah, everyone will be pissed; but they'll be really, really happy it wasn't them.

      It's all good, right? :)

      Note: I hope Trump doesn't read /.

      --
      Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
  5. Gas prices will go up! by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Gas prices will go up!

  6. So, it's either Global Warming At War With Humans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or God. Or democrats versus republicans. Or good versus evil, a/k/a GvE! Which will win out? Stay tuned!

  7. Winter is coming by SuperKendall · · Score: 0, Troll

    We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...

    I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Winter is coming by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.

      I think that the prediction is actually for fewer storms, but greater magnitude.....
      C. Model simulations of greenhouse warming influence on Atlantic hurricanes ....
      Our regional model projects that Atlantic hurricane and tropical storms are substantially reduced in number, for the average 21st century climate change projected by current models, but have higher rainfall rates, particularly near the storm center."

      I guess you will also have an explanation for the fact that there is less ice in the Arctic?

      Summary: climate change denier detected.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why must anyone who calls out your fallacies be a denier?
      I accept the science, but you're doing this wrong.

    3. Re:Winter is coming by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Weather may not be climate, but the statistical behavior of weather certainly is.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Winter is coming by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter

      That would be a valid argument if "cold snaps" were becoming statistically more likely or more severe. They are not. Instead we have a million square miles of open water where we used to have ice pack.

      But hurricanes are becoming more intense. Ocean surface temperatures have risen 0.7C, which has lead to about a 10% rise in max wind speed.

    5. Re:Winter is coming by swillden · · Score: 1

      We'll all remember your insistence that weather is climate the first extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...

      Individual, localized events are weather. Widespread patterns of events are climate. It's really not hard. And we have a pattern of increases in severe storms. This storm by itself is not evidence, but the larger pattern it fits into is.

      Also, note that you should expect global warming to produce extreme cold weather in some locations, where "extreme" is compared to local historical records. Global warming is going to significantly alter weather patterns, and that will result in some areas getting colder, others getting hotter, some getting wetter, others getting drier, etc. Heck, some areas will probably get both hotter and colder.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's the funny thing about climate change deniers: every winter storm is a sign that climate change is false too. It's a general problem with these kind of arguments.

      It's a statistical trend. It *is* too much to attribute individual storms to climate change, and models suggest the number of storms might even decline while the intensity and rainfall amounts per storm go up. Nevertheless, it's not a positive thing, especially when you add a little higher sea level over a period of decades and more population to be affected by a given storm.

    7. Re:Winter is coming by swillden · · Score: 1

      That would be a valid argument if "cold snaps" were becoming statistically more likely or more severe.

      Not really. Global warming will rearrange climate patterns, so we should expect that some regions will begin to have more severe winters, with longer and more severe cold snaps, etc. even as the global average increases.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    8. Re:Winter is coming by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Who is doing that? We have the entire history of recorded meteorology to draw upon; it's quite easy to identify a single storm as a statistical outlier.

      Generally any data point more than 1.5 IQRs above the third quartile is an outlier, and should be a rare bird. Of course you do on occasion run into a rare bird, but if you start seeing them on a regular basis that means either you are having implausibly strange luck or something underlying has changed.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    9. Re:Winter is coming by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 2

      I guess you will also have an explanation for the fact that there is less ice in the Arctic?

      Well, it is an interglacial......

      Even if there was no such thing as climate science slow warming would be a safe bet.

    10. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure, ignore the sudden increase in the rate of climate change over the past 100 years.

      You're a fucking idiot...

    11. Re:Winter is coming by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Human industrial activity within the past 300 years, especially with the most significant of it happening only within the past 100 years, is not responsible for the ice sheets retreating. This most recent cycle of retreating glaciation has been going on for over 10,000 years now, and started well before humans were engaging in any sort of notable industrial activity.

      The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.

    12. Re:Winter is coming by deviated_prevert · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We'll all remember your instance that weather is climate the furst extreme cold snap that occurs this winter, which by your logic utterly disproves global warming...

      I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.

      Part of the reason why the hurricanes were absent was because of an unusual prolonged el Nino in the Pacific. The duration and severity of the typhoons in the Eastern Pacific during the el Nino years were also effected. But because typhoons do not directly effect North Americans by and large they are ignored. Now the situation is doing a wild swing in the other direction. Now we see the jet stream taking a long sweep to the north all summer pumping moisture eastward like a vacuum cleaner gone mad. All indications of radical changes in the earths climate. These changes are like the mood swings in bipolar individuals that are becoming suicidal.

      The upside of the damage that is being done is that it might just shut down a fair portion of the biggest polluters and make gasoline and oil refining too expense to maintain thereby effectively reducing North American oil consumption. Houston and the gulf coast was a dumb place to put the majority of North America's key oil refining infrastructure the same as putting the Fukushima nuclear facility near the ocean in an earth quake hot spot was not exactly the best idea it was just the cheapest place to build because of the easy water and a handy heavy lift port access.

      We are in for a very rough ride, this is just the beginning of hurricane season and a sustained change in corresponding ocean temperature patterns. My bet is that the majority of US centric ignorant Americans do not even know about the very recent North Pacific Blob and how radical changes in the ocean temp there are strongly effecting much more than just global weather patterns in ways never seen in history.

      Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival. 45 degrees C over more than a few days is downright dangerous and the pattern of extreme summer drought on the West Coast will be followed with flooding in winter. Unfortunately we have brought this situation on ourselves and it will take huge human die off to effectively wake people up. Ocean temp change are contributing to the loss of a huge portion of the ocean's fisheries which is almost exclusively from our activities. The rapid loss of cheap protein from ocean sources will be the first phase of a planetary human die off. Be prepared for Friskies kitty vitals at 10 dollars a can boys! MEOW

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    13. Re:Winter is coming by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      I was going to mod you up, but then I found out my mod points expired last night. Anyway, good point.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    14. Re:Winter is coming by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      The accepted science until last week, apparently, was that global warming creates more wind sheer which reduced the magnitude of hurricanes.

      But how convenient that a new study came out just as Hurricane Harvey, a storm that will prove to be the most expensive in U.S. history, was petering out. Hurricanes are back on the global warming bandwagon at such a convenient moment.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    15. Re:Winter is coming by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      None of your rant is actually relevant. The problem wasn't "weather pumping anything all summer. it was the fact that we got an oddball hurricane that decided to linger a bit. If not for this peculiar bit of movement it would have been much less interesting and damaging.

      Your narrative doesn't explain what happened.

      > Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival.

      You mean the desert? It's always been like that. Just ask anyone that's ever lived in Nevada, Arizona, or southern Utah. This is the sort of hysterical silliness that makes "deniers" out of people.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://xkcd.com/1732/

    17. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We have the entire history of recorded meteorology to draw upon

      So about 150 years of observations out of 4 billion years of Earth's existence. That's actually much worse than a sample of size 1.

    18. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People are still digging up Mammoth tusks and Dinosaur fossils in the arctic. Weather changes. Get used to it.

    19. Re:Winter is coming by deviated_prevert · · Score: 1, Interesting

      None of your rant is actually relevant. The problem wasn't "weather pumping anything all summer. it was the fact that we got an oddball hurricane that decided to linger a bit. If not for this peculiar bit of movement it would have been much less interesting and damaging.

      Your narrative doesn't explain what happened.

      > Right now large areas of Southern California are experiencing temps that are marginal for human survival.

      You mean the desert? It's always been like that. Just ask anyone that's ever lived in Nevada, Arizona, or southern Utah. This is the sort of hysterical silliness that makes "deniers" out of people.

      I doubt if Eastern North Americans know anything about what is currently happening in the West. The areas of the west that are experiencing record breaking temperatures and drought are far greater than the news media in the east is reporting. The heat wave in British Columbia is breaking all records for lack of rainfall and the areas of California reaching over 110f are not the areas you have stated!

      To state that hurricanes in the Atlantic have nothing to do with the shifting climate cycles of the Pacific and the corresponding unusual and prolonged northern track of the jet stream is just plain wrong. A normal el Nino year would by now see a moderate cooling of the waters of the Atlantic where hurricanes start to form. Instead because the jet stream is staying way to the north cooler air is not making it to the areas of the Atlantic that are carried south and east by the trade winds. If this situation continues to the end of September then the Atlantic could easily spawn serious hurricanes into November instead of just the usual tropical depressions that send fall and winter rains to the east coast of North America. I suggest you go work for Ronald Frump, who knows he might need some help rebuilding his golf courses in Florida soon if Irma hits land there at cat 5 ;-) My apologies to Ronald Frump. Also my sincere apologies to the real Republican Ronald Frump in Florida who has a very unfortunate name but would most likely make a better POTUS than the current moron.

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    20. Re:Winter is coming by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      So whats the word when someone is claiming statistical significance from a sample size of one?

      Why do so many of the same people who don't believe in climate change believe that illegal immigrants commit felonies at a greater rate than American citizens?

      Aren't they on the side of science and reason?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    21. Re:Winter is coming by whoever57 · · Score: 2
      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    22. Re:Winter is coming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Thing is, BC and Alberta need those dryer conditions as well as the forest fires. Flood and drought cycles are also cyclical in those regions. So do many northern states, it's one of the few things that actually kill the problems they're having with pine beetle infestations. The trees that the beetles kill as well, are basically kindling to boot and nobody really wants to use it for anything. It's too expensive for the pulp industry to double bleach, even then it doesn't get the "blue" fecal colouring out of the wood pulp. The integrity of the wood is compromised so it's useless for building materials, so it can be used for houses. It's either cut down and sold as firewood(inter-state only) because of the beetles, or left to dead rot.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    23. Re:Winter is coming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      San Francisco is is classed in either desert, mild desert, or semi-arid climate depending on which classification scale you want. So yeah, the desert. A few scales classify it as "arid-mediterranean."

      The only reason it looks so pretty and green is because of all the water used to make it look like that.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    24. Re:Winter is coming by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      'ER', excuse me but no record cold snaps, there were record snow falls. How here is how that works, once it is cold enough to freeze water it is cold enough, the critical point how much water in the atmosphere to freeze. So whether it is -10 C or -8 C because it is 2 degrees warmer will not affect snow falls, how much water there is in the atmosphere after evaporating over warmer oceans, will. So during the last round of bullshit, this was covered, yes, expect much worse snow storms, they'll be a little warmer but they will have much more water 'er' snow to dump on your cities. This is all your are doing https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and it is actually happening, actually really happening, you have become https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lotu....

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    25. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why must deniers always get their accusations wrong?

    26. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People die. So get used to it and throw those laws into the ocean. 'cos it can't be murders doing the killing when people died long before murderers were invented...

    27. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess to you it's just an "inconvenient truth" how long it's been since we've even had any serious hurticanes hit the US.

      I think that the prediction is actually for fewer storms, but greater magnitude.....
      C. Model simulations of greenhouse warming influence on Atlantic hurricanes ....

      It's about time we got some science into this conversation. All that reached the public was the promise that there would be no fewer than five hurricanes each stronger and more economically damaging than Katrina in 2006, along with a lot of yelling and screaming and calling people idiots for having the slightest skepticism that climate models were good enough that such precise predictions could be made. Then 2006 was not as bad as was predicted and neither was 2007 or 2008...

      Meanwhile, every loudly announced "warmest year on record" was quietly adjusted to be cooler than 1998 which anyone could see on the annual graphs where the last year's "warmest year on record" had been moved below the temperatures of the 1990s. A lot of people now refuse to believe anything about global warming because they think it is all bullshit.

    28. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But how convenient that a new study came out just as Hurricane Harvey, a storm that will prove to be the most expensive in U.S. history, was petering out. Hurricanes are back on the global warming bandwagon at such a convenient moment.

      It's just the "study" researchers gaming the system for more grant money.

    29. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would be a valid argument if "cold snaps" were becoming statistically more likely or more severe.

      Not really. Global warming will rearrange climate patterns, so we should expect that some regions will begin to have more severe winters, with longer and more severe cold snaps, etc. even as the global average increases.

      I just love the hysteresis built into climate alarm-ism. After a bit of unpleasant weather here and there, you pick up more useful idiots for the AGW bandwagon.

    30. Re:Winter is coming by russotto · · Score: 1

      The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.

      Well thank Man for staving off the ice age!

    31. Re:Winter is coming by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Whether it is desert or not isn't really relevant to the issue of all-time record high temperatures.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    32. Re:Winter is coming by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      We've probably overshot on that by quite a bit.

    33. Re:Winter is coming by keefus_a · · Score: 1

      I thought the debate was regarding temperatures and you're using "desert" to argue/justify your point, but desert has nothing to do with temperature. It's based on precipitation.

    34. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like 12 years without a hurricane when the AGW community said we would see them many per year and they would only increase? Gee, maybe someone should look at El Nino years of the past and see if there is a link between that and the occurrence of hurricanes?? But why do that? Wouldn't want science to muddy the waters of the alter of AGW

    35. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Appeal to hypocrisy

    36. Re:Winter is coming by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      believe that illegal immigrants commit felonies

      Illegal. Felony.
      Really. You can't make this shit up.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    37. Re:Winter is coming by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Wind energy increases at the square of the speed. 10% is vague, but lets call it from 165mph to 185mph leading to a 25.7% increase in energy. Average of ocean water is around 17C, or 190K. Going from 190K to 190.7k, for an energy increase of 0.3%. Three tenths of a change in the input, will result in a nearly 30% increase in the output? Outstanding claims require outstanding explanations.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    38. Re:Winter is coming by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Illegal. Felony.

      It is not a felony to be undocumented in the United States. It's not even a misdemeanor. It's a civil infraction, like parking in a no-parking zone. It doesn't even meet the strict definition of "crime".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    39. Re:Winter is coming by rthille · · Score: 1

      https://www.nasa.gov/audience/...

      TLDR: Antarctica is a desert.

      --
      Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
    40. Re:Winter is coming by dywolf · · Score: 1

      So I guess then you cant count?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    41. Re:Winter is coming by dywolf · · Score: 2

      before posting again, i suggest learning the definitions of the words you use.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    42. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Found the pedantic one.

      Crossing the border illegally can land you in prision, so try again.

      Title 8, Section 1325 of the U.S. Code

    43. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hey look. more mashiki bullshit.

    44. Re:Winter is coming by dywolf · · Score: 1

      Once again you prove you have no clue what youre talking about.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    45. Re:Winter is coming by GingaFlash · · Score: 1

      To state that hurricanes in the Atlantic have nothing to do with the shifting climate cycles of the Pacific and the corresponding unusual and prolonged northern track of the jet stream is just plain wrong. A normal el Nino year would by now see a moderate cooling of the waters of the Atlantic where hurricanes start to form. Instead because the jet stream is staying way to the north cooler air is not making it to the areas of the Atlantic that are carried south and east by the trade winds. If this situation continues to the end of September then the Atlantic could easily spawn serious hurricanes into November instead of just the usual tropical depressions that send fall and winter rains to the east coast of North America..

      The position of the PFJ (I assume you are referring the polar front jet, there is more than one ;]) right now is quite consistent with normal weather patterns as it typically remains more zonal and poleward during the summer months. The reason why the PFJ moves poleward during this time of year is because of increased heating at the equator which, simply put, expands the atmosphere and pushes everything North/South, depending on your hemisphere. Its actually dipping fairly far south right now into the US then shooting poleward through the NE into the Atlantic along the Bermuda-Azores high. That high is also the reason Irma is hitting the Caribbean and not NY, although it could still turn north depending on the position of the high as she gets closer. https://earth.nullschool.net/ is a good resource if you want to see for your self.

      August and September are historically the peak of TC development as its driven more by the warm waters of the North equatorial current (receiving increased heating from the sun during this time) than the jet so its what is happening right now is not uncommon at all.

      As someone who works in the meteorology field I don't disagree that AGW is and will continue to change our weather but it isn't quite so drastic as you make it seem.

    46. Re: Winter is coming by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Crossing the border illegally can land you in prision, so try again.

      Title 8, Section 1325 of the U.S. Code

      Not a felony, though. I was responding to someone claiming it was a felony. Words have meaning.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    47. Re: Winter is coming by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Crossing the border illegally can land you in prision, so try again.

      More undocumented aliens overstay their visas rather than sneak across the border illegally. So, "crossing the border illegally" is a red herring when talking about undocumented. So, it's not pedantic to say that it is not a felony to be undocumented in the US.

      Also, since the topic was felonies, you should know that the percentage of undocumented people who have committed felonies is approximately HALF of the percentage of the total population who have committed felonies. You read that right.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    48. Re:Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're dealing with temperatures and thermal masses. They naturally have hysteresis built in to them. You've certainly busted the AGW conspiracy wide the fuck open.....or not. Whatever.

    49. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, there are a zillion studies with conflicting predictions, and only ones with convenient results for the moment are presented as the consensus. Before Harvey, no one could explain the drought, but all of a sudden, we now find this one paper that is touted as some ground truth predictor. If anything, the modeling is awful beyond belief. Should we dial back greenhouse gases just in case? Sure, why not? Do we have to pay Al Gore to be able to do it? Hell no.

    50. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want space travel? Necessity is the mother of all invention...

    51. Re:Winter is coming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      So death valley being a desert has no issue with all-time record high temperatures? Who knew. If you've been to either place, it's pretty easy to figure out why there's also extreme temperature swings.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    52. Re:Winter is coming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Once again, you add nothing of value. I'm still waiting replies to other posts by you that you ran away from, feel free, create a new thread to them.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    53. Re: Winter is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those 'Ã lot of people' who doubt Global warming are 0,000001% of all scientists and 0% of all climatologists. 2014 was hotter than 1998 and the hottest year ever on record. 2015 broke that record. 2016 broke the record of 2015. And while surface and atmosphere warming may have had a temporary pause between 1998 and 2013 heat was stored in the deep oceans where temperatures kept and keep rising.
      Only some blind fools or idiot politicians (anyone say Trump?) keep denying man-made Global warming of the planet.

    54. Re:Winter is coming by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Um, NOAA also says this, so let's not jump to conclusions just because it fits our agenda or preconceived notions:

      It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    55. Re: Winter is coming by suutar · · Score: 1

      you honestly think 1 event out of 4 billion years is better than 150 years of events out of 4 billion years?

  8. Re:Fake news by GLMDesigns · · Score: 0

    One of the problems is the very phrase "climate change." First "Global Warming". then that proved to be a PR disaster. Now "Climate Change."

    And yes - adding billions of tons of sequestered carbon is NOT a F**KING good idea. But crowing "Climate Change"; spewing predictions; then being quiet when the predictions fail to come true and then crow again ... is a losing strategy.

    --
    If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
    Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
  9. Speed Estimated Differently and Often Inflated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From my understanding, hurricane wind speeds near ground level are estimated from aerial observations. Furthermore, the calculation used to extrapolate such wind speed was changed about 20 or so years ago. The newer estimation method may be inflating near-ground wind speeds. It's interesting to note often ground-based hurricane wind measurements will fall far short. There have been articles written about it.

    Point is it's fierce hurricane, but likely not quite as bad as being reported.

    1. Re: Speed Estimated Differently and Often Inflated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wind speeds are estimated with satellite images, radar data, buoys, aircraft observations, and dropsondes. Not all of these are always available, so forecasters use whatever data is available to estimate the intensity. These estimates are more reliable close to land where more instruments are available. Dropsondes do measure wind speeds below flight level. They're like weather balloons, but are dropped out of aircraft. And no, land based observations don't measure up with the maximum sustained winds for a hurricane. Friction from the land surface slows down the winds, so the strongest winds are actually over the water. Also, the strongest winds often occur over pretty small areas that may not be sampled by observations. There are often smaller vortices within the eyewall, called mesovortices, which can locally enhance the winds. After Hurricane Andrew, Dr. Ted Fujita (known for tornado research) did a damage survey in South Florida. He found F3 damage, which is estimated as 158-206 mph on the old Fujita Scale. Andrew's winds were estimated at 165 mph at landfall. It actually matches up pretty well with the damage survey. There just aren't a lot of instruments along the coast that can withstand the winds of a major hurricane. The chances of one of those instruments being in just the right place to record those winds really isn't that high. Finally, the wind speeds are a result of factors like the pressure gradient and friction. It's definitely possible to do the math and determine what the wind speeds should be.

  10. 185 mph by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds. The problem is a lot of these islands are mostly third world shitholes with shoddily built buildings that are going to get blown into kindling. This could wind up being the single most deadly disaster directly attributable to AGW that we have seen yet.

    1. Re:185 mph by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds.

      Sure, if the winds were responsible for the majority of damage and lives lost. But they're not, so it is just as bad as it sounds.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    2. Re:185 mph by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds.

      Plenty bad enough. The eye of Irma is currently 40 km across, which means when the eye sweeps over some place a zone 40+ km is getting hit with the maximum wind speed. I don't want to meet up with any ~50 km wide tornado.

      But people get fixated on the wind speeds. Throw in a 3-4 m storm surge and torrential rain, all at the same time...

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    3. Re:185 mph by grcumb · · Score: 1

      Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds.

      No, this is like a tornado 100 miles in diameter, moving at a walking pace.

      You're right to note that the winds actually aren't the biggest danger. That prize goes to the ocean surge. Water is a little denser than air, so it tends to require less movement to do a lot more damage. But don't discount what winds like that can do.

      Here's one projection, showing Irma impacting south Florida pretty hard. Luckily for the USA, in this model it drags itself along the length of Cuba, which impedes its wind speeds significantly. But I can tell you from experience that sustained winds in excess of 60 knots are not to be trifled with. They'll knock down a lot of walls, trees, power lines and the like, as well as breaking a shitload of windows. The storm surge looks to be pretty heavy for Miami, too, so even if the winds don't knock it about, that doesn't mean it's scot free.

      I've been through a Category 5 cyclone with similar winds. Let me assure you, it's not a pleasant experience. We lost eight out of eleven state of the art cyclone shutters around the house before it let up.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    4. Re:185 mph by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not an expert, but I thought tornados were classified more by the amount of damage done and the wind speeds were estimated from there. I live in the upper midwest and grew up in farm country. I've seen two fairly massive tornados from a distance that were mainly in fields and didn't cause much damage (other than to crops) and I think they were both rated F0, even though they left a path as wide as a football field. I've also seen one smaller one in the late 90s that was much less intimidating from a distance but it hit the edge of a town and was classified F2.

  11. Re:Fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

  12. Do we really know this? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

    How long have we been measuring winds in storms that are still this far out? Would we have known if a storm was this strong at its current location 50 years ago?

    1. Re:Do we really know this? by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      Do we really know this?

      Yes.

      How long have we been measuring winds in storms that are still this far out?

      About 70 years.

      Would we have known if a storm was this strong at its current location 50 years ago?

      Yes.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    2. Re:Do we really know this? by hey! · · Score: 1

      The first TIROS satellite was launched in 1960, although it failed shortly thereafter. We've had continuous photographic satellite coverage of Atlantic hurricanes since TIROS-3 in 1961.

      So we've had a geographically comprehensive, detailed, reliable record of hurricane winds speeds for the past 56 years.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Do we really know this? by Nethead · · Score: 1

      [snark] Too bad it's 56 years of fake science, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? [/snark]

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    4. Re:Do we really know this? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

      If wind speeds could be fully and accurately determined by satellite, the hurricane hunters wouldn't be bothering to measure them. Doppler radar can measure wind speeds, but I don't know how long that has been deployed extensively and whether there is a land based station that can reach out to the distances from land at which this storm was just measured. I just spent a few hours looking at historical data and see that even Andrew in 1992 had to be reclassified years later because the data collected at the time was too sporadic to show it to be a Category 5. The GPS drop-sondes that give us the ability to get many data points at many levels without actually flying through them are relatively knew and have greatly enhanced our measurement abilities - even to the point of being credited with a 20% improvement in predictions.

      My point is that the number and quality of measurements has been increasing over the years and even today we are far from having continuous measurement, especially when the storm is out of range of doplar radar. Between 1900 and 1966 it is believed that an average of two storms a season were completely missed. I just read through the historical accounts of storms in the early 70s and it is striking how many references there are to measurements being made by islands and ships they happened to pass over and how few measurements were actually attributed to hunter flights. I can't find a clear record of how many hunter flights there have been per storm and how far from landfall they were bothering to make them, but I have to conclude from what I did read that it is easily possible that storms have grown to 185 mph winds or higher while still completely out to sea and dropped back down without us having known it. This one may have done so.

      To say that something is as high as has ever been measured may be as much of a tribute to the increase in measurement technology as to the storm.

    5. Re:Do we really know this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How long have we been measuring winds in storms that are still this far out? Would we have known if a storm was this strong at its current location 50 years ago?

      The US Air Force has been flying planes into such storms since 1944.

    6. Re:Do we really know this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True. That is when they started. Sporadically. Until full-time satellite coverage to tell the hunters where to go became available in the 60s, whole storms were missed entirely. The frequency of flights has dramatically increased over the years. There was a lot of room between measurements for storms to grow to category 5 and descend back to something much less before hitting land (assuming they even did) in the earlier years. The quantity and quality of the measurements has dramatically increased. And yet there is still room today for storms to have surges between measurements that we miss when they are still far out to sea. We don't exactly have flights every hour and not every portion of the eyewall is sampled in every flight.

    7. Re:Do we really know this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I find it fascinating the little residual puddle of climate deniers who lurk on Slashdot. These are otherwise technically skilled and intelligent people who have a kind of contrarian belief about climate change and will go to any length to defend it.

    8. Re:Do we really know this? by hey! · · Score: 1

      Sure they can *accurately* be measured by remote sensing. They just can't be measured as *precisely*.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    9. Re:Do we really know this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How to survive *climate change*:

      1) Move inland

      2) Build a strong house

      12 years ago I sat under Wilma for 48 hours. The Americans are a bunch of crybabies!

    10. Re:Do we really know this? by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Are you saying they could get an accurate windspeed measurement using their airspeed indicators and triangulating ADF stations?

      There is no way an airplane flying through a storm could get an accurate reading of the windspeeds.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  13. Chuckle...Harvey was a cat 4 by p4nther2004 · · Score: 1

    So...it wasn't that bad right?

    Hell, Irma is only a cat above it.

    1. Re:Chuckle...Harvey was a cat 4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you sure? I think they are referring to the hurricanes called Harvey and Irma, not the cats.

    2. Re:Chuckle...Harvey was a cat 4 by hey! · · Score: 1

      Harvey lost speed very quickly after making landfall. The problem is it also dumped all that moisture it picked up from the warm Gulf waters.

      Hurricanes may be defined by their wind speeds, but wind speed is only one of the ways they can kill you. There's rainfall and storm surge, too.

      Hurricane Sandy had the lowest central pressure of any hurricane ever to make landfall north of North Carolina. It had a massive extent and came with huge storm swells that were guaranteed to coincide with local high tide.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  14. irma is a racist name by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    she is Irmese not an "irma"

  15. Time to Conserve Nice Weather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At what point will southern conservatives decide that intensified storms by climate change SUCKS, and do something about it?

    1. Re:Time to Conserve Nice Weather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      I voted for HER, but the storms still came. OMG WTF the storms are Nazis SMH. If we get rid of the first and second amendments we will have no more hurricanes. Thank you for showing us the error of our ways.

    2. Re:Time to Conserve Nice Weather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Southern conservatives know that hurricanes have always been a part of living in that region.

      Many of these people have roots going back hundreds of years. Their ancestors arrived in the 1700s, if not earlier. Some of them are descended from Native Americans who were in the region even earlier than that. Generation after generation have passed along stories and records of severe hurricanes in the region.

      These people know that severe hurricanes were happening frequently long before the Industrial Revolution. They know that human activity is not having an impact on hurricanes.

      These people also know enough to get out of the way of hurricanes. They seek shelter away from areas that could be heavily damaged. They don't stick around to loot basketball shoes and televisions.

  16. Both storms were usual in magnitude by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative
    Quoting the wiki page on Atlantic hurricane seasons:

    On average, 10.1 named storms occur each season, with an average of 5.9 becoming hurricanes and 2.5 becoming major hurricanes (Category 3 or greater).

    So far this season, we've had 9 named storms, 4 of which have become hurricanes, 2 major hurricanes. While we've still got 3 more months, but the end of September is the end of the peak, with a few storms in October, and almost none in November. Predictions at the start of the season were for about 14 named storms, 6-7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes. So we're on track for a really boring, average year in terms of Atlantic hurricanes.

    The only reason both storms seem unusual is because until Harvey, the U.S. hadn't been hit by a major hurricane since 2005. Contrary to the doom and gloom scenario painted by climate change alarmists after Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, who warned us that 2005 was going to become the new norm for Atlantic hurricanes. Sometimes outliers are nothing more than outliers.

    1. Re:Both storms were usual in magnitude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So which is it? Are Harvey and Irma outliers and definitely not the new norm for Atlantic hurricanes, or are we on track for a really boring, average year?

    2. Re:Both storms were usual in magnitude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both. Average means anywhere from a few to several storms that can be relatively small or really big. In other words, there is no "average" year - just an average of extremes.

    3. Re:Both storms were usual in magnitude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So during the entire Obama administration we didn't have a single major hurricane, and during the first year of the trump administration we have 2, both aiming for red states...

      Remember this when the crazy evangelical right says that god is sending hurricanes because of the gays.
      (Which could be a fair assessment only if all that hot man on man action is happening in a way that is heating up the Atlantic ocean... in which case the solution isn't to get rid of the gays, but to provide lube free of charge so as to reduce the friction and thus the heat caused by the gay orgy that must be taking place somewhere off the coast.)

  17. Not a con, a religion by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1, Troll

    Two storms of unusual magnitude, exceptional temperatures in parts of CA, but hey, climate change is worldwide con, right?

    Not a con, closer to a religion.

    Scientists who want to speak out are threatened in various ways, the arguments are made by insult and bullying, some (read: some) of the methods are sketchy, and some of the data has been manipulated.

    I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science. I had been blinded by everyone saying things like "the science is settled" and "all scientists agree" and so on. It was an epiphany to discover that something I held as "obviously correct" was based on, effectively, nothing.

    Well, the science is not settled, the "all scientists agree" is taken out of context and doesn't refer to what you think it does, the data has been manipulated, and most importantly critique and debate are not allowed.

    The whole issue also conflates the political decisions with the science. Anyone who disagrees with the political policy, such as carbon credits or reducing US birth rate, is called stupid for not believing in science.

    Interpretation by a chosen elite, evidence in either direction supports the conclusion, disbelievers are harassed and threatened, discussion and disagreement are not allowed... that sounds like a religion.

    Climate change is a religion.

    1. Re:Not a con, a religion by whoever57 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science.

      No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science.

      No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.

      You call him a liar and use ad hominem as evidence which clearly indicates something about yourself.

    3. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I personally attend conferences where climate change is debated, there is no squashing of debate that I have observed. In addition, there is a large number of independent measurements and data that are generally painting the same picture. Theorizing that it has all been manipulated for political gain is not to be taken seriously; if a political actor, even with colluding scientists, could do that it would be the mother of all hoodwinks, bigger than a fake moon landing, closer to our President is a robot and about the same as US govt collusion with alien life forms conspiracies. The orchestration of manipulations would be truly impressive.

      Do not mistake continued scientific debate on climate observations for lack of consensus, there is quite good consensus among those that study the climate that it's changing. Roll back 100 years, or even now, and I'm sure scientists can be found that assert the Earth is flat, but in reality "all scientists agree", by consensus, the Earth is an oblate spheroid, aka round-ish. General consensus is as good as it will get in science.

      You assert that the issue has traversed from science to politics and your reference is brietbart.com, one of the most political and myopic outlets of psuedo-information? Hilarious irony, 2 points.

    4. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact you read Breitbart means we can dismiss anything you say as lunatic crap

    5. Re:Not a con, a religion by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Okay, mate, where is the extra energy that physical laws make inevitable going? Unless you're prepared to deny everything physicists and chemists have known about carbon dioxide since the 19th century, it's up to you explain how increased CO2 concentrations inevitably lead to more energy (heat) being trapped in the lower atmosphere. Go ahead, explain where it is.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    6. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I personally attend conferences where climate change is debated, there is no squashing of debate that I have observed. In addition, there is a large number of independent measurements and data that are generally painting the same picture. Theorizing that it has all been manipulated for political gain is not to be taken seriously; if a political actor, even with colluding scientists, could do that it would be the mother of all hoodwinks, bigger than a fake moon landing, closer to our President is a robot and about the same as US govt collusion with alien life forms conspiracies. The orchestration of manipulations would be truly impressive.

      Not really. How many climate scientists have access to this data, who funds them and who will challenge their data "corrections"? Read about climategate I and II.

      Do not mistake continued scientific debate on climate observations for lack of consensus, there is quite good consensus among those that study the climate that it's changing. Roll back 100 years, or even now, and I'm sure scientists can be found that assert the Earth is flat, but in reality "all scientists agree", by consensus, the Earth is an oblate spheroid, aka round-ish. General consensus is as good as it will get in science.

      Lots of blabber until you finally hit upon your obvious failure. Science is not about consensus at all.

      You assert that the issue has traversed from science to politics and your reference is brietbart.com, one of the most political and myopic outlets of psuedo-information? Hilarious irony, 2 points.

      The issue has traversed from science to politics. Do you consider Al Gore a scientist or a politician? Are you really unaware of the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Climate Accord, carbon taxes and government subsidized renewable energy?

      It is amazing that you would chime in on a subject that you are obviously so ignorant of.

    7. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Well, the science is not settled [breitbart.com], the "all scientists agree" is taken out of context and doesn't refer to what you think it does, the data has been manipulated, and most importantly critique and debate are not allowed.

      Critique and debate are certainly allowed. But you have to bring real science and empirical evidence to the debate which few climate science deniers are willing to do.

      If climate science is a religion then it's an awesome one because it has actual evidence to back it up.

    8. Re:Not a con, a religion by philmarcracken · · Score: 1

      The debate centers on the predictions of what might happen due to anthropomorphic climate change. Not the settled conclusions based on what has already been measured, and where it came from.

      But feel free to do your own global measurements on CO2 PPM and temperature over time, will specifics on the last 200 years of human industrialization. We as the supreme leaders in our climate change cult eagerly await your results.

    9. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Not really. How many climate scientists have access to this data, who funds them and who will challenge their data "corrections"?

      Most climate data is available online if you care to take the time to look for it and there are papers available that describe the methodology used to correct the data. If you think they are wrong you are free to write a paper that contradicts them.

      "Climategate" was much ado about nothing.

    10. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most climate data is available online if you care to take the time to look for it and there are papers available that describe the methodology used to correct the data. If you think they are wrong you are free to write a paper that contradicts them.

      "Climategate" was much ado about nothing.

      I am not a climatologist, but this link regarding past climate seems to indicate that you are an alarmist.

      http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/07/extreme-global-warming-noaa-confirms-modern-us-warming-not-as-hot-vs-1930s.html

    11. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Critique and debate are certainly allowed. But you have to bring real science and empirical evidence to the debate which few climate science deniers are willing to do.

      If climate science is a religion then it's an awesome one because it has actual evidence to back it up.

      There are large volumes of real science out there that shows how unremarkable this period of AGW(or however you refer to this cult) is. You just have to look for it since it isn't going to be reported by CNN, MSNBC or any other left leaning source of news. I can direct you to a few sources:

      http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/07/extreme-global-warming-noaa-confirms-modern-us-warming-not-as-hot-vs-1930s.html
      https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-who-got-it-right-predicts-20-more-years-global
      http://www.climatedepot.com/

    12. Re: Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No problem. As I corrected you in this same topic earlier, the earth is not a perfect black body. Go see my other reply to your black body first semester physics nonsense for details. You're not very smart so I'm sorry if you don't understand where the heat goes.

      Hint: the earth is surrounded by this thing called "outer space".

    13. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      The information in that link is confined to the Continental US, only 3% of the surface area of the Earth. You need to broaden your horizons.

    14. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well you can look at Canada. You know where recorded weather starts at around 1977, and many climate researchers decided to throw out old city collected data. Don't forget that the AUS meteorological service was caught this year faking data, so was the British MET.

    15. Re:Not a con, a religion by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      All government funded data regarding climate research is world wide free to download.
      AFAIK, even North Korea signed the contract.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    16. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      So I have looked at your c3headlines link and cnsnews link.

      The c3headlines link is only about the Continental US which is about 3% of the surface of the Earth, a very small part of the whole picture.

      the cnsnews link is a story from 2014 about Don Easterbrook predicting 20 more years of cooling*. I guess the cooling hasn't started yet because 2014, 2015 and 2016 consecutively set new global temperature records. 2017 will not be as warm as 2016 because the El Nino of 2015/2016 ended but it has a good chance of being the 2nd warmest on record. If he wants to say it's cooling then temperatures will have to drop back to at least what they were during during the 2000s. That hasn't happened yet and doesn't appear likely to me.

      *He said the cooling started 17 years before which I guess means 1998 but while the rate of warming slowed some during that period it didn't actually cool in any statistically significant way.

      I checked out climatedepot a few times when it first went online but all I found there was a lot of unsupported BS so I won't bother giving them any clicks now.

    17. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you could provide some links to your accusations. I heard about the Australian accusation and looked into it and it was BS.

    18. Re: Not a con, a religion by Muros · · Score: 1

      No problem. As I corrected you in this same topic earlier, the earth is not a perfect black body. Go see my other reply to your black body first semester physics nonsense for details. You're not very smart so I'm sorry if you don't understand where the heat goes.

      Hint: the earth is surrounded by this thing called "outer space".

      Perhaps you could explain to us your understanding of the subject in more detail.

    19. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are large volumes of real science out there that shows how unremarkable this period of AGW(or however you refer to this cult) is. You just have to look for it since it isn't going to be reported by CNN, MSNBC or any other left leaning source of news

      And there is your fundamental problem. You view climate science as being wrong because it has been politicised in your country and you have adopted your party's stated position. In most of the world, the science is not politicised.

    20. Re:Not a con, a religion by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      And what happened to the NASA archivist that blew the whistle on the climatologist throwing out the ocean temperature data collected by bouys in preference for the data collected by cargo ship intake readings (which tend to be higher and less accurate)?

      I'm still wondering why ANY data would be thrown out, considering how cheap storage currently is.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    21. Re:Not a con, a religion by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      They didn't throw anything out. All the raw data is still available. They merely adjusted the buoy data to match it up with the ship intake readings which makes it easier to compare to other studies of sea surface temperatures which came out before the buoy data became available in the mid-2000s.

    22. Re:Not a con, a religion by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It really doesn't matter what the exact temperature is. It matters how it is changing. To measure global warming, we need consistent readings more than accurate ones. Adjusting buoy data to mimic ship data makes the readings a little less accurate, but much more comparable.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    23. Re:Not a con, a religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your post history puts the lie to your claims

  18. Wait! We don't know everything? by es330td · · Score: 0

    Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear.

    Maybe because people think they understand weather and climate better than they actually do?

  19. Related links by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The related links section at the bottom of the page listed "Donald Trump Wins US Presidency".

    Perhaps Slashdot's servers are on to something: giant sucking windbags, massive economic damages, and constant media attention. I understand how it could mistake the resemblement.

    1. Re:Related links by Xenographic · · Score: 1

      Actually it's been stuck there for weeks now. No, I have no idea why Slashdot thinks it's related.

      I've been noticing it for a long time now because I submitted that story. Granted, they didn't actually accept my submission, they instead wrote a new story out of my submission and credited me for some reason.

    2. Re:Related links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just another disaster devastating the United States...

    3. Re:Related links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Weeks? It's been stuck there literally since last November. Maybe Slashdot will finally give it a rest after it's been there a full year.

    4. Re:Related links by Xenographic · · Score: 1

      You're right, actually. I've just lost my sense of time. I can't believe it's almost been a full year now.

  20. Why worry about global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why worry about global warming when we're about to have a nuclear winter with North Korea?

    1. Re:Why worry about global warming by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Just how many nukes do you think NK has, and why would you think the US would even need to use nukes if it came to attacking NK? The US's conventional weapons are more than adequate to knock down pretty much every major structure in NK.

      I'd say the people who need to worry are the South Koreans and Japanese.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Why worry about global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nukes are more efficient than a massive drawn-out deployment. Ever see a nuclear air to air missile? They existed in 1957 and pack one helluva punch. That's the kind of weapon that could be delivered at Mach 2.5 or faster from a fighter jet. They'd be gone by the time you heard the sonic boom. These are smaller than the ones dropped on Japan and much more focused, so it won't flatten entire cities. There's still the problem of fallout unless they've miniaturized the hydrogen bomb.

    3. Re:Why worry about global warming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      I'd say the people who need to worry are the South Koreans and Japanese.

      You mean because the vast majority of the semiconductor industry is based in both countries? Or the number of companies that directly operate out of those regions for trans-pacific and trans-atlantic shipping? Yeah, that won't impact your life at all.

      Let's not even go nuclear. Let's say China puts the pressure on N.Korea, and N.Korea responds by directly shelling S.Korea in retaliation or starts firing medium range missiles at S.Kore and Japan. Wanna guess what happens? The entire semiconductor industry and 60% of shipping comes to a screeching halt overnight. Yep, you can thank previous presidents for kicking this can down the road and China who are either unable, or unwilling to do anything. I think it's more of a case they're unable at this point, which of course means that economic sanctions on banks and a trade war will be the most likely case. It'll still be nasty, but not nearly as nasty as say having to evacuate Seoul or having to see Japan push their entire military into "active self-defense."

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re:Why worry about global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could we not suffer some significant 'nuclear winter' (as the OP called it) if NK were to detonate, say 2-3 nukes somewhere on the Korean peninsular or surrounding area? It doesn't need the US to use nukes to have a nuclear war.

    5. Re:Why worry about global warming by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      I doubt it. The whole "nuclear winter" scenario was based on the US and the Soviets launching a significant fraction of their nuclear arsenals. NK doesn't have more than a handful of devices, and I don't think the yields are that high. I would imagine at worst it would be similar to the cooler temperatures caused when the Iraqis lit the oil wells in Kuwait during their retreat in the First Gulf War. It might have some impact, but hardly the "nuclear winter" of dozens of megaton devices blowing up in Eurasia and North America.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  21. Re:Confessions of a Public Defender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You missed the part about the 300 year holocaust which stripped Africans of their humanity and forced them into chattel slavery so that your ancestors could profit upon their freely provided labor (whether or not your ancestors actually owned enslaved persons is immaterial, you benefit from the system that they created to this day).

    You missed the part about the fact that once these enslaved individuals were manumitted, they had to try to convince you for the next hundred years that they were human beings. That they have fought voluntarily in every single American "white man's" war to try and convince you that they too are Americans speaks volumes.

    You missed the part about the fact that many of the policies and regulations that people like you create today are designed to marginalize and economically castrate these very people. The Italians and Jews of the 30's and 40's had the exact same criminal tendencies. But you gave them the civil service jobs and the police department jobs so they could stop the inner city violence. They got an economic hand up. These blacks could graduate high school and earn a living wage with their own two hands before you took the trade programs out of the schools. How else are they supposed to make a living? Oh, right, selling crack cocaine in the 80's and 90's and we know how that turned out.

    You missed the part about the fact that these very people rarely feel part of American society, often don't give a rat's ass about society and have nothing to loose because of the generations of psycho-social-economic destruction and racially-tinted warfare that they and their ancestors have been subjected to.

    Pick up a book and try not to act so ignorant of the reality that you do very well understand, but refuse to come to terms with. The fact that you are posting this damn near thesis sized post demonstrates your interest in maintaining the current status quo.

  22. Not always by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

    I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science.

    No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.

    Yeah, but before about a year ago I *didn't*.

    Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.

    Then I check the MSM, to find out why it's Trump's fault.

    If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.

    Instead of, you know, insults.

    1. Re:Not always by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.

      Instead of, you know, insults.

      Except that you don't believe in science, batting it away as being manipulated. Or maybe you only do that it Brietbart says so? Your trolling needs practice. If you're not trolling and you actually go to Breitbart for truth, your truly lost and, uh, hey would you be interested in buying some of the best de-ionized, dooms day-ready, bottled water?

    2. Re:Not always by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Instead of, you know, insults.

      So you consider being called a Breitbart reader an insult? You said it, not me.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re:Not always by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.

      Yeah, but before about a year ago I *didn't*.
      Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.
      [...]
      If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.

      You can't use logic or science with people who think that anything that's happened in the past year justifies going to Breitbart to "find out what's going on", as opposed to disqualifying it as a potential source of useful information. They have already proven that they are not interested in such things.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re: Not always by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You intended it as such obviously. Stop trying to be clever. You're not.

    5. Re:Not always by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.

      By "what's going on", I assume you mean, "brown people and feminists are trying to kill me", "jews are devils and you know they're bad because their names are always surrounded by emojis of globes" and, "Nazis aren't really bad, it's the people who are against Nazis who are bad".

      http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

      https://www.democraticundergro...

      http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

      [Note: the original Breitbart typography to denote jews was the triple-parentheses, as in, "(((Jared Kushner)))". The switch to globe emojis is one of their more recent innovations. I assume that they'll eventually just go straight to using yellow stars.]

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Not always by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead of, you know, insults.

      So you consider being called a Breitbart reader an insult? You said it, not me.

      You used his reading of Breitbart as an attempt to discredit him and he perceived your intent.

    7. Re:Not always by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You fully implied it as an insult (Breitbart reader /= science believer) and you know that you did. Now you're just wriggling like a worm on a hook.

    8. Re:Not always by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Instead of, you know, insults.

      So you consider being called a Breitbart reader an insult? You said it, not me.

      I'd consider it an insult, sure, unless you're just curious what the fringe end of the alt-right believes. But it's one of the websites with the most obvious hard-political slants; I'd just it about as much as Alex Jones, The Onion, or a total parody site.

    9. Re:Not always by dywolf · · Score: 1

      going to brietbart first is like putting your head up your ass to see if the sun is shining.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  23. How exciting... by hAckz0r · · Score: 1

    Great, by the looks of it, Irma and I are both scheduled to land in FL at about the same time. Something tells me this isn't going to be as great of a vacation as I my wife had anticipated. Well, at least it won't be boring.

  24. Squeeze that data to fit that model!! by SuperKendall · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I see that link was JUST published (Aug 30 2017). Because after all, what we have seen this year is larger than average storms...

    So of course your death cult needs a new story to back up it's belief system, by making predictions around things that have already happened.

    However mankind had developed this thing called Google, and it shows the duplicity of your fellow cult members in stark relief to your assertions.

    No matter that the link you just provided will be proven utterly false over the next five years, you'll just publish some new lies for the masses to consume.

    There are MANY people who claimed Global Warming meant more frequent hurricanes, before we had a major lull in recent years...

    That's because none of you seem to even understand physics, much less climate, or you would understand global warming means neither more frequent nor any change to the average size of hurricanes.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Squeeze that data to fit that model!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see that link was JUST published (Aug 30 2017). Because after all, what we have seen this year is larger than average storms.

      That's the date last revised. It's been there for longer than that.

    2. Re: Squeeze that data to fit that model!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Adding heat adds energy to systems. That's the fundamental physics.

  25. Re:Chuckle...Harvey was a cat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Psssh. Cat 5? That's nothing. I have a Cat 6 Ethernet cable. Beat that, mother nature.

  26. Fixed link by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, here is a link to the many, many people who claimed Global Warming would cause more hurricanes.

    It's also funny how the GFDL used to claim global warming would neither make hurricanes more frequent nor more powerful...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Let's use the entire quote from your link, shall we?

      "The present-generation global climate models at GFDL simulate weak versions of both tropical storms and El Nino. These simulated phenomena do not appear to become either more frequent or significantly more intense in the present global models. *However, it will be important to use higher resolution models with more realistic simulations of these phenomena to more reliably assess this issue. At GFDL, work is underway to develop higher resolution global coupled models for El Nino/climate change simulations.*"

      They were simulating weaker storms because they didn't have the ability to do so for stronger storms at the time. They specifically said this. Now they have the ability to forecast stronger storms, and these new predictions are that the storms will be less frequent and of greater intensity.

      Unless you believe that all of these scientists aren't actually modeling or calculating anything, but just sitting around a room sipping coffee and agreeing about what to predict, which is what your premise appears to be. That isn't how real science works. It's not a "doomsday cult" when you use the best information you have available and that information continues to predict increasingly dire outcomes as we put better information into it.

      Of course arguing this is pointless, because humanity doesn't have their shit together enough to do anything about it anyway.

    2. Re:Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      whats the God Fucking Damn Left have to do with this?

    3. Re:Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I know that nobody is going to see this, but it should still be pointed out..

      Your "link" is just a web serach. Looking at the actual articles linked, and going beyond the news outlet articles that talk about it to the actual papers, they do indeed say the same thing. In fact, it looks like the news outlets are using technically correct wording, but it's misleading, something like: "There will be more, powerful storms" as in "There will be a larger number of powerful storms" not that there will be an increase in storms overall.

      Adding to this, the actual NOAA explicitly states this :

      https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

      Our regional model projects that Atlantic hurricane and tropical storms are substantially reduced in number, for the average 21st century climate change projected by current models, but have higher rainfall rates, particularly near the storm center. The average intensity of the storms that do occur increases by a few percent (Figure 6), in general agreement with previous studies using other relatively high resolution models, as well as with hurricane

      You can even check that this hasn't recently changed by using the wayback machine:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20120204071418/https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

      Frankly, I've learned to be highly skeptical when I see Superkendall posts. They're usually those types of posts that seem correct at first glance, but turn out to be a little disingenuous with a little research.

    4. Re:Fixed link by nedlohs · · Score: 2

      Knowing the limitations of your computations is a sign have some idea what you are doing (though it's not a certainty of course). It's the people who don't understand the limits that tend to now know what they are doing.

    5. Re:Fixed link by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Like predicting how much more energetic a storm will be by increasing the energy by less than 0.2%?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    6. Re: Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "better information"

      I was not aware that information had degrees of goodness. Makes me wonder if those deniers might be onto something.

    7. Re: Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I sat in lecture after lecture in 2005 and early 2006 with climate researchers claiming more hurricanes with greater intensity. I worked on the super computers running the models. Post Katrina, people wanted some explanation and someone to blame, somehow this doomsday prophecy came out of that where there was no way out. The more bold the prediction, the more TV airtime some obscure professor was given. Claiming an increase was statistically unfounded then and is now based on individual samples. An outlier event over the past 15 to 20 years is not representative of the population. I don't deny anything, but I do demand scientific honesty and good statistical practices when making bold claims.

  27. Re:Chuckle...Harvey was a cat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have TWO Cat 6 cables, so I can have Cat 12 connectivity!

  28. excluding Trump of course as by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He never stops exuding wind over that sind of the Atlantic.

  29. Difficult to forecast Irma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a really difficult forecast for a number of reasons.

    Most major hurricanes don't just gradually intensify to a category 3 or 4, let alone well into category 5. They undergo periods of rapid intensification, due to bursts of thunderstorms in the core of the storm with lots of hot towers developing. Harvey did this before making landfall in Texas. Irma has done this twice. However, forecasting when this will happen is generally beyond the current limits of meteorology. The Ships statistical model only called for a gradual intensification of Irma. Some of the dynamical models like the GFS, HWRF, and HMON did predict rapid intensification. However, they have been predicting that it was imminent for days, without actually happening. It's obvious when rapid intensification is occurring because the hot towers show up in infrared satellite imagery. But there's very little skill in predicting rapid intensification before it starts. It's related somewhat to ocean heat content, but it doesn't explain when there's high ocean heat content but rapid intensification doesn't occur. Most major hurricanes do undergo rapid intensification at some point, and it's very hard to predict.

    It's very likely that Irma will take a hard right turn in a few days and move north. There is very good agreement among the models that this will occur. However, it's not clear exactly when this will happen. If it happens sooner, Irma could miss Florida entirely and move toward the Carolinas. This isn't especially likely, but it's possible. It could turn north a bit later and move across the Florida Keys into South Florida. There are also model solutions that bring Irma into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This last situation also isn't especially likely, but is definitely possible. This doesn't include true outlier model forecasts, such as missing the United States entirely. Irma will also get close to Cuba, and moving over mountainous land for an extended period of time could wake Irma substantially. It just isn't clear yet whether this will happen or not. Hurricanes are steered by winds in the upper atmosphere around areas of high pressure (ridges) and low pressure (troughs). There are currently special upper air observations being taken every six hours in the central United States to help with forecasting Irma. There's an upper level trough over its area, that will interact with a ridge to the east, which has an impact on steering Irma. It's not clear whether these extra observations are helping with the forecasting of Irma, but it's definitely possible. Maybe these types of special observations well over a thousand miles from a storm have been taken before, but I don't recall seeing it. It's a very interesting idea for sure, to try to help improve forecasting of the storm's track in the 3-7 day time frame. Even though we know Irma will very likely take a hard turn to the north, relatively small differences in where this occurs will have a big difference on the impacts to the United States. And this is not at all unusual in hurricane forecasting.

    Despite running tens of different computer models every six hours, it's really hard to predict where the storm is going to go. And yet the track forecasting has improved quite a bit over the past couple of decades, definitely outpacing intensity forecasts.

    1. Re:Difficult to forecast Irma by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 0

      Finally, a post worth reading--and it comes from an AC!

  30. Re:Fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What are you talking about? What "PR disaster"? This isn't about marketing. "Global warming" is an oversimplification, because some localized areas may become cooler, have changes in precipitation rather than temperature, etc. It's more complicated than expecting every spot on the Earth to experience an increase in temperature. Climate change is a better term because it more accurately describes what is predicted.

    Nobody expects predictions of a system so complicated to be perfect, and the predictions have always been stated to be a range: worst case, best case, and somewhere in the middle. It's like the current predictions for hurricane Irma: there's a cone for the expected path, some a little more north, some a little more south, but the overall trend is west (for now), until it is expected to turn northwards. That it's going to dissipate tomorrow, or suddenly turn east and come ashore in Africa instead of North America is not in the cards. That's far outside the model parameters. Likewise nobody expects the Earth's climate to change into that of Venus in a couple of decades. You can't expect exact predictions of rates, but the overall trend is obvious and is legitimate cause for concern even if there is a decent chance it won't be as bad as the worst case.

    What failures are you referring to? That when someone casually says something like "As soon as [year]", and it doesn't happen by then, that it is a failure? If so, then you did not understand the phrase "as soon as".

  31. meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a depression to the west and a Tropical Storm Jose just to the south east of IRMA. Jose is forming into another hurricane, which is likely going to help Irma strength.

  32. If you hadn't started here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    we might have spotted that.

  33. Re:Fake news by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Anthropogenic global warming is still a useful term. Much of the climate change we are seeing is a result of global warming. The term "climate change" just encompasses all of the effects that include things besides warming.

  34. Re: Confessions of a Public Defender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Around blacks, never relax!

  35. Irma Gerd by GrBear · · Score: 4, Funny

    After Texas, Florida be like.. Hold my beer!

  36. Erase Miami by JimSadler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hurricanes seem to come in two types. There are storms in which wind is the problem and storms in which rain is the real enemy and the winds quite tolerable. What happened to Houston was a wet storm that will cause massive property damage and very few deaths. Katrina was a wind storm that force the damns and levies to fail causing huge numbers of deaths. Irma is a wind storm and more so it is hell on a stick. If that storm strikes Miami I would expect almost all homes and buildings to be leveled. Winds of 185 mph. with gusts at 225 mph are sever enough to pretty much erase a city from the face of the Earth. there are about two million people in Miami. Evacuation is impossible. I am 110 miles north of Miami and a potential victim of this storm. God help Houston if this storm happens to strike them. Now I see on the radar that there are two more hurricanes trailing Irma. Now every right winger should shout at once "There is no global warming." That way when they open their pie hole I can shove a brick down their throats.

    1. Re:Erase Miami by ghoul · · Score: 1

      Yeah well sensible people who live in Hurricane country build using Concrete not wood and they build on Stilts. Bemuda is right in the middle of the Atlantic but they dont panic when they see a hurricane coming

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
    2. Re:Erase Miami by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 2

      1. Last time I checked, Biloxi was still there. Even after the storm (Antebellum houses still exist there). 2. Those trailing storms are likely to stay out at sea. 3. The global warming folks used to say AGW would shred hurricanes....until that didn't fit the narrative. 4. The last time serious hurricanes (not Nor'Easters (sp) hit US coast was 2005--And predictions of storm numbers have been mostly higher than actual storms since. 5. Grow up.

    3. Re:Erase Miami by Reziac · · Score: 1

      The reason there was so much destruction whenever a hurricane hit Florida up through the 1960s and 70s is because housing developments were built using staples instead of nails. When wind is moving a structure, staples pull out a lot easier than do nails. Of course most of those structures are long gone, and using staples in construction has since been outlawed.

      As to flattening a city... northern Colorado's east slope regularly gets winds of 160mph, and that's not enough to take out a well-built house, let alone a commercial building.

      We've had a dearth of hurricanes over the past 15 years -- far fewer than normal. So when we get a few bad ones, now all of a sudden it's the end of the world. Wait til you see how bad they get when the Earth cools down a bit more, even just to where it was in the 1960s, and there's enough temperature differential to drive *really* big weather.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  37. Re:Confessions of a Public Defender by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 0

    And how do they compare to their (and my) relatives that are still over in Africa? You know one may actually become president one day...

  38. Re:Confessions of a Public Defender by jedidiah · · Score: 0

    My ancestors? No, my ancestors suffered economic harm from those who could use free labor as a cheat. You're the one that needs to crack open a book. Your view of history sounds as sophisticated as a comic book from a pack of bubble gum.

    The people that surround you in the hood are far more relevant then "how the man is trying to keep you down". Thug culture will ensure that any attempt to "be white" is discouraged. That includes ANY kind of academics including the vocational stuff.

    This is why immigrants (illegal and otherwise) end up doing the those kinds of vo-tech jobs.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  39. wrong year is listed for Hurricane Gilbert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hurricane Gilbert was 1988, not 1998.

    1. Re:wrong year is listed for Hurricane Gilbert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The 1998 hurricane was Georges. I remember that one because I rode out the storm in base housing at Eglin AFB, FL.

      -=-=-

    2. Re:wrong year is listed for Hurricane Gilbert by 6Yankee · · Score: 1

      Yep.

      I was there, sheltering in our apartment as far away from the windows as we could get. While the telco had the sense to take down their giant dish in a hurry (and managed to put it back up again afterward in an equally big hurry), the management of our apartment complex went up to the roof and tightened all the bolts on their dishes. All were trashed; one of them made a lovely noise when it broke loose, flew clean across the complex, and took out five floors' worth of windows on its way to earth...

      Didn't get power back for ten days, and we were lucky. By knowing people who know people, we somehow managed to get into one of the hotels for a hot meal. A stranded British Airways crew who'd been staying there were mucking in and doing what they could to keep the place running. Good times!

      Still can't eat corned beef...

  40. Bad but not as bad is a Haiyan by erice · · Score: 1

    Basically a really large EF4 tornado, however these speeds are only found in the eyewall so it's not as bad as it sounds. The problem is a lot of these islands are mostly third world shitholes with shoddily built buildings that are going to get blown into kindling. This could wind up being the single most deadly disaster directly attributable to AGW that we have seen yet.

    I dunno. Super Typhoon Haiyan killed 6300 in the Philippines alone and had sustained winds of 195mph. That's a pretty hard act to follow.

  41. Ok, time to MAN UP... by wisebabo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are you willing to go on the PERMANENT record (thanks to the never forgetting Internet) so that people you care about (friends, spouses, children, grandchildren) know that you:

    Denied the overwhelming scientific consensus on Climate Change?
    Thought Obamacare was a disaster?
    Refused to believe in Evolution? (This is my particular interest, I am a genetic engineer. Now that we can see Evolution happening right down to the molecular level, disputing it is laughable. Not to mention "Nothing in Biology makes sense without it").

    Or for that matter:
    Think the Federal Government was planning to take over Texas in 2015 (The "Jade" something or other exercise)?
    Believe that there is a Pizza parlor in Washington D.C. that was a front for Democratic pedophiles?
    Think that because Trump criticized Clinton on Goldman Sachs he wouldn't end up in their pocket?

    I could go on but you get the picture. How many times do you have to be proven WRONG and been a victim of FAKE NEWS before you learn some critical thinking? Not only are you hurting the republic by voting for idiots (Bush) or frauds (Trump) but you are really hurting yourselves by believing that these leaders will help you (the working class) instead of just making them and their super rich friends richer, and by making stupid decisions like buying waterfront property in places like Texas and Florida.

    Anyway, if thinking won't get you to reflect on your positions; maybe shame will. How about you tell the ones you care about the social media accounts like slashdot where you post things? Assuming you at least have the balls to not post Anonymously, tell them your username. Let them see what you really think. (I have, in fact I'm proud to show them).

    Of course if Climate Change really is a hoax, and the Republicans come up with a much better replacement to Obamacare and God LITERALLY created the animals in one go (and forever fixed their attributes), then your friends and children and grandchildren will see you as the genius you are!

    1. Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... by coofercat · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, until I see a double-blind study on climate change, I'm not going to believe it either. If it's real science they should be able to do proper tests to prove it. Otherwise, the only possible explanation that makes any sense is that it's bullshit - even the scientists can't agree, so it must all be make-believe.

      I'lll quite happily live in the upstairs of my house because the floods are 5 feet deep, I know there'll be no power or water, but hey, I've got some gas canisters and I've filled up the bath tub with fresh water. I won't be able to get anywhere because I'm too lazy to row my boat and I won't be able to get any fuel for the outboard. I'll happily watch thousands of my less-'manned-up' neighbours become displaced and subsequently destitute, because I'm still waiting on that double-blind study before I'll take any sort of action at all.

      As Richard Attenborough said on the subject "[whether it's true or not] that's sort of not the point".

    2. Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you willing to go on the PERMANENT record (thanks to the never forgetting Internet) so that people you care about (friends, spouses, children, grandchildren) know that you:

      Thought Obamacare was a disaster?

      I'll bite. Fuck you. Obamacare is not the universal single-payer heathcare system you seem to be imagining. I thought it was great when it started since my family was denied coverage due to a child's existing condition and we could finally get insured.

      You want to know what happened next? Prices went up 25% every year, to the point of being forced to pay more for heath insurance than housing, (mind you, not actual heath care - just the insurance premium), and at gunpoint no less. You see, Timmy, when you put a massive tax on not having it, and since not paying your taxes gets you in jail, the effect is essentially attaching this new thing to something else that does in fact get extracted from you at gunpoint.

      Obamacare bankrupted my family and didn't do a damn thing to improve the health care we had already been paying for previously out of pocket. It just isn't what you seem to think it is. Fuck that shitty system.

    3. Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am a climate change denier. I deny that taxes and transfers of wealth and power will make any difference in the climate.

    4. Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... by fatwilbur · · Score: 1

      What a ridiculous list, who exactly are you trying to group together and identify as the 'enemy' here? I don't think people who object to Obamacare are in any way on the same plane of critical thinking as someone who denies evolution. I don't think Obamacare was all that bad but I would give an opponent in a debate on it more respect than assuming they denied evolution as well. Non sequitur.

      Bringing up the "overwhelming scientific consensus" on climate change, within the context of this article, is also extremely disingenuous. It's already been noted that this storm season isn't anything special in terms of frequency and magnitude of storms, and there hasn't been a major hurricane make landfall in the US in 12 years (yes, way back in 2005).

      Your second list if just stupid. I never heard of the first one, only idiots believed in the second, and I could make a much better argument than you any day that Trump doesn't give a shit about Goldman Sach's views if they contradict his. Check your critical thinking skills.

    5. Re:Ok, time to MAN UP... by wisebabo · · Score: 1

      I don't know what level of critical thinking goes into people's objections to Obamacare versus how much they deny Evolution (maybe none). All I'm saying is that there's a very clear correlation (not causation) between people (some conservatives) who for the last seven years have been trying to repeal Obamacare (because, and let me call a spade a spade here, they're RACIST) and those who don't believe in Evolution. (Now that they actually have the opportunity to overturn it, they realize that without the black man behind it, it's not so bad.)

      http://bigthink.com/neurobonke...

      Of course what this article brings up is that these "beliefs", and yes they are beliefs because they are not coming from facts (hence the flip-flop on Obamacare) are based on IDENTITY POLITICS. So the same person who believes that Obama was a muslim, wasn't born in the U.S., is part of a worldwide Jihad, etc. is likely to not believe in Evolution, Climate Change or that Obamacare was a carefully thought out negotiated plan with over 100 public hearings (and still far from perfect but short of completely changing the entire "free-market" medical industry, the best they could do). Of course, beliefs (like religion) Trumps all so when a person has these beliefs they'll bend whatever facts there are to fit them, hence the more certainty against climate change amongst better educated Republicans.

      I do hope that perhaps there is a point where facts will overwhelm one's misguided "beliefs" like the assertion that "this storm season isn't anything special" in the face of the fact of possibly TWO 500 year storms happening in a few weeks of each other. (The probability of that occurring in a single year let alone a few weeks is 0.002 x 0.002 or 0.000004. That's four chances in a Million! Do you play the lottery? Do you EXPECT to win?).

      That's why misguided beliefs can ruin a nation and one's own finances. If you think otherwise, you should buy waterfront property in Texas or Florida, it'll be cheap and the next storm this big won't be back for another 500 years. The only good thing about the accelerated pace of Climate Change is that, when I started following it more than a decade ago, I didn't think it's effects would be locally obvious while I was still alive (and it was only a problem for our unfortunate children). Now only the most die-hard denialist would think about investing in these properties. Will you? Then give my regards to Bankruptcy court!

  42. Re: Confessions of a Public Defender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So you don't deny his story, just excuse the behavior.

    What do you propose? Just ignore it because wah wah wah?

  43. So now you accept that the predictions were right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes? I mean we have had more bigger storms, just like predicted.

    Oh, this is just a statistical fluke, an outlier? Funny how you think of scatter now, innit.

  44. It would be the wrong bet for 3000+ years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because that cycle you're talking about is us being in a warm interglacial 8000 years ago and now we're going to a glacial, as before. Not warming. Cooling.

    Please, bet some more. But with your own stuff, not someone else's.

  45. Well that was a meaningless rant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Had fuck all to do with the parent post but used a lot of idiotwords to pretend it did.

    Ever done some work on thermodynamics before? Why do you wear a thicker coat when it's winter than you do when it's summer?

    So when we have a thicker coat of GHGs..?

  46. Re:So now you accept that the predictions were rig by cirby · · Score: 1

    Wrong.

    The predictions FAILED. Read that word again. FAILED.

    No, you don't get to predict something, get it wrong for a couple of decades, then pretend you got it right when a couple of big storms finally pop up in one season.

    This isn't about "scatter" or "statistical flukes." This is year after year after year of failed predictions, which are not made correct by one year of slightly-worse tropical weather.

  47. So disobeys the laws of motion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because things stay at rest or continue to move unless acted upon by a force. But if your assertion were correct, they'd move about randomly for no reason, no force.

  48. Er, so he was right and your claim irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More snow? All that requires is a lot of water and below zero air temps below warm wet air.

    So "more snow" means shit.

  49. Re:So now you accept that the predictions were rig by dave420 · · Score: 1

    You're condensing all climatology into a couple of unsourced predictions, and drawing a conclusion. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously?

  50. Ignoring History, sad. by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    'ER', excuse me but no record cold snaps

    Ahh, typical revisionist liberal ignores history. And that was just last year alone...

    Don't you get tired of lying and lying to try and protect your death cult? I can only imagine imagine the horror it wreaks on your psychology after a while. You must be fifty shades of fucked up by now, which I guess we can all see from your response...

    *shakes head*

    I'll let you have the last response, I don't think at this point you can even see reality any more, not even with "cold" hard proof in front of you... just sad to see a life wasted like that.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Ignoring History, sad. by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Either that or I am not American and the only pay attention to big weather news, major storms. So no record cold weather where I am from but lots of record hot weather, Australia, and no death cults, that seems to be an American thing, you know the war industrial complex and being in a near permanent state of war and all. Now apparently that polar vortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is also fed by "A polar vortex strengthens in the winter and weakens in the summer due to its dependence on the temperature difference between the equator and the poles.", so well, well, perhaps you should study more and when it comes to weather in the US, I should, well, who is kidding who, I will still only pay any attention to major destructive storms because, yeah, I am on the other side of the world (So yeah, you missed the cold snap created by increased temperature difference between the pole and the equator and the increased moisture at the equator). I find the severe weather interesting as I come from a city that does not experience it at all, Adelaide, storms seem all a little distant, apart from the heat waves when they hit 45C, man that is killer hot and not an ounce of breeze when it gets that hot.

      To be fair of course, it was reported different here, http://www.abc.net.au/news/201..., note "Meteorologists predicted the lowest temperatures in two decades in some areas of the country".

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  51. Re:Chuckle...Harvey was a cat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    12 cats is far too many for any house.

  52. The IT Crowd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aunt Irma had arrived.

  53. Re:HIllary lost by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    Hillary Lost is good news, but Trump winning is horrible news.

  54. Re: So now you accept that the predictions were ri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's statistics. It is rare for several large storms to happen in the same year, but not indicative of a shift in the mean. It is rare to go several years between major storms, but that is also not indicative of there being fewer storms.

  55. alt-Fact #FakeNews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record"

    And apart from Wilma, Gilbert, "Labor Day" - based on wind speed.

    And apart from Wilma, Gilbert, "Labor Day", Rita, Camille, Katrina, Mitch, Dean, "Cuba", Ivan - based on pressure drop.

  56. Where on the Central Coast? - Re:Camille by Bratch · · Score: 1

    My brother lives in AG, behind the Pismo Dunes. I really like this part of California, but it's quite a long drive from San Diego, which is why my mom takes the Amtrak back and forth.

    --
    Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
    1. Re:Where on the Central Coast? - Re:Camille by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      My brother lives in AG, behind the Pismo Dunes.

      I'm very close. An easy bike ride, in fact.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.