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Ophelia Became a Major Hurricane Where No Storm Had Before (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The system formerly known as Hurricane Ophelia is moving into Ireland on Monday, bringing "status red" weather throughout the day to the island. The Irish National Meteorological Service, Met Eireann, has warned that, "Violent and destructive gusts of 120 to 150km/h are forecast countrywide, and in excess of these values in some very exposed and hilly areas. There is a danger to life and property." Ophelia transitioned from a hurricane to an extra-tropical system on Sunday, but that only marginally diminished its threat to Ireland and the United Kingdom on Monday, before it likely dissipates near Norway on Tuesday. The primary threat from the system was high winds, with heavy rains. Forecasters marveled at the intensification of Ophelia on Saturday, as it reached Category 3 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale and became a major hurricane. For a storm in the Atlantic basin, this is the farthest east that a major hurricane has been recorded during the satellite era of observations. Additionally, it was the farthest north, at 35.9 degrees north, that an Atlantic major hurricane has existed this late in the year since 1939.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Highest winds 1-minute sustained: 120 mph (195 km/h)
Lowest pressure 961 mbar (hPa); 28.38 inHg
Fatalities 78 total
Damage $50 million (1961 USD) (Estimated)
Check back later whether Ophelia will *REALLY* be "worst evah".
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Pacific Blob? How are you so confident there wasn't a "pacific blob" in the 1600s? Do we have satellite observations of oceanic temperatures from the 17th century to back that up? Are you assembling that data from observations? Did they have calibrated temperature probes taking measurements day and night thousands of miles out at sea?
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It seems to me that a lot of your belief system is built on inferences and assumptions. The largest of those being that the weather events of the 21st century have somehow made a biblical deviation from the norm. Anything approaching a climate "norm" is based on such a limited understanding of the world, it's hard to accept as the truth. Global Warming may be a new phenomenon. But if it is we need to treat it like a science with skepticism, and not like a religion.
Global warming very much is a science, and the researchers involved do examine their data and conclusions with a lot of skepticism and they do a lot of work figuring out how to test their assumptions (I suspect there's a bunch of actual papers dedicated to figuring out if there was a "pacific blob" in the 1600s). Of course there is some uncertainty over how serious the problem will be (though as evidence mounts the problem seems to be getting worse).
But you also need to be prudent. We're talking about taking mitigating action against the cautious projections. You are correct we're dealing with a lot of unknowns. If the scientists are underestimating we might be in a lot more trouble than we realize, this isn't some computer game where someone gave us a nice path to galactic colonization, it's quite possible that the byproducts of industrialization prove disastrous for human civilization.
I stole this Sig
So, yes, we can tell that the rate of climate change is unprecedented.
Sure is! Because people froze to death where Washington, DC is now, from temperatures they'd never experienced even in the heart of European winters. They've also died from "bad air" or as it's known today as malaria as far south as central Quebec -- it wasn't the draining of swamps that changed things, it was several decades of cold weather that pushed malaria carrying mosquito's further south. That was all in the span of 150 years too, and it wasn't cold to warm.
Just keep in mind that there's plenty of "adjustments" to that data, while claiming that the olde gold standard silver-mercury thermometers weren't reliable or anything too. So all those temperature readings have to be adjusted.
Om, nomnomnom...
Your belief system seems to recognize climate data going back only a few decades, perhaps a century.
Climate data goes further back obviously, but the problem is that data varies a lot in consistency, accuracy, frequency, space span.
It is like sea serpents, old data, and giant oarfishes, modern data, or krakens, old data, and giant squids, modern data: yes, you have data going back for centuries, but that data is really sketchy and totally useless if you want to infer species distribution, behavioural differences etc. through time.
In fact, we have climate data going back further than you apparently believe. There are direct measurements of sea temperatures from the mid-18th century (ships logs) and many proxy measurements, going back far, far, further.
The margin of error on those measurements are huge, and even in those there are rather large swings. Check out the historical rate of change in this reconstruction, or look at around 1100 in these reconstructions. The green in that second graph definitely shows a rate that changes more than our current rate. But again, the error bars are so huge in the reconstructions that a lot of questions remain: the science is definitely not settled there.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For the record, even the oil companies are saying that climate change is a major concern. Being to the right of those guys on an environmental issue really takes a particular kind of dumb-ass.
How do you know they weren't just toadying up to Obama?
It's not like Obama wouldn't use his "pen and phone" to illegally funnel billions of dollars of federal funds to companies advancing his agenda...
Federal judge rules Obamacare is being funded unconstitutionally
The Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law," Collyer noted, but the administration has continued to pay billions to insurers for their extra cost of providing health coverage.
"Paying [those] reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution," she wrote. "Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one."
This is my personal favorite indication of climate change. The Sphinx snow patch in Scotland has melted only seven times in the last 300 years. They *ALL* occurred in the last 75 years, *FOUR* of those meltings occurred in the last 21 years.
If the scientists are underestimating we might be in a lot more trouble than we realize,
And we already know they are, because they are repeatedly being surprised; everything is happening faster than expected by all but the most pessimistic models. (Even most of them are being outpaced by reality.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. We have fairly accurate data points going back hundreds of thousands of years, nay millions of year.
2. We know that mammalian life has been around for 80+ million years (120+ if you could proto-mammalian life).
3. We know that temperature has risen and fallen; CO2 levels risen and fallen, and coastlines have changed many times over the past 80 million years (hell last 80,000 years)
Does this mean we should pollute? F**K no.
Does this mean that burning fossil fuels is fine; and not caring about adding CO2 is also fine. Again. F**K NO.
But the chicken little approach combined with send-all-power-to-a-central-world-government seems just a little bit suspect to me. As a matter of fact, it's more than a little suspect. It too is in the real of F**K NO.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
We don't know if the big storm off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland that destroyed much of the Spanish Armada in September/1588 was a hurricane. Probably every bit as powerful as Ophelia though.