Online German flagship national daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
has a piece on the hype surrounding hurricane Irene, which we recall was supposed to end up being the most super-charged hurricane to hit the Northeast US in a quarter century.
It ended up being a hurricane of hype, and nothing else. But the FAZ writes if Irene had been a mega-size hurricane, it would have been just what the doctor ordered for unlocking the climate politics gridlock in the USA.
There, interest in climate change has slid so deep into the basement that even ex-presidential candidate and climate protection activist Al Gore has to be really worried about the impact of his new campaign which will begin on September 14.”
For Al Gore, Irene could have served as the ideal climate wake-up call. He certainly would have seized the opportunity to exploit it in citing it as the latest example of climate catastrophe. Can you imagine his disappointment? Unfortunately for Gore and the warmists, Irene fizzled and is now ironically being used by skeptics to illustrate rampant climate hysteria and media hype instead. The FAZ writes:
Indeed the climate-political winds turned in the opposite direction. Instead of acting as a ‘harbinger of climate change’, as the New York Times had written on Saturday, the tropical storm worked massively against hurricane and climate science.
Half-assed, superfluous, and damaging – these are some attacks that scientists now find themselves having to deal with because, though they were correct with their time forecasts, they were nowhere near correct with the hurricane’s strength forecast.”
Here the FAZ doesn’t know that the forecasters were also incorrect with the projected route of the hurricane, as forecasters made huge adjustments with each route forecast cone they issued. And by the time the hurricane made landfall it had degraded down to a mere Cat 1 hurricane, and shortly thereafter to a tropical storm. By this time, the entire US national weather and climate forecasting network and large parts of the media had become a laughing stock.
The alarmists are trying to argue back, sometimes with what appear to be quite dubious claims. Stefan Rahmstorf, citing Nature, claims that for every 1°C of temperature rise, there is a 31% increase in Cat 4 or 5 storms. The FAZ also brings up Kerry Emanuel:
At the Hurricane Conference, leading American expert Kerry Emanuel showed for the Atlantic that the correlation of sea temperature and hurricane energy has strengthened over the last five years.”
Really? Looking at the last fives years, one would have to assume the globe is cooling rapidly.
GLOBAL HURRICANE FREQUENCY
Source: http://policlimate.com/tropical/index.html
What does expert Ryan N. Maue say about climate and hurricanes?
But, the overall trend is flat proving conclusively that there is NO “overall” global increase in hurricanes, minor or major. Since natural variability such as El Nino and La Nina is the primary driver of global hurricane variability, any discussion of “climate change” impacts on TCs is woefully incomplete without acknowledging the effects of ENSO on global TC activity.”
Politically, Irene has turned out to be the ideal storm – for the skeptics! Indeed attention has been drawn to where the alarmists least want it: facts and reality.
Reading some of the reports on Irene’s wake, over many of the coastal New England states PG, there was a heck of a lot of flooding, with major disruption to towns, villages [even in the States – the poor seem to get the worst of it] and major lines of transport communication.
That said, the hyperbole over Irene was classic alarmist hype, simply making an incorrect correlation between ‘AGW’ and the prevalence of Cat 4+ storms is alarmist scare-mongering, it is low, it is ‘dirty’ and it is downright wrong!
Interesting stuff from FAZ, thanks for the heads up.
BTW, I’ll be glued to reports of German politics, in the next few weeks – Angie is in trouble and so too is the euro [no surprise there] but it emerges that the German taxpayer is very unhappy – I wonder why???
It has been reported in the Sunday Times 4.IX.11 [no link sorry – paywall] that, 66% of Germans are against a new Greek bailout and even 34% saying they would back a withdrawal from the EU – not just the eurozone but……………………. EUROPE!
Interesting times.
Count me in with the 34%. I’d love to see those 10,000s of Eurocrats struggling for a job. Tent cities in Brussels, bring it on!
Yep! Sounds good to me Dirk!
Al Gore has to fear a mental hurricane. The Nobel Prize Committee was so cruel to give him a prize, making him to believe that it was based on something and that he was the saviour of the world. Try to imagine that he must conclude one day that his prize is worthless.
First his legal career – never got out of the blocks,
then mercy, he lost it – in politics,
then his wife went,
next, his ‘theory’ went,
now they’ll soon wanna take his gong back!
He’ll still have his alter ego, to keep him company, he’ll never be lonely.
Just a thought here: All the eco-whackos that call “Mother Gaia” their Goddess and are working to protect Her just may be getting paid back by: MOTHER GAIA! Maybe she sees how uninformed and basically wrong the AGW crowd really is, that she is trying to shut them up by doing exactly the opposite of what the anti-science Warmers are spouting!
When people like Gore jump on a “bandwagon” like GW and makes millions of dollars selling fear mongering and disastrous agendas all backed by an unhealthy ill-informed band of Green Junkies, usually young and vegan, then someone has to take a stand…………maybe even Gaia is pissed off at him!
“Stefan Rahmstorf, citing Nature, claims that for every 1°C of temperature rise, there is a 31% increase in Cat 4 or 5 storms. ”
That could even make sense, as Hurricanes get their energy from warm sea water; the problem is only that it’s not warming – which has been hidden from the public in the USA and in Germany by the constant Global Warming propaganda barrage.
Trust in mainstream media must be at all time low. Another parallel to the USSR. That’s the reason why Russians, Czech and Polish are far less susceptible to become alarmists; they learned not to trust their media during the Warsaw pact years.
This is interesting. Youtube offers me a sponsored video; a Dutch guy explaining how the greenhouse effect works and why it is probably a problem.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TNOResearch?v=DwHfGqv1AU4&feature=pyv&ad=6386100657&kw=co2
Now, interesting is the sleight-of-hand he applies: at 3:00 he explains the infrared absorption and then quickly skips to saying “Now if there’s more CO2 there’s more absorption” … but he omits to say that the CO2 absorption band is already close to saturated; and that CO2 will obviously only displace some water vapor; and that any increase in CO2 has only a logarithmic effect.
This is a good example of how warmist scientists very consciously select what information they give to the public.
Because I do not have sound on my computer, I cannot follow his You-tube-science. This may be a better text for the public: http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/CarbonDioxideNotaWellMixedGasandCantCauseGlobalWarming.pdf
You wrote
“Here the FAZ doesn’t know that the forecasters were also incorrect with the projected route of the hurricane, as forecasters made huge adjustments with each route forecast cone they issued.”
I wrote and posted the following on WUWT (page now seems to be gone) on Aug. 20th:
sarc/ON
I hope this isn’t too technically worded for ya’ll, but after churning for quite some time my models are telling me this storm will wobble and waffle some before heading up the Hudson River estuary and it will maybe definitely inundate the West Side Highway of NYC, in a week or so plus or minus a few days. In doing so it will provide James Hansen with one correct prediction:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
And, it will be worse than previously thought.
sarc/OFF
Six days ago I wrote that KATIA would likely “dance across Bermuda while leaving NA alone” and tonight this still looks possible. The NWS NHC thinks she will slip in between Bermuda and the NA coast and harm neither. So, my WAG-model has not yet been falsified.