Global Warming and Hurricanes
cmooney | October 11, 2007
So: I have just gone and done something really stupid in my latest "Storm Pundit" column--namely, made an eminently falsifiable (and almost certainly incorrect) prognostication.
More specifically: I hazarded the very hazardous prediction that there will be four more Category 4 or 5 tropical cyclones globally in 2007. Go here to see my reasoning behind this only mildly informed guess.
And get ready to make merciless fun of me if/when I turn out to be wrong....
cmooney | October 4, 2007From conservative science writer Michael Fumento we note the following series of compliments and high praises:
Chris Mooney is a left-wing writer who specializes in injecting politics into practically any scientific subject you can name. Mooney could make a case that there would be no cavities but for conservatives and the GOP. His latest book is called Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming.
But as Steve McIntyre, the guy who put egg all over the face of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies for overstating U.S. global warming, notes and shows in charts: "…
cmooney | September 17, 2007
My latest "Storm Pundit" column on this subject, which has come to seem fairly pressing in the wakes of Hurricanes Felix and Humberto, is now up. Upshot: I want to know more about the mechanism by which climate change would presumably affect storm intensification rates. Still, it stands to reason that some type of change ought to occur--and given how dangerous rapidly intensifying hurricanes near landfall are, this is an urgent area of scientific inquiry.
For a counterpoint on the subject, see Stoat: "only now we've had an otherwise unexciting hurricane distinguished only by rapid…
cmooney | September 7, 2007My piece just ran today, here's an excerpt:
When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should lead to a stance of cautious, well-informed concern. Further research -- or, perhaps, more mega-hurricanes -- may seal the issue. But meanwhile, given how much we have at stake, we should already be moving to prepare and protect ourselves -- even as we remain fully open to new evidence.
You can read the whole piece here.
cmooney | September 5, 2007Last week climate scientist Andrew Dessler posted a review/blog entry about Storm World over at Gristmill. I really appreciated the final paragraph, showing that Dessler truly understood what I was trying to get across. Moreover the words are so quotable and resonant that I thought I'd share them with you:
Overall, I think this book helps pull back the curtain from science. Science is much messier and, frankly, less scientific than most people realize. Despite that, science is incredibly successful and, I believe, a force for good in this world, and I am proud to be a scientist.
Fellow…
cmooney | September 5, 2007 So: The latest is, I'm going to be blogging weekly for DeSmogBlog on global warming and sundry related matters. I'm a longtime reader of this site and a big fan of the folks up there in Vancouver who produce it--so I'm glad to be involved.
My first item for the DeSmoggers has just gone up. In it, I take on the Danish environmental apostate Bjorn Lomborg's new book Cool It--and in particular, his section on hurricanes and global warming, which I find pretty off-base. Excerpt:
...from here, Lomborg grows increasingly misleading. Before long, we find him citing a late 2006 statement from the…
sheril | September 5, 2007All of these storms whirling around causing trouble and now the most dramatic link I've seen yet demonstrating how that pesky troublemaker climate change is likely harming endangered sea turtles. And as it happens, this hits directly at the Intersection of Chris' world and my own.
According to an article in Current Biology, tropical cyclones may increasingly drive sea turtle egg mortality. The logic is quite simple:
If (1) global warming leads increased storminess* and sea level rise, (2) given these factors decimate sea turtle populations, then (3) it's not rocket science to figure out…
cmooney | September 4, 2007My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up at the Daily Green. Using Wikipedia and outher sources, I've cobbled together the records apparently set or otherwise affected by this storm. It's quite a staggering list:
1. Fastest intensification from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane -- around 51 hours. (This is apparently an Atlantic record only.)
2. Second-fastest pressure fall in 12 hours (50 millibars), third-fastest in 24 hours (63 millibars). Again, apparently this is an Atlantic-only record.
3. Thirteenth full Category 5 hurricane landfall in the Atlantic region. Others…
cmooney | September 3, 2007Felix's weakening has been fairly pronounced since this morning; it's now a weak Category 4, though the hurricane guys expect a slight bounce-back before landfall.
In the meantime, we're in the waiting phase: The damage will depend upon the precise track, speed, and so on. No one can predict it in any detail, though there are certainly some bad rainfall-related scenarios for Central America.
To pass the time, I pulled together some good links about Felix, which I'd encourage you to check out:
The Flight of Their Lives? It was a hell of a reconnaissance mission into the explosively…
cmooney | September 3, 2007As I mentioned earlier, only three Atlantic hurricane seasons other than this one have recorded more than one Category 5 storm. Those seasons are 1960 (Donna, Ethel), 1961 (Cleo, Hattie), and 2005 (Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma). But here's what makes 2007 distinct: Each of the year's first two storms to reach hurricane strength have also reached Category 5 hurricane strength. You certainly don't see such a phenomenon with any of these other years.
I'm not sure exactly what to make of this particular record, but it seems unlikely to be equaled any time soon.
cmooney | September 3, 2007Here's a detail that I missed:
Felix now holds the record for shortest time for an Atlantic storm to intensify to Category 5 strength. Felix required just 51 hours to reach Category 5 strength after it started as a tropical depression. That is a truly remarkable intensification rate, considering most tropical cyclones take 3-5 days to organize into a Category 1 hurricane.
As I said in my last post--you can look at these anomalies and just shrug, but Thomas Kuhn knew well that if you get enough anomalies, you sometimes get a paradigm shift.
cmooney | September 3, 2007With a storm like Felix out there, I've been spreading it around in terms of my blogging. I've just posted about the storm at both The Daily Green and The Huffington Post. Here's the gist from the latter post:
To be sure, it might be the case that there's a natural up-and-down cycle in the Atlantic for intense hurricanes, and we're only now seeing a peak comparable to the 1960s. Some scientists would argue that point, and [you'd] only have to reclassify two hurricanes from the 1960s in order to have just as many Category 5 hurricanes during that decade as we've seen so far during the 2000s.…
cmooney | September 3, 2007
Here's some data I recently compiled. First, concerning Hurricane Felix:
* After not having once since Andrew in 1992, we are now expected to see two Category 5 Atlantic basin hurricane landfalls in the space of 2 weeks.
* Hurricane Felix reached Category 5 on September 2, just 13 days after Hurricane Dean reached it on August 20.
* Both hurricanes are stronger than anything seen in the Pacific this year, even though Pacific typhoons are generally more frequent and powerful than Atlantic hurricanes.
* 11 am ET, Sunday Sept 2: Felix was at 90 knot maximum sustained winds. By 8 pm ET, Sunday…
cmooney | August 31, 2007In which I discourse about hurricanes and global warming with Sarah Goforth of Discovery News:
What do folks think of the ending, where--following my lead--the video contrasts the number of Category 5 storms between 1970 and 2002 (8) with the number between 2003 and 2007 (7)? My own view is that while we shouldn't make too much of a comparison like this, it is still worrisome...
cmooney | August 29, 2007And so this is what it has all been building up to: Leadership. If New Orleans is languishing right now, there's one chief person to blame. And if we're not investigating how global warming is going to change our hurricane risks on a national level--well, again, there's one person to blame.
The person in charge of the government that is currently failing us.
It's not a particularly original observation these days to note that George W. Bush has built quite a legacy for himself. The black marks will include the mess in Iraq, the mess in New Orleans, and the failure to address global warming…
cmooney | August 29, 2007My first two Katrina posts announced the following "lessons": 1) science doesn't confer certainty about hurricanes and global warming; but scientific uncertainty doesn't justify inaction, either; 2) the issue of hurricane risks is much bigger than New Orleans. In other words, there are many, many other disaster-prone places. I only named a few possible worst case scenarios, involving Tampa Bay, Houston, Miami, and New York.
Lesson three, I think, arises inevitably from these first two. We don't know precisely what global warming is doing to hurricanes; it would be foolhardy to claim otherwise…
cmooney | August 29, 2007There is going to be a lot of hand-wringing today about the relative lack of progress when it comes to rebuilding and redefending New Orleans. And rightly so. But kind of like with Fight Club, the second lesson to be learned from Hurricane Katrina is that you shouldn't simply focus on Hurricane Katrina.
Yeah, this storm was really bad for New Orleans--and another storm could be even worse for the city. But as I detail today on the Huffington Post and in an op-ed syndicated by Blue Ridge Press, we have to look at the broader national picture as well. Consider the following scenarios:
* A…
cmooney | August 29, 2007Sheril and I are going to give the blog over to the subject of Hurricane Katrina and its legacy today, in honor (and in mourning) of the two year anniversary. We're going to try to focus on lessons learned in particular, and as this is my particular bailiwick, I'll likely be doing most of the posting. And so I'd like to start off with the central lesson that I think we can take away after two years of the post-Katrina hurricane-global warming debate: science doesn't confer certainty; but scientific uncertainty doesn't justify inaction, either.
I elaborate on these thoughts in much more detail…
cmooney | August 28, 2007Lots of people are putting out reports and such. A brief rundown of some things that have come across my desk:
Center for American Progress (PDF). I really like the Center, but I must say I find their recently released hurricanes-and-global warming report a tad disappointing. Oddly, in my view the report is both too incautious with the science and yet also far too cautious when it comes to the policy. The complexities and uncertainties aren't really limned on the science front. And then while there's lots of talk about community-based preparedness measures, nothing CAP suggests (in my reading…
cmooney | August 28, 2007Well, this may be the best produced video segment that I've yet appeared in to talk about the book.
Nice work, huh? I'm told it will be up on YouTube shortly.