timeimmortal

Jim Whalley writes in, presumably in response to this article concerning a possible correlation between global warming and reduced numbers (and diminished violence) of hurricanes.

I’ve edited Jim’s message a bit, inserting paragraph breaks where it seemed appropriate. Also, in a departure from my norm, I’ll be spacing my replies in a more “interlinear” fashion, between paragraphs as it were.

The chief point appears to be that for the Eastern USA the incidence of hurricanes appears to be dropping as the Northern Atlantic grows warmer as it approaches thermal equilibrium with the tropical and equatorial water masses. What it doesn’t mention is the increase (or decrease) of hurricane (or typhoon) activity worldwide. The temperature differential between polar and equatorial is what is responsible for the winds that make up hurricanes and typhoons.

I’m going out on a limb, not having taken any studies in fluid dynamics or weather patterns, but based on what I’ve learned about things like tornados here in Alberta, the violence of the storm is proportional to the magnitude of the temperature differential. Assuming, then, that the same holds true for hurricanes, a diminished temperature differential between polar and equatorial currents would result in fewer, or less violent, hurricanes.

In other words, it seems logical to conclude that increased warming brings diminished quantities or violence of hurricanes.

The other consequence of warming polar oceans is the sea level change when the polar icecaps melt, with the catastrophic consequences for the millions of people who live within 80 - 100 feet of current sea level. The displacement of coastal populations will be felt even in the US and Canada with large portions of the Atlantic coast under 40 - 80 feet of water, and near sea level areas like the Gulf coast states or the Canadian Maritimes flooded and their resident populations displaced and homeless.

This doesn’t even begin to address the possibility of a catastrophic climate change that would turn most of equatorial Africa into desert, and kill off most of the indigenous plant and animal species in the rest of the world, due to the cascading effect of the elimination of polar icecaps and snow (which reflect a substantial portion of heat back into space).

The problem with any good debate about climate change is that scare numbers inevitably get hauled out by proponents of the various climate change “solutions” being proposed by the likes of Al Gore and the IPCC. Even assuming that the polar ice cap melted in its entirety (which would take centuries to happen, and which did not happen even when, thousands of years ago, the Earth was (in places) as much as 8 degrees warmer on average than it is now). Back then, forests crept as much as 1000 km north of their present limits, and every glacier below 5 km elevation melted.

Notable exceptions included the Greenland ice sheet and, presumably, parts of the polar ice cap. Earth would have to get catastrophically warm — i.e. reach temperatures that could only be caused by the Sun in its death throes — for all polar ice to melt.

And if I do recall correctly, although I seem to have lost the link to the calculations, even if the entire polar ice cap did melt, sea levels wouldn’t rise as far as Jim would have us think. To achieve that rise, the Antarctic ice cap would have to melt entirely as well. And Antarctica is currently cooling, for the most part.

That warming period thousands of years ago also addresses Jim’s comment about equatorial Africa becoming a desert, with the attendant mass death of most plant life. If it didn’t happen back then (and if I do recall correctly, the fossil record doesn’t show evidence of mass extinctions of plant life, or of the animals that would have thus been deprived of food, in that time period), why would it happen now? Especially since the current warming trend falls far short of the 4 to 8 degrees C that happened back then?

Secondary effects of global ocean warming, such as the blooming of toxic bacterial strains which presently live near volcanic undersea vents is possible, but presently still conjecture. If we have to find this out the hard way, it’ll be too late. It may be too late already, as we have set forces into motion which will take at least 200 years to reach a state of equilibrium if we could stop all future CO2 emissions and go back to a pre-industrial level.

Even if humanity stopped all industrial carbon emissions, the warming trend would be affected by less than one percent…less than a percent of a percent, in fact.

Almost all of the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat comes from water vapor, which we do not (and, more to the point, cannot) regulate the emission of. And most of the current warming trend has nothing to do with human industrial emissions anyhow, but with the Sun — we know this because other planets in the Solar System, such as Mars and Neptune, have also experienced warming trends proportional (adjusting for their increased distance from the Sun) to what has been observed on Earth.

I could go on about how our judgment, ethics, and responsibility have taken a beating at the hands of ego and greed-driven capitalism, but that would take a discussion of its own to do it justice.

I think sentences like this, when they are found as a part of any environmentalist’s argument, are telling, because what such sentences reveal is that the professed environmentalism is really just a front, a cover, for a desire to see global socialism become a reality.

If for no other reason than that, it is worthwhile to oppose environmentalism and climate change alarmism. But equally, it’s worthwhile to oppose the use of scare numbers (see above) and shoddy science( see above as well, though not as distantly) in an effort to advance those causes.

The basic thesis of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is, if I understand it correctly from the cover art, that global warming — and then, global warming directly attributable to carbon emissions from industry (anthropogenic global warming, AGW) — is causing an increased number of hurricanes, and that these hurricanes are on average more violent. If true, it’s a damning condemnation of mankind’s contribution to climate change, and the impacts thereof.

Okay.

Except that a new study suggests that the real truth might be inconvenient for Mr. Gore and his thesis:

The study, produced by two respected South Florida researchers, found that the planet’s oceans have been warming for more than a century. No surprise there, but this may be:

Those warmer oceans are producing stronger crosswinds that tend to suppress the development and growth of hurricanes, according to the scientists.

“We found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. landfalling hurricanes as global oceans warmed up,” said Chunzai Wang, an oceanographer and climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research facility on Virginia Key.

Some previous studies found that global warming was increasing the number and intensity of hurricanes, a conclusion that supported the conventional wisdom that warmer seas automatically turbocharge hurricane development.

This latest study, conducted by Wang and Sang-Ki Lee of the University of Miami, will be published Wednesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Though it is still early in the process, the study raises questions about how the insurance industry, which sets rates based on risk models, will respond to reports that appear to contradict each other.

Many other studies have used computerized statistical models to predict the future consequences of global warming, but Wang and Lee conducted a rigorous “observational” examination of records reaching back to 1854.

WIND SHEAR

They found that nearly every ocean on Earth has warmed since then, producing a variety of effects including stronger crosswinds, a phenomenon called wind shear. When they matched those findings with records of hurricanes that have struck the United States, they discovered a correlation that illustrates the danger of making assumptions about the climate and challenges some previous findings and predictions.

“The increased wind shear coincides with a weak but [consistent] downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes, a reliable measure of hurricanes over the long term,” the report found.

See, this is one of the reasons why I don’t buy in to the climate change alarmism that seems to permeate public discussion about the environment, because the studies contradict the living heck out of each other. One group of scientists, using such and such a method, claims that global warming is causing a particular trend (glacial melting, more violent hurricanes, what have you). But another group of scientists, using a different but seemingly no-less-valid method, claims that the opposite is taking place — that a particular trend is happening in the reverse direction (glacial formation, less violent hurricanes, what have you).

Obviously, both conclusions can’t be true, and I suspect that the real truth is to be found somewhere in between. The Earth’s climate is in a state of flux that, by and large, humanity has no control over (and almost no impact on), and we’re bound to see cyclical patterns to everything ranging from hurricane frequency and violence to glaciation. That’s just the way of the world on which we live. And to me, at least, there seems to be no cause for alarm.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: The Jawa Report)