# Associating bad hurricanes with climate change will backfire on Global Warming Alarmists **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654 "2017-09-18T17:11:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/61 "2017-09-23T10:13:34Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Can’t trust a damn thing NOAA publishes, now can we … [NOAA’s Atlantic basin ACE numbers from 1851 to 2016…](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html) [Same numbers, graphed in Wikipedia…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy#/media/File:Atlantic_ace_timeseries_1850-2014.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/62 "2017-09-23T13:06:27Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > But that’s the point…the time period is cherry picked because that’s when we have data. If you read the GFLD article and look at the NOAA historic trend graphs, you’ll see why it’s so hard to decide that current hurricane, for either intensity or frequency, have worsened as a result of climate change. > > As to [Kerry Emanuel](http://news.mit.edu/2017/kerry-emanuel-hurricanes-are-taste-future-0921) (I assume this is to whom you are referring), I am confused where I have contradicted him. He has two key expertises: 1. How hurricanes work, and 2. Modeling what will happen in the future. > > Emanuel is very careful to parse out “expected increase” from current events. His complaint about current events boils down to building near the coast, and a future probability increase that we will have more intense, (but less frequent) storms. His model does not support a current increase in number, so the increased number of storms this year is an outlier to his model. Obviously that does not mean the model is wrong; just that weather is variable around a long-term mean. That and the following posts just demonstrates that you are still insisting that we are talking about alarming people about an increase in the number of hurricanes, that was not the case and Kerry Emmanuel was one of the first researchers I was talking about regarding why the problem is that global warming is making the damage that the excess water and energy that is present once a hurricane comes along. Your contradiction is basically why you got the OP wrong. Emmanuel and others like **wolfpup** are referring to the intensity of the hurricanes, not just Power Dissipation Index (PDI), which accounts for cyclone strength, duration, and frequency. The frequency number is not about what water that is increasing in the background is doing now and will likely do in the future. From the same article you quoted on your next post: > [@](#): > > Scientists are clear that climate change has “threat multiplier” effects on storms, increasing the likelihood and severity of some aspects. For instance: warmer waters and warmer air increase the moisture available and the energy in storms; disruptions in atmospheric circulation increase the likelihood of a storm “stalling out” over a region; and ocean storm surges are made more destructive when melting ice caps have raised the baseline sea level. > > “The thing that keeps forecasters up at night is the prospect that a storm will rapidly gain strength just before it hits land,” Emanuel recently told Agence France-Presse, citing Harvey as an example. “Global warming can accentuate that sudden acceleration in intensity.” > > **Interestingly, it’s still uncertain whether global warming will lead to more or less frequent hurricanes. But in terms of catastrophic damage, storm frequency seems less important than the severity of storms, where climate change does have a clear footprint.** As Kerry Emmanuel and other scientists clarified elsewhere: > **[What you can and can’t say about climate change and Hurricane Harvey](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/25/what-you-can-and-cant-say-about-climate-change-and-hurricane-harvey/)** > > Singling out Harvey as a climate-driven anomaly would be a big mistake. > [@](#): > > “The storm is a bit more intense, bigger and longer lasting than it otherwise would be,” added Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. > > And then there’s sea level — it’s higher along the Texas coast than it was 100 years ago or more. At least part of that is because of climate change and its melting of ice and swelling of ocean water — though there are other factors in the mix, too, such as the subsidence of land. > > Sea level matters for storm surge, one key destructive aspect of any hurricane. “New York, when Sandy hit, the sea level was already about a foot higher than it was 100 years earlier,” Emanuel said. “So if Sandy had hit in 1912, it probably would not have flooded Lower Manhattan.” ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/63 "2017-09-24T08:57:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > We wouldn’t see a bunch of Cat 5 hurricanes in just one year. Next year conditions will almost certainly be less favorable. If climate change was a decisive factor in hurricane severity, we’d be seeing more severe hurricanes over a long period. Except we’re not. There’s no trend in the data between 1900 and today. It’s fair to say that climate change may produce more severe hurricanes in the future, but it is not causing more severe hurricanes today. [How 'bout this?](http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/2016/08/gw-impacts-graph-hurricane-categories-3-4-5-over-time.jpg?itok=Er9dc2yF) The data is messy (as one might expect - there aren’t _that_ many hurricanes per year) but there still seems to be a pretty clear trend. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/64 "2017-09-27T21:21:27Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The battle for current control of public opinion around the Great Cause of anthropogenic climate change is largely won, in my opinion, and the winner is the alarmist camp (those very concerned that climate change will have profoundly negative net consequence, and therefore an alarm should be sounded to substantively change what we are able to change to minimize the consequence). Huh, and just last December [you were saying](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19851483&postcount=98) that the climate realists (“alarmists” in your idiosyncratic lingo) seemed to have **lost** the battle for public opinion: > [@Chief Pedant](#): > > Are we settling in then, on a general consensus from the AGW Alarmists, that the single worst consequence is an increased frequency of “extreme” weather? > > I do not think AGW Deniers will be particularly moved by that message…but perhaps I am mistaken? It seems rather vague and soft, and hard to quantify. If the world is just generally warmer and wetter with extreme weather more frequent, I’m not sure much traction will be gained for the idea that we have a crisis on our hands against which we need to act and act big. […] > > For AGW Alarmism to regain its prominence with the masses will require a clear elevator pitch about what the threat is, exactly. I don’t see that in this thread (and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it…). Amazing how massive hurricane devastation suddenly makes concerns about increased severity of “extreme” weather events look quite a bit less “vague and soft”, huh? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/65 "2017-10-14T15:11:15Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Amazing how massive hurricane devastation suddenly makes concerns about increased severity of “extreme” weather events look quite a bit less “vague and soft”, huh? Exactly! Thanks for stating the confirmation bias problem so succinctly, Kimstu. When one is deeply committed to a Great Cause–be it miracles from Jesus or Global Warming–what we see around us at that moment tends to reaffirm our belief. We let the science go because we are seeing Proof Positive Right Now. Human nature, I guess. [Hurricane ACE North Atlantic:](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/comparison_table.html) 2005 Alarmist: Global Warming is real, stupid! Denier: Weather, stupid! 2013 Denier: Global Warming is a myth, stupid! Alarmist: Weather, stupid! 2017 Alarmist: Global Warming is real, stupid! Denier: Weather, stupid! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/66 "2017-10-14T16:42:48Z")
Actually climate is not weather, so this is just again another sorry attempt at making a point. The increase in intensity of the hurricanes that do come is still there no matter how much contrarians want to tap dance around it. It is way past the time to continue to listen to them. > **[Scientific models saved lives from Harvey and Irma. They can from climate...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/sep/18/scientific-models-saved-lives-from-harvey-and-irma-they-can-from-climate-change-too)** > > Dana Nuccitelli: Climate models have an even better track record than the weather models that saved lives in Texas and Florida > [@](#): > > The reason is quite simple – if climate models are right, then if we don’t start cutting our consumption of fossil fuels, we’re in big trouble. But the GOP has now effectively become the Grand Oil Party – a subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry that does its bidding. They don’t want to curb our reliance on fossil fuels, so they attack the models, or like Rush Limbaugh, claim it’s all a hoax and then flee to California, leaving the duped followers behind to face the ugly consequences of science denial. > > We need to act on model warnings about climate change too > > There are some exceptions. The bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which now includes 28 House Republicans, acknowledged the impacts climate change is having on disasters like Harvey and Irma. We need more conservatives to accept reality and join their ranks. > > Scientific models saved countless lives from Harvey and Irma because we listened and acted. They can also save countless lives from climate change if we listen and take action to slow global warming. Or we can listen to the conspiracy theorists, ignore the scientists and their models, and suffer the consequences while the Rush Limbaughs of the world flee in their private jets to higher ground. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/67 "2017-10-14T16:50:07Z")
The OP is missing the key point: the people who have been denying climate change for the last ten years are not going to apply scientific standards to any claims regarding hurricanes being caused by climate change. Because these people don’t understand how science works. If they did, they would have accepted the existence of climate change years ago. These people just believe whatever an authority figure tells them. If an authority figure tells them climate change is a Chinese hoax, they believe it. If another figure steps forward and says "_You fools! Your lack of faith has angered the hurricane gods!"_ then they’ll bow before a new authority figure. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/68 "2017-10-15T07:26:00Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The OP is missing the key point: the people who have been denying climate change for the last ten years are not going to apply scientific standards to any claims regarding hurricanes being caused by climate change. Right, and that’s why I tried to clarify **Chief Pedant** ’s position upthread. Note how \*deftly \*he [avoided answering the question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20488291&postcount=45). I can’t really get on board with the whole “Why are alarmists saying this or that hurricane was caused by AGW?” that’s alledgedly happening, without first an acknowledgement that the \*really \*ridiculous thing is that there are still deniers out there, period. After yet another year of record-breaking high temperatures, and with all the arguments that deniers used to use (“hiatus”, “land ice hasn’t declined”, “it’s not faster than previous climate shifts” etc) in tatters, why are we still having this conversation? What reasonable person is still on the fence? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/69 "2017-10-15T11:13:38Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Right, and that’s why I tried to clarify **Chief Pedant** ’s position upthread. Note how \*deftly \*he [avoided answering the question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20488291&postcount=45). He not only avoided the question, he made a pseudo-assertion using weasel words that are pretty much meaningless: “that associating bad hurricanes with climate change will backfire on Global Warming Alarmists, because this is an unscientific position”. What does “associating bad hurricanes with climate change” mean, exactly? Does it mean a claim that some specific hurricane was caused by climate change, no question about it? Does it mean the assertion that _ **this kind** _ of extreme weather will statistically happen more often? Does it mean a prediction of increased hurricane numbers, or does it mean a prediction of increased hurricane energies? Is the prediction global or specific to certain ocean basins? What’s the metric being used to assess hurricane energies? What’s the timeframe for the prediction? Depending on the answers to those questions, such predictions may be unscientific or they may be rigorously scientific and backed up by a ton of evidence and endorsed by the most prominent climatologists and hurricane specialists in the world. There most definitely is an association between hurricanes and climate change subject to the conditions and caveats I mentioned earlier and which **Chief Pedant** dutifully ignored, just as he ignored your question. The vague unqualified weasel-worded statement he makes is what’s truly unscientific. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/70 "2017-10-15T12:18:34Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > He not only avoided the question, he made a pseudo-assertion using weasel words that are pretty much meaningless: “that associating bad hurricanes with climate change will backfire on Global Warming Alarmists, because this is an unscientific position”. > What does “associating bad hurricanes with climate change” mean, exactly? Does it mean a claim that some specific hurricane was caused by climate change, no question about it? Does it mean the assertion that _ **this kind** _ of extreme weather will statistically happen more often? Does it mean a prediction of increased hurricane numbers, or does it mean a prediction of increased hurricane energies? Is the prediction global or specific to certain ocean basins? What’s the metric being used to assess hurricane energies? What’s the timeframe for the prediction? > Depending on the answers to those questions, such predictions may be unscientific or they may be rigorously scientific and backed up by a ton of evidence and endorsed by the most prominent climatologists and hurricane specialists in the world. There most definitely is an association between hurricanes and climate change subject to the conditions and caveats I mentioned earlier and which **Chief Pedant** dutifully ignored, just as he ignored your question. The vague unqualified weasel-worded statement he makes is what’s truly unscientific. LOL. Associating bad hurricanes with climate change means that, when one comes along, the associator promotes it as evidence that climate change is upon us. “Told ya!” Come on. You get that. And generally the associator specifically does NOT go into any detail about the subtleties, which is why it is such an unscientific association. That is the whole point. There is absolutely no science that says hurricanes are harbingers of anthropogenic global warming. They are notoriously hard to separate out from the background variability, and climate change models themselves are unable to quite figure out what is going to happen. The general summary for current models is fewer hurricanes; possibly more severe. Both of those predictions well into the future—i.e., NOT currently the case on either front. When we see lots of hurricanes within a cycle, or lots of energy within a hurricane—current science did not predict that either of those things is a result of current atmospheric gas changes. And there is NO current science that this is Already Happening! a la the typical asssociator yelping. My position on anthropogenic climate change is pretty straightforward. First, humans generate gases which affect the climate substantially beyond the background effect of what would otherwise be “natural” were humans not to exist. Second, our ability to predict the net effect of that gas production is very poor. We don’t have a good track record of long-term prediction for anything. We are very likely to get wrong both the worst negative consequence(s) and the unexpected positive ones. We are also likely to get wrong what actually happens from a climate change perspective since we have only modeling with which to predict; those models are heavily dependent on variables which themselves are difficult to predict. We do not, for example, have a variable for any scientific advancement such as large-scale removal of atmospheric gas. Third, something in our nature generally predisposes us to predict doom over neutral or even positive outcomes. At some psychological level we are a lot more in love with being the one who cried “disaster” first. Fourth, we are also psychologically inclined to glomming onto to a Great Cause. We want to be part of Something Special. Once we have chosen said Great Cause, we are inclined to a Confirmation Bias. See Kimstu’s excellent point about that, above. Fifth, anthropogenic climate change is nowhere near the top of the things that are going to ruin this world ecologically for the next generations. Human population increase alone will do that, particularly as we get the poorer parts of the world up to anything close to western standards. We will raze our forests into croplands, and our open spaces and seas into food farms. We will pave over the earth into roads and bridges; we will suck out all the fresh water from underground and then begin distilling the oceans. 100 years from now the most substantial disruption of the natural ecosystem will not be a result of climate change but instead the result of too many humans, living as well as possible. Sixth, it is highly unlikely we will get right which anthropogenic or natural disasters end up being the most catastrophic ones. BUT…here is the thing I am rebelling at in my OP: To the extent we ARE concerned about anthropogenic climate change, we do ourselves no service by carelessly throwing about fake associations. We do ourselves no long term service by promoting confirmation bias. And the reason we do so is because we love love love our Great Cause. However in the long run, science suffers. Finally, dear readers, is it friggin’ even possible to post ANYTHING about anthropogenic climate change without being asked to pass the litmus test of “Well, are you a Denier??!! SIR, I ask you again: ARE YOU A DENIER??!! Because if you are a Denier, I have no need of paying any attention to you. Good day sir! Good day!!” Even within this thread, a poster literally said that, if I were a Denier, the poster had no need of any further participation. As if a statement on my part about hurricanes and global warming has no merit if its author is a Denier. Within such constructs is science suffocated. The commitment to the Great Cause of Anthropogenic Climate Change is so profoundly invasive that any and all deviations from The Message are attacked through a filter which first insists on passing the litmus test that you belong to the Faith. I am unable to separate out the psychology driving belief in the climate change Great Cause from the same human foibles which drove the Inquisition, or the Red Scare, or any other number of similar trends. _Dear Jesus, please let me live another hundred years just to get the last laugh about whose “vague unqualified weasel-worded statement” about climate change was right…_ ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/71 "2017-10-15T12:37:03Z")
Still didn’t answer either of my questions ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/72 "2017-10-15T13:03:44Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Finally, dear readers, is it friggin’ even possible to post ANYTHING about anthropogenic climate change without being asked to pass the litmus test of “Well, are you a Denier??!! SIR, I ask you again: ARE YOU A DENIER??!! Because if you are a Denier, I have no need of paying any attention to you. Good day sir! Good day!!” Even within this thread, a poster literally said that, if I were a Denier, the poster had no need of any further participation. As if a statement on my part about hurricanes and global warming has no merit if its author is a Denier. Within such constructs is science suffocated. That’s how reality works. When you chose to not believe in science, people who believe in science stop taking you seriously. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/73 "2017-10-15T15:42:27Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > LOL. Associating bad hurricanes with climate change means that, when one comes along, the associator promotes it as evidence that climate change is upon us. “Told ya!” Come on. You get that. And generally the associator specifically does NOT go into any detail about the subtleties, which is why it is such an unscientific association. That is the whole point.\* piffle. The whole point here is that you avoided not only the questions from many posters but also continue to avoid that while some popular press is getting grossly wrong, scientists already have reported and continue to report that how many hurricanes will come is not known but there are implications that point to the issue that tell us that it is really reckless to wait to know how what that number is going to go when other issues related to the release of CO2 are known to be more likely to affect us. What is it know is that factors related to global warming are making Hurricanes more intense. For all your complaints there is one common issue in your tirade. It is what I have seen many times before: contrarians that only look at denier sources that do press on the talking point of “all proponents of climate change getting it wrong” by not realizing that their point is to discredit what the scientists do actually report **also**. [http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/hurricanes.html](http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/hurricanes.html) > [@](#): > > As long as the base of this weather system remains over warm water and its top is not sheared apart by high-altitude winds, it will strengthen and grow. More and more heat and water will be pumped into the air. The pressure at its core will drop further and further, sucking in wind at ever increasing speeds. Over several hours to days, the storm will intensify, finally reaching hurricane status when the winds that swirl around it reach sustained speeds of 74 miles per hour or more. > > Eventually, hurricanes turn away from the tropics and into mid-latitudes. Once they move over cold water or over land and lose touch with the hot water that powers them, these storms weaken and break apart. > > Recent studies have shown a link between ocean surface temperatures and tropical storm intensity – warmer waters fuel more energetic storms. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/74 "2017-10-15T16:36:15Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Second, our ability to predict the net effect of that gas production is very poor. We don’t have a good track record of long-term prediction for anything. We are very likely to get wrong both the worst negative consequence(s) and the unexpected positive ones. We are also likely to get wrong what actually happens from a climate change perspective since we have only modeling with which to predict; those models are heavily dependent on variables which themselves are difficult to predict. We do not, for example, have a variable for any scientific advancement such as large-scale removal of atmospheric gas. The cases of what happens when phosphates are added in rivers and lakes, tobacco smoke use, acid rain increase and ozone depletion gases released shows that you have not learned when to ignore the denier media that does have interest on sustaining profits over livelihoods. Here you do make a reference on a variable like the scientists ignoring the appearance of large-scale removal of atmospheric gas. Well, I would like a pony too. Science would be wasting time indeed by entering a variable that has a very uncertain value, as it turns out I do remember how annoying it was for the IPCC to basically ignore the issue of accelerated loss of ice over land in the polar regions and glaciers. Until recently the reports just pointed out that a moderate ocean rise would be expected by very likely normal runoff and ocean thermal expansion. But that was provided if there was no acceleration observed on the loss of ice over land. The estimates of ocean rise are going up because indeed the acceleration has been observed. Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss - James Balog It would indeed had helped to add the expected values, but if the expected acceleration had not taken place I see that then the contrarians would had a field day. Well, they still have a field day because they do not care that even though scientists waited to get more accurate numbers for the likely acceleration contrarians demonstrated that they do not care at all about science or evidence when it shows up. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654/75 "2017-10-15T23:46:34Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > LOL. Associating bad hurricanes with climate change means that, when one comes along, the associator promotes it as evidence that climate change is upon us. “Told ya!” Come on. You get that. And generally the associator specifically does NOT go into any detail about the subtleties, which is why it is such an unscientific association. That is the whole point. There is absolutely no science that says hurricanes are harbingers of anthropogenic global warming. I see that you’re confusing science with some unnamed subset of the popularizers of science, which is a favorite ploy of climate change deniers. Whether you are one or not – and I’m not judging – you share with deniers certain notable traits, such as this confusion between science and populist proselytizing, and then throwing around invectives like “alarmist” with the unstated poisonous implication that the science itself is suspect if its conclusions are troubling. Among the “alarmists” by your definition would be, I assume, [the national science academies of every advanced nation in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Academies_of_science_.28general_science.29) whose positions on this issue are unequivocal. Your statement is false because the actual science, of course, does qualify its conclusions with all the caveats and statements of uncertainty commensurate with the evidence. Nevertheless some broad generalizations can be made, and they have been made, extensively by the IPCC on the subject of extreme weather and by notable hurricane researchers like Kerry Emanuel on hurricanes specifically. I quoted this before but you ignored it then and presumably will ignore it again: We find that in the Pacific, as well as in the Atlantic, there’s this excellent correlation between this measure of hurricane energy that we developed [the PDI] and the temperature of the tropical ocean. It’s very in concert on all kinds of different time scales. And the amount of energy expended by hurricanes has gone up in the last 50 years by somewhere between 50 and 80 percent. If all we had to go on was the hurricane data, I don’t think we would be terribly alarmed. We’d just say, well, it’s been changing the last 25, 30 years, so what? It’s the correlation with sea surface temperature and the fact that that trend is unprecedented for a long time that has us worried. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/science...7-hott-nf.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/science...7-hott-nf.html) The rest of your screed can be summed up as confidently stating – as a matter of apparently self-evident fact – that climate change will be the least of our problems. You state as indisputable fact that “anthropogenic climate change is nowhere near the top of the things that are going to ruin this world ecologically for the next generations” and “it is highly unlikely we will get right which anthropogenic or natural disasters end up being the most catastrophic ones”. Stating as fact what are actually ill-informed armchair opinions is surely the very essence of “unscientific”. A scientific assessment of climate change impacts at various levels of global temperature change yields [a plethora of serious impacts](https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/fig/figure-spm-2-l.png) which, if examined carefully and in depth, can be seen to amount to a systemic environmental catastrophe if allowed to proceed much beyond two Celsius degrees. The consequences are serious enough that they affect not just quality of life for all of us but survival for millions and, as the US military has noted in their own assessments, may have major impacts on global security because of disproportionate impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the world. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/associating-bad-hurricanes-with-climate-change-will-backfire-on-global-warming-alarmists/796654.md?page=3)