"Climate Change" Was Supposed to Spawn Monster Storms-What Happened?

I don’t want to hurt the economy, I want it to be strong. In a poor economy, people don’t care about the environment, they only care about themselves. That said, the invisible hand is a powerful tool and the easiest way to use it is with taxes. Subsidies can lead to all kinds of perverse incentives and corruption. A straight tax on carbon levied on each energy source will drive consumers to cheaper, and cleaner, sources. Companies, especially farmers and transportation companies who use the majority of energy in this country, will pass these costs straight on to their customers and all prices will rise. This is why corporate income taxes are stupid, all they do is increase the costs of products as the corporations strive to maintain their profit margins. To compensate for the rise in prices (which will be in effect a very regressive tax), we need to cut the income tax drastically especially on the low end. I am thinking of a negative income tax here to offset the price increase on food to to higher enrgy costs. Strive to make the system both revenue neutral and impact neutral.

we should also do what we can to increase nuclear power. Fukishima aside, there are ways to do this safely and the technology has moved on since those reactors were built. Also from a purely statistical perspective, it may be much safer. I.e., one level 7 disator every 20 years leads to 2000 more cancer cases compared to a coal plant releasing toxins (including radiation) leading to 10,000 more cancer cases in the same time period. These numbers are just made up, but surely we could do this calculation.when you add in the potential negative effects of climate change, the results may be irrefutable for all the horror associated with a level 7 accident.

I like biofuels because they also teach us an efficient way to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Changing technologies and increasing efficiency is a good thing, but it is only a marginal change; it will only give us a 2-3x reduction, at best. We need a paradigm shift to get the 10x reduction we need.

One last reason we should move with alacrity with this issue and push for clean energy (and one reason I think conservatives are being stupid in letting their ideology rule in this issue), is hat for better or worse climate change is going to drive our economy for the next century. Clean energy is going to be as large a part of the world economy in the coming century as transportation was in the 20th century. This is regardless of what we do here in America. Simple population increases and the industralization of the world guarantee this. There is just no way that hydrocarbons are going to keep up with the energy needs of a hungry world. I would rather that the US developed and owned these technologies than China and Germany. By taking ideological steps in Congress to shut down renewable energy research, they are being awfully short sighted.

It is, because one of the properties of the ones pushing climate-gate (and the fact is several investigations showed that nothing contradicted the science and the scientists never did nothing more than trash talk that was supposed to be private)

It is also important to realize that that boasting of Jones came from a personal e-mail, no one should consider that to be important for science unless it is published on a peer reviewed paper, the bottom line is that you are just pushing nothing. What is more important is the science that was made by Jones, and my experience has been that all the myths against him have been debunked, what you have to ask yourself is why do rags like the Daily mail still quote from already explained and investigated e-mails that are not reviewed and are not the published science?

It goes again to the Personalization issue, the fallacy is to assume that there is value on discrediting the person and therefore all the science will be discredited, it does not work that way.

Once again, when even Phil Jones himself and other scientists report that the trend is already significant and going up, it does take care of what he said in the e-mail. Denying that is really getting silly, and the context was offered, The Daily Mail in special should never be relied on for information.

And I think we had this conversation before, Geo engeneering should be a last resort solution, and even when implemented it needs to be done while the emissions are also controlled. Otherwise you leave ocean acidification still going in and you are adding even more expense. As researchers have pointed out, the best way to look for better ways to geo engineer will also have to be investigated with computer simulations, but if the critics already do not trust simulations…

Great. Then you and I are in agreement that the climate models are not able to predict the type of things the OP mentioned.

Your posts tends to respond in a different direction than the post you are responding to so I’m going to reinforce the context:
My posts have nothing to do with whether we should or should not do anything. My posts are purely statements regarding the limits of our knowledge of the future due to limited understanding of what is being modeled and limited capabilities to model it.

You stated that the models are able to accurately predict (based on matching historical data) number and intensity of storms, droughts, etc.

Can you please point me to the results of some model over an extended period of time that match this?

I haven’t seen any that mention storms, etc., but I’ve haven’t really looked at many of them either.

This has nothing to do with the topic I’m discussing, which is accuracy of climate models.

Great.

Point me to the page or graph that shows results of climate models with respect to number and intensity of storms matching historical records as you claimed they do.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see anything like that.

This isn’t fighting ignorance, but simply beating one’s head against a wall.

yes but the reality of it is a nuclear power plant is as popular as a Walmart in Yellow Stone National Park. We’ve made such a project out of them that we’ve lost the expertise to build one without turning it into a construction freak-show. The last one they built in my state was such a cost-overrun/structural fiasco they ended up turning it into a coal plant. It’s almost to the point we would have to pick a design in a national competition and give it some kind of political blessing. This is it, go forth and multiply.

I like it because it uses all of our existing technologies. We need something realistic NOW and diesels are it. I recently drove a “fuel guzzling” turbo diesel and damn it was fun to drive. It could easily knock out 45 mpg and could do everything I wanted it to do 100 percent of the time. It was a real trooper of a car. If I had the money it would be sitting in my garage right now along with a home built electric.

Explain.

And already granted, and explained why, the take home point is that the OP was a ***staw man. ***

Actually it does, pressing on it only shows that the tactic is like the creationists, never mind that simulation can replicate past extremes, “because it can not predict exactly when (Or for the creationists, find yet another intermediate form) we should dismiss it”.

It does not work that way, what you pointed out was a snapshot of what they are attempting to do next, it may take many years to do so, but once again, the fact that they can replicate roughly the timing of the extremes points to good progress, not a reason for dismissal.

If I referred to storms, that was not my intention, the context should show that I already granted that the best papers out there have the experts reporting (and they are saying that for awhile already, once again the OP was a straw man) that regarding hurricanes and tornadoes it will be a gamble.

Now, what about the past simulations roughly matching the past heat and cold levels?

The link BTW goes to the IPCC and it refers to this series of simulations and research work:

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-4.htm

Well, it does and it doesn’t.

Take, say, a predicted increase in temperature: one can – quite easily – forecast at least X amount of warming in Y years, even while going on to add that it’ll probably be some zany amount Z. If you can’t say it’ll at a minimum be X, then, yes, the whole claim should of course be dismissed as hopelessly unscientific.

Again, you’ve done it for temperature: boldly predicted at least a tenth-of-a-degree rise per decade. The same can and should be done here, with equal ease: if there’s a prediction to be made about hurricanes or tornadoes – or droughts, or named storms, or forest fires, or whatever – folks don’t need to make an exact Z claim so long as they can clear the oh-so-low bar of X.

Only that once again, you are depending on a hypothetical straw man from the climate scientists, as Richard Alley reported, they are not saying that, the current consensus is that the future number of extreme weather events like hurricanes can not be predicted with a lot of confidence, in essence, it remains a gamble that many deniers in power want to convince others to take.

That’s magnificent; the latter part would’ve been a concise and accurate reply to the OP; it should’ve been this thread’s second post: “the current consensus is that the future number of extreme weather events like hurricanes can not be predicted with a lot of confidence”. I truly couldn’t agree more with that summary.

I am in no way shape or form a global warming denier, but this is a faulty conclusion. Before we had the kind of weather imaging we have now, there would be large storms that hung out in the ocean and never did anything and so never got named. Now days any large storm anywhere in the world will be detected and named.

To claim this indicated an increase is storm activity would be similar to saying that there was a sudden increase in breast cancer with the invention of the mammogram.

There is plenty of good evidence of climate change but this isn’t one of them.

The link actually addresses that

You are going to lose people right here. Many of the ones who deny climate change believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

If you had looked at the thread you would had noticed that I was not posting here early.

And the video from Richard Alley and the opinion of climate scientists on the issue has been posted before, the OP should had know better already.

The take home lesson is that what Richard Alley and others reported has been posted by me and others in other threads, the problem with posters like the OP is that they never learn, or the objective is to discredit climate scientists with a straw man.

What scientists actually say is that the number of hurricanes is so far unpredictable, but as Richard Alley also points out, that is not a reason to be complacent, there are other much more likely things that will happen in a warmer world if we do not make a concerted effort to limit emissions, and even if hurricanes turn to be few in a warming world, the problem is that all that increase in water vapor and energy will be part of the few hurricanes that are coming and there are reports that this took place with Sandy.

Of course the gamble here is the number of hurricanes, if global warming give us less hurricanes we still will have to worry about them being stronger than before, on the other hand they could also increase in number… with the same [del]steroids[/del] global warming gases added to the background.

Stop while you’re ahead.

This is valid:
“the current consensus is that the future number of extreme weather events like hurricanes can not be predicted with a lot of confidence”

This is speculation:
"and energy will be part of the few hurricanes that are coming and there are reports that this took place with Sandy. "

This is speculation:
“if global warming give us less hurricanes we still will have to worry about them being stronger than before,”

Nope.

This is based on already measured increases on water vapor, ocean rise, and increase in temperature of the oceans.

Again, the simple logic is on the increase on matter (water vapor), ocean rise and energy in the atmosphere thanks to the increase in GWG.

The problem here is assuming that all that is not or will not affect the strength of the hurricanes that come, and this is not even taking into account the number of hurricanes that a warming world will bring.

From the NOAA:
“We find that, after adjusting for such an estimated number of missing storms, there is a small nominally positive upward trend in tropical storm occurrence from 1878-2006. But statistical tests reveal that this trend is so small, relative to the variability in the series, that it is not significantly distinguishable from zero (Figure 3).”

and
“The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s (Figure 4, blue curve).”

and
“In short, the historical Atlantic hurricane record does not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming induced long-term increase.”

There is a statement about increased intensity based on their models, but again, without a model that accurately match historical trends it’s really speculation that the model is any good.

And you are just repeating what was granted already.

You did not check the last link I made, and it seems that you can not let the straw man go:

Sorry, but you are indeed pushing the straw man, the reality remains, it is not a quantity issue, scientists are in agreement with that for several years already, and for the hundredth time, it is a straw man to claim that me or the scientists are talking about an increase in numbers, it is an issue of Intensity. Something that your quotes do not touch.