UN's climate link to hurricanes in doubt

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7044158.ece

by anamax • 16 years ago

24 23 16 years ago

timesonline.co.uk

brazzy• 16 years ago

Does anyone have a source that explains the results of the report with a bit more scientific depth, specifically why global warming would lead to fewe but slightly stronger hurricanes rather than more?

AFAIK the fundamental cause of hurricanes is the evaporation and condensation of water. Higher temperatures cause more evaporation, so it seems pretty obvious that it would cause more opportunities for hurricanes to form.

ars2• 16 years ago

No, that's not the fundamental cause of hurricanes.

The fundamental cause of hurricanes is the difference between water and air temperatures. If both go up together nothing changes.

The difference is measured from absolute zero, so if both go up 1 degree there is actually even less of a difference than there was before.

Since the water is warm, and the air cold, and every model shows water temperature rise lagging air temperature rise, global warming should cause less hurricanes.

The higher intensity might be because the water would become warmer, and air temperature is not a constant. If a hurricane should happen to form when it's cold out, it'll be somewhat more powerful.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

Isn't the driver the difference between surface temperatures and stratospheric ones, right? It all goes back to the adiabatic lapse rate. The question I would have would be how greenhouse gases would affect that. Anybody have that information?

jamesbritt• 16 years ago

" ... global warming should cause less hurricanes."

Do you mean lesser, or fewer, hurricanes?

KirinDave7• 16 years ago

NEWSWIRE: Continued scientific research updates predictions. Slightly less devastating storms predicted. This is normal for science. Deniers try to use process as wedge for false-dichotomy argument.

Aside, this exact same story from a different news outlet already flooded through here last week and got no play. Why submit it again?

dantheman• 16 years ago

Well it's not just that the prediction was off a by a bit, the entire relationship was wrong.

It was GW -> More Storms, now it's GW -> Less Storms.

Now of course this is just science being done, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that Climate Scientists claim to have a much better understanding than they do. As Feynman said, it is the duty of the scientist to bend over backwards to inform you of all the ways they might be wrong. In Climate Science, you hear this is the consensus, not that we have data for 30 years of 10000 year cycle and we think that this will happen. In my opinion it's not honest.

KirinDave7• 16 years ago

> In Climate Science, you hear this is the consensus, not that we have data for 30 years of 10000 year cycle and we think that this will happen. In my opinion it's not honest.

I don't know how much more honest an admission that a prediction was wrong by respected scientist can be. What do you want? This AGW issue is so politically charged that we want the scientists to be constantly going over the data and trying to reproduce it.

It's not like the IPCC was trying to hide this. If anything, the entire way this scenario played out should be a reassurance that the IPCC and cooperating scientists are acting in good faith. They're not trying to "cover up" failures; they're acting on the established scientific process.

ars2• 16 years ago

There was no science on hurricanes. It wasn't wrong science, it was no science at all.

It was just a guess, and guess by an institution that supposedly is based on science. So they loose some credibility now.

jerf2• 16 years ago

Slight rewrite: "'Deniers' use it to point out that yelling 'The science is settled!' is unjustified."

'Tis clever how you manage to insult the "deniers" by beating them with the truth of one of their key points. Maybe you're a "denier" too.

KirinDave7• 16 years ago

The entire notion of "science" being "settled" is flawed. It's never settled; revisions will happen constantly. We go from a general understanding to increasingly specific understanding, overturning bad assumptions as we go. By arguing that "the science is still ongoing" a denier is making a non-argument.

As a parallel example, consider the ongoing argument about evolution. The science is still ongoing about the specifics of evolution, but the general theory would be incredibly hard to overturn at this point.

CamperBob4• 16 years ago

Deniers try to use process as wedge for false-dichotomy argument.

At some point, we need to see a few correct predictions made by the models. Otherwise, your "science" looks more like Creationism.

KirinDave7• 16 years ago

There are correct predictions. If you don't know of any you haven't tried to inform yourself.

anamax• 16 years ago

> Slightly less devastating storms predicted.

The AGW "settled science" claim was for significantly more devastating storms. Now we find that the AGW hypothesis leads to something significantly less.

The AGW argument is based on horrible consequences. If the consequences aren't actually horrible....

> Aside, this exact same story from a different news outlet already flooded through here last week and got no play. Why submit it again?

Actually, it's not. Last week's story was an "unpublishable" paper with basically the same conclusions. This week's is peer-reviewed and published. It was written by someone whose research KirinDave agreed with when it supported KirinDave's position but now that additional data has changed the author's position....

Perhaps KirinDave will tell us what would change his mind.

I used to believe in AGW but I now think that it is significantly overblown. I note that the "I used to be" argument is considered convincing by AGW advocates when followed by "a skeptic", so surely the other form deserves equal consideration.

UN's climate link to hurricanes in doubt

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