Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Hurricanes are not increasing. Tornados are not increasing. Even the IPCC concludes that there is not enough data to conclude whether or not floods are increasing. And according to the EPA and the IPCC, droughts are not increasing. Who told you that they were.

My interest is in the overall energy dynamics of the Earth system. Energy is not created or destroyed, so it takes different forms and circulates through various cycles of motion/expression.

When sunlight shines on a tree, a lot of the energy is reflected and scattered as green light, which is the most abundant frequency in the solar spectrum (probably the reason chlorophyll evolved as protection against evaporation).

When the same sunlight shines on a building, car, pavement, etc. the thing it's shining on heats up. That, in turn, heats the air and the heated air rises and mixes with other air above it. The higher the temperature of air, the more water can dissolve in it (which is why relative humidity rises as air cools).

The energy that causes water to evaporate and air to rise is the same energy that gets released when cold air bears down, water precipitates and weathers/erode the ground, etc. What goes up must come down, and it comes down with the same energy that lifted it up.

Now there's a lot of complexity in the atmosphere. The Earth has two hemispheres, huge oceans, a tilted axis that causes seasons to change, etc. but energy is energy and it is neither created nor destroyed; so weather events are manifestation of the heat energy that causes water to evaporate and air to rise.

So if there is more heat and less energy radiating away due to more greenhouse gases blanketing that heat, then there is going to be more water in the atmosphere and that water is going to come hammering down with all the energy that lifted it up.

That is too basic to even debate.

You said it is a given that hurricanes, tornados, floods, and droughts are increasing. They are not. My interest is in finding out who told you that they were.

There is lots of news about them increasing. You don't need to ask me about that because you know that yourself.

What you seem to be implying is that I accept those news reports uncritically, which I don't. I am perfectly aware that confirmation bias can exist not only among academic researchers but also among journalists and their editors/publishers etc.

What you have to understand in terms of basic science, however, is that "hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts" are all weather/climate phenomena that are connected to larger patterns of heat-energy and water circulation. You shouldn't just assume they are isolated events and what you see is all that there is to see. A storm front, for example, is the result of colliding hot and cold air masses; so a tornado that forms along such a front is just a very visible manifestation/expression of those larger air/water/energy movements.

Now you seem to feel you have factual authority to proclaim that such weather events are definitely NOT increasing, and I question how you can be critical of others' claims that they are increasing, yet not have any doubt about your belief that they aren't.

You seem to have confirmation bias with regard to your own assumption that increases are not happening. What is your confirmation bias based on? The assumption that things, including climate/weather, stay the same no matter what else happens with the conditions that cause them?

Where? Cite something. I asked you who told you that. Do you have an answer or not?

Why do you keep saying such irrelevant things. You already agree with me that there is news about them increasing because otherwise how would you claim that such news is a lie?

Why do you avoid good discussion in favor of irrelevant discussion? Is it that you have a weak filter when it comes to figuring out what makes good, relevant discussion; or are you just obsessed with certain rhetorical tactics, such as demanding citations?

Boy, I don't know how you came to that conclusion. I don't agree that there is news about such increases. That's why I'm asking you who told you that. So, can you link me to the news source that you are referring to?

Go back and read the responses. LL is talking about INTENSIFYING. You are talking about INCREASING. TTher is more energy in the system because of AGW, that makes the storms more powerful. LL is right

t.here is a huge difference there.

No he's not.

As far as the connection between (mythical) global warming and hurricane frequency and intensity, NOAA says climate change hysterics are out of luck. Just last month, NOAA issued this statement:

“In the Atlantic, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human activities–and particularly GHGs that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on hurricane activity...In short, the historical Atlantic hurricane frequency record does not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced long-term increase.”

Plus:

. . . First, in order to have global warming be the cause of anything, it has to be happening. But it’s not. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - not part of the vast rightwing conspiracy - there has been no U.S. warming at all since 2005. Yes, you read that right. No warming, period. Nada, zip, zilch, bupkis.

. . . Satellite data is no help for climate crisis types. The Department of Energy’s study of NASA satellite data reveals not only that there has been no warming in the U.S., but there has also been virtually no global warming anywhere in the world since 1994, almost 25 years. This, of course, is during the same time the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere continued to accelerate. Quite simply, CO2 does not cause detectable global warming at all.

The problem with surface-based temperature readings prior to 2005 is that many of the thermometers were haphazardly placed near artificial heat sources - right next to runways, for instance. There is a well-known urban heat-island effect, where temperature readings in cities will be higher than outlying areas because of concentrations of people, cars, buildings, and miles of asphalt.

https://www.afa.net/the-stand/culture/2019/09/there-is-no-global-warming-and-it-s-not-causing-hurricanes/

You are the one arguing against the veracity of news claiming increases in violent weather events, aren't you?

Or was that someone else and I have you mixed up with another poster?

Do you deny that what goes up must come down?

If not, why don't you think that applies to air and water that goes up due to heating?

If you shoot a bullet up into the air and it comes down and hits you, it is the same as if you were shot directly with the same bullet/gun. If you shot a bullet with less powder in the cartridge, it would go up with less energy and thus come down with less force as well.

The water cycle and atmospheric pressure cycles are the same. Air and water absorb heat-energy and go up, and therefore they must also come down with the same energy.

Where else do you think the energy goes?

Climate change deniers’ new battle front
Robin McKie Science editor
Sat 9 Nov 2019

The battle between climate change deniers and the environment movement has entered a new, pernicious phase. That is the stark warning of one of the world’s leading climate experts, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

Mann told the Observer that although flat rejection of global warming was becoming increasingly hard to maintain in the face of mounting evidence, this did not mean climate change deniers were giving up the fight.

“First of all, there is an attempt being made by them to deflect attention away from finding policy solutions to global warming towards promoting individual behaviour changes that affect people’s diets, travel choices and other personal behaviour,” said Mann. “This is a deflection campaign and a lot of well-meaning people have been taken in by it.”

Mann stressed that individual actions – eating less meat or avoiding air travel – were important in the battle against global warming. However, they should be seen as additional ways to combat global warming rather than as a substitute for policy reform.

“We should also be aware how the forces of denial are exploiting the lifestyle change movement to get their supporters to argue with each other. It takes pressure off attempts to regulate the fossil fuel industry. This approach is a softer form of denial and in many ways it is more pernicious.”

Over the past 25 years Mann has played a key role in establishing that rising fossil fuel emissions and increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are heating the planet at a worrying rate. He was also involved in the 2009 Climategate affair in which thousands of emails – many to and from Mann – were hacked from the University of East Anglia’s [UEA] Climate Research Unit. Climategate marks its 10th anniversary this month. At the time, deniers on both sides of the Atlantic claimed the emails from UEA showed climate scientists had been fiddling their data, claims that may have contributed towards delay in the implementation of measures to tackle climate change over the next decade, say observers.

Subsequent inquiries found no evidence of any misbehaviour by researchers, however. The denial machine lost a lot of its credibility as a result, added Mann, and there has been a gradual rise in public acceptance of the idea of global warming.

However, deniers have not given up their opposition to plans to curtail fossil fuel use and among their new tactics they have also tried to encourage “doomism”, as Mann put it. “This is the idea that we are now so late in the game [in tackling global warming] that there is nothing that we can do about the problem,” he added. “By promoting this doom and gloom attitude this leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and finally inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism.”

This is the new climate war, said Mann, and it is just as dangerous as the old one which focused on outright denial of the science. This new approach has a veneer of credibility, he added. It seems reasonable to many people. And that makes it, to some extent, even more dangerous, Mann concluded.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/nov/09/doomism-new-tactic-fossil-fuel-lobby

I haven't been keeping up with the thread. Is everyone still in hysterics over biased and unreliable data?

I think you are.

No. I don't pay any attention to biased and unreliable data.

I went to litn to a talk by Mann two weeks ago at the University of Delaware:s interdisciplanary Science Building. The place was paked and the deniers were there with thir lame qutions. Mann took em all and did an excellent job of clarifying what a deniers point was about and how it was rather non-fact based.
I was amazed at how the"hockey Stick" issue is still a hot topic (though all wet and full of fraudulent assumptions). Mann, as the "father of the Hockey Stick graph" Patiently tried to explain how graphing data actually worked. This was addressed to the denialist posse.
His main issue was the recent data that is now showing how the climate trip point seems to be approaching faster than science had originally calculated.
Richard Ally was there also he spoke briefly about ice core data .

You are the one in hysterics, rejecting unbiased and reliable data on the basis of specious illogical claims that one journal article which was rejected because its conclusion was not in fact the case was suppressed, when it was in fact just wrong, and generalizing wrongly from that that all AGW data were unreliable, no matter how independelntly derieved. Your logic and "facts are incorrect.

The image of ostriches with their heads in the sand springs irresistibly to mind (tho ostriches don't stick their heads in the sand to escape detection, that's just an old wives' tale, but oh so typical of oralloy)

Great cite, Glenn <cynicsl> I love its claim that God is the one wreaking havoc on us because of the hurricanes he creates to pummel us, not global warming. Great science there.

Typical response from that character — as long as he can find some off-the-wall site staffed with Neanderthals spouting an anti-environmental line of pseud0-science that handily happens to confirm his right-wing bias his prejudiced positions remain unchallenged! Looks like desperation to me.