By Paul Homewood

 

 

A welcome dose of common sense from Booker:

 

Terrible though the deaths and damage caused by Hurricane Irma may be, the way it has been reported makes one wonder whether, after more than 10 years that have seen Atlantic hurricane activity at its lowest level for decades, everyone has forgotten what these monster tropical storms are like.

 

The media have gone way over the top, with headlines such as “the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record”, even “the deadliest storm in history”.

But two minutes on the internet could show that, of the 10 “deadliest” such storms ever, Hurricane Mitch (1998) killed 11,000 people in Central America, the death toll there from Fifi-Orlene (1974) was 8,000, and 7,000 died in the Caribbean from Flora (1963).

As for the “most powerful” storms, measured by wind speed, Irma’s 185mph stands alongside Wilma in 2005, Gilbert in 1988 and the US Labor Day hurricane of 1935; Allen (1980), which killed 269, topped them all at 190mph.

 

So Irma hardly matches up to all its hysterical billing and was almost certainly outperformed by numerous hurricanes in history which happened before their intensity could be measured – the “Great Barbados Hurricane” of 1780 killed 20,000 or more in the Windward Islands.

But at least one person who got what he wanted from Irma was Justin Webb, of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Last week I wrote about how he tried in vain to persuade various interviewees to blame Storm Harvey on climate change. Finally, on Thursday, he got the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda to trot out all the required mantras, in a manner that not even Al Gore could have faulted.

“The science is very clear.” “Climate change is real.” This “unprecedented” disaster has been one of the consequences.

By Friday, Today had even found two “experts” to discuss whether the world’s top “CO2 polluting” fossil-fuel companies could be made to pay for the clean-up after Irma.

What a good thing the Today programme wasn’t around at the time of the Great Barbados Hurricane of 1780.

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It is of course ironic that it was the Telegraph itself that was at the forefront of fake claims about “most powerful” and “most deadly”.

Indeed, it is still at it this morning, to the disgust of many commenters:

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As for the BBC, nothing should surprise us any more about their biased handling of climate change.

I am sure he has many other abilities, but I am also pretty sure that Barbuda’s Prime Minister is not a meteorologist. So what is the purpose of Justin Webb asking him whether climate change was to blame for Hurricane Irma?

 

While we’re on the topic of the Telegraph, they currently have this video running on their website:

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It is produced by one of the Telegraph “journalists” Laurence Dodds, who looks as if he has just left 6th Form

It makes the usual naive claims about how weather is getting more extreme, but concludes that we are all going to be saved by the Paris Agreement.

It is probably too much to expect young Master Dodds to actually check the facts!

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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September 10, 2017 at 07:36AM

For years I was led to believe that there was a fundamental difference between these three things: However, I recently read a report on the constituent of “smoke” and discovered that one of the main ingredients of what we call … Continue reading →

via Scottish Sceptic

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September 10, 2017 at 06:12AM

By Paul Homewood

 

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The latest NHC bulletin still shows Irma tracking up the west coast of Florida, though they are still no sure where landfall could occur.

As I reported yesterday, the storm degraded somewhat over Cuba, and despite strengthening over water since, wind speeds are at 130 mph. NHC expect that strength to be maintained for another 12 hours before weakening.

 

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This is the full discussion from NHC:

Hurricane Irma Discussion Number 45 NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL AL112017 500 AM EDT Sun Sep 10 2017

An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft reported 700-mb flight-level winds of 128 kt in the northeastern eyewall, along with surface wind estimates of 110-115 kt from the Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer. In addition, the aircraft data shows that the central pressure has fallen to 928 mb. Based on these data, the initial intensity has been increased to 115 kt, again making Irma a Category 4 hurricane. I

rma has made its long-awaited turn, with the initial motion now 325/7. For the next 36-48 h, the cyclone will be steered generally north-northwestward with an increase in forward speed between a low- to mid-level ridge over the western Atlantic and a developing mid- to upper-level low over the Gulf Coast states and the northern Gulf of Mexico. After that, the system should turn northwestward and then move somewhat erratically near the end of its life as it merges with the low. The tightly-clustered track guidance has changed little since the last advisory, and the new NHC forecast is very close to the previous one. The eye should move across the Lower Florida Keys in the next few hours. After that, the hurricane’s track almost parallel to the west coast of Florida makes it very difficult to pinpoint exactly where Irma will cross the Florida Gulf coast.

Given current trends, some additional strengthening could occur during the next several hours. However, vertical wind shear is increasing over Irma, and the shear is expected to become strong within 24 h. This, combined with land interaction, should cause at least a steady weakening from 12-36 h. The new intensity forecast is slightly lower than that of the previous advisory at those times, but it still calls for Irma to be a major hurricane at its closest approach to the Tampa Bay area. A faster weakening is likely after Irma moves across the Florida Panhandle and starts to merge with the aforementioned upper-level low, and the new forecast follows the trend of the previous one in calling for the system to decay to a remnant low by 72 h and to dissipate completely by 120 h.

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via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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September 10, 2017 at 05:36AM

My new research paper A Method of Google Search Bias Quantification and Its Applications in Climate Debate and General Political Discourse is published in WUWT.  Most people observe that Google search results on political topics are left leaning.  But it was hard to determine whether such leaning was a simple reflection of the left/liberal cultural dominance on the web, or Google search team intentionally (or “artificially”) biased rankings.  This paper demonstrates and even quantifies such intentional or artificial bias.

After publication, I found a 2016 study, also showing that Google results are artificially biased in favor of liberal ideology and Democrat Party candidates: Google bias in search results; 40% lean left or liberal (Matt Bentley / CanIRank.com).  From the Matt Bentley study:

“Does it make sense, for example, that someone researching “Republican platform” should be presented only the official text of the platform and seven left-leaning results highly critical of that platform, with zero results supporting it?”

“… we would expect top ranked search results to have more external links compared to lower ranked search results.  Instead, pages demonstrating a left or far left political slant made it into the top results with significantly fewer external links compared to pages rated balanced. Pages with a right-leaning slant needed significantly more links to make it into the top results.”

“According to recent Google findings, online search is the resource that 87% of the population turns to first when a question arises. Online search plays a particularly prominent role in the democratic process during election season. During the 2012 election cycle, a survey of persuadable voters revealed that 49% get their news about campaigns and the election online, largely through search engines like Google, and that these voters generally trust the information they find online. Top search results are broadly perceived as being the most accurate and authoritative by members of the public with the first five search results accounting for an estimated 67% of all clicks and the first three results alone accounting for over 55% of all clicks. In their 2015 study, Robert Epstein and Ronald Robertson concluded that the order of search results can have a big impact on voter behavior — and in the event of a close election, this effect could even be profound enough to determine the outcome of the election.”

via Climate Realism against Alarmism

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September 10, 2017 at 05:08AM