Last Tuesday morning German flagship ARD public television meteorologist Donald Bäcker surprised some climate-realist viewers here with a very level-headed look at the factors behind hurricane development.

I use the word “surprise” here because the massive German public media system are generally devout warmists and vigilant gatekeepers against skeptic views. Open discussion here means discussion only among adherents and the like-minded. Anyone with a dissident view usually is branded and excluded.

Before telling viewers the forecast for Germany, Bäcker gave some background information on the current hurricane situation during the first 42 seconds of the clip.

 

German ARD public television meteorologist Donald Bäcker tells viewers many factors are behind hurricanes, and not just climate change. Image cropped from ARD moma here.

He begins the segment by reminding us that there is “still a large need regarding research on climate and weather“, adding:

We can of course make everything really easy and say the powerful hurricanes in the current season are caused by climate change. But you just can’t do that. With this you cannot explain the years 2008 – 2015, as during this period there were practically no strong hurricanes in the Caribbean region. It has to do with a number of factors, among them ocean currents are to blame, and you need triggering factors. These are the so-called easterlies.”

Bäcker then explained how this year all the factors are in place and the conditions for producing hurricanes are “optimal”. A refreshingly non-dogmatic analysis, and so hats off to the ARD in this one particular case.

Politics, or science?

Of course, it didn’t take long for an alarmist rebuttal to be made. And what better person to provide it than a “scientist” from the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Manfred Stock.

Stock tells viewers that man is mostly responsible for the terrible hurricanes and that the PIK scientists have the data to show it. Stock warns that we are at a crossroads (again) and that unless we change our ways, we are going to see a catastrophe. Stock says that hurricanes have become worse since 1980. But here he failed to explain the lack of hurricanes in the Caribbean from 2008 – 2015 and the overall downward trend of the past 100 years.

When it comes to hurricanes and number of other climate and weather issues, the PIK alarmists have a very pronounced habit of forgetting things and misleading the public.

Stefan Rahmstorf’s amnesia (or fraud?)

For example just days ago Stefan Rahmstorf of the PIK claimed that this year’s spate of hurricanes were “unprecedented” – a statement I had a hard time believing. So I asked hurricane expert Philipp Klotzbach at Twitter about this. He replied:

The PIK seems to have a big problem with data selection and processing. Moreover, it’s always either we have to drastically change how we live, and quickly, or we will see planetary disaster. It’s the old playbook used by charlatans again and again throughout the history of civilization.

 

via NoTricksZone

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September 22, 2017 at 06:40AM

By Paul Homewood

 

GWPF report:.

 

The suits, filed by San Francisco and Oakland in state Superior Court, are among the first in which plaintiffs are seeking to force companies to pay for infrastructure to protect coastal cities from potential damages caused by rising sea levels. The cities are asking for the oil companies to pay for sea walls and other infrastructure projects, the cost of which aren’t yet known, according to the cities, but are expected to be in the billions of dollars, they said.

Scientists have linked rising sea levels to the burning of fossil fuels and warming global temperatures.

The cases open a new front in a years long effort by environmental groups, Democratic state attorneys general and municipalities to hold big oil companies accountable for the societal costs of climate change.

Plaintiffs in a number of lawsuits or investigations have argued companies knew or should have known about the potential impacts of burning fossil fuels, but instead made efforts to sow doubt about the science behind global warming.

The companies dispute those allegations.

City attorneys reiterated those complaints Wednesday, with San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera saying large oil companies “copied a page from the Big Tobacco playbook.”

“These fossil fuel companies profited handsomely for decades while knowing they were putting the fate of our cities at risk,” Mr. Herrera said.

Matthew Pawa, an attorney who participated in a 2012 California conference that dealt with the potential for seeking climate change damages from oil companies and compared the effort to tobacco-company litigation, is part of the cities’ legal teams, according to court documents.

The San Francisco and Oakland suits allege the companies are a “public nuisance” and ask courts to force the firms— BP PLC, Chevron Corp. , ConocoPhillips , Exxon MobilCorp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC—to create a fund for each city to pay for infrastructure projects likely to cost billions of dollars.

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In fact, sea levels have been rising steadily at San Francisco since 1850, long before  Big Oil came along:

http://ift.tt/2bIok6u

 

Worse still for the con merchants, the rate of rise peaked in 1945, since when the rate of rise has slowed to 1.43mm/year:

 

http://ift.tt/2wFs8Sq

 

Still, if San Francisco is so concerned, why don’t they stop using fossil fuels completely? They could start tomorrow.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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September 22, 2017 at 05:33AM

The Graun really is worse than you thought. This article by John Gibbons plumbs new heights. Under a fetching picture of Gigi Love’s fluorescent bottom, Gibbons drools bile over the Irish Climate Science Forum, Richard Lindzen, retired male engineers and meteorologists, deniers, aging contrarians, conservative white males, elderly white men, elderly engineers, and elderly white … Continue reading →

via Climate Scepticism

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September 22, 2017 at 05:31AM

Linking hurricanes to climate change is not based on empirical science and threatens to misdirect policies.

 

Hurricane Harvey was the first major hurricane to strike the USA since 2005.

The storm made landfall in Houston, causing widespread damage, mostly from flooding.

And then Harvey was followed by Hurricane Irma, which landed in Florida.

The return of hurricanes has excited many climate change campaigners. And even some scientists have blamed both storms on climate change.

But was there anything unusual about these extreme weather events? And can we detect a human influence on these storms, as has been widely reported?

Climatologist professor Judith Curry, says no.

“These aren’t particularly unusual as far as hurricanes go. They’re top-20 kind of storms, but they’re not record-breaking in any way, apart from the overall rainfall from Harvey, which was really more of a fluke from the weather situation that allowed the storm to sit in one place for a very long time. There is nothing particularly unusual about this hurricane season or about Harvey or Irma. The US had incredibly lucky run of 12 years without a major landfall during this active phase of the hurricane cycle. So we were incredibly lucky. You know our luck is now broke. But you know, it’s totally expected.”

The coastal region of the south western US has a long history of hurricanes, the most deadly claiming 8,000 lives in Galveston, Texas, in 1900.

Since then, and in spite of climate change, the human costs caused by hurricanes have fallen.

But around the world, the news media carried stories about climate change worsening hurricane frequency and intensity.

But these claims, too, have no foundation in science.

Prof Judith Curry:

“Well we only have good satellite data back to maybe 1980. We have some satellite date going back to 1970. But it’s of lesser quality. So we don’t have long global records. But in the Atlantic, we have pretty good historical records, at least for the land-falling hurricanes —  not necessarily for the total number in the basins. So, for the satellite record globally, there’s no trend in the numbers or overall, erm, accumulated cyclone energy.”

According to the observational record the number of hurricanes of all categories landing on the US have reduced in frequency. And there is no convincing evidence of hurricanes or tropical cyclones increasing in intensity, frequency, or accumulated energy.

In spite of the science, however, the story of increasing extreme weather persists.

At the centre of these stories is the way hurricanes are born. They form over large bodies of warm water drawing energy from evaporation and the Earth’s rotation.

But, says Judith Curry, sea surface temperature is not the whole story:

“Sea surface temperature is only one ingredient for hurricane development and intensification, and it doesn’t just seem to be absolute sea surface temperature, either. So it’s more relative sea surface temperatures and the overall dynamics of the atmosphere that are arguably the key ingredients – not just absolute sea surface temperature itself. I mean you can go back and there were really strong hurricanes in the nineteenth century for example, where surface temperatures were significantly cooler. And there were some horrendous hurricanes in the Atlantic in the early part of the twentieth century, when sea surface temperatures were noticeably  cooler.”

This is a more complex picture of what causes hurricanes than the one presented by many commentators.

And many have been keen to draw a direct link between human activity and hurricanes.

But even according to mainstream climate science, as represented by NOAA and the IPCC, global warming may only increase the intensity of storms by as little as 2% to 11 per cent by the end of the century.

Claims that the effects of climate change can be seen in hurricanes are premature given the high degree of natural variability in these events.

Prof Judith Curry:

“We’re probably looking at a shift in the Atlantic to the cool phase of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. In 1995, after a relatively quiet period in the Atlantic, we flipped to the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and that like really juiced-up the hurricanes. And so, at some time, probably in the order of ten years, we’ll see a flip to the cool phase again, and presumably much quieter situation in the Atlantic for hurricanes.”

The danger is that claims about global warming and extreme weather are a diversion from the real issues that affect people’s lives.

Indeed, such strong statements about hurricanes and other extreme weather events are not based on the science as we understand it and they may misdirect policies.

Prof Judith Curry:

“In terms of trying to figure out how to manage extreme events and reduce our vulnerability, what’s causing it is almost a secondary concern. I mean, we’re not preparing for the evens we have now, or the events we have seen in the 20th century, let alone the events we might see in later part of the 21st century.”

Disaster resilience and preparedness are the best policies against hurricanes, regardless of the influence of carbon dioxide or climate change.

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 22, 2017 at 04:10AM