Global Warming - Right & Wrong

lousubcap

A good read regarding climate and Hurricane Ian from The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/09/climate-change-impact-hurricane-ian/671604/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

Canugghead

Darn paywall

lousubcap

@paqman if the above is directed to my posted link above I am surprised as I do the pedestrian no pay option.  That said, here's a copy and paste. FWIW-
"

Honestly? The Link Between Climate Change and Hurricanes Is Complicated

Hurricane Ian shows some symptoms of global warming. But saying anything beyond that is folly.

By Robinson Meyer

Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022, 5:02 PM ET

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Hurricane Ian is one of the most destructive hurricanes ever to hit Florida. A day after the storm made landfall, hundreds of people have been rescued and, as of this morning, millions were without power. President Joe Biden has indicated that early reports suggest “substantial loss of life,” but no firm numbers have been confirmed. With such a catastrophic storm coming after the string of disasters this summer, some commentators have tried to link Hurricane Ian to climate change.

But while climate change is clearly fueling some disasters, such as heat waves and wildfires, it has a more complicated effect on hurricanes. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations–led panel of hundreds of climate scientists from around the world, has said that it’s an “established fact” that industrial carbon pollution has led to an increase in “frequency” or “intensity” of extreme weather. But the report uses more circumspect language such as “likely” to talk about tropical cyclones. (Tropical cyclones are only called hurricanes when they’re above a certain wind speed and in the Atlantic or North Pacific Ocean.)

Climate change is changing hurricanes in a few ways. “First of all, you can have more intense hurricanes in a warmer climate. That finding goes back well over 30 years now,” Kerry Emanuel, an MIT meteorologist and an expert on how climate change affects hurricanes, told me. “For that reason we expect to see more of the highest-category storms—the Cat 3s, Cat 4s, Cat 5s, more of the Ian-style storms.”

Read: How Hurricane Irma is sucking Florida’s beaches dry

In effect, climate change raises the speed limit on storms, he said, allowing hurricanes to attain a higher wind speed than they would otherwise. Why does this happen? It arises from the brute-force physics of a hurricane colliding with the inescapable presence of greenhouse gases. “A hurricane is a heat engine,” Emanuel told me, turning heat from the ocean into wind energy. This transformation happens because as water evaporates from the sea surface, it transfers heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, essentially speeding the storm. (The underlying phenomenon here is also why “if you’re wet, you feel cold, all else being equal,” Emanuel said.)

So how does the ocean get hot in the first place? There is really only one way for heat to enter the ocean and only two ways for it to leave, he said. Heat always arrives in the ocean as sunlight; it always leaves as infrared radiation, which is emitted back into space, or as evaporation from the sea surface. But carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants prevent infrared radiation from escaping the ocean—that’s the “greenhouse effect” that gives greenhouse gases their name. Because heat has nowhere else to go, the rate of sea-surface evaporation has to speed up, which means more heat energy can pass into the storm.

In other words, climate change “creates the conditions for water to evaporate faster,” Emanuel said, which means more heat can enter a given storm—and it can get windier.

Second, researchers agree that hurricanes can now strengthen far faster than they could in the old climate. The number of tropical cyclones that have undergone “rapid intensification”—a term of art meaning a storm’s top wind speed has increased by at least 35 miles per hour over a 24-hour period—has “likely” risen over the past 40 years, the IPCC has found.

“The forecaster’s nightmare is going to bed with a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico and waking up to a Cat 4 bearing down on a city” that has no time to evacuate, he told me. Even when meteorologists can safely predict that a storm will rapidly intensify, they can struggle to communicate its risks to the public.

Hurricane Ian looks like a textbook case of rapid intensification: On Monday morning, its top wind speeds were 75 miles per hour, barely qualifying the storm as a hurricane; just 48 hours later, its winds howled at up to 155 miles per hour—just shy of Category 5 status—as it made landfall in Cayo Costa, Florida. Indeed, people may feel like every hurricane to hit the United States recently has undergone a similar metamorphosis. Last year, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm only 74 hours after it became a tropical depression; the storm formed and came ashore faster than New Orleans could evacuate. In 2018, Hurricane Michael rapidly exploded into Category 4 status before it walloped the Florida Panhandle; a year earlier, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma also experienced rapid intensification before they made landfall.

Finally, climate change is making hurricanes rainier, Emanuel said. That’s actually true of most storms, tropical or not, but it’s especially important for hurricanes, because rain from a given hurricane can combine with other impacts to increase a storm’s overall danger.

Read: Did climate change intensify Hurricane Harvey?

“If you have a more intense storm and an elevated sea level, you’re going to be more susceptible to surge flooding,” when the storm pushes the ocean ashore, he told me. Then, surge flooding and “freshwater flooding” from all that extra rain “can gang up,” he said, creating a brackish flooding disaster. “It looks like that’s what happened in Fort Myers,” which has seen some of the worst damage, he told me.

So that’s what scientists do know about climate change and hurricanes. But much remains unclear or unknown about how the two interact. There’s essentially no agreement on what a warming climate will do to smaller hurricanes in the Category 1 or 2 range, Emanuel said. Historically, these less intense storms form far more often than major storms, and they dominate the raw numbers of hurricanes that form each year (although major hurricanes still cause by far the most damage). But “we just don’t know if the number of those smaller storms will be more or fewer or stay the same.”

Climatologists also don’t know what will happen to the diameter of hurricanes. The size of hurricanes is an overlooked but important aspect of a storm’s danger, Emanuel said. For instance, Hurricane Ian made landfall in almost the same place that Hurricane Charley did in 2004, but Ian is a much wider—and thus a much more destructive—storm. Charley, in fact, could almost fit entirely within Ian’s eye. Idealized computer models show that climate change will likely make these monster storms more common, Emanuel said, but so far “nobody wants to carry that over to the real world,” which is far more complex than a simulation.

So what can we say about climate change’s effect on Ian? Stepping back, it seems safe to say that it showed some symptoms of climate change. It rapidly intensified. It dumped huge amounts of rain. You could even argue that it showed evidence of that “higher speed limit.” But asking questions beyond that is folly, Emanuel said.

“I don’t like the question ‘How did climate change affect this storm?’” he told me. “If you had a grandparent who died of lung cancer and who smoked two packs a day, you wouldn’t ask, ‘How much did smoking contribute to his lung cancer?’ Because sometimes people get lung cancer without smoking at all. You just can’t answer that question.”"

paqman

lousubcap said:

@paqman if the above is directed to my posted link above I am surprised as I do the pedestrian no pay option. 

I am not  @Canugghead ‘s troll account 🤣😂

lousubcap

@paqman Sorry as I F'd that big time.  I was close to earth then, now not so much.

Canugghead

Dislikowart strikes again.

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1576218248248688643?s=20&t=tq8uAJSIfqM29KgR1VbIxg

lousubcap

Canugghead said:

Dislikowart strikes again.

And he/she is making up for lost time.  It's everywhere 

WildmanWilson

Doesn't matter to the sheep. Just move the goalpost and keep kicking. Yeah, its a few years old but still shows how gullible you libs are.

https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/content/2017-04-24-a-brief-history-of-fantastically-wrong-climate-change-predictions/

nolaegghead

Do I really need to post an article how the medical community has had some colossal bad ideas in the past and therefore you should not believe in modern medicine?  

JohnInCarolina

nolaegghead said:

Do I really need to post an article how the medical community has had some colossal bad ideas in the past and therefore you should not believe in modern medicine?  

Wouldn’t do any good.  Some men… you just can’t reach.

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1576686626008203265?s=20&t=AmJRTfGMYtULn7WT8FzC8g

Legume

http://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florida-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html


I am over trying to embed links.

Interesting article, small town 12 miles from Ft Myers that was designed to be 100% solar, underground utilities, streets designed to flood rather the homes, etc.  Nobody flooded, nobody lost power, minimal damage.

Botch

Tomorrow I need to do some research on flood insurance.  
When I was working on my MS in IE we had a class on "Current Issues in IE", and one of the more interesting sections was on Insurance.  At that time (~1990) Flood Insurance was the only common type that was subsidized by the Feds (some really ugly case studies for that).  I'd read later that the laws were changed, it was all on the private insurance companies.  I'd read a bit later again that the laws were changed back, as the Wealthy didn't want to pay full cost for insuring their beachside homes.  
Now, with Ian, I'm seeing on the news that flood insurance companies are pulling out of FL in droves, so it sounds like the laws have flip-flopped again.  I also saw, on Bill Maher's show from Friday night, that Bill himself can't purchase fire insurance for his home in California; I'm assuming that's the case for many (all?) californians now?  
 
When Katrina decimated NO I had suggested on a different forum (back in, what, 2006?) that it didn't make sense to rebuild the low section of NO, as both the Gulf and Lake Ponchartrain have a water level higher than that section; global warming was increasing the sea level; and global warming was also increasing hurricane seasons and strength.  Wow, I received the worst flak from anyone on a forum in my life!  "That's our HOME!  How DARE You!"  I guess its because my Dad, and then I, moved often that I didn't have such a sense of "place".  Live in a place where you have work, make the best of it, and hopefully it's inherently safe.  And now I'm seeing the same statements from FL Keys residents, "We'll rebuild here, this is our home".  I guess, if they can find/afford insurance, I'm okay with that, but are they counting on the next hurricane not arriving before their next 30-year mortgage being paid off?  
 
But now, where is it  totally safe?  Hurricanes will only grow in intensity and frequency; parts of Miami flood, daily, with the tides, now (due to sea level elevation already); when I was a teenager tornado season in the midwest was July and August (now it's year-round); the intermountain west where I now live is burning up (as with tornados there's no longer a "season"); and both snowpack and groundwater sources are drying up here too. 
 
More to follow maybe.  

WildmanWilson

nolaegghead said:

Do I really need to post an article how the medical community has had some colossal bad ideas in the past and therefore you should not believe in modern medicine?  

And that would prove that science isn't settled. Its always growing and evolving. Sometimes its just completely wrong. However, the global warming sheep will tell you this is settled science and that's a complete lie. We can also see the politicization of science. This article just shows how these dire prediction were wrong. They are continuing to be wrong. At some point you must ask, how long do I blindly follow something that's been wrong at every turn? Not only that, to do what they ask means a complete life change and lower standard of living for the majority of us. You do this on faith they are doing this without more being behind it. Nothing in the history of modern man will give government more power than this. It changes the complete structure of how the world will be governed. But all you see are cow farts and are ready to give in to anything they ask. Blindly, I may add. 

HeavyG

One thing is certain - the NFIP has created a huge bucket of moral hazard since its inception. Not a single penny of federal taxpayer dollars should support that program. It's funding should be derived entirely from users fees.

The NFIP should be closed to any new property development.

FEMA should not be providing any grant money (low or no interest loans are ok) to folks whose property falls within a flood zone but who decided to forgo the purchase of flood insurance.

I'd also go one step further and say that any state whose governor voted against the feds providing disaster relief money for hurricane events in the past (like say...Hurricane Sandy) when they were a Congressman shouldn't be asking for money now for their state.

JohnInCarolina

Any moron can look at the many astrologists and essential oil chemists at the Flat Earth Society meetings and understand that even the planet being a sphere isn’t “settled science”.  C’mon people, this is just common sense, and global warming is just the sun.  Duh!

Legume

HeavyG said:

One thing is certain - the NFIP has created a huge bucket of moral hazard since its inception. Not a single penny of federal taxpayer dollars should support that program. It's funding should be derived entirely from users fees.

The NFIP should be closed to any new property development.

FEMA should not be providing any grant money (low or no interest loans are ok) to folks whose property falls within a flood zone but who decided to forgo the purchase of flood insurance.

I'd also go one step further and say that any state whose governor voted against the feds providing disaster relief money for hurricane events in the past (like say...Hurricane Sandy) when they were a Congressman shouldn't be asking for money now for their state.

Agree, especially with your comments on funding of NFIP.  At some point, availability and cost of insurance has to factor more heavily into where people choose to live or can afford to live.  If you can't get insurance or can't afford it for that area, you shouldn't be living there.  Prospectively, that should help regulate new building in high risk areas.

Considering the recent political theatrics with immigration and the argument that a few states bear an unequal share of the cost of illegal immigration, I had an odd thought and saw a loose parallel with disaster relief.  Some states take an unequal share of federal disaster relief - the hurricane, wildfire, flood, drought and tornado states.  Yet, we don’t hear the same complaints when those few states that have natural catastrophes repeated frequently and get federal bail outs when others don’t at the scale or frequency.

I am not at all against federal support for disasters, but we need equal or better investment in prevention and mitigation.  For immigration, yes, we need improved policy and practice, but we can’t stop people from wanting and trying to come to the US when there is such a disparity of conditions between where they live and the US.  We can only try to manage it better with policy and control at the border. 

For natural disasters, we can't prevent hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or massive wildfires, but we can try to address contributing factors (yes, things that we believe contribute to global warming) and we can try to lessen the impact of natural disasters by making it a financial choice and responsibility to live in a place, in a structure that is more at risk. That goes for the businesses that keep building homes that will be swallowed up or blown away as well.  Maybe the big builders need to provide insurance for 10 years, or banks need to provide insurance for the life of the loan.  Homeowners pay, but the builders and banks are on the hook for ensuring insurance is available.

No easy solutions, but we need forward progress.

Legume

It's a good thing we didn't let skepticism derail the decision to cut ozone depleting CFCs back in the 70's.  Sadly, I'm not sure that's a win we could achieve in today's environment.

paqman

fishlessman

if nfip needs more money, they just get the zones changed. im done with the whole fema/nfip thing, go with lyods of london if you can get approved. i have three properties in floodplains, experienced i flood, my building was dry until the state came in and turned the property into a dam. it closed off miles of floodplain behind me and forced about 3 feet of water thru the back door of a machine shop and out a side door. coverage was nada. they built a 200 yard earthen dam between my building and the next one over, then removed it after the damage was done.

dbCooper

As regards insurance subsidies at the federal level, if republicans are successful at capturing majorities in the house/senate this November my farmer friends could be in for a shock when they buy crop insurance.  The proposal is to cut the federal subsidy from 60% to 30%.  That and other scary details are touched on in this column...

https://farmandfoodfile.com/2022/08/17/our-money-their-mouth-your-choice/

*edit to add the full column as it may be pay-walled...

Our Money, Their Mouth, Your Choice

If the political polls are to be believed, November’s midterm election will sweep Democrats out of power in the U.S. House of Representatives and put Republicans back in charge.

If accurate, House Republicans will have a splendid opportunity to put your tax money where their collective mouth is by implementing their highly detailed, little-publicized “Blueprint to Save America,” a 122-page, “alternate budget” introduced by the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) June 9.

If you’re a small government/fiscal conservative, the Blueprint is 200-proof catnip. It attacks dozens of government programs as either “socialist,” “radical” or “insidious” and wastes little ink on ways to reform any. Instead, its favorite alternative is the ax and its prescribed fix is either complete elimination or deep program cuts.

This is especially true when the Blueprint starts swinging away at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its farm and ranch support programs. For example, under the deeply red Blueprint, the RSC–of which four out of five House Republicans are members–would:

–“Remove nutrition programs from the Farm Bill.”

–Eliminate the nation’s two, “duplicative,” federal crop insurance programs to save “$42.7 billion over 10 years.”

–Replace both with a single program whose “subsidies (would be) 30 percent” instead of today’s “60 percent” and “would only be offered to pay for catastrophic policies.”

–And “phase out the Sugar Program,” “prohibit new enrollments in the Conservation Reserve Program” (to effectively kill CRP in 10 years) and end the “Conservation Stewardship Program.” 

Additionally, the GOP House group would “eliminate the Milk Program,” “prohibit funding for National School Lunch Standards,” eliminate “the Rural Water and Waste Disposal Program Account,” and dismantle “ McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program.”

And that’s just a start and just USDA.

The Blueprint also urges big tax cuts, deep cuts in environmental oversight, greater defense spending, and privatization of federal agencies like the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service.

Yes, that’s right: no milk program,” no “sugar program,” and no CRP.

Also, no federal crop insurance other than a “catastrophic” policy where farmers would pay 70 percent of the premium, not today’s 40 percent.

And, yes, remove all “nutrition programs”–programs like the vast Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)–from the Farm Bill that would give every non-rural, non-farming House member the perfect reason to never vote for any Farm Bill again.

Coincidence or not, two weeks after the Blueprint went public the decidedly not conservative and not happy Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its own analysis of recent federal farm program spending.

It, too, was a stunner because it agrees with the GOP Blueprint’s key assertion: farm program spending is out of control. The problem, however, claimed the EWG, was the last Republican in the White House–not today’s CRP, not crop insurance, not the milk or sugar programs, and certainly not SNAP.

“The government paid a record $41.6 billion in a variety of subsidies to farmers in 2020,” reported the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) in reviewing the EWG’s analysis, “double the amount they received in 2018, when the Trump-era cash gusher began flowing…”

And, FERN went on, “…farmers received a combined $91.6 billion in 2018, 2019, and 2020 from crop insurance, traditional crop supports, trade war assistance, and pandemic relief,” under the Trump Administration that few–if any–Congressional Republicans or Democrats even questioned.

If you add in 2021 data, direct farm program payments for the most recent four years total $115.5 billion. That means 29 percent of all net farm income earned by farmers, ranchers, and landowners between 2018 and 2021 came from U.S. taxpayers.

Little wonder House Republicans consider USDA a ripe target for spending cuts.

Or do they? If put in charge, would they really cut crop insurance, gut CRP, and eliminate the dairy and sugar programs or is the Blueprint more baloney than beef?

Who knows, but when most House Republicans and the Environmental Working Group agree that farm program spending is out of control, farmers and ranchers might have a problem.

© 2022 ag comm

Botch

Interesting read, @dbCooper; thanks!  

WildmanWilson

For you sheep. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcja8bykNh8

alaskanassasin

I have never met a openly democrat farmer.

alaskanassasin

CRP is double cash rent around here and people still don't use it.

alaskanassasin

In my 8 years of farming the federal government has mailed me money mostly when we did not need it and nothing when we did.  The thing about federal payments to farmers is that the government controls the price of the goods we sell, unfortunately we are not operating in a open market.

   Contrary to popular belief (on this forum anyway) they also indirectly control petroleum prices which in turn effects fertilizer prices (not going to argue that with you guys).  And only can a president put tariffs on our number one exporting country and essentially kill our market, the usda regularly reports exports, grain stock, and crop conditions through out the year which controls the prices.   It is not like when a bank or automaker is failing because they are greedy and the feds bail them out.

Legume

WildmanWilson said:

For you sheep. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcja8bykNh8

So you found a right wing commentator that has made his popularity trading in defamation and conspiracy theories until he basically lost his radio pulpit.  (Related to Alex Jones?). And he spoke to a politician that is generationally  embedded in the coal industry and a well known conspiracy theorist.  

In Australia.

What am I supposed to take away from this?

Canugghead

7🙃7

fishlessman

well that answers the question...whats the question again

https://www.psychnewsdaily.com/spiritual-guide-to-the-707-angel-number/