Hurricanes, El Nino, and GW

Here is a link to a story that everyone is familiar with by now. 2006 had way fewer hurricanes than predicted by "the experts".

The story points out that the hurricane predictions were faulty due to unexpected and unpredicted formation speed, intensity and behaivior of El Nino. El Nino..... an extremely well studied and understood phenomena. There have been other culprits mentioned as well.....dry air, Saharan dust.....

My request to the GW alarmist (no disrespect intended in the name) is to present some of the reasons you believe the GW doomsday predictions when "the experts" can't reliably predict well understood climate/weather events like El Nino and Atlantic Hurricanes.

Last year the doomsayers pointed to the 2005 hurricane season and said..."See? See what GW is doing? Be prepared for more." Now I suppose we should be ready to hear "GW renders our predictive models unreliable".

No takers?

How does AlGore know what the next 50 yrs. will bring, when the weather experts dont know what next year will bring?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts

You got no takers to this because the doom and gloom sayers on this board simply have no rhetoricals to give.

One can do an ATS search and find loads upon loads of doomsayer threads concerning Global Warming, hurricanes, etc and yet, when their doomsaying predictions are confronted a time later, they are no where to be found defending those predictions. Ironic, huh?

The proof speaks for itself, hence the reason that Al "Global Warming's 'The End is Near' posterboy--aka, Captain Planet" Gore has hastily retreated into seclusion to write more bogus and overhyped material such as At stake is nothing less than the survival of human civilisation....:shk:

May G-d forgive their secularistic liberal doomsayers souls.

Originally posted by darkbluesky

My request to the GW alarmist (no disrespect intended in the name) is to present some of the reasons you believe the GW doomsday predictions when "the experts" can't reliably predict well understood climate/weather events like El Nino and Atlantic Hurricanes.

Well, for starters, El Nino is not very well understood, and we're still learning the processes behind the development of Atlantic hurricanes.

And future climate predictions are much simpler because they generalise. We're not predicting specific events in specific places on specific dates (or even years).

It's a bit like saying, how can you predict a road leading to the seaside will be busy with traffic next summer, when you can't even predict the exact time that every single car using it will pass by tomorrow ......

Originally posted by Essan

Well, for starters, El Nino is not very well understood, and we're still learning the processes behind the development of Atlantic hurricanes.

I respectfully disagree.

www.elnino.noaa.gov...
geochange.er.usgs.gov...
www.pacificislandtravel.com...
www.upei.ca...
hurricanes.noaa.gov...
www.weatherquestions.com...

I'm sorry, but both phenomena have been studied intensively for nearly 100 years and are very well understood in terms of what causes them, however they remain highly unpredictable. How is it then, that anyone can predict the effects of a phenomenon such as global warming, that is being observed and studied scientifically for the very first time?

And future climate predictions are much simpler because they generalise. We're not predicting specific events in specific places on specific dates (or even years).

This is from AlGores film "An Inconvenient Truth"

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000 people a year.6
Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.7
Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.8
More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.9

www.climatecrisis.net...

Plenty of dates and time ranges cited in these alarmist warnings. And everyone has heard many of the others. In fact just 2-3 days ago there was a thread here on ATS about warnings of mass extinction from GW.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

My problem is not with people concerned about the potential effects of global warming. However I find it unacceptable and self-serving and utterly irresponsible for a politician to use an issue such as this for his own political gain.

It's a bit like saying, how can you predict a road leading to the seaside will be busy with traffic next summer, when you can't even predict the exact time that every single car using it will pass by tomorrow ......

Sorry, but I believe it's more like saying "If the hurricane experts can't tell me if there will more or fewer storms next year than we had this year, then how can a GW expert (who toils in the world of predictive models based on a comparitively insignificant volume of historical data) tell me how many feet the sea will rise in 50 years or how crop growth patterns will change, or how many forest fires will occur....?"

Also, to me, it's telling that all of the claims made by the more savvy alarmists, such as Mr. Gore, are laced with words like "could" "may" and "possibly". IMO if Mr. Gore is so firmly convinced that we are facing such dire consequeces he would be more commital. Many, such as myself, already think he's either a manipulative politician or a nut job (or both). I couldn't possibly think any less of him if he stated "The ocean will rise by 50 feet by 2050 and submerge NYC. No difference to me.


[edit on 12/1/2006 by darkbluesky]

All done here?

No more defenders of AlGore et.al.?

Clearly no one wants to argue with you because you obviously have already made up your mind. Sure, nothing is wrong and everything is just wonderful in paradise; Ok, fine ... so go back to sleep and stop looking for a fight. Meanwhile every scientific mind in the world is watching the polar ice melt and the weather grow monsters ... like the Cat 5 super-typhoon that just hit the Philippines.

But, if you really want to know why we didn't get hit by any hurricanes this year, look the Jet Stream. All summer long it was dipped extremely south blocking the Atlantic storms that did form; and now it’s about to bring one of the worst winters on record ...

Doomsayers? Sure, I’ll buy that title ...

Thanks for the reply. I'm not looking for an argument. Just trying to make a point that even though GW is real, we need to temper our response to balance our current needs with the future health of the planet.

Well see that's the problem though, no one knows if it's real or not. Remember the Theory of Eugenics, which stated the human race would die out if the weak part of the gene pool was not killed off (i.e. all non-white people must die!). The Nazis and the Americans were the big researchers in that and it was supported by all the big politicians, scientists, and celebrities of the time, and people who said it was bogus were ridiculed and told to shut up, until it was actually put into practice in WWII; after WWII, it was quickly forgotten about, everyone who had believed in it felt so disgraced.

Global Warming is a theory, and it could just be another theory of eugenics. Just like that theory, now scientists, even Nobel Przie winners, are claiming we need to take measures to start "shading" the earth with chemicals released into the atmosphere. These scientists are blinded by their own viewpoints, failing to realize they themselves are too biased for their own good.

They essentially want to enact something that is COMPLETELY theoretical, I mean HOW IN THE HECK could we know what shading the Earth might do!? They want to utilize something in which we have no idea what the consequences would be, if there would be any or if they would be drastic, etc....for something that we also don't even know if it exists.

Remember, despite all the doom-and-gloom about CO2 in the atmosphere, CO2 only makes up less than 1% of the Earth atmosphere.

Regarding Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," that movie was not true at all. It was based off of the science of climatologist Michael Mann, who was critisized by scientists who believe in global warming very strongly, for producing incredibly sloppy work, which could be used as fuel for the anti-enviromentalist crowd.

Another problem that is huge, regarding environmentalism, is that its research is not conducted in a double-blind fashion. In the medical industry and others, this is standard practice. It means two groups of scientists or researchers, each with opposing viewpoints, are given the same experiment to conduct (without being told of about the other team conducting it as well) and told to conduct this research or experiment in an unbiased fashion. Well that never works, results always come out biased even if the scientists try to be unbiased. Humans will be unconsciously biased a certain way. Once both results are received, they are reviewed over by a group of scientists of both viewpoints and then conclusions are made ultimately.

This is not done in environmental science, meaning research and results from environmental organizations are just as biased as the research coming from big oil corporations.

Environmental organizations are no different than the corporations, most of them: they start out with good intentions, but then they begin to fall prey to corruption and they will thus skew research towards what brings them in more money and keeps them from being dissolved into nothing. Environmental organizations are also not audited, meaning no one really knows what they do with their money.

When you look at history, since the dawn of the 20th century, there is always some kind of fearmongering going in the media and used by the government, to scare the public. First there was the Theory of Eugenics, and when it died off after WWII, it was quickly replaced by two major fears, namely Communism (i.e. Red Scare), and the Soviet Union, and thermonuclear war (though these were legitimate threats). After the Cold War ended, it was happy time, or so people thought, but it was replaced by (drum roll please) global warming.

When I am 50, there will probably be yet another big threat out there that is going to end the world. And like the Cold War, now movies are being made and all that on global warming. During the Cold War, books were written and movies were made about the effects of thermonuclear war. Now, movies are made about the effects of climate change ("The Day After Tomorrow," "An Inconvenient Truth," etc...).

Now I am not saying all of these things are fake or true, I mean Eugenics was a fake threat; Communism and the Cold War and nuclear war were real threats, but I mean, they were the prevailing threat for about 45 years. Then, with them gone, a new threat was needed, and global warming took it.

As to whether global warming is a real or fake threat remains to be seen. There's two things about global warming unknown: 1) is it happening? Some people say yes, and you are a fool if you disagree, others say no, and you are a fool for being so sure. 2) is, okay, IF it is finally concluded that global warming exists, well, is it actually going to be bad for the Earth?

Right now, we know this:
Is the Earth heating up? It seems so, although no one can be completely 100% sure, the Earth does seem to be in a warming trend.

Is the Earth heating up from global warming? No one has a clue really, and no the science is not nearly as conclusive as many like to put it.

If global warming is happening, will it damage the Earth or help it? No one knows for sure, there's research saying it will cause an ice age and kill us all, there's research saying it will help everything. Personally, if it is happening, I hope it's the latter

Are scientists, even Nobel-Prize winners who are experts in their field, biased and fallible? Yes, the Theory of Eugenics shows this and much recent work done in environmentalism shows this. If some Nobel Prize winning physicist or environmentalist or climate scientist says we need to start doing :::insert grand plan to save the Earth::: don't put all of your stock into what they're predicting. Climate science and the oceans and all that are still far too highly misunderstood.

Can we humans stop global warming if it is concluded we are causing it? Probably not, though some scientists obviously think we can. The problem is that historically, every time humans have "messed up" the environment, whenever we try to fix it, we end up messing it up moreso.

Why Is Environmentalism So Misunderstood? Well, a couple of reasons, namely 1) the systems are so darn complex, and 2) the research is too skewed. For example, take the theory of global warming. The theory of global warming essentially states that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will trap heat in the atmosphere, which will heat up the upper atmosphere, which will thus heat up the ground. But apparently, according to certain research, the ground is heating up and the upper atmosphere is not! This means that yes, the Earth is heating up apparently, but not due to global warming.

But then, just recently, research was released announcing that, the upper-atmosphere IS heating up, so that is in favor of global warming.

But without double-blind experimentation, who can one believe? Another example is the polar ice caps. According to Al Gore's movie, NewsWeek, Time magazine, Vanity Fair, Katie Couric, etc...the ice caps are melting, polar bears and penguins are threatened, and they will flood New York City out and so forth.

YET, then research states that 90% of the world's ice is in Antarctica (South Pole), and that Antarctica isn't growing warmer, it's growing colder! Scientists who believe in global warming even argued by saying to this, "Just because this is happening does not mean global warming is not happening. GW will cause certain parts of the world to grow colder."

Well that's all fine and dandy, but if GW is happening and the place with 90% of the world's ice isn't melting, then I don't think we have to worry about North America and Europe becoming flooded or the penguins and polar bears dying off.

Of course I'm sure there's research that can counter this, too!!

Going back to #1, the complexity of the systems. You've got the atmosphere, which is incredibly complex, thousands of variables, many of which we don't even know of as yet, so predicting the climate in the future is very difficult.

Then you've got the OCEAN, another VERY COMPLEX system that we do know about, but not enough about in itself, and there's how the ocean affects the atmosphere.

There's ocean temperature, where they don't know quite the actual temperature of the ocean, and which portions affect the atmosphere (for example they believe deep ocean temperature can affect the atmosphere above), sea-level rise (which is highly debated and complex to measure), there's how the salinity of the ocean affects the atmosphere and the ocean temperature, which then can affect the atmosphere itself also, they don't quite know which parts of the ocean affect the atmosphere, or how those parts affect the atmosphere at different temperatures, or how to even accurately measure those temperatures, they don't know how salinity affects the ocean temperature exactly, and they can't accurately measure ocean salnity, sea-level rise is really complex, etc....it's all really complex and not nearly understood enough.

I can tell you one thing though, oil isn't going away at all; energy needs in the U.S. alone are probably going to double or maybe even triple in this century, and China and India are quickly becoming huge consumers of oil. So hopefully, GW is not happening if it will be harmful, and if it is (and is beneficial), more power to it.



[edit on 2-12-2006 by WheelsRCool]