BS: Katrina's real name?

Subject: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:07 PM

Here's an article which may have something quite significant to say about the hurricane...

Katrina's real name?


I hope the link works.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,B.R.Plenty
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:11 PM

Baby Please Don't Blow

(mp3 file)

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:22 PM

Thanks, LH. I'd heard about this, earlier, today.

B.R. Plenty...sounds good! Thanks for sharing!

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,Tweed
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:33 PM

HAW!!! I'ze fooled you Kat!! It is I, Tweed, aslo named (for tonite anyhow), B.R. Plenty.

How'd that (mp3 file) thing get on there...??? This is one smart board setup.

I heard from khandu today and he is alive at least in the Khingdom obv Tupelo and hopefully will be able to take his royal self and the dancing tarts off to West Point to join up with the Bobert there at the Howling Wolf festival. Como, Mississippi, which is about 50 mile south of Memphis is out of power with trees and lines laying in roads and cars. West Point, MS lost power for 30 minutes and a lot of trees but my correspondent there says it ain't so bad as expected, but they're thankful they didn't live further south.

That was a badass storm.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: JennyO
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:40 PM

Top two threads in the BS section at the moment:


Whats in a name...? / Katrina's real name?

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:47 PM

Well, I saw "tweedsblues" in the addy, Tweed, so I figured it was you or one of your cronies! Well done!

Good to hear that about khandu. Wish we'd hear from poppagator, etc.!

Nice to hear you, again!

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 11:47 PM

That article is, to put it bluntly, BULLSHIT!!!


Yes, Katrina was a very strong storm. So was Andrew in 1992, Camille in 1969, and the "Labor Day Hurricane" in 1935. Katrina was not some kind of anomaly that needs "global warming" as a cause. There've always been strong hurricanes and there always will. There'll also always be category one hurricanes and lots of tropical storms that don't make it to hurricane strength.

Yes, this decade has, so far, been an exceptionally busy one for hurricanes. It looks like we're on pace to have something around 24 hurricanes hit the U.S. which is exactly the number that hit in the 1940s before the idea of global warming was even a gleam in some scientist's eye. (Chart from National Hurricane Center) The chart plainly shows that the last four decades have been ones of below average activity. Hurricane activity is cyclical and we're obviously on the upswing of the cycle, but the causes of the cyclic activity are a complex set of ocean/atmospheric dynamics that have nothing to do with global warming, but have been going on since before any human being ever exhaled a molecule of carbon dioxide.

And, just because I can't let this one go by:

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

What??? Would someone please explain to me how global warming causes colder weather? Or does it just cause colder weather in California and warmer weather in Indiana?

I'm not saying I don't believe in global warming, just that people like the author of that article make it sound a little like environmental snake oil.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 12:19 AM

I reckon it increases the per cent of saturation by raising the average sea temperature, BWL. The added moisture means precipitation is heavier than normal when it happens. But that is just my SEWAG.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 04:44 AM

It's the gawddamn cattle farts and chickenshit.

PLUG A COW'S ASS
SAVE THE WORLD

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 05:02 AM

Articles like that make good headlines, but aren't actually true.

Atmospheric C02 levels are much higher than historical averages. TRUE

Human Activity is responsible for at least some of that rise. TRUE

There is a historic correlation between higher CO2 levels and higher temperatures. TRUE

We have a likely mechanism for C02 to cause increased global energy retention, 'global warming', rather than be an effect of global warming.

Weather systems really do one thing( this is the quick and almost true summary version, ignore if you know this)
They shift heat from near the equator, where there is a net energy gain due to solar radiation, to near the poles where there is a net energy loss. If there is more energy in the system, then it is thought   more intense weather systems will form. In simple terms this means bigger storms etc.


Real science has uncetainty and citations for generations. Newton and Maxwell may be assumed to be correct now. The science here isn't so well understood yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 06:40 AM

Methane:

Only fossil methane is a problem. Methane's chemical lifetime in the atmosphere is approximately 12 years, so any emitted by cattle will only add to the atmosphere in proportion to the INCREASE in cattle population over a 12 year period (unless cattle fart more than they used to). The rest will be recycled back to the CO2 that formed the food the cattle ate in order to make them fart.

Natural gas extraction, on the other hand, along with clathrates and methane stored in peat bogs frozen by permafrost, presents a huge problem, as this CH3 has been stored away for tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years.

Like the chap that asserted quite definitely that he was still on de boat to Luxor, you Yanks are completely in de Nile.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 07:19 AM

I read an interview yesterday (in German) with a scientist who usually warns of global warming and its consequences but said explicitely that global warming adds either nothing or a very tiny amount to the frequency and strength of hurricanes. In his opinion the data of the hurricanes just do not support the claim.

The damage, however, they do gets larger each decade (enough data on that to be sure) and he says that this increase is manmade but unrelated to global warming. The main contributing factors are:
(1) the changing pattern of settlements (closer to the sea, the rivers, the lakes) puts more people and property in danger zones.
(2) The taking away of natural flooding zones by damming, reducing the percentage of natural soil and all that makes floods getting higher than in former years.

That's not my field of knowledge but I must say he made more sense than the article Little Hawk has linked to.
His opinion in a nutshell: Man is largely responsible for global warming, man is largely responsible for increasing damage by tornadoes, but global warming has close to nothing to do with tornadoes.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,G
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 07:30 AM

Amazing thread, well balanced. Only problem is Bee-duya-ell used my opener.
The point is, Global warming, if it is true, didn't just start in 2001.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,BanjoRay
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 07:42 AM

Katrina's real name should have been Hurricane Kyoto - then maybe some of your blinkered politicians may have got the message!
Ray

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: kendall
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 07:47 AM

Global warming is a natural process, and it is being speeded up considerably by our burning of fossil fuels. So, instead of the people in Bangladesh being flooded out in 500 years, they will be flooded out in 50 years. So what?
We won't give a damn until FLORIDA is flooded out. I just hope their voting machines go first.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 09:48 PM

Whatever the precise processes involved, the bottom line is that environmental issues can't be shrugged off as low priorities which can be put on the back burner (a rather disquieting image in this context), but have to be given centre stage.

And the onus of proof has to be shifted - once any activity has been identified as suspected of causing serious environmental damage, it needs to be treated as guily until proved innocent, rather than the other way round. An analogy: we've lost God knows how many people to terrible deaths over the years because of a culture in which it was possible to claim that smoking should be treated as harmless until there as firmm proof that it wasn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Schantieman
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 09:45 AM

We are going to have to get used to the idea, like it or not, that low-lying coastal areas are going to get flooded more often and more seriously in years to come. Bad news for Bangladesh, St Louis and lots of East Anglia.   Some places can afford it more than others. I wonder what would have happened this week if there'd been a cyclone in Bangladesh? Or a 1953-type storm surge in the North Sea?

..and to pick up McGrath's last point, I would echo the last line of Where have all the flowers gone?

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 11:59 AM

We are going to have to get used to the idea, like it or not, that low-lying coastal areas are going to get flooded more often and more seriously in years to come

Just like they did a few centuries ago, and now we have what was a countries population living in the costal counties.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 12:48 PM

I know I'm contributing to the national italic font shortage. Consider the above bracket closed.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:06 PM

Hmmm. Well, that's an interesting set of responses, people. We'll see as time goes by.

Bill - Global warming, in fact, can cause severely colder temperatures to occur at certain locations at certain times...due mostly to its effect on altering convection currents in the ocean, I think, but I'm certainly not enough of an expert to explain it all...nor do I have the time to even attempt to at the moment.

Maybe do a google search on "global warming" and you could find some info about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 04:44 PM

I thought Katrina had fired the Waves and gone solo.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Cluin
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 05:11 PM

Lots of things happening:
Global Warming. The planet's core is cooling. The poles are due to reverse polarity soon (geologically speaking). Our sun is burning out. Comets and asteroids whipping by us all the time. Solar flares. Holes in the Ozone Layer. Volcanoes and earthquakes biding their time. Extinctions of diverse species occuring maybe as they always have or maybe on the increase. Climactic optima and ice ages wafting in and out of the planet's history...

We don't know very damn much about the way things happen or the reasons for them, but it's a good bet our industrialization is not making for a better habitat for the ecosystem that provides life to us.

As bad as the Hurricane Katrina disaster was, it doesn't add up to as much as a fart in a windstorm measured against what has happened and will happen in the future. No need to blame it all on Global Warming.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 05:35 PM

Who produces more methane? Cows or people? I vote for people.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Tweed
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 06:38 PM

Hmmm...Spaw or regular people??

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:30 PM

This Katrina was one hell of a storm.

The time to really be worrying, though, is when we get hit by hurricane ZELDA !!!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:33 PM

...and Cock Robin's real name was Penis Rabinowitz !!

Art again

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Cluin
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 03:13 AM

And Dick Van Dyke's was...

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 07:01 AM

"Would someone please explain to me how global warming causes colder weather?"

Others have had a go - I'll just add this to clarify a minor point I am quite pedantic about:

"Global Warming" doesn't mean just that things are getting hotter. When a system acquires more energy it tends to behave in a more turbulent manner. This means that extremes are more likely. In a time of year when we here in Brisbane should have been getting relatively mild temperatures for a month or two - our temps are swinging from way below average to well above average - on this coming weekend it is forecast to hit over 30 deg C - unusual for this month! We should be in the low to mid 20's for this time of year on average.


"you Yanks are completely in de Nile." ... so far you in de Mediterranean!

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 08:03 AM

Yea, Global Warming it is then. I have declined so far to say it because it might offend those worried over loved ones. But it has to be said sometime:

NOW DO YOU BELIEVE US?

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 10:53 AM

And the onus of proof has to be shifted - once any activity has been identified as suspected of causing serious environmental damage, it needs to be treated as guily until proved innocent, rather than the other way round. (McGrath)

That sounds good, but it is not as good as it sounds. I partly agree and partly disagree. We had at least two false alarms during the last years in Germany. Two big companies nearly went bankrupt that way as the sells dived and the state had to pay both times a large amount of compensation money. In both cases a lot of jobs were in jeopardy.

Identified as suspected is so weak that even a single person's doubts would count here. What the extremist position of McGrath disregards completely are the costs of false alarms. You can lower the costs of misses (the other error) by allowing an extremely high rate of false alarms. False alarms, BTW, not only have costs but also make the population less inclined to listen to alarm calls. Therefore, to look only at the costs of one error (misses), is just as stupid a politic as only acting when damage has been proven beyond any possible doubt (like in the good smoking example).

I am for a cost-benefit analysis in all those cases. This would avoid inaction (as long as one could still find some voices of doubt) and it would also avoid the extremely large costs of shifting the onus of proof. In most cases in which one can make two different types of error (misses and false alarms) that are related by a trade-off in a way that decreasing one type of error increases the other both extremist positions are nearly equally stupid. Either a minimizing-the-sum-of-both-errors strategy or, if the costs of both errors are not considered to be equal, a weighted decision strategy is much better.

As much as I agree with McGrath that innocent-until-proven-guilty is the completely wrong way here with too large costs for environment and all of us I strongly disagree with his solution of shifting the onus of proof for it just replaces one nonsense by another.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 06:23 PM

Apparently, global warming increasing the severity of hurricanes is not bullshit.

"Mounting evidence suggests that tropical cyclones around the world are intensifying, perhaps driven by greenhouse warming, but humans still have themselves to blame for rising damage". Read this article in Science magazine, one of the most prestigious magazines of its type.

Bee-dubya-ell examined only the evidence for hurricanes striking the U.S. to conclude there is no increase in either number or severity but scientists examining the entire earth found much evidence to indicate increases in both number and severity.

But, it's still too soon to reach a definite conclusion - either way.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 07:26 AM

I think it is now time for a follow-up after the following very weak (both in frequency and in intensity) hurricane season.

(1) The frequency of hurricanes may not only not increase with global warming but even decrease (IPCC, 2007).
(2) The strength of hurricanes the present majority opinion says is likely to increase (Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become
more intense, IPCC, 2007).
(3) Close to all scientists agree that the high water marks for hurricanes will be a bit higher for starting on a higher level of ocean water.

That's the present state of opinion.

BTW, has Al Gore meanwhile changed his tune (he used to give the wrong information on (1) and to overstate the certainty of (2))?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 07:43 AM

One swallow doesn't make a summer.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: pdq
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 09:42 AM

One swallow doesn't make you drunk.

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Amergin
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 02:21 PM

One swallow doesn't mean she's in love....

Subject: RE: BS: Katrina's real name?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 08:28 AM

One swallow doesn't make a summer

Yes, I'm glad you agree. Al Gore really should not have used the increased frequency argument in his 2005/2006 presentations, but you must admit it was too hard to resist the temptation to point to the then recent season with an extreme number of hurricanes. This way one gets the attention of the audience.

There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones is the most recent IPCC summary. And I'd really like to know whether that has an effect upon his presentation.

If I was Al Gore's advisor I'd tell him to speak instead about the frequency of major hurricanes which may increase even if the overall frequency should decrease (for which there is some evidence). He then can add that he has meant to say that all the time and is glad now he can clarify this point.

Al Gore is a politician with leadership qualities. Such persons are not known for public expression of doubts. They give the audience the impression that they clearly know where they want to lead the nation. So it is no wonder that IPCC language of "more likely than not" mutates to "scientists agree" in Al Gore's presentation.

Despite these remarks, he's a good guy I'd gladly vote for. Even if he exaggerates, a course of politics following his ideas will have a lot of good consequences.

Wolfgang