Essay on "Hurricane Harvey's Rainfall and Global Warming"

[xmetman]

Interesting article from Chris Landsea on Hurricane Harvey and global warming (link).

[Alastair B. McDonald]

Well, it is just what you would expect from a climate change denier. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Landsea#On_global_warming_and_hurricanes

[Richard Dixon]

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 18:00:05 UTC, Alastair B. McDonald wrote:

Well, it is just what you would expect from a climate change denier. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Landsea#On_global_warming_and_hurricanes

Where is Landsea's "denial" in the sentence "we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming" ?

This pernicious "you're either in one camp or the other and if can see you seem to be in the opposite to me I'm not going to value your views" really irritates me. He's giving some pragmatic views on how he thinks hurricanes are being changed by climate change. I for one agree with him on activity rates: we have very little evidence to suggest the climate is influencing hurricane activity - although it's fair to say that rainfall could easily be being altered by a warmer climate. And no, I'm definitely not a climate denier.

Richard

[xmetman]

Alastair is just plain wrong in summing up Chris Landsea as a denier, and I totally agree with Richard's comments. I can see it won't be long before we bring the ducking stool back to test for AGW deniers before we listen to what they have to say. Tropical cyclone development is far from being fully understood and must depend on any other variables other than just the SST.

[Jack Frost]

He has a great surname. If only he married someone with the surname Air and they chose to combine names. Sigh!

Liam

[Alastair B. McDonald]

"... I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming" is hardly a ringing endorsement of current  scientific thinking that "... the best estimate for the anthropogenic share of global warming since 1950 is 110 percent". (In other words, the climate would have continued to cool after the 1950s but for our burning of fossil fuels.)

Deniers can no longer claim that climate change is not happening, but they still deny that the consequences could be catastrophic, and that any minor catastrophes are related to global warming, That is what Landsea is doing in his essay.

[Alastair B. McDonald]

I am not saying that you should not listen to Landsea, only that you should be aware of his agenda.

However, I have got some bad news for you. It is not the ducking stool, but legal proceedings which are being taken against ESSO  for their denialist propoganda and distortion of the science. See "

The global CO2 rise: the facts, Exxon and the favorite denial tricks" at:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/01/the-global-co2-rise-the-facts-exxon-and-the-favorite-denial-tricks/comment-page-3/#comment-690701

[Richard Dixon]

I see you're still branding him as a denier. Sigh.

Is it not fair also to assume that the warming effect in the atmosphere has a spectrum of responses? Why should everything respond to it?

For what it's worth, the current wisdom for hurricanes is a decrease in overall Atlantic hurricane activity but an increase in the strength of the events when they do happen.

Also a warming of the Atlantic means that the genesis points of hurricanes - especially those forming from African easterly waves - moves further east into the Atlantic as the warm pool of water than can support hurricane activity expands. This means that storms have more chance of recurvature and stay away from land. Why must climate change always be associated with negative impacts?

[Richard Dixon]

I actually have sympathy for Landsea, per this article.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3341688/Climate-control.html

It comes to a pretty pass when open debate on a topic is frozen out because someone takes a contrary view to the majority. It happened in the 1960s in nutrition where anyone who disagreed with the heart disease / fat intake hypothesis that was shot down in flames. Nowadays we're slowly debunking the idea that saturated fat is bad for you.

I'm not saying that this is the case with climate change as it's so obviously happening but I feel the ears should be open to reasoned thinking. For instance I've not seen any attempt to explain the US Hurricane drought from 2006-2016 through the lens of climate change because things got better, not worse in terms of impacts.

Richard