Monday, 3 October 2022

"To understand the scale of the climate emergency, look at hurricanes"

... says everybody's favourite go-to source of Climate Change Porn.

Let's follow their advice and look at long term records.

And... we establish that there is no discernible pattern or long term trend, it's entirely random, and this year 2022 (so far) has seen relatively few major hurricanes.

Admittedly there is a lot of cherry picking with this - the Alarmists sneak in definitions like 'costliest' (of course $ damages are going up, the Yanks have built a lot more valuable stuff near the coastline over the past century); or include weaker sub-hurricanes (which show up more in the records because people didn't used to bother counting them, or they formed and dissipated far out at sea); or select shorter time periods over which there appears to be a trend (2004 was a bad year, but preceded and followed by several years with no landfalling hurricanes) and so on.

So believe who you want, I always prefer raw data where the parameters are clear and consistent. The raw data just shows random patterns since 1851, and if we're using hurricanes as a yard stick, there is no climate crisis.

4 comments:

A K Haart said...

I sometimes wonder if the people who push out climate porn really believe any of it, or if it's just a job.

ontheotherhand said...

I don't know why we tolerate hurricanes at all. We should stop all of them, not only the extra ones that are allegedly caused by humans. Why not spend 90% of GDP going beyond net zero? Why logically stop there, you wimps? Clever politicians should bind us to remove ALL CO2 (killing plant life, oh well) and dry excess clouds by some date just after they retire.

Bayard said...

"Clever politicians should bind us to remove ALL CO2 "

They could set an example by stopping producing any themselves.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, it's definitely just his day job. Read it, he's just going through the motions and re-hashing every tried and tested Alarmist Trope.

OTOH, you jest, but one of the links in the article is to an Alarmist view of hurricanes where she says that they would not exist without the Greenhouse Effect/greenhouse gases.

She then explains (correctly) that they work because of the lapse rate, which is true, but she clearly misunderstands why there is and has to be a lapse rate, which exists in any atmosphere, it is common sense backed up by observation, maths and a bit of basic physics (energy conservation and gas laws).

B, most actual pol's know perfectly well this is all bullshit that's why they just do a bit of token stuff to keep fringe voters happy.