Sunday, July 17, 2016

Capozzola's "Hurricane Drought" examined (climatechangedispatch)


The depth of Republican power politics driven deception is mind-boggling.  By happenstance I’ve been introduced to Steven Capozzola, another appalling example of the base hostility and dishonesty towards constructively learning about what the experts have to share about our changing global climate system.  
Capozzola wrote an article about a New York Times Op-ed (7/15/16) written by Professor Adam Sobel, a bona fide climate scientist.  After his op-ed's bumpy start, which played right into the contrarian’s ruthless opportunism, Sobel did an admirable job of explaining what climate scientists have learned these past decades.  At least to those who were actually reading it with an eye to understanding what was written.  

Capozzola’s article however provided a fundamentally dishonest portrayal of, not just Sobel’s op-ed, but the scientific understanding in general.  In this review I will demonstrate why and how.

To me it remains flabbergasting that fraud like this is accepted as part of adult dialogue.  Constructive, it certainly is not.  Education, it has nothing to do with.  Sick entertainment for folks who hate our planet and other people, perhaps.  In any event, it’s this sort of attack on rationality, learning and decent experts that drives me to keep dogging these artful liars and traitors (toward our children’s future wellbeing.).

In this post I have copied Capozzola’s complete article not changing a word.  I will intersperse my own comments along with paragraphs from Adam Sobel’s maliciously defamed op-ed, and of course a few links to further legitimate information for your own edification.  

Climatologist Tries to Justify 11-year Hurricane Drought in New York Times Op-Ed

Written by Steven Capozzola, Guest Post on July 15, 2016, ClimateChangeDispatch

Capozzola:  The New York Times ran an op-ed today by Adam Sobel, an “atmospheric scientist at Columbia.” The gist of Sobel’s article: Since 2005, the United States has been experiencing a hurricane “drought” (i.e., no category 3 or higher hurricane has made landfall in 11 years.) 

But don’t worry, Sobel says, there will be more hurricanes soon, and the fact that they will be coming is proof of man-made climate change.

Yes, that’s what he’s saying.

The question is whether Sobel is writing the op-ed to buck himself up, or hoping to cheerlead the rest of the alarmist crowd. 

After all, the computer models that have predicted global warming have also predicted more hurricanes. 
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This is a lie.  
From Sobel’s op-ed:  “The best science doesn’t, in fact, predict that the future will hold more hurricanes; most of our best models predict there may be fewer. But these predictions of changes in the number of hurricanes are quite uncertain, in part because they are connected to a more basic problem: Why does the number of tropical cyclones average about 90 per year, and not more or fewer?”

Here’s an interesting fact most don’t know:
From Sobel’s Op-ed:  But aerosol cooling appears to be disproportionately effective in reducing hurricane intensity, and climate models suggest that, because of the aerosols, hurricane intensity globally should not have increased much yet, despite warming caused by greenhouse gases.

As usual there’s more to this story:
From Sobel’s Op-ed:  Global aerosol concentrations appear to have reached something of a plateau, thanks to air quality regulations in the United States and Europe. While increases in aerosol emissions in Asia have offset the decline elsewhere, this pollution is unlikely to keep pace with rising greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, aerosols tend to wash out after a few weeks, while carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a very long time.

For an idea of what's happening in the Northern Hemisphere see these details:

2015 Sets a New Record for Category 4 and 5 Hurricanes and Typhoons
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Capozzola:  But real-life observations continue to diverge from what computer models have actually predicted.
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Capozzola why ignore the rest of our globe?:

From Sobel’s Op-ed:  The Atlantic Ocean, where hurricanes affecting the United States arise, generates only a little over 10 percent of the planet’s tropical cyclones, a term that includes both hurricanes and less intense but still powerful tropical storms. 

What happens in the Atlantic isn’t generally representative. In fact, other regions have not enjoyed the vacation that our most susceptible coastlines have had from serious storms. Ask the people in Taiwan and China, who just got hit by a supertyphoon named Nepartak (“supertyphoon” is, approximately, the western Pacific label for what we would call a major hurricane).
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Capozzola:  It’s somewhat baffling that the New York Times would publish such an essentially meaningless opinion. But the mainstream media have long since thrown in its lot with the alarmist crowd.
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Here Capozzola the public relations expert engages in the requisite character assassination that is the mainstay of the Republican PR attack on science and rational learning.  

It wouldn’t do to acknowledge that Professor Sobel is a respected active climate scientist, and that his op-ed is basically a simplified explanation geared for informed lay-people who want to understand the state of the science.  Here from Sobel’s webpage:

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Adam Sobel

Several colleagues and I have a new paper in Science about tropical cyclone intensity and climate change. The paper is behind a pay wall, sorry about that. However you can get the basic messages from my op-ed piece about it in the New York Times.
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It seems that recognizing others have important legitimate information to share is like a deadly sin for our faith-based Republicans - there’s not one serious scientist that doesn’t get denigrated like this by the right wing media.  

Here’s why we should listen to what Prof. Sobel has to share with us, he knows what he’s talking about:

Adam H. Sobel
Professor
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Ocean and Climate Physics
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Capozzola:  Regardless, there are problems with Sobel’s op-ed…
Sobel says that “significant global warming, over a degree and a half Fahrenheit, has already occurred since preindustrial days.” That’s essentially accurate. The Earth has warmed by roughly 0.8 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s. But whether one views it as “significant” depends on context. Given the accumulating evidence of global climate changes over the past few thousand years, such a net increase over a span of roughly 130 years seems relatively mild—and typical of the climate variations seen during the latter part of the current interglacial epoch.
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This can only be believed from within a hermetically sealed echo-chamber, here Capozzola reveals his own cartoonish understanding for what’s been happening on this planet.  His delusions are refuted by learning about what is being observed on this planet:

The Biosphere/Climate Connection
Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences summarizes the most important principles and concepts of climate science. It presents information that individuals and communities need to understand Earth’s climate, impacts of climate change, and approaches for adapting and mitigating change. 


Concept A. Individual organisms survive within specific ranges of temperature, precipitation, humidity, and sunlight. Organisms exposed to climate conditions outside their normal range must adapt or migrate, or they will perish.
Concept B. The presence of small amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere warms Earth’s surface, resulting in a planet that sustains liquid water and life.
Concept C. Changes in climate conditions can affect the health and function of ecosystems and the survival of entire species. The distribution patterns of fossils show evidence of gradual as well as abrupt extinctions related to climate change in the past.
Concept D. A range of natural records shows that the last 10,000 years have been an unusually stable period in Earth’s climate history. Modern human societies developed during this time. The agricultural, economic, and transportation systems we rely upon are vulnerable if the climate changes significantly.
Concept E. Life – including microbes, plants, and animals and humans – is a major driver of the global carbon cycle and can influence global climate by modifying the chemical makeup of the atmosphere. The geologic record shows that life has significantly altered the atmosphere during Earth’s history.
You can also see where these concepts are found in national standards documents as well as common misconceptions in the Standards and Curriculum Connections article.
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Are humans too insignificant to affect global climate?
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Climate change and the biosphere
By F. Stuart Chapin | January 1, 2008 | The Scientist

Climate change and the biosphere © Momatiuk - Eastcott / Corbis 

From corals to human disease, scientists watching the effects of global warming are convinced.  Global warming spells danger for Earth's biomes, which in turn play an important role in climate change. 

On the following pages, you will read about some of the specific changes, from fruit flies to microbes, that scientists have observed. 

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New report finds human-caused climate change increased the severity of many extreme events in 2014
November 5, 2015

Human activities, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land use, influenced specific extreme weather and climate events in 2014, including tropical cyclones in the central Pacific, heavy rainfall in Europe, drought in East Africa, and stifling heat waves in Australia, Asia, and South America, according to a new report released today. The report, “Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective” published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, addresses the natural and human causes of individual extreme events from around the world in 2014, including Antarctica. NOAA scientists served as three of the five lead editors on the report.
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Global Average Temperatures Are Close to 11,000-Year Peak
By the end of this century, Earth is set to get hotter than at any time since the last ice age
By Sid Perkins, Nature magazine on March 8, 2013

After the ice age, they found, global average temperatures rose until they reached a plateau between 7550 and 3550 BC. Then a long-term cooling trend set in, reaching its lowest temperature extreme between ad 1450 and 1850.

Since then, temperatures have been increasing at a dramatic clip: from the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest, Marcott and his team report today in Science.
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What’s the hottest Earth has been “lately”?
Michon Scott  |  September 17, 2014
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Capozzola:  There’s also the greater issue of cause. Sobel naturally assumes that this increase in temperatures is driven entirely by increased emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). 
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This particular implication is among the most malicious acts of misrepresenting thoroughly understood science.  It deserves to be considered an actionable offense, malicious vandalism of intellectual certainty.

I feel so bold about this because I know that Air Force scientists for a number of countries studied the atmosphere intensely during the 40s, 50s, 60s and into the 70s during which time they studied every aspect of Earth’s atmosphere and it’s radiative transfer properties.

Subsequently many modern marvels (that too many take for granted) would have been impossible without scientists having achieved that thorough understanding.  For proof of my certainty on this point visit:

CO2 Science dependent modern marvels, For your consideration
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Archive, Hanscom AFB Atmospheric Studies, Cambridge Research Lab

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Perhaps it is a mute point since SB1161 was withdrawn, then again, it's important to understand the real arguments and intentions behind SB1161 -   
Because the demand for NO MORE LIES is only going to get louder!

Five Reasons to Pass the Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act (SB 1161)
Jason BarboseWestern states policy manager | March 29, 2016
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Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?
Lawrence Torcello  |  March 13, 2014  |  The Conversation
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Capozzola:  But many climate skeptics (That would be contrarians!) would argue that this mild uptick is the result of a large-scale increase in solar output over the past 130 years. 

And while solar irradiance has increased in that time, it is the associated variations in solar winds and the solar magnetic field that contribute significantly to changes in global climate, thanks to their influence on atmospheric ionization and cloud formation.
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This is either gross stupidity or malicious lying!


These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments.
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The Sun and Global Warming 
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Stanford Solar Center
(Latest research determines Sun is not the cause of global warming)
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Solar activity not a key cause of climate change, study shows
December 22, 2013 | Source: University of Edinburgh

Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows.
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Who’s to Blame for Global Warming? Not the Sun
Published: June 22nd, 2011
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Capozzola:  Putting aside the issue of cause, however, it’s important to note that Sobel is basing his views on what he predicts may happen. Essentially, he is saying “The computer models tell us…” And that’s the crux of his argument, and his problem.
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No, that is totally false, this knowledge is not depend on computer model projects, and that is not what Prof. Sobel tried to explain to those willing to listen to what he actually wrote:

From Sobel’s Op-ed:  But when it comes to the strength of hurricanes, we have a pretty good comprehension of the physical science of how hurricane intensity is controlled by the large-scale climate. In a paper this week in the journal Science, several colleagues and I assess the state of this understanding and what it implies about the recent past, present and future of hurricanes.

As the climate warms, the physics says hurricanes should get stronger, because the tropical ocean surface heats up more than the atmosphere above it, increasing the temperature differential on which storms feed. The best computer models also predict stronger storms, so we have separate but consistent lines of evidence. Even if the number of hurricanes decreases somewhat, the overall increase in intensity may well mean that there are more of the strongest storms. And the very strongest storms of the future will probably exceed any of the past in their intensities.

While several groups of scientists who have done statistical analyses of data on all storms for the last few decades have found significant increases in the numbers of the strongest ones, Categories 4 and 5, it is also true that those results are not consistent across all studies.

It also turns out that human influence on storm intensity is more complicated than we have thought. Human activities have not just increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, but also concentrations of aerosols — tiny liquid or solid particles from cars, industrial smokestacks and fires. These particles tend to cool the climate by absorbing and reflecting sunlight, though they haven’t been enough to prevent significant global warming over the last century.
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Capozzola:  Since the start of the 21st century, the computer models predicting large-scale man-made warming have diverged further and further from actual, observed temperature measurements. 
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No.  That is completely false, this knowledge is not depend on computer models

27 -- The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC
YouTube channel Potholer54


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No, climate models aren’t exaggerating global warming

By Puneet Kollipara 
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Capozzola:  Despite this, Sobel and company continue to insist on the validity of their thesis. The problem is that they can’t explain why their predictions aren’t matching the flatlining of temperatures seen since 2000.
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Here’s another one of those claims that ought to have the guy hauled before a judge to explain how he can justifying repeating such absolute and harmful fraud.

It’s the atmospheric insulation regulator getting bumped from under 300 ppm to over 400 ppm and climbing that is causing our “global” climate to retain more heat, thus causing our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine to warm.  90% of this heat is going into our oceans.   

In other words pretending that a slight leveling off of surface temperature equals global warming stopped is ludicrous.  But delusional faith-based Republicans embrace such transparent stupidity - and the rest of us let them get away with it ???

SCIENCE | TEMPERATURE | January 15. 2013.
All the reasons why global warming hasn’t stopped

Accusations of scientific misconduct flowed from skeptics and some news outlets last week after the Met Office revised downwards its decadal prediction of global temperature rise up to 2017. Although the Met Office has explained why this change to their short-term forecast doesn’t affect their view of the likely long-term warming trend, this didn’t stop the Mail on Sunday resurrecting one of its favourite arguments – that global warming has “stopped”.

This is not a new claim.  …
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Did Global Warming Slow Down in the 2000s, or Not?
Scientists clarify the recent confusion
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire on February 25, 2016

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Capozzola:  Ironically, solar advocates can offer a valid hypothesis: since solar activity began falling off, there’s been an ensuing leveling off of temperatures. Equally significant is that atmospheric CO2 has reached 400 parts per million (0.04 percent), and is essentially “saturated.” Thus, its greenhouse potential is maxed out, making additional heat-trapping less likely.
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Here’s another one of those claims that ought to have the guy hauled before a judge to explain how he can justifying repeating such absolute and harmful fraud.  The scientific argument that Capozzola is using here was lost a century ago.  Get with it, this is 2016!  

For an excellent review of the details check out this article.  

A Saturated Gassy Argument
Filed under: Climate Science Greenhouse gases — group @ 26 June 2007 - 

A guest post by Spencer Weart, in collaboration with Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

…  Nobody was interested in thinking about the matter deeply enough to notice the flaw in the argument. The scientists were looking at warming from ground level, so to speak, asking about the radiation that reaches and leaves the surface of the Earth. Like Ångström, they tended to treat the atmosphere overhead as a unit, as if it were a single sheet of glass. (Thus the “greenhouse” analogy.) But this is not how global warming actually works.

What happens to infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface? As it moves up layer by layer through the atmosphere, some is stopped in each layer. To be specific: a molecule of carbon dioxide, water vapor or some other greenhouse gas absorbs a bit of energy from the radiation. …

What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas molecules means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers …

Any saturation at lower levels would not change this, since it is the layers from which radiation does escape that determine the planet’s heat balance. The basic logic was neatly explained by John Tyndall back in 1862: "As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial [infrared] rays, produces a local heightening of the temperature at the Earth’s surface.” …
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How Much More Will Earth Warm?
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Is the CO2 effect saturated?
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For yet more details:

Why some gases are greenhouse gases, but most aren’t, and some are stronger than others
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It’s interesting to note that Sobel couches his statements with a series of disclaimers. Of hurricanes and climate, he says the “knowledge is far from perfect.” And he cites the arguments of his opponents to make a few safe caveats—he blames “natural variability” for the current hurricane drought.
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For a closer look at this fraudulent Hurricane Drought see:

This is what climate science delusionals call an 11 year Hurricane Drought

By limited his perspective Steven allows himself to forget how damaging <3 category hurricanes can be in our new climate system, with it’s rising seas and intensified torrential rains:

Hurricane Ike - September 2008
Although it was classified as a category 2 storm, Ike remains the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history after Katrina and 1992’s Andrew. Total damage: $25 billion, mostly in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

Hurricane Sandy - October 29, 2012
Summary: Hurricane Sandy was the 18th named tropical cyclone of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 - November 30). Sandy formed in the central Caribbean on October 22nd and intensified into a hurricane as it tracked north across Jamaica, eastern Cuba and the Bahamas. Sandy moved northeast of the United States until turning west toward the mid Atlantic coast on the 28th. Sandy transitioned into a post-tropical cyclone just prior to moving onshore near Atlantic City, NJ. For a complete summary of Sandy, view the National Hurricane Center Sandy Tropical Cyclone Report
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Capozzola:  Overall, Sobel explains that studies of weather are uncertain: “While there is debate about the drought’s significance, there is little doubt that its primary cause is dumb luck, and that won’t continue forever…The best science doesn’t, in fact, predict that the future will hold more hurricanes; most of our best models predict there may be fewer. But these predictions of changes in the number of hurricanes are quite uncertain…” So why is Sobel predicting a glut of future hurricanes?
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Why are you putting words in his mouth?  Sobel said nothing about a glut of hurricanes.  He’s pointing out that simply because we’ve been lucky that category >3 Atlantic hurricanes of the past few years haven’t made landfall, that we shouldn’t be stupid enough to think this coincidence will last.


2015 Sets a New Record for Category 4 and 5 Hurricanes and Typhoons

A record 22 hurricanes or typhoons have reached Category 4 or 5 strength in the Northern Hemisphere this year.


The record was broken on Oct. 17 when Koppu became the nineteenth storm to reach this intensity prior to slamming into the Philippines as a super typhoon. Since then, Super Typhoon ChampiHurricane Olaf and Hurricane Patricia added to the total. …
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Capozzola:  Again, it’s somewhat embarrassing that the New York Times would publish an op-ed that essentially says: ‘We haven’t seen any major hurricanes for 11 years, we don’t really know why, our climate science is uncertain, our predictive computer models are limited, but we’re certain we’ll see more frequent and intense hurricanes soon because of increased CO2 emissions.’
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That is not at all what the professor wrote, but then you would have to actually read it and think about what the professor explained to understand that.

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Capozzola:  But this is the contemporary face of climate science and willful alarmism. It’s the same crowd of environmental elites who gleefully disparage those who question any tenet of man-made global warming, who aim to silence dissent and debate, who advocate for massive fossil fuel reductions that will hurt millions of struggling American families, and who choose to deny much-needed infrastructure and power generation to Third World countries. All this certitude for an agenda based on question mark after question mark.
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Capozzola reveals his true colors in this paragraph.  The science of global warming, he couldn’t care less about.  He is worried about economic prosperity and keeping Reaganomics alive no matter how disconnected it is from physical reality.  Unfortunately he and his ilk don’t have the common sense to realize that we depend on a healthy planet and a predictable weather regime for everything we hold near and dear.

Also for the record, 
this isn’t about Free Speech, it about maliciously lying about settled evidence.  

Hell, Capozzola won’t even recognize that it’s not about the climate models, it’s about solid science and verifiable observations.
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Capozzola:  Sobel and his ilk should stop basing their predictions on failed computer models and start looking at the real world consequences of their imperfect science. Insisting that disastrous hurricanes are on their way in order to prove one’s ‘consensus science’ is a troubling indicator of where climatology is headed.
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I myself can’t comprehend how people can remain so disconnected from the physical reality playing out upon our planet.

21 hurricanes and typhoons that shattered records in 2015
By Andrew Freedman and Johnny Simon | October 22, 2015

UPDATED 2:45 p.m. ET: Since this story was posted, yet another storm — Hurricane Patricia — in the eastern Pacific intensified to Category 4 status, making it 22 Category 4 and 5 storms that have formed so far this year.

The combination of El Niño, other natural climate cycles and global warming have supercharged this year's tropical cyclone season in the northern hemisphere to the point where all-time records have been blown away.

Specifically, there have now been 21 typhoons and hurricanes in the hemisphere — all but one of which occurred in the Pacific Ocean — that have reached the most intense levels of the Saffir Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Category 4 and 5. This beat the past record of 18, set in 2004.

One of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded has provided storms with an ample amount of fuel in the form of warm ocean waters across the tropical Pacific, and has also helped squelch tropical activity in the North Atlantic Basin.


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Hurricane Patricia Had Maximum Sustained Winds of 215 MPH (Landfall, Oct. 23, 2015, Baja Peninsula, Mexico)

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-patricia-mexico-coast

Record-breaking Hurricane Patricia had stronger maximum sustained winds at its peak intensity than previously thought, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Thursday.
The NHC report says that maximum sustained winds topped out at 215 mph (185 knots) on the morning of Oct. 23, 2015, when Patricia was spinning off the coast of Mexico in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This is 15 mph higher than the 200-mph winds stated in advisories issued by the NHC when the hurricane was ongoing, which already made it the strongest hurricane on record in either the eastern Pacific or Atlantic Ocean basins.
In addition, the NHC says that the official estimated lowest atmospheric pressure on the morning of Oct. 23 for Patricia has been adjusted to a lower value of 872 millibars (previously estimated to be 879 millibars). This pressure is the lowest on record in the Western Hemisphere, and the second lowest on record for the world just behind the 870 millibars observed in Supertyphoon Tip in 1979. ...

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