Global Warming May Decrease Hurricanes

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

(From Discovery News)

Global warming could reduce how many hurricanes hit the United States, according to a new federal study that clashes with other research.

The new study is the latest in a contentious scientific debate over how man-made global warming may affect the intensity and number of hurricanes.

In it, researchers link warming waters, especially in the Indian and Pacific oceans, to increased vertical wind shear in the Atlantic Ocean near the United States. Wind shear -- a change in wind speed or direction -- makes it hard for hurricanes to form, strengthen and stay alive.

So that means "global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States," according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami.

With every degree Celsius that the oceans warm, the wind shear increases by up to 10 mph, weakening storm formation, said study author Chunzai Wang, a research oceanographer at NOAA. Winds forming over the Pacific and Indian oceans have global effects, much like El Nino does, he said.

Wang said he based his study on observations instead of computer models and records of landfall hurricanes through more than 100 years.

His study is to be published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters.

Critics say Wang's study is based on poor data that was rejected by scientists on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They said that at times only one in 10 North Atlantic hurricanes hit the U.S. coast and the data reflect only a small percentage of storms around the globe.

Hurricanes hitting land "are not a reliable record" for how hurricanes have changed, said Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Trenberth is among those on the other side of a growing debate over global warming and hurricanes. Each side uses different sets of data and focus on different details.

One group of climate scientists has linked increases in the strongest hurricanes -- just those with winds greater than 130 mph -- in the past 35 years to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said "more likely than not," manmade global warming has already increased the frequency of the most intense storms.

But hurricane researchers, especially scientists at NOAA's Miami Lab, have argued that the long-term data for all hurricanes show no such trend. And Wang's new research suggests just the opposite of the view that more intense hurricanes result from global warming. The Miami faction points to a statement by an international workshop on tropical cyclones that says "no firm conclusion can be made on this point."

Former National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said regardless of which side turns out to be right, it only takes one storm to be deadly. So the key for residents of hurricane-prone areas, he said, is to be prepared for a storm "no matter what."

So ... hurricanes have the potential to get stronger on the account of warming ocean waters. Provided they can survive the disruptive effects of increased trade winds caused by ... warming ocean waters. That's not to say that coastal cities still aren't totally fucked, though. Just another thing to use to beat global warming doubters over the head with.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The idea of these Invincible Super Storms that has been bandied about never made any sense, anyway; the world has been that warm before at several points in its history, and life existed quite normally, even in shallow waters and other coastal areas. There seems to be no real chance of storm activity interfering with the continued flourishing of life. If people die, well, meh. Human life is overvalued. Our own damn fault, anyway.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The idea of these Invincible Super Storms that has been bandied about never made any sense, anyway; the world has been that warm before at several points in its history, and life existed quite normally, even in shallow waters and other coastal areas. There seems to be no real chance of storm activity interfering with the continued flourishing of life. If people die, well, meh. Human life is overvalued. Our own damn fault, anyway.

I am glad someone said that before me...

[Admiral Valdemar]

Thing is, this rate of warming is totally unprecedented. A lot more than humans are going to get fucked over because of this. If you look to the north, you will see the last polar bear grasping at what's left of the ice in summer. To your left is an amphibian you'll likely never see ever again, and just coming over the horizon are the fish seeking refuge now their coral reefs are bleached and dead.

Change is perfectly adaptable. Within reason.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Thing is, this rate of warming is totally unprecedented. A lot more than humans are going to get fucked over because of this. If you look to the north, you will see the last polar bear grasping at what's left of the ice in summer. To your left is an amphibian you'll likely never see ever again, and just coming over the horizon are the fish seeking refuge now their coral reefs are bleached and dead.

Change is perfectly adaptable. Within reason.

Oh, I agree. I will probably make my career studying the effects that habitat fragmentation, temperature shifts, rainfall shifts and species migration have on reptiles and amphibians... I know all too well

[Kodiak]

I was thinking about Global Warming this morning and I'm glad to see that someone has saved me the trouble of starting a thread. There is no question that world-wide temperatures seem to be increasing yearly. My question is: Has it been proven that the actions of humanity are the prime factor? In other words, can it be shown that modern man is the cause of these increases?

I read an article several months ago (I'll try to find it) which talked about carbon emissions of civilization versus carbon emissions of natural phenomena (ocean life dying, forests, etc) and humanity was at a fraction of the total carbon. Likewise it pointed out geologic evidence which suggests that the ocean temperatures were significantly warmer in the 14th and 15th centuries, and have gone through cyclic change. I would be interested to see both sides of the issue, and am glad that this message board promotes such discussion and debate.

[Darth Wong]

I was thinking about Global Warming this morning and I'm glad to see that someone has saved me the trouble of starting a thread. There is no question that world-wide temperatures seem to be increasing yearly. My question is: Has it been proven that the actions of humanity are the prime factor? In other words, can it be shown that modern man is the cause of these increases?

Of course not. No one can prove that Martians aren't coming and sucking up the 7 billion tons of CO2 we're pumping out per year, and that the 3 billion ton yearly increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is not just some freaky coincidence that just happened to coincide with human industrialization. Also, no one can prove that the Martians aren't causing billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 to carbon-date to fossil-fuel origins by infiltrating the scientific agencies with their secret agents, thus further fooling our silly scientists into thinking that industry is somehow to blame for all of these remarkable coincidences. Damned Martians ...

I read an article several months ago (I'll try to find it) which talked about carbon emissions of civilization versus carbon emissions of natural phenomena (ocean life dying, forests, etc) and humanity was at a fraction of the total carbon.

Of course we're only a small fraction. But a small fraction of a large effect can still produce a significant result. Since greenhouse gases are already heating our planet by more than 30 degrees (the Earth would be a frozen rock without them; try doing a simple radiative heat balance on the Earth using the Sun's projected output onto Earth's surface for one side of the equation), even a 10% change would easily account for the last century's entire warming several times over.

Likewise it pointed out geologic evidence which suggests that the ocean temperatures were significantly warmer in the 14th and 15th centuries, and have gone through cyclic change. I would be interested to see both sides of the issue, and am glad that this message board promotes such discussion and debate.

The only people promoting the "other side" of this issue are non-scientists, or scientists who are expressing opinions outside of their specialization and refusing to defer to those who are specializing in the area.

[Gil Hamilton]

The idea of these Invincible Super Storms that has been bandied about never made any sense, anyway; the world has been that warm before at several points in its history, and life existed quite normally, even in shallow waters and other coastal areas. There seems to be no real chance of storm activity interfering with the continued flourishing of life. If people die, well, meh. Human life is overvalued. Our own damn fault, anyway.

The problem is, "life existing normally" and "super massive hurricanes" aren't mutually exclusive. Such storms can exist and do alot of damage and life will still continue, even in affected areas. Natural disasters are part and parcel with life existing normally. That doesn't mean however that such areas will be particularly liveable for people though.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The idea of these Invincible Super Storms that has been bandied about never made any sense, anyway; the world has been that warm before at several points in its history, and life existed quite normally, even in shallow waters and other coastal areas. There seems to be no real chance of storm activity interfering with the continued flourishing of life. If people die, well, meh. Human life is overvalued. Our own damn fault, anyway.

You mean limited death? Or extinction. Please don't tell me you too are on the doom, gloom, and its all over ticket too now. I'm tired of people pretending human extinction is okay.

[Darth Wong]

She's probably talking about a population crash, which is sadly what the human race needs at this point. This Malthusian nightmare cannot go on forever, and if the fucking religious assholes won't understand that we can't just keep breeding like rabbits until we consume every resource on the planet, then we'll have to collectively find out the hard way.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Its not a bright prospect to have to raise a family thinking about. Sadly, I find myself hoping we scrape by over here and most of the losses are in the third world.

[Surlethe]

I was thinking about Global Warming this morning and I'm glad to see that someone has saved me the trouble of starting a thread. There is no question that world-wide temperatures seem to be increasing yearly. My question is: Has it been proven that the actions of humanity are the prime factor? In other words, can it be shown that modern man is the cause of these increases?

Yes. It can, and it has. Scientists have isolated the various major climatic forcings, and the only one which could possibly have produced an increase of 0.9 C in the last forty years is the increased CO2 levels.

I read an article several months ago (I'll try to find it) which talked about carbon emissions of civilization versus carbon emissions of natural phenomena (ocean life dying, forests, etc) and humanity was at a fraction of the total carbon.

Humanity is indeed a small fraction of the total carbon. In fact, about half of human CO2 emissions are reabsorbed by natural sinks. However, anthropomorphic emissions are still large enough to cause a net CO2 increase -- and have caused such an increase, by over 30% in the past 150 years or so.

In my understanding, the problem is that the equilibrium changes very slowly, which means the system is unresponsive to quick changes like the arrival of humans on the scene. If yearly CO2 emissions increased by six billion tons at a normal rate -- over millennia instead of over centuries -- I doubt the effects would be as pronounced as they are now. But that's just my understanding.

Likewise it pointed out geologic evidence which suggests that the ocean temperatures were significantly warmer in the 14th and 15th centuries, and have gone through cyclic change. I would be interested to see both sides of the issue, and am glad that this message board promotes such discussion and debate.

They may have gone through cyclic change related to solar emissions, or what have you. The fact remains that all the major climate forcings have been isolated and the current upswing in temperature can only be caused by anthropomorphic CO2 emissions.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I read an article several months ago (I'll try to find it) which talked about carbon emissions of civilization versus carbon emissions of natural phenomena (ocean life dying, forests, etc) and humanity was at a fraction of the total carbon.

What they do when they write those figures is only take the emissions, and leave out the other side of the equation. The natural CO2 sinks. The ocean and terrestrial forests take in a lot of that CO2, and without us, we end up with a net sink. With us in the equation, we end up with a net increase in atmospheric carbon.

[The Spartan]

I read an article several months ago (I'll try to find it) which talked about carbon emissions of civilization versus carbon emissions of natural phenomena (ocean life dying, forests, etc) and humanity was at a fraction of the total carbon.

What they do when they write those figures is only take the emissions, and leave out the other side of the equation. The natural CO2 sinks. The ocean and terrestrial forests take in a lot of that CO2, and without us, we end up with a net sink. With us in the equation, we end up with a net increase in atmospheric carbon.

To put it another way: suppose you have a system that can handle 100 units of substance X without accumulation. Natural processes put in 99 units. Man comes along and adds 2. What happens? Accumulation. Doesn't matter that man's contribution is much smaller than the natural contribution, there is still accumulation.

[Zablorg]

She's probably talking about a population crash, which is sadly what the human race needs at this point. This Malthusian nightmare cannot go on forever, and if the fucking religious assholes won't understand that we can't just keep breeding like rabbits until we consume every resource on the planet, then we'll have to collectively find out the hard way.

What do they think will happen? It's not like they think that the earth is filled with magical infinity powder. We're doomed to rape the planet, I can't exactly see any reason they could think otherwise.

[Surlethe]

I'm going to echo what Valdemar said earlier because I think it's an important point. The quantity of this temperature increase is substantial, but what's more important is the rate at which the global mean temperature is increasing. Consider, for example, these paleoclimatic temperatures from Antarctic ice records:


(image courtesy NASA)

Temperature zips up perhaps 10 degrees C, but it takes 15,000 years to do so, so that's about one degree every 1500 years. Our current rate of warming is about one degree every century. Suffice it to say, we're warming the Earth an order of magnitude faster than nature does it.

Now, evolution works on a generational basis. Therefore, adaptation to any environmental change -- in this case, warming -- requires a sufficient number of generations. Species can handily adapt to a ten-degree change in 15,000 years, but it is much more difficult to handle those changes in a mere 1000 years; the directional selective pressure is so much greater that, chances are, a species will go be selected out of existence and go extinct.

Of course, anthropogenic global warming is just the latest and, arguably, most widespread of a series of changes humans have wrought upon the Earth. We are in the middle of a mass extinction event; the megafauna of the last millions of years were unable to adapt in time to the changes wrought by the spread of humans from Africa. The only ones left are heavily endangered -- elephants, rhinos, hippos, and their ilk.

At the end of the day, it's not just change that will cause problems -- anything can handle change, given enough time. It's the speed at which the change occurs. If the asteroid impact 65 million years ago had taken fifty thousand years to occur, dinosaurs would still rule the Earth. It didn't, which is why we're around now.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Its not a bright prospect to have to raise a family thinking about. Sadly, I find myself hoping we scrape by over here and most of the losses are in the third world.

At two-percent growth, the human species will convert all matter in the universe to human cells within ten-millennia.

Constant growth is a lie. Even if the fanciful ideas of colonising the whole Sol system in the next century were remotely possible, we'd hit a limiting factor somewhere down the line. As Bartlett said, the greatest flaw in the human condition is not understanding the exponential function.

For that reason, capitalism is doomed ultimately as is growing the population indefinitely even at the minuscule rate the First World sustains (which may be reversing in the US now).

[Rye]

She's probably talking about a population crash, which is sadly what the human race needs at this point. This Malthusian nightmare cannot go on forever, and if the fucking religious assholes won't understand that we can't just keep breeding like rabbits until we consume every resource on the planet, then we'll have to collectively find out the hard way.

Indeed. The cruelty towards animals and the larger worker population will come back and bite places like China and India in the ass if a new extra lethal virus hits the world's population. Dramatically reducing the people in those areas and across the rest of the developed and developing world could help slow down the change we make.

If I were a conspiracist, I would be thinking that a government was making a "children of men" virus that could infect the majority population with infertility, especially in the most bitter and expendable parts of the world. This would of course lead to a huge crisis with an aging population, but it would allow the world to set up plans while the talent is there. After that generation passed away, the human race could rebuild and unleash another one when things started turning shit again. It would be less immoral than the normal means of stopping people reproducing, but still, it's hardly ideal.

[Zablorg]

What the fuck is the point in stopping reproducing? The world is fated to get fucked at some point or another.

Now, my only hope rests in the slim chance that the universe recycles itself at some point, thus carrying a chance of life once more! Or something.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

She's probably talking about a population crash, which is sadly what the human race needs at this point. This Malthusian nightmare cannot go on forever, and if the fucking religious assholes won't understand that we can't just keep breeding like rabbits until we consume every resource on the planet, then we'll have to collectively find out the hard way.

More explicitly, the idea that human life has inherent dignity or value. No, it doesn't; it has the value we make of it. And right now, a huge part of the population is just wasting resources which could be used to make the rest of us continue to function normally.

Knowing, as an absolute fact, that we are facing a resource crash combined with enormous environmental disruption which is going to collectively kill probably 1.5 billion people in the next 75 years, every single trailer park in Floriduh wiped out by a Cat 5 means 200 fewer fat slobs wasting resources by trying to get Just Far Enough up the ladder to gain credit lines they can max out for 72in plasma screen TVs and Cadillac Escalades. Why should I be bothered by their dying?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

What the fuck is the point in stopping reproducing? The world is fated to get fucked at some point or another.

Now, my only hope rests in the slim chance that the universe recycles itself at some point, thus carrying a chance of life once more! Or something.

The point in reducing reproduction would be similar to not eating yourself into a blubbery state of lard. Will you die eventually? Sure. Do you really want to accelerate it and end it sooner or make life worse?

I doubt it.

[Sikon]

every single trailer park in Floriduh wiped out by a Cat 5 means 200 fewer fat slobs wasting resources by trying to get Just Far Enough up the ladder to gain credit lines they can max out for 72in plasma screen TVs and Cadillac Escalades. Why should I be bothered by their dying?

Objectifying and dehumanization, classic...

Knowing, as an absolute fact, that we are facing a resource crash combined with enormous environmental disruption which is going to collectively kill probably 1.5 billion people in the next 75 years

No, it will kill 3.72 billion people in the next 21 years ... except wait a moment: Real "absolute facts" don't consist of making up a number and counting on the stupidity of many readers to believe an unsupported figure said by someone on the internet with neither calculations nor references.

Whatever happened to this board's motto of "sci-fi, science, and mockery of stupid people" when not one of a hundred-plus readers posts the slightest questioning of that figure? Is it no longer applicable to those with popular ideology and admired ethical systems? Anyone but an ideological idiot should realize the future through the next 75 years isn't known with that kind of precision, not that the number has a shred of proper support anyway.

Wild claims like that have been made before, such as four decades ago:

Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. [...]

Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." [...]

Dubbed "ecology's angry lobbyist" by Life magazine, the gloomy Ehrlich was quoted everywhere. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," he confidently declared in an interview with then-radical journalist Peter Collier in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." [...]

Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the "Great Die-Off."[...]

Time has not been gentle with these prophecies. It's absolutely true that far too many people remain poor and hungry in the world--800 million people are still malnourished and nearly 1.2 billion live on less than a dollar a day--but we have not seen mass starvation around the world in the past three decades. Where we have seen famines, such as in Somalia and Ethiopia, they are invariably the result of war and political instability. [...]

What's the world population? Rather than 7 billion people inhabiting the earth by 2000, there are 6 billion--nearly 30 percent fewer than predicted. That's because total fertility (the number of children a woman has over the course of her lifetime) has been dropping nearly everywhere on the planet since 1970. In fact, it has dropped from around 6 children per woman in the 1960s to around 2.8 today--and shows no signs of stopping. Total fertility rates for 79 countries, including the United States, are below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. If present trends continue, it looks like the U.N. low-variant population growth projection is likely, which means that world population will likely peak at around 8 billion in 2040 and then begin to decline.

From here.

In contrast, for example, when the IPCC report makes a prediction such as up to 6 millimeters per year average sea level rise this century
(discussion before), that works in context of past history, current observations (3.4 +/- 0.5 mm/year), etc.

There is some harm from climate change, but it is that in the domain of careful, quantitative science, not made-up numbers and blatant bullshitting.

More explicitly, the idea that human life has inherent dignity or value. No, it doesn't; it has the value we make of it. And right now, a huge part of the population is just wasting resources which could be used to make the rest of us continue to function normally.

Which specific resources? Water? Iron? Oil? While people dying can influence the particular number like X or Y years to a given percentage decline, conventional crude runs out sooner or later in either case. The requirement to continue to function normally in the long-term is to switch to other energy sources which don't run out, like solar and nuclear energy ... not just efficiency improvements (although those help to a lesser degree) but ending dependency on the limited resource, period.

Likewise, for example, to eliminate a few hundred tons of carbon dioxide emissions over several decades takes either:

1) The deaths of on the order of a hundred people in particularly impoverished regions like parts of Africa

2) Or the average reader of this thread dying or not having been born (who, despite all the hypocritical rhetoric, use electricity, computers, drive cars and have children around as much as anyone else in industrialized countries*)

3) Or on the order of 0.001% of the benefit from one large nuclear power plant, a cost of hundreds of dollars per year for avoiding hundreds of tons of emissions per decade.

* Any reader who has more than one child or plans to do so is having more than the average unenlightened citizen of industrialized countries with above $10000/capita GDP, where the average fertility rate is 1.7 per woman (less than in impoverished countries) ... so if you think drastic reduction in population is the primary and best plausible solution, ask yourself what would it take to force you not to have children.

Of course, some people in some places currently have too many children, undesirably having more than they can properly support. With declining fertility rates, population growth will stop within a few decades (illustrated later), though the greatest question is not how many people but whether they build coal or nuclear power plants, whether their transport is fossil-fuel or electric, etc.

But your ethics are despicable, to claim human life has no "inherent dignity or value."

At two-percent growth, the human species will convert all matter in the universe to human cells within ten-millennia.

Constant growth is a lie. Even if the fanciful ideas of colonising the whole Sol system in the next century were remotely possible, we'd hit a limiting factor somewhere down the line. As Bartlett said, the greatest flaw in the human condition is not understanding the exponential function.

That's an irrelevant to wrong comparison on multiple levels

As for the near future on earth, population will tend to peak then decline (which was 2% annual growth rate decades ago but now currently 1.17% as it continues to drop, soon under 1%, eventually negative):



since fertility rates are declining with factors described here, for which the following figure for Australia is a foretaste:



There are places, primarily parts of the third world, where many have more children than they can properly support today, but fertility rates are dropping.

As for a future scenario of space colonization, a fair-sized human space colony in the solar system would be in a position a little like a single village on an otherwise uninhabited earth. It could stay at the same population forever, yet that would be missing out on a lot, much like if mankind always consisted of a single stone-age tribe rather than reaching the richness of modern civilization. The solar system's resources are literally millions of times greater than that of earth's surface. Plus, no civilization would someday reach the trillions of terawatts level involved in actually depleting much of the solar system's resources without also the terawatt-level capabilities sufficient for interstellar flight.

That kind of migration and expansion wouldn't correspond to an arbitrary percent per year, nor necessarily be by biological homo sapiens anyway, but it could continue for not just millennia, instead for millions to billions of years. Transversing the galaxy and its fraction of a trillion star systems alone will take eons without unlikely FTL. Unless the universe is both finite and yet much longer-lived than many cosmological models, there will always be hordes of star systems yet uncolonized, up until the end of the universe. Of course, the present situation is more down to earth, but, in any case, talking about two-percent growth versus all the matter in the universe is rather irrelevant.

For that reason, capitalism is doomed ultimately as is growing the population indefinitely even at the minuscule rate the First World sustains (which may be reversing in the US now).

Population growth in the first world is much reversing after the residual effects of past demographics end, with fertility rates meaning the next generation in China will be under 90% the size of the past generation; the next generation in the E.U. will be around 75% its preceding size, etc.

"Capitalism is doomed" is a giant leap in logic. Now and for the foreseeable future, almost every country is at least largely capitalist (along with elements of socialism that range from low to high percentages in national economies). Even modern China is as much or more capitalist than socialist in many ways. Out of two hundred countries in the world, the only country with about no capitalism is the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, but not too many people show preference in actions by trying to immigrate there.

[Darth Wong]

Knowing, as an absolute fact, that we are facing a resource crash combined with enormous environmental disruption which is going to collectively kill probably 1.5 billion people in the next 75 years

No, it will kill 3.72 billion people in the next 21 years ... except wait a moment: Real "absolute facts" don't consist of making up a number and counting on the stupidity of many readers to believe an unsupported figure said by someone on the internet with neither calculations nor references.

Whatever happened to this board's motto of "sci-fi, science, and mockery of stupid people" when not one of a hundred-plus readers posts the slightest questioning of that figure?

Because it looks and sounds like nothing more than an off-the-cuff made-up number, so it's pointless to ask for the scientific derivation?

I would agree that some of the rhetoric regarding the future is rather inflammatory; after all, predictions extending many decades into the future have a notoriously poor historical track record. But there is no serious question that overpopulation is a major problem.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Isn't a fertility rate of 2 children per woman what a developed society needs to maintain its population over time? It almost seems like unbalanced population growth, not just old-school Malthusian overpopulation, is the big problem here. Western Europe isn't going to be able to sustain its welfare systems forever without more kids, and there doesn't seem to be any genuine action towards incorporating an immigrant workforce from the booming North African population. I mean, look at Japan's attempt to deal with a declining population. Certainly across the Global South there's overpopulation, but the human species is hardly growing exponentially.

I mean, look at China. Aren't they hurting from the one child policy?

[Adrian Laguna]

We can always just move the retirement age 15 years back, or eliminate it entirely, you don't get to retire unless you saved-up on your own. Meanwhile, if we have too muc population and not enough resources for all of them, the only solution involves a lot of death. The amount of hurting China is getting from the one child policy does not compare to the amount of pain they'd be going through without it.