Monday, December 18, 2006

Oh how fair he likes to appear to be.....

Being banned in Boulder has its advantages, for example, Ethon comes visiting now and again with reports on the atrocities. Eth is quite fond of grandma's chopped liver recipe and we always have some on hand to cut the bitter taste of Greek hero bile. The latest is that Jr. has borrowed Dad's stuffed shirt and is out harumphing again. The joy is that anyone who follows the links finds the Center Director once more staked out on Flagstaff Mountain.

Here is the beginning of the newest.....

Holland and Webster’s new paper can be found here in PDF and the text I have excerpted below in bold comes from their pp. 5-6. My comments are interlaid within their text.

Questions have been raised over the quality of the NATL data even for such a broad brush accounting. For example, a recent study by Landsea et al (2006) claimed that long-term trends in tropical cyclone numbers and characteristics cannot be determined because of the poor quality of the data base in the NATL even after the incorporation of satellite data into the data base. Landsea et al. also state unequivocally that there is no trend in any tropical storm characteristics (frequency or intensity) after 1960, despite this being established in earlier papers by Emanuel (2005) and Webster et al. (2005), and more recently by Hoyos et al. (2006).
Here is what I read in Landsea et al. (2006) (PDF): "There may indeed be real trends in tropical cyclone intensity . . ." Holland and Webster report the opposite of what Landsea et al. (2006) actually says. Landsea et al. (2006) state that they do not believe that the data record is of sufficient quality to definitively detect trends. They do not say that there are no trends. Holland and Webster ascribe a claim to Landsea et al. that they do not make.
Unfortunately if you follow the link you find that right after Landsea, et al., do the cringing please the ref mayindeedbe (but we don't believe a word of it fingers crossed behind the back bit)
There may indeed be real trends in tropical cyclone intensity.
They drop the hammer.
Theoretical considerations based on sea surface temperature increases suggest an increase of ~4% in maximum sustained surface wind per degree Celsius (4, 5). But such trends are very likely to be much smaller (or even negligible) than those found in the recent studies (1–3). Indeed, Klotzbach has shown (23) that extreme tropical cyclones and overall tropical cyclone activity have globally been flat from 1986 until 2005, despite a sea surface temperature warming of 0.25°C. The large, step-like increases in the 1970s and 1980s reported in (1–3) occurred while operational improvements were ongoing. An actual increase in global extreme tropical cyclones due to warming sea surface temperatures should have continued during the past two decades.
Still, there is much to learn here. For example the expert entrails readers and their bunny grad students have concluded that Pielke and Co. are getting ready to abandon the field and retreat to we never said that land with regard to hurricane intensity. Watch the moving shell.

8 comments:

coby said...

Yur funny!

BTW, thank you very much for your kind gesture, I couldn't decide on a reliable email address to use so I say it here, I was very touched. I was also very fascinated to learn who the human is that brings you your daily rabbit pellets. Keep up the great blogging!

C W Magee said...

The thing that makes me cranky about the whole hurricane bizzo is that on the one hand, people say that el Nino (a hurricane inhibitor) will increase, but on the other hand, hurricanes should be more destructive.

Why can't scientists just say, "Look, it's a really complicated system, and most of the time we have no idea what atmospheric chemical changes will do or how they will play out."

Anonymous said...

Why can't scientists just say, "Look, it's a really complicated system, and most of the time we have no idea what atmospheric chemical changes will do or how they will play out."

BEcause science is about making educated guesses (hypotheses) about the way that nature will behave under specific circumstances and then testing those hypotheses.

perhaps you would the scientists to cease and desist from doing science?

I'd say jr's arguments are more like watching an elephant evolve into a mouse with no intermediate stages involved. anyone who does not believe it need only read a single post (any one is fine) on his blog promoetheus.

Anonymous said...

for anyone who wishes to see what RP jr is currently up to on his blog, here's a sample;

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001028misrepresenting_lite.html#comments

i believe it is referred to as 'political science'.

Anonymous said...

Your smart. I need advice. My relatives and most of their friends pride themselves on their climate change ignorance and denial. In fact that they work hard at actively maintaining their dellusional states of mind. When ever you mention any scientific facts they don't like the sound of they smirk smugly and stay silent. They act if as if you are not there and completely ignore whatever you might be saying. It is is as though you are invisible in those moments.
They just have a faint smirk of confidence or pretend that you are not there.
What do you think would be the best thing to do in these moments?

Anonymous said...

Roger Pielke is particularly adept at taking a tiny morsel of heresay and turning it into something big (in pre-internet times it was called gossip), but he has really gone off the deep end with this one:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001030so_what_happened_at_.html

They should not let political "scientists" anywhere near such meetings.

EliRabett said...

Well you could always give their kids this DVD for Christmas.....Still time to get it delivered.

Anonymous said...

a guest blogger posted the above nonsense on prometheus, but it fits th pattern; speculation based on the skimpiest of details.

all i can say is, they must be giving out phd's like candy these days.