Global Warming Expected to Intensify Hurricanes 589
DoraLives writes "Think this hurricane season was bad? Well according to the New York Times, a study was published online on Tuesday by The Journal of Climate indicating that warming ocean temperatures are going to make for stronger, wetter hurricanes in the coming years and decades. An abstract of the article concludes cheerfully enough that 'greenhouse gas-induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms.' Oh joy."
Problem Solved (Score:2, Interesting)
See Here [slashdot.org]
Kyoto (Score:3, Interesting)
(Kerry voted against the Kyoto agreement in the Senate in 1998)
Re:The only way to motivate (Score:2, Interesting)
Again, I'm sure that humans don't help the problem and can do a lot better than we currently do, but I'm not convinced that if we immediately stopped all the "bad stuff" that the warming trend wouldn't continue simply because it's a part of a natural cycle.
Re:Kyoto to the rescue (Score:2, Interesting)
What if the U.S. had signed, but Russia hadn't? Would the hurricanes be Russia's fault?
Your mastery of simple addition is impressive, but I don't think you have any understanding of how the weather works.
Nice burn on SUVs, though! So at least your post wasn't a total failure.
Forseen 18 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
"Hotter summers, colder winters, and more intense hurricanes. But we can't rule out a sudden (say, within a century) plunge into a little ice age, if the ice caps at the poles melt, causing the earth to lose too much albedo from the loss of the reflective ice caps. Also, glacial runoff from Greenland could stop the warming North Atlantic current and make northern Europe uninhabitable, like in the last big ice age, which ended 11,000 years ago."
So far he's been right. Not that that's a good thing.
Re:Weather is complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
The key point is that they are less than 50% accurate for short term forcasts. The same rule applies to psychology for diagnosing a single patient (meaning that it isn't always particularly effective).
This rule does not apply for large sums. Psychology, for example, is an extremely predictable science for sample sizes greater than 1000 or so. The same will apply to weather forcasts. And it makes complete sense since hurricanes are fueled by thermal energy. Increasing the overall thermal energy of the planet can only make them more probable.
Of course predicting when one will occur is very difficult.
Re:Weather is complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
I have seen some other alternate theories to cover possible issues with global warming. Increases in geothermal activity under Greenland, for example, causing increased movement of the glaciers there. There's been the suggestion that increased energy output by the sun (a fraction of a percent, but at the level of the sun's output, that adds up pretty quickly) may be more at fault than man-made atmospheric releases. I don't mind research into man-made effects -- I'm all for getting off of oil dependency, and tech innovations are Very Good Things(TM) in general -- but alternate ideas do need to be suggested, considered, and explored.
Blame China (Score:1, Interesting)
If we want to find a source for the blame, China should be first on the list. China has let numerous coal fires [www.itc.nl] burn out of control, becoming the number one source for carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
According to experts, 2% to 3% of CO2 emissions originate from this single source. Check this map out [www.itc.nl] to see how widespread the problem is - literally all of northern China has fires raging uncontrolled and disregarded by the Chinese government. So what if the USA has more storms that kill its citizens - in fact, this is a good thing for China.
If only the Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt [ebtx.com] would shut down so the colonialist European pigs would freeze to death. Then China would be the world's only superpower. Serves them right for all their meddling!!!
look at the other side of the arguement (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Common Misconceptions on Kerry and Kyoto (Score:3, Interesting)
Ecosystem (Score:5, Interesting)
- Polution produces greenhouse gasses and puts holes in the ozone layer. Atmosphere allows more radiation in and traps more of it as heat.
- Planet warms up.
- Ocean tempatures rise.
- Tropical storms, including hurricanes and typhoons become more severe.
- Increased lightning activity means more ozone is generated, patching the ozone hole.
- Wetter inland weather means more plant life is active to use some greenhouse gasses, thus reducing their atmospheric amounts
- Things cool off a bit and then the cycle starts again, leaving the world not a whole lot different than it started.
It could run deeper and somehow the warming of the earth is what is starting volcanos to trigger again, producing carbon monoxide which in turn eventually helps form ozone, but I can't think of a way those two events could be directly related.Re:Blame China (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep seeing this theory hopped up in every discussion about global warming. How cold water runoff (from melting ice sheets) from the North Pole and Greenland will mix with the North Atlantic and cause the Gulf Stream to suddenly stop. Then there's all these horrible scenarios about ice ages and such.
Perhaps someone can answer this for me, but isn't the only reason there is a Gulf Steam/strong current in the Atlantic Ocean anyway is because of the Coriolis Effect [wikipedia.org]? So technically, unless the Earth stops rotating, the "Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt" should still work (albeit, the northern latitudes may be colder because of the melting ice sheets, but you'd still have the current there).
Could they get together and settle on one story? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of hurricanes, global warming. No hurricanes, global warming.
Big hurricanes, global warming. Small hurricanes, global warming.
Drought, global warming. Flooding, global warming.
Hot weather, global warming. Cold weather, global warming.
Different weather, global warming. Same weather, global warming.
Obviously the planet is warmer than it was 50,000 years ago and at least he in California it has been wetter and cooler in the last several thousand years than it has been before that. One super volcano or asteroid and we may be trying to warm the planet up or it will be very, very cold.
Haiti + deforestation = many dead and more to come (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, no one in Haiti is going to do much about it. They will just continue to chop down what trees remain for charcoal, etc.. They are digging their own graves. This is not a troll, this is reality.
more info [indybay.org]
Re:What? We didnt blame Bush for it? (Score:1, Interesting)
A bunch of avowed leftists/marxists who have no specilized exptertise in climatology write the president a letter whining about greenhouse gases, and the president roundfiles the letter... good, I would have too. I don't know what was in it, but color me less than shocked if it came off as a bunch of leftist/environmentalist wanking...
Argumentum Ad Verecundiam, or the Appeal to False Authority, I belive it's called... a rather large example of such, I'd say.
And yes, the president decided not to waste our time with Kyoto... it was voted down 98-0 in the senate for cripes sakes... he couldn't have done anything with it anyways. It's called a reality check. Check out how treaties are ratified in this country sometime...
No Precedent (Score:2, Interesting)
Well.... actually, I think the order of magnitude of carbon and other greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere IS without precedence in the earth's history. I wonder how many acres of rainforest burning would be equivilant to all the exhaust put out by cars and other gas engines? But even more importantly- engine exhaust is ON TOP OF all the usual forest fires and burning peat bogs that usually occur. We have diesel soot microparticles from boats and trucks landing on the polar icecaps, reducing their albeda. In even the most volcanic periods of earth's biological history, did soot manage to find its ways to the poles? I don't know.
Also, as a smaller issue there are chemicals like CFCs which don't have any precedent in nature.
Re:Nature's way... (Score:5, Interesting)
CO2 concent rations in the atmosphere have increased by about 30 percent in the last 50 years, with most of the increase happening in the last few decades.
The actual growth of CO2 varies from year to year [noaa.gov], but has averaged about 0.5% per year for the last 15 years, with about 0.9% per year rates in the last four years (but these are probably related to El Nino cycles).
China's rapid industrialization (fuelled mostly by coal---the fuel richest in carbon emissions) threatens to accelerate this growth rate for the next several decades, so 1% annual growth is quite a reasonable estimate.
come on, not true (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Nature's way... (Score:1, Interesting)