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The Irene Mistake
I am a climate change believer and I think that CO2 emissions are in part responsible. I also have a great deal of respect for Bill McKibben. But this is a mistake:
Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming,” environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote Thursday night in The Daily Beast. He argued that this year’s hot Atlantic Ocean temperatures and active spree of hurricanes — coupled with droughts, floods and melting sea ice elsewhere on the globe — are “what climate change looks like in its early stages.”
Irene is a big storm but not unusual. It’s not really all that intense. The thing that makes it so potentially dangerous and destructive is it’s path. Blaming Irene on global climate change is wrong and will only increase skepticism even among believers. He might be better off talking about the lack of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Texas could use a hurricane or two to end the severe drought it is experiencing. The blocking high pressure area that is responsible for the drought and the lack of hurricanes is predicted by climate change models. A hurricane like Irene – not so much.
11 Responses to “The Irene Mistake”
Every idea has people who will push it too far. To have a few of these people is just part of the movement growing beyond the few core people that started it.
I know that it’s popular to point to these people and try to use them to paint the whole group, but I’ve always considered that a worthless form of defense. All ideas, good or bad, have their looney followers.
For that matter, all ideas have people that lay out rational points, and are called looneys anyway.
I agree with you to a point Prof, but it has become routine that every time there is a major weather or geological event it is followed by articles speculating that it was related to AGW. This occurs in mainstream publications and has occurred several times on this website. It’s not just a bunch of looneys driving the stories.
You don’t get much more “globally warming” than that… Increased water temperature = increased hurricane strength.
Maybe Irene’s middle name is global warming, maybe it’s not. Either way, global warming is here – and it’s only going to get worse.
Global warming has preceded every ice age. By the mid-century, it will be very cold on Earth.
Earth history shows how the climate has warmed and cooled over its measurable life
See link:
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
Had it not been for Al Gore (the one that invented the internet) being the forecaster of global warming and had this come from the scientific community without any political ties, then the theory may be more acceptible. But in our society where anything the left or right says is unacceptible to 50% of the people on either side, it can not come without debate.
Granted, the earth is warming, but looking at the chart, it appears we are just leaving a much cooler time.
As for the hurricane, it appears it will not be as bad as forecasted and that in the long run is bad. The next wone that could be a Katrina for the northeast may turn out just that, given the number of people that will look at the weather forecasters as another “Chicken Little”.
McKibben has ventured into bizarre or crankish, not mere ordinary, extremism, and has once again overreached ridiculously here with the classic blunder by unknowing extremists following the “global warming” fad of blaming any noteworthy hurricane or tornado on global warming. It’s really surprising he would stoop so low and be so ridiculous, though his recent demonstration against the pipeline was also as bad.
Doesn’t anyone recall the recent La Nina event which can develop a high pressure zone in the Southwest and a related drought that can sustain itself or make itself worse through the summer?
I don’t think Bill was saying climate change “caused” Irene; he’s merely saying it makes storms like Irene happen more often. Which means NYC, along with every place else, is going to get hit more often. By the way, the last hurricane to hit NYC dead on was in 1821.
LOL RP
Your site/link deals with paleogeographic subjects, not AGW. Your welcome to take Scotese out of context, and attack Gore as the father of the Internet and AGW, but how does your links home page goal correspond to scientific proof against AGW over a couple of centuries and not millions of years.
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