Climate Progress

Hurricanes can get much, much bigger and stronger than we have so far seen in the Atlantic. The most intense Pacific storm on record was Super Typhoon Tip in 1979, which reached maximum sustained winds of 190 mph near the center. On its wide rim, gale-force winds (39 mph) extended over a diameter of an astonishing 1350 miles. It would have covered nearly half the continental United States.

“More than half the total hurricane damage in the U.S. (normalized for inflation and populations trends) was caused by just five events,” explained MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel in an email. Storms that are Category 4 and 5 at landfall (or just before) are what destroy major cities like New Orleans and Galveston with devastating winds, rains, and storm surges.

In Part 2, we’ll look a little more in detail at Katrina (and Gustav), and why they weren’t (and probably won’t be) as strong and hence as devastating at landfall as they could have been.

But let’s first ask, How did Katrina turn into a powerful Category 5 hurricane ? The National Climatic Data Center 2006 report on Katrina begins its explanation by noting that the surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Gulf of Mexico during the last week in August 2005 “were one to two degrees Celsius above normal, and the warm temperatures extended to a considerable depth through the upper ocean layer.” The report continues, “Also, Katrina crossed the ‘loop current‘ (belt of even warmer water), during which time explosive intensification occurred. The temperature of the ocean surface is a critical element in the formation and strength of hurricanes.”

An important factor was that the ocean warming had penetrated to a considerable depth. One of the ways that hurricanes are weakened is the upwelling of colder, deeper water due to the hurricane’s own violent action. But if the deeper water is also warm, it doesn’t weaken the hurricane. In fact, it may continue to intensify. Global warming heats both the sea surface and the deep water, thus creating ideal conditions for a hurricane to survive and thrive in its long journey from tropical depression to Category Four or Five superstorm.

A 2005 study, “Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World’s Oceans,” led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography compared actual ocean temperature data from the surface down to hundreds of meters (in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans) with climate models and concluded:

A warming signal has penetrated into the world’s oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences.

This figure shows what they found:

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I won the scientifically rigorous online voting in the Economist.com Oxford-style debate, 55% to 45% — a landslide of epic proportion. And that’s not even counting all the people who voted for the “con” side thinking they were actually supporting the pro side, since, if you actually read my opponent’s argument, he doesn’t really disagree with me that we can in fact solve our energy problems with existing technologies.

I’d like to thank my wife and daughter and all those people who believed in me or at least felt threatened enough to vote for me. Because of your actions, the kitten will live — and so will humanity!

You can read my posts here:

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In his column last Sunday, conservative pundit George Will wrote:

Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.”

Will called this “comic” and a “fairy-tale promise.”

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Actually, Obama has spelled out the details in his energy plan (see “A real energy plan for America: Efficiency now, 10% renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015“), but I wouldn’t expect Will to bother using Google to find it.

In any case, Will has nailed a key difference between conservatives and progressives:

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Did I mention she’s a hard-core denier?

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

That would be McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in a new interview. Needless to say, if humans aren’t the cause of global warming, then it’s a random cycle that will eventually reverse itself, so 1) you’d be crazy to mandate sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions like McCain (says he) wants, and 2) the polar bear can fend for itself.

So it’s no surprise that in May, Palin announced the state will sue the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as threatened. As she explained in an op-ed for the NYT in January:

… adding polar bears to the nation’s list of endangered species, as some are now proposing, should not be part of those efforts….

I strongly believe that adding them to the list is the wrong move at this time….

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, has argued that global warming and the reduction of polar ice severely threatens the bears’ habitat and their existence. In fact, there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future.

Uhh, no. Does anybody out there still think the Arctic won’t be ice free by 2020? If so, I want your money and am still trying to take more bets on this. The National Snow and Ice Data Center’s Mark Serreze said on Wednesday, “No matter where we stand at the end of the melt season it’s just reinforcing this notion that Arctic ice is in its death spiral.”

The only question that remains is — Can the polar bear survive the loss of its primary habitat? Even the Bush’s uber- Conservative Interior Secretary Dirk Kepthorne had to admit the basic case (see Bye-polar Kempthorne: Polar bear IS endangered, but “Rule will allow continuation of vital energy production in Alaska”):
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I reprint this post from TPM election central (a must read blog for political junkies), having already borrowed its headline:

Priorities, priorities.

Check out this Karl Rove quote buried in a Fox News article about the threat Hurricane Gustav poses to the GOP’s convention plans:

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Yeah, Katrina (which hit in August 2005) was really rough on those Republicans, no question about it.

You can’t make this stuff up!

For more on the implications of Gustav on the RNC, see the Washington Post’s piece today, “GOP Considers Delaying Convention.” The piece warns that, “Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina. A new major storm along the Gulf Coast would renew memories of one of the low points of the Bush administration.” It also notes that, “A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico could also cast unwelcome attention on the offshore oil rigs that McCain has championed as a solution to rising gasoline prices.”

But the article has two unintentionally funny parts:

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On August 23, 2005, a tropical depression formed 175 miles southeast of Nassau. By the next day, it had grown into tropical storm Katrina and was intensifying rapidly. Early in the evening on August 25, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near North Miami Beach. Even though it was only a Category 1 storm, with sustained wind speeds of about 80 miles per hour, it caused significant damage and flooding, and took 14 lives.

The hurricane’s quick nighttime trip across Florida barely fazed the storm. Entering the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters quickly kicked Katrina into overdrive, like a supercharged engine on high-octane fuel. Hurricanes fuel themselves by continually sucking in and spinning up warm, moist air.

On August 28, Katrina reached Category 5 status, with sustained wind speeds of 160 mph and a pressure of 908 millibars. A few hours later, wind speeds hit 175 mph, which they maintained until the afternoon.

At 4:00 pm, the National Hurricane Center warned that local storm surges could hit 28 feet, and “Some levees in the Greater New Orleans Area could be overtopped,” a warning that was tragically ignored by federal, state, and local emergency officials. Over the next 14 hours, Katrina’s strength dropped steadily. When the hurricane’s center made landfall Monday morning, it was a strong Category 3, battering coastal Louisiana with wind speeds of about 127 mph. The central pressure of 920 millibars was the third lowest pressure every recorded for a storm hitting the U.S. mainland.

The devastation to the Gulf region was biblical. The death toll exceeded 1300. The damage exceeded $100 billion. [Combined with the effects of Hurricane Rita] two million people were forced to leave their homes, more than were displaced during the 1930’s Dust Bowl. One of the nation’s great cities was devastated.

About 20 miles to the west of the second Gulf landfall was the small town named Pass Christian, Mississippi, where my brother lived with his wife and son.

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The text of Obama’s convention speech has been released. Here is what he said about energy:

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

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Okay, no more complaints the Dems aren’t talking climate change (see “Should you freak out at the lack of air time for climate change in Denver — or Minneapolis?“). Al Gore globally warmed the crowd in a terrific speech (be sure to read to the end where he compares Obama’s experience to Lincoln’s).

Gore pointed out that if he had won in 2000:

… we would not be denying the climate crisis; we’d be solving it.

Today, we face essentially the same choice we faced in 2000, though it may be even more obvious now, because John McCain, a man who has earned our respect on many levels, is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House and promising to actually continue them, the same policies all over again.

Hey, I believe in recycling, but that’s ridiculous.

And Gore took on McCain’s walking away from mandatory caps (see “McCain opposes ‘mandatory’ carbon limits“) and cozying up to Big Oil (see “You’ve heard of ‘polluters pay’? So has McCain.“:

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“I’m nothing special, in fact I’m a bit of a bore….” Okay, my 18-month-old daughter is an ABBA fan. Go figure.

But if I am preaching to the choir, as Brewster worries, then I must say, thank you for the music, for giving it to me.

I wouldn’t be blogging this much if you all weren’t tuning in and writing all your comments. I wouldn’t be adding new features like “Must have PPTs” if it weren’t for the response. And I’m hoping to add yet another feature, podcasts, in time for my brother to do interviews at the Republican National Convention.

As for preaching to the choir, well, last month alone, the choir was over 115,000 unique visitors (triple last year at this time) reading 3.3 pages each. I do get plenty of deniers and doubters, but I have no illusions that we change their mind and since I won’t put up with their posting long-debunked disinformation, I suspect most don’t stick around long. We also get some undecideds.

But I’ve long thought that giving progressives the best information and best arguments with a vigorous debate is about all you can do in our current political climate.

That said, I lot of the media read this — which is one of the reasons I do so many media critiques.

And so do a lot of young people. They get here through Google, unexpectedly enough, mainly researching reports on polar bears. In fact, here are my most widely read posts year to date (with # of views in parens):

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The uber-centrist Brookings Institution joins the climate alarmist realist crowd. President Strobe Talbott and VP for foreign policy studies Carlos Pascual explain in an Op-Ed:

The world may have only seven years to start reducing the annual buildup in greenhouse gas emissions that otherwise threatens global catastrophe within several decades.

The politics is a little bland for my taste, but that’s to be expected from Brookings, which has moved closer and closer to the center in recent years. But the whole piece is worth reading, if only to see just how far the informed center has moved:

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