Harvey and Climate Change

[Allegra]

Hurricane Harvey: The link to climate change - BBC News :

For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur.

Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas.

"The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010," Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it's almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that."

Is tropical storm Harvey linked to climate change? :

Is there a link between the storm and climate change?
Almost certainly, according to a statement issued by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday. “Climate change means that when we do have an event like Harvey, the rainfall amounts are likely to be higher than they would have been otherwise,” the UN organisation’s spokeswoman Clare Nullis told a conference.

But hurricanes are nothing new in this part of the world …
Correct. Nobody is arguing that climate change caused the storm, but it is likely to have made it much worse.

How did it make it worse?
Warmer seas evaporate more quickly. Warmer air holds more water vapour. So, as temperatures rise around the world, the skies store more moisture and dump it more intensely.

It's hard not to notice the more frequent and severe storms, flooding, wildfires around the global in the past decade. So what are the scientific explanations for this phenomenon of those who keep calling the climate change a hoax anyway?

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

So what are the scientific explanations for this phenomenon of those who keep calling the climate change a hoax anyway?

Hoaxers don't believe in real science.

 

[Allegra]

Real science comes from real, honest scientists which is the mainstream.

 

[Dave]

So what are the scientific explanations for this phenomenon of those who keep calling the climate change a hoax anyway?

This is a political argument and we aren't allowing political arguments here any more. I agree that shouldn't be a political argument but there is no question that it is now. If we can sidestep that and keep to the science alone (because it is, in my view, the single greatest issue of our time):

Can there be any scientific explanation for this phenomena for those that keep calling the climate change a hoax? Well, yes. You already gave the answer to that. You said:

Nobody is arguing that climate change caused the storm, but...

When I said the same thing here following Hurricane Katrina I had a similar response here. The fact is that Katrina could be a once in 500-year chance storm, and Harvey could be a once in 1000-year storm. No one can say that they are not just statistical freaks of nature without more evidence.

However, when you put them all together, and you add the larger, but largely unreported storms over India, Nepal and Bangladesh this week, well then at some point you must say we have enough evidence now.

Three other relevant things: First, many people do not say that climate change is a hoax, but they simply do not think it is caused by the actions of man, or more specifically the burning of fossil fuels. They don't deny its existence but say that it could be due to volcanic activity. There is ample evidence that it is not the case. However, it is more complicated because other gasses are more warming than carbon dioxide and we also produce a lot of Methane. We also have other sources of gases - Methane from cow farts being the humorous one, and carbon dioxide from pouring concrete.

Second, people don't understand what "global warming" means. They think one or two degrees doesn't matter, because a one or two degrees higher temperature in the weather in any locality on any particular day, doesn't make much difference to them personally. And there was snow in Texas last year, so it can't be warming, can it? This is a problem with education, and I think why "climate change" is the term used now. It is much more about the energy within the system and the unpredictability of weather systems.

Third, many people point to atmospheric carbon dioxide being much higher in the past, and they say that therefore it is a natural phenomena and everything will be okay because everything always turns out okay in the end. That becomes an argument about Faith and we don't allow those here either.

All in all, I'm not sure this thread can last very long without being closed.

 

[Vertigo]

I think most of the climate change deniers would claim there is no increase in number or severity of extreme weather events and that the apparent increase is down to how those 'normal' events are being reported. I don't believe that myself but I think that is what they claim/believe and that is much harder to quantify.

 

[Cathbad]

I had heard the storm was worse because of global warming. Yet, wouldn't such a claim require (unfortunately) more evidence?

 

[Vertigo]

I had heard the storm was worse because of global warming. Yet, wouldn't such a claim require (unfortunately) more evidence?

I think that's probably down to reporting; I've heard scientists that have been interviewed but they were very careful to say things along the lines of the level of rainfall was likely worse due to warming but then, of course, the journalist hacks translate that into "Man made global warming creates killer storm."

I don't believe there is any science that could proof any one storm to have been worsened by any one factor, global warming included.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I have begun to think that the most important event of our recent time for a time traveler to target would be the coining of the term "global warming". If we could go back and prevent that from happening, it might be possible to save the planet for humanity. And I say that as a person who has been known to utter the words "Tell Al Gore I just shoveled two feet of global warming from my driveway."

I think the scientific explanation from the denying side is partially "That's weather for you", partially the 100-year storm thing which does, yes, get misused from the climate-change side. Proponents of climate change point at these clusters and say "look how many 100-year storms we've had in the last three years" as an argument that it's obviously exacerbating, when in reality that number is a dice-roll, not a predictor.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

I hope this won't sound political... I was from the U.S. originally, and I've known a fair number of climate-change deniers. The two reasons I've heard for their beliefs are:

- scientists are wrong.
- weather patterns must be considered as grand, epoch-spanning phenomena; you have good periods, and bad periods. What we're seeing now is just patterns repeated throughout the ages.

I'll provide no analysis of either belief.

 

[Extollager]

One may, if one chooses, assume that climate change "deniers" (which seems to be used expansively to include not only those who deny climate change, but those who question it or some of the elements in the familiar climate change narrative) are all unreasonable.

If appeals to reason might be made to some who at present do not affirm the familiar climate change narrative, then, it seems to me, the following might be helpful.

1.Report good data relating to climate, which show that, as compared with reliable measurements and historical norms, abnormal weather occurs more frequently and significantly.
2.Acknowledge complexity: weather events may have multiple causal agents.
3.Acknowledge non-anthropogenic causes.
4.Show that when this is done, there remains a residuum of apparent anthropogenic causation.
5.Show, if possible, that some of the anthropogenic element is both significant and capable of correction.

The above requirements seem to me to be reasonable. I'm not a climate change denier, but I understand how some people think or feel, who are associate the issue not with reason and not with respectful communication addressed to them, but with non-scientists (actors, politicians, musicians) presenting a simple story that calls for something like a "religious" conversion, including repentance and a new way of life. Men of these recalcitrant folks are not about to be intimidated into, yelled into, or shamed into such a conversion.

Personally, I think "climate change" is real, and I think it very likely that a human-caused factor is included. I think some voluntary changes could be made that might help slow the rate, at least, of climate change, and would be beneficial in other ways too, like more people walking instead of driving, flying in airplanes less often, and so on. The younger generation is relatively more strident about climate change than people in late middle age or of elderly years. The younger generation is also fond of tourism, foreign vacations, adventure travel, etc. Hmm.

My intention isn't to start a political debate or quarrel -- it has been GREAT not having those here at Chrons -- nor to participate in one, and I hope that, if this message would do that, a moderator will delete my message here.

I'm suggesting that some who have no doubt about the anthropogenic element in climate change and who are inclined simply to despise those who are not on board with them, might consider the matter as it may seem to others. Those others will have thought, "So we're having a weather disaster. How long before the global warming fanatics try to make capital out of it like they usually do?"

These others might appreciate reasoned communication, with behavior to back up their convictions, from the climate change community (so to speak).

 

[EJDeBrun]

I think ultimately the issue is that people don't live long enough to say for sure. Like, it's easy for us to study things like genetics when we look at flies because they live and die in a day. And after several days patterns start becoming obvious. For humans, weather moves year to year, decade to decade, millennium to millennium. We don't live long enough to really study it. As it is, we don't have tons of data compared to how weather works. Weather reports with scientific figures has only been around for maybe 100-150 years. From the Earth's perspective, that's barely a minute of a day of its lifetime.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's hard to believe in climate change if you're not willing to accept data outside of your personal experience. As individuals we really have no clue. (I studied oceanography once and the concept of understanding the planet from the Ice Age was boggling). Anyways. So unless you're willing to look at the empirical based on obscure branches of science and try to understand the findings, you have to trust the experts. But I think right now in the information-opinion era, people are finding it easier and easier to shrug experts off and believe only in the information that best serves their interests. And since we don't really have the data to say 100% for sure "YES THIS IS GLOBAL WARMING" again, easy to brush off.

In other words, because we don't live long enough to be able to say for sure, and because people have a relatively self-serving way of viewing the world, the idea of any kind of universal climate change belief seems unlikely. I mean, this is the root of religion right? Explanations for the inexplicable.