As Hurricane Irma is about to arrive in South Florida, it is instructive to reread my comments on this blog posted about one year ago (see https://ericgrimsrud.org/2016/08/10/state-aided-deception-continues-in-florida/). In that post, the encouragement of the State of Florida for continued and even enhance residential construction in South Florida is related. Since the Governor of that state has been a hard-core denier of the detrimental effects of global warming, it will be interesting to see what spin he places on the effects of Irma. I expect his response will be that the extraordinary strength of Irma was due entirely to natural causes and was not affected by mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Assuming he cares about any other states in the USA, I suspect he will say the same about the origin of Hurricane Harvey in Texas.
Oh sure, Mother Nature caused these two 500-year extreme weather events in less than two weeks from each other without any assistance from the distinctly unnatural emissions of CO2 by human beings, right? Going forward, Americans should beware of Florida’s snake-oil salesmen, such as Governor Scott. They might soon be trying to sell you one of their state’s multitude of bridges, for example. After all, they will soon become “bridges to nowhere” and Florida will need the proceeds of such sales for payments to the contractors who are still building the infrastructures of South Florida’s latest coastal communities. If you need help in believing the existence of this twisted logic, you should read again my previous post indicated above. Heaven help those Iowa pig farmers referred to there who are counting on retirement bliss in South Florida.
ericgrimsrud 
Most “deniers” probably know – on som level – that they are wrong. Their pathology reminds one of anorexia, in that the patients display a total inability to acknowledge a fact that is obviously true for just about anyone else. They get excited about a few months of increasing icecover in the Arctic, fell confident of “victory” after some years of no GW, etc. But when the icecover and the global temperature resume their long term trends, they are unable to accept these observations and turn to new hopeful ideas.
By: cognitiophile on September 11, 2017
at 12:59 pm
The conventional response to this issue is that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change. It is like a loaded dice that comes up with a six in more than 1/6 of the throws. No single event of getting a six can then be attributed to the fact that the dice was loaded.
This conventional truth is only partly correct. If we would use high-speed cameras to accurately follow the motion of the dice, we may be able to state, after analyzing the last set of turns by the dice before it comes to rest, that if the dice had not been loaded, it would (given a certain initial state) not have come up with a six, but with, say, a two.
The situation is similar with hurricanes and simulations of this type have been done. These shows unequivocally that the hurricanes are stronger that they would have been without global warming. Not that that should have come as a surprise. With warmer water the rate of evaporation increases and (given some additional restrictions of atmospheric conditions) the amount of energy that can be supplied to the hurricane will be larger. We regard to natural cycles, the AMO (Atlantic Multidecal Oscillation) is presently in the warm phase, so more energetic hurricanes are not unexpected. However, the global warming effect on surface waters in the Atlantic is already larger than the AMO!! Furthermore, the destructiveness of Harvey was largely due to the fact that it after landfall became nearly stationary. We have observed that the circumpolar jet stream has weakened, presumably due the dramatic warming in the Arctic. The stream has shown an increasing tendency to lock itself into stationary pattern – something that is not at all surprising for turbulent flows in general. For example, the whole of Europe was in such a locked situation all summer. The jet stream swept south in the East Atlantic and turned north over Easter Europe. The weather is the southeast was hot and the weather in Scandinavia was lousy. Every week of the summer! Normally, the system move with a lot of energy from west to east. The storms in the North Atlantic are not as strong as they used to be.
Thus, it is not at all unlikely that without global warming, Harvey would have been quickly swept away from the Houston area.
(Of course, should any of this prove to be wrong, I would be more than happy to revise my thoughts and opinions).
By: cognitiophile on September 11, 2017
at 2:39 pm
“However, the global warming effect on surface waters in the Atlantic is already larger than the AMO!! Furthermore, the destructiveness of Harvey was largely due to the fact that it after landfall became nearly stationary.” cognitiophile
It will be interesting to see how cognitiophile will be able to connect CO₂ to why there were so FEW hurricanes in the Pacific Region.
2017 Accumulated Cyclone Energy [ACE]
Basin Current YTD Normal YTD % of Normal YTD Yearly Climo* 2016 **
Northern Hemisphere 450.7045 449 100% 568 604
Western N Pacific 122.95 223 55% 302 259
Eastern + Cent N Pac 97.9225 127 77% 138 189
North Atlantic 225.887 90 250% 104 140.5
North Indian 3.945 8 49% 18 14
Southern Hemisphere 98.8 210 47% 209 208
Global 547.9270 622 88% 771 800
http://wx.graphics/tropical/
cognitiophile I’m sure can go to the actual site to get a better view of the information above.
By: John Swallow on October 16, 2017
at 7:35 am
I didn’t write anything about hurricane frequency, only about their possible strength. In fact, I don’t know enough about the former subject. That said, the development of hurricanes depend on the temperature difference between the seasurface (which is warming) and the upper atmosphere (which seems to be cooling) and on windshear. Some model results show an increased shear in the tropical Atlantic with GW. So why on earth should I be surprised if the frequency of hurricanes would decrease? That would, in fact, increase my confidence in AGW models. i take pride in (trying my best) not to choose opinions based on whether they weaken or strengthen my conclusion, based on a massive amount of evidence, that AGW is extremely dangerous to the human race. Any good scientist must learn to identify and correct for his “confirmation bias”.
By: cognitiophile on October 16, 2017
at 10:13 pm