Columbia Journalism Review‘s Curtis Brainard and I had a somewhat lengthy back-and-forth on Twitter about his view (10/30/12, 11/1/12) that some journalists and environmental activists are misleading the public by pointing to superstorm Sandy as an outcome of human-caused global warming. I argued on FAIR Blog (11/1/12) that saying that global warming caused Sandy is simply accurate–and later tried to make my point via tongue-in-cheek metaphor in a tweet.
I don’t think I convinced Brainard–“Wow. You’re spinning words like tops,” pretty much summed up his reaction. But I thought I’d try to explain what I was saying in a medium not limited to 140 characters–along with a better metaphor.
The result of our climate experiment. (Photo by NASA.)
My argument was that climate change caused Sandy in the straightforward sense that without global warming, Sandy wouldn’t have happened. Weather is a chaotic system, meaning that small changes in initial conditions produce vast changes in outcome. We live on a planet where the atmosphere has been altered not slightly but dramatically by human actions, changing the climate and therefore all weather derived from the climate. Without climate change, Sandy wouldn’t be weaker or have a smaller storm surge or strike somewhere else; there would be an entirely different weather pattern, most likely an entirely unremarkable one.
This is not, I don’t think, the point climatologist Kevin Trenberth, quoted by Brainard, is making when he says, “All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” He’s saying that if you imagined Sandy without climate change, you would have a cooler, drier Sandy. What I am saying is that whenever you alter the conditions of the atmosphere in a significant way, in whatever manner, you will automatically end up with a different set of weather events–and the odds against these weather events without alteration would have produced something resembling Sandy are astronomical.
Believing that a Frankenstorm of some sort would have manifested itself in late October 2012 if people hadn’t started pumping carbon into the atmosphere in the 1800s is like believing that if chimpanzees instead of Homo sapiens had evolved into the dominant species on Earth, a chimp named Abraham Lincoln would have been elected president of the United States of America in 1860.
Mantoloking, New Jersey: We made the storm that did this. (Photo: USFWS)
Now, you might say to me, “Yeah, yeah–so what?” One could argue that this kind of “cause” is trivial, because it applies equally to all weather events–that pleasant day in August, the first big snowstorm last winter, the lightning that hit the old barn two years ago–all these events were “caused” by climate change, in that the hypothetical world without climate change had entirely different weather events.
But I think it’s important to understand this about weather: There aren’t some weather events that are the result of climate change and some that aren’t. There are no weather events that are made better or worse by global warming. Without global warming, there would be an entirely different set of weather events.
What people think of as the interesting questions about climate change and extreme weather involve comparing the weather events we actually have with the weather on an imaginary Earth, where the climate hasn’t been altered by greenhouse gases. Would they have similar kinds of weather events there? More of some, less of others? More or less severe, on average? More specifically: Could the kind of storm that Sandy was have struck the East Coast at some point in time in a world free of global warming?
These are very hard questions to answer, obviously–since we’re unable to observe the weather on an imaginary planet–and scientists furiously debate the answers. I would note that if we’re talking about a weather phenomenon that’s never been seen before, we should be more skeptical of claims that such things happen naturally on hypothetical Earth X. And people who have been predicting that one of the things to expect from increasing climate change is an increase in the severity of storms should be listened to seriously when a storm of unprecedented severity occurs–just as people who recognized the housing bubble early on should have been listened to for advice on what to do after it popped.
But the one thing we can say for sure is that Sandy would not have occurred here and now without climate change. Is that a useful thing to say? Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine we live in that world with no climate change. (Maybe the industrial revolution developed with wind and water power until a Thomas Edison analogue invented the solar panel.)
In this world, researchers come up with a way to alter local weather. Some scientists warn against trying this out, saying that it could cause irrevocable changes to the climate, including severe storms. But the researchers say, no, while it will unavoidably randomize the weather all over the world, it won’t change the climate: You’ll get a different mix of weather after the alteration, but it will be the same mix of weather that existed before.
They go ahead and do the experiment–making sure, say, that there’s sunny skies over the Super Bowl–and then, within a year, a devastating hurricane wrecks Miami.
It’s hard to say how to answer the question of whether the experiment made the hurricane worse or not: It’s one data point, and one that could be found in an ordinary hurricane season–though it’s consistent with the prediction that the experiment would exacerbate storms.
But did the experiment cause the hurricane? In the sense that that hurricane would not have happened without the weather alteration, yes–the researchers are responsible for the hurricane striking Miami. That’s the way the courts would presumably view it, and that’s surely how the newspapers on Earth X would report it.
I put it to you that this Earth’s media ought to give the same treatment to the consequences of the real-world experiment we call global warming.
If the research is correct, we’ll see a huge earthquake because of erosion. I did look and the most recent earthquakes were in Canada and Southeast Asia. Just another data point to work with for now. Maybe totally useless though.
The only sensible explanation I’ve heard of global warming is colder air isn’t mixing as much with hotter air. Why that produces worse hurricanes though is beyond me. On a basic level, heat is movement. Does cold air slow down a storm?
I think another way of putting it is not to look at extreme weather as an abberation superimposed on a background of so-called normal weather. Whatever the weather is we have now, it is a result of a more or less permanently changed composition of the earth’s atmosphere. CO2 (not the only greenhouse gas) absorbs light right in the region where it should be transmitted into space.It’s a stable molecule. It’ll be around for a long, long time. It seems that many global wrming deniers are libertarians. That seem to think that this whole global warming is a massive conspiracy on the part of liberals and proponents of big government. This makes me ask the questions, Were they libertarians before they became “climatologists?” I’m afraid the answer is yes.
WOW. You guys are scary. And I don’t mean that in a way you should be proud of.
There is nothing unusual about a tropical storm coming north in November. What made Sandy more damaging than other TS’s of the same intensity was a combination of 3 things.
First – she hit land at a location where the seabed has a gradual transition from deeper to more shallow water. That physical feature allows for a maximum storm surge (given the storms accumulated cyclonic energy, or ACE) to develop.
Second, Sandy occured during a full moon which, as we all know, increased the high tide (storm or no storm) by about 2 feet. This only added to (as do all spring tides) the already maximized surge.
Third, Sandy ran afoul of a cold-front descending out of Canada and as a result produced a large amount of snow for this time of year.
So, my question to those of you who feel climate change (more specifically AGW) caused Sandy…..
…..did AGW somehow effect the seabed off the coast of NJ and NY?
…..did AGW somehow effect the allignment of the earth, moon and sun?
…..did AGW cause a cold front to descend upon the US from Canada?
Obviously, none of these were caused by either CC or AGW.
I miss the old days when scientists were expected to question their results and the results of others as part of the (now defunct) scientific method. Modern scientists seem as unencumbered by such a guideline as the media feels unencumbered by the idea of due diligence in reporting.
Researchers report that storms with a surge over 10 feet have occurred AT LEAST 7 times over the last 700 years in this location. That figure became 8 with Sandy. 8 storms over 700 years gives an interval of such occurance of …. about 100 years.
My heart goes out to the residents of the NY area who have been so afflicted. However, a statistician (even a good local bookie) would suggest that building your walls 10 feet high may unnecessarily place your populace at risk roughly once every …. say 100 years or so.
Furst
Test, fair doesn’t seem to be working
Seems Fair is working. In any case, to Furst: first of all, your first sentence implies that proponents of global warming are engaged in wreaking panic and needless fear for political gain. So let’s dispense with that. Second of all you’re making a common mistake by mesuring the strength of a hurricane by how much damage it does or doesn’t do. The argument goes that nothing has changed with the weather; it’s the same as it always was. These modern hurricanes, so they argue, appear to be stronger only because of the greater damage they do due to large increases in population and construction over the last 50 years or so. Other than that, nothing has changed. And so you look at the damage done due the conditions that led to high storm surge. Undoubtedly part of this argument is true: more damage is done to property and lives than ever before by any tropical storm regardless of strength. But is that the correct metric for identifying changes in weather, that is, their impact on human lives and property? People who make a living at studying and modeling hurricanes look at the intrinsic strength of a hurricane, i.e. how much energy in invovled in the storm regardless of the damage it does. One of the factors that leads to more powerful tropical storms is the surface temperature of the ocean where the hurricanes form and travel. The higher the surface temperature, the more energy avaialable, the greater the frequency of these powerful storms regardless of whether they hit land or not. So that’s what you should be looking at, how hurricanes are formed and what factors lead to hurricanes that are both more powerful and more frequent. The amount of damage done–however devastating it may be–is not the proper metric for understanding how weather has changed.
Well , you prove FAIR is not . This is intentional stupidity .
This storm surge was about twice as high as 2 storms I experienced living on Peck Slip in Lower Manhattan in the late 1980s . It probably was not as big as the 1938 storm which devastated a lot of New England . It appears to have been perhaps half or less the surge which was reported to have drowned the tip of Manhattan up to Canal Street in 1821 .
And there is NO theory linking the 0.3% rise in temperature we’ve observed since the thermometer was invented with increased variance in weather – which hasn’t occurred in any case . In fact , any increased insulative properties of the atmosphere would decrease polar-equatorial variance , and therefore the energy gradients to drive storms .
Oh , and yea , lots of us realists are libertarians . If you ever meet a group of libertarians , you’ll find an overabundance of teky nerds – engineers , programmers , market quants , etc , We’re libertarians in large part because we refuse to be slaves to the arrogant idiocies of innumerate watermelons like Mr Naureckas .
to JB – I’m not pointing to the damage caused as a measure of the storm at all. The press is. I’m looking at the ACE score (which deserves neither “superstorm” nor “frankenstorm” moniker) and noting that there is nothing even remotely unprecedented about this storm itself. The factors which allowed a TS to wreak a lot of damage were location and timing – neither of which are affected in the least by AGW.
My point is, in order for either scientists or the press to say that Sandy was caused by AGW, there needs to be some identifiable variable which actually links the two. In lack thereof, someone needs to be held accountable for sensationalistic journalism.
to Lewis – a guy using computer modeled data as evidence might want to rethink handing out advice on the use of emotion in a blog…
The last major hurricane to hit New Jersey was in 1891 and some close hits in the 1950-60s. So, where does one not-even-a hurricane become a human-caused disaster? The only disaster is that people were stupid or complacent enough to think that hurricanes do not ever hit NJ. This is stupidity at its finest.
As there was a series of hurricanes that hit New England in the 1950s, 6 in almost as many years, where does one large storm, when a major hurricane has not made landfall in over 7 years, become world-changing.
The ninnies in NJ are just too ignorant or inexperienced to know that there are many kinds of disasters and they are not immune. In WV 2004, we had a major flood which wiped our our valley. It took years to recover, but we did not blame it on others and the junk science of non-existent global warming.
Yesterday somebody was claiming that about 6 inches of the 17 inches of sea level rise in NYC was due to man’s CO2. This smelly, brown number is what it seems, pulled out of somewhere the Sun does not shine.
If CO2 is only 3-5% of the greenhouse gases (which cannot do what they claim, but let’s pretend that they do) and our contribution is only 3% of that, then 17 x 5% x 3% = 0.026 inches, the thickness of 2 and a half sheets of writing paper. This can be totally ignored and nothing to feel guilty over.
Furthermore, thermodynamics tells us that our basic air temperatures come from heating due to gravitational compression with an overlay of solar energy input and modulation by major ocean cycles and their huge heat capacities.
Very simply, the upper troposphere is claimed to be warming the surface and thus our lower atmosphere by stopping and re-emitting IR radiation back to the surface. Ignoring many reasons why this does not happen, one glaring problem is that the upper troposphere is about -15 deg C and the surface at about 17 deg C. It is simply impossible for a cold body to warm a hot body. It HAS to be the other way around.
Even the warmest scientists agree that the upper troposphere has be warm faster than anyplace else to do what they claim. Not only is the needed hotspot totally missing, but satellite measurements show that this region of the atmosphere has been cooling.
But, as validity of science has nothing to do with the claims, the false claims continue as this is a political agenda and political agendas do not care at all about real data and real science.
Thus, our country now sinks into scientific dark ages, in which technology will be used to suppress the people and all dissent.
Higley7 – what are you doing bringing facts and figures into a rhetoric blog?
Oh, BTW, apparently caps are out and no emotion is allowed……unless your emotional about that damned AGW. Then it’s OK.
Dear DOCTOR “furst”:I love your name,and pronunced the way it’s written, you have a brogue! : )
I believe in Climate Change, because of the rise of the jellyfish populations and the dying of the coral reefs. The ocean absorbs carbon, but at a certain point, it can’t absorb any more and it gets warmer too.
The clear cutting of the forests affects the ability to the planet to absorb carbon too. Also, I think the huge growth of Earth’s humanity affects the temperature of the Earth, can’t it? It’s like being in a room full of people when the air conditioner dies.
I think I believe too, because many of the same people that say that the 1% create jobs, seem to be the same people that deny any kind of climate change. However, even if a person doesn’t believe in climate change, and says that these changes are natural, they are very unnatural for current life on the planet, so what do these denial people propose to do about that?
George Lakoff says it well:
Global Warming Systematically Caused Hurricane Sandy
By George Lakoff (about the author) Permalink (Page 1 of 2 pages)
OpEdNews Op Eds 11/4/2012 at 07:50:16
Pasted from
Consider the Connection to: Environmental Communications CTC1 [KNOWLEDGE]
The more KNOWLEDGE we have, the more connections we make.
http://www.twitter.com/CTC123GREEN
I can think of no better metaphor for the effects of climate change than the ashen face of Chris Christie. It was always so confident and arrogant before the storm.
Furst’s “evidence” is baseless at best.
First, he references his own disbelief (“as if it could do that”) as a seamless part of the evidence. Then he claims that atmospheric heat is a result of “gravitational compression” of the atmosphere, while handily forgetting that ANY net heat from that source (even if possible) would have dissipated literally EONS ago, as proved by the very science that he says “proves” his own point, re: compression.
Any net heating from compression is one-time-only, and MUST dissipate from any system, UNLESS the gravitational loading can be seen to have INCREASED in the short-term interim.
Excluding such nonsense, the NET heating effect will remain constant, assuming the NET gravitational loading remains constant. And of course over time, hot things will cool and come to energy equivalency.
Compression does indeed contribute to heating, but it requires a CHANGE in the compression, to have ANY effect at all. To apply this thermodynamic effect to our atmosphere is FAR, FAR out of place, scientifically.
To wit, NO net heat due to compression is even POSSIBLE, because any heating from such an effect now, is handily counteracted by uncompression/cooling somewhere else in the SAME atmospheric system.
Furst’s “doctorate” is OBVIOUSLY NOT in either Thermodynamics, or Climatology.
“You guys are scary. And I don’t mean that in a way you should be proud of.”
I don’t know enough about the science of climate change to get into that part of the conversation, but I do want to comment on this statement by the guy who thinks he’s so clever with his screen name. Just because YOU may think being scary is something to be proud of, that doesn’t mean that others who are contributing here think it is. Don’t try to attribute your amoral, bullying libertarian values to others.
Carbon dioxide is the most prevalent of GHGs. Not as powerful as methane or nitrous oxide or other industrial chemicals that are thousands of times as powerful but CO2 lingers the longest. In fact without it our world would be much colder. Any more CO2 and we couldn’t survive. Right now our oceans are becoming acidic from all the carbon dioxide absorbed. Soon they will not be able to take in any more and start releasing them into our atmosphere. The oceans will become too hot to take in any CO2 and begin expelling it faster and faster. In 50 years we have lost 50% of the ice at the poles.
We haven’t had such warming so quickly in a long time. 55 million years ago was the last one. The ice cores tell us much about the atmosphere over 600,000 years or more.
And if there are no more storms for 100 years that too will be caused by……..us.If it gets better or worse it is due to ……..us.Any change up ,down, or sideways is our fault.What a perfect perfect theory it is.A no loose scientific shell game.So FLEXIBLE.Now can we please move on to finding how we can tax this?Is that not the point?
As an engineer, it’s pretty easy to identify who knows what they are talking about when it comes to thermodynamics. Gravitational compression as a heating mechanism for the earth is a one time effect occuring billions of years ago.
Now this explanation might be appropriate for Whinnie the Pooh explaining to Piglet why it’s so hot today, but both the afore mentioned have enough sense not to profess any real knowledge of global warming or climatology in a public forum.
Lets all explain why the himalayan ice fields are not melting.It is a cental point of all warming models.Yet nothing???????Explain wigglypop
I am a vegan eco but don’t believe in global warming. I don’t like being called a denier. I think we should use renewables and recycle I am 100% into the whole eco bag. A funny thing the nuclear energy industry loves to present itself as the saviour in climate change and loves the scare scenarios.
We don’t understand the climate.
is it allowed to say we don’t know
we don’t know . Yes i deny that we know. right now climate change is being used to justify nuclear energy. We really are on the verge of a green revolution. but hey all you people who smugly insult me by calling me a denier because i dont’ agree with you maybe you could stop eating meat and dairy which contribute to pollution, massive use of fossil fuels,water and higher food prices / world hunger……….or do you deny it? Peace and love to you all
Here’s a letter I recently sent to my congresspersons. John Harvey is right as far as he goes, but we must do much more, and I DON’T MEAN NUCLEAR!!
Dear Senator / Congressperson
As a parent and grandparent I have become very concerned about the impact we humans are having on our planet and how that will affect my descendants and our long term survival as a species. A recent article (June 7, 2012) in the journal Nature entitled “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere” underscores much of my concern. I strongly urge you to read this paper. From my perspective there are two key factors that we as a nation must address:
Worldwide population size
In the last few decades we have accelerated the growth of our population at an unbelievably rapid rate. It took our species perhaps 50,000 years to go from zero to the one billion mark. It took only 200 years to add, not the next billion, but a full five billion more. Today it’s taken only 12-13 years to add the most recent billion. Such a rapid growth rate is simply not sustainable. (NOTE: It’s sometimes hard to get a gut sense of one billion of anything. But imagine the following: Define a village as a thousand people. If we define a city as one million people, it will take a thousand villages to create a city. To add one billion more, we will be adding not 10, not 100, but 1000 new cities in the next 13 years or so.)
But it’s not just our numbers that create the problem. Its that we use so much resource, spew so much CO2 into the atmosphere, pollute so much land and sea, and crowd out so many other species with our farms, cities, highways and other uniquely human inventions.
Most of us have become so isolated from the natural world that we don’t understand how our very survival as a species is dependent on healthy ecosystems. Here’s just one example of this dependence: Phytoplankton and other organisms in the ocean produce as much as 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere. If we were to loose these, we would all be living at the equivalent of 19,000 feet or higher and gasping for every breath.
Climate Change
It is very likely that sometime in the next 10-40 years that climate change, combined with other human induced stresses, will push our globe past a tipping point, causing radical and irreversible change of the Earth’s entire ecosystem upon which we humans intimately depend. We cannot accurately predict how this will affect our civilization, but something like the collapse of the twin towers or the Second World War would be but drops in an ocean of troubles.
I therefore urge you to make this interlocking pair of issues your over arching concern as a senator or congressperson. Saving Monterey Bay, setting aside wilderness areas, even women’s rights, will mean nothing if we don’t act on these key issues.
What we must do
This is a big topic – more than can be contained in a single letter. Let me just say that despite the challenges I mention above, I remain optimistic. But only if we take action immediately and in very, very big ways!
Climate, despite it’s difficulties, is the relatively easy one. As a nation we have taken on challenges of similar size in the past: The interstate highway system, sending a man to the moon, winning the Second World War. How we might act would take at least another letter, but in simplest form, completely replacing our reliance on fossil fuels with a massive investment in renewable energy and increased efficiency would form the basics of any viable solution. This is a huge challenge for at least a dozen reasons, but we must not give up. I will have more to say about this in future letters.
Population:
Dramatically reducing population growth is a topic for another letter. I would only say that the “solutions” in chapter 7 of Al Gore’s book “Our Choice” are a beginning.
So, the point of my letter?
A request that you refocus your attention to these issues. Without addressing them, all other efforts will be for naught.
Thank you for your attention on these matters.
John and Tom great pieces.John I love that you point out one or two hypocrisies.There are truckloads more.Tom…..Problem is you are dancing around the pole.Obama did the same thing when asked yesterday in his press conference if he would rethink carbon taxes(Humadda humadda humadda.)Lets really lay it out there.Action in a really big way huh?What do you want the average American to give- to avoid the global warming planet destroyer?Take into account that China, among loads of other countries, are going to tell you to go pound sand.America is the only country that did not sign the protocol .It is also the only country meeting and surpassing clean/green standards.So your war is really with….the rest of the world.Go to it tiger.
Finally ,finally finally a man who puts forward something he actually believes in.Taking what he has read, and synthesising it into a coherent personal belief.It has taken ages on this sight to meet you sir, and I say well met.Thanks Tom
I am aware of a lot of this(some surprises i shall research).My personal favorite is the energy derived from hydrogen.Most can be stored as an output of our nuclear power plants for pennies as we sleep.Power every car.This(you)could be the heart of American entrepreneurial spirt going forward.A spirt that has changed the world over and over.But a few things must happen first.We need a robust economy to allow us to invest in this.Or the will to allow private companies to do so.Instead we are staggering.Choosing this time before any of the costly engineering is worked out to force our coal plants out.Plants that provide 45% of electric power.Choose this time to block our own natural gas and oil development.( Obama is still under contempt charges for blocking all leases.)All growth now is due to private companies who have old leases more than ten years old.It seems the plan(Obamas) is to make energy so costly that the government will step in to save us all with these new wonder ideas.Not the way it works Tom.We will be gone long before we can afford to do this.Not because of the direct cost, but because we will go broke before we try.Also remember that anything that involves government involvement is going to balloon in cost.Obama care promised at 750 billion.Now over 3 trillion before implementation.Your numbers are probably not even a percentage of true cost.But Im all for getting government out of the way.Lowering taxes to a low point for companies ready to try this.Lets recreate massive wealth,not attack it.,That IS the way it works.As far as an investment now……Tom I don’t think this country will last without a complete financial collapse for another 12 years.And I think that is the pie in the sky- outside number.But I will pray that what you are talking about will be our future.I love your positivity.I think the vote last week was a vote for a government to take care of its people.To do what you say will need a people willing to do the hard work that will take care of their government.Those people,that sub sect is….. under direct attack.We used to look up to the movers and shakers that become the captains of industry .Henry Ford……..Today he would have a bullseye on his chest,and government would be compelled to take over his job.Spread that across almost every field.America has fundamentally changed Tom.Where do you see government…….government that runs nothing well being able to carry this out?
Your comment…”But the one thing we can say for sure is that Sandy would not have occurred here and now without climate change.” is way off base.The earth climate doesn’t change every couple of years! All you have to do is look at the history of hurricanes impacting in NYC. Here’s a link to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_hurricanes
I’ve been a meteorologist for The National Weather Service and the Navy for 39 years and have work 18 of those years in Gulf Coast office.