For the brief remaining seconds while Patricia has focused out attention…
Above, Senior Researcher Jeffrey Kiehl, senior climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). I asked Dr. Kiehl about the evidence for the intensity of storms in the ancient greenhouse powered world – storms strong enough to leave their traces millions of years into the future.
A trio of researchers affiliated with Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico, and VU University in the Netherlands, has conducted a study on the source of an increase in property dollar amounts lost over the past several decades due to hurricanes and has concluded that it cannot be blamed on an increase in wealth or construction—instead, they suggest in their paper published in Nature Geoscience, that it is due to more storms, because of global warming. Stéphane Hallegatte with the Climate Change Policy Team at the World Bank, offers a News & Views piece in the same journal edition on the work done by the team, outlining the process that was used, and highlighting possible problems with the results.
Mega-Insurance company Munich Re finds increases in costly natural disasters due to “Hydrological” and “Climatological” events.
Monetary losses that come about due to natural disasters are on the rise, particularly from storms such as hurricanes—that much is clear. What is not clear is whether this trend can be blamed on changes in the weather or people building more expensive stuff in the path of such storms. Some recent studies have found that it is mostly the latter, but that, the researchers with this new effort argue, is because the approach used to reach such conclusions was flawed.
The traditional way of normalizing damage from hurricanes, Hallegatte explains, involves an approach where it is assumed that an increase in damage would come about evenly with an increase in wealth—i.e. doubling wealth in an area would double the damage costs that occurred in it. But that thinking is flawed, the researchers contend, because it does not take into consideration the fact that as an area grows more wealthy, some of that money is used to prevent storm damage. They conducted their own study using a method that took such changes into account and their results showed that the economic loss increases due to hurricanes over the period 1900 to 2005 could not be solely attributed to an increase in wealth—they suggest that the other increase was due to an increased number of storms and stronger intensity (due to global warming) and further suggest that between 2 and 12 percent of losses due to such storms in the year 2005 alone (the year Katrina struck New Orleans), could be attributed to global warming.
Hallegatte agrees with the approach used by the researchers but points out that the change used to normalize the data is not proven, nor is the assumption that an increase in the number of storms, or their intensity can be blamed on global warming.
In a story posted just before the news about Hurricane Patricia, Bloomberg tracks a growing wave of concern about climate change.
Note to media. Even Republicans. Check the sudden spike in the red line above.
Election coming. This year will set new Heat Records. 2016 also looking to be very, very warm.
Republican candidates still dug in on denial. Dems sniff blood.
Get popcorn.
Maybe it’s the pope. Or the freakish year in extreme climate records. It might even be explained by the United Nations climate talks and the bright lights of the presidential election cycle. Whatever the cause, U.S. views on climate change are shifting—fast.
Three-quarters of Americans now accept the scientific consensus on climate change, the highest level in four years of surveys conducted by the University of Texas at Austin. The biggest shocker is what’s happening inside the GOP. In a remarkable turnabout, 59 percent of Republicans now say climate change is happening, up from 47 percent just six months ago.
When public opinion shifts this much in a single survey, a bit of skepticism is justified. (You can take a look at the methodology here.) Yet these results are precisely in line with a separate survey published this month by the University of Michigan, which found that 56 percent of Republicans believe there’s solid evidence to support global warming, up from 47 percent a year ago. The Michigan poll also found bipartisan agreement with climate science at the highest level since 2008.
The changing views by Republicans could strand some of the leading presidential candidates in an increasingly unpopular position. Many in the party reject mainstream climate science, and not just at the margins. Republican leaders including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and top presidential contenders Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio all articulate views that would be considered extreme in other countries.
Republicans are still mixed in support for policies to curb climate change, according to the Texas poll. Just 26 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports a tax on carbon emissions,2 a policy with majority support among Democrats. On the other hand, half of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who wants to reduce the use of coal or require utilities to obtain a certain proportion of electricity from wind and solar.
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Last year in the U.S., Bloomberg interviewed dozens of former senior Republican congressional aides, lobbyists, and staff at nongovernmental organizations. Many Republicans privately recognized the need to address climate change—in stark contrast to their party’s public stance—but saw little political benefit in speaking out. Maybe it’s time to reconsider.
The article does not do a good job of distinguishing the recognition that climate change is happening, and the understanding of the human role, but clearly that realization is sinking in as well.
Duane LeVine, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy development, gave a primer to the company’s board of directors in 1989, noting that scientists generally agreed gases released by burning fossil fuels could raise global temperatures significantly by the middle of the 21st century — between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit — causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise, “with generally negative consequences.”
But he also made it clear the company was facing another threat as well — from public policymakers.
“Arguments that we can’t tolerate delay and must act now can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps,” LeVine said.
Heat waves and drought had scorched North America in 1988, fueling public concern that the planet was warming. Top government scientists testified in Congress that year, pushing for action.
Lawmakers at home and abroad began calling for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — the lifeblood of Exxon’s business. And, in 1988, the United Nations established a panel of scientists to study the issue and make policy recommendations.
Brian Flannery, Exxon’s longtime in-house climate expert, outlined the threat in a note to his colleagues in an internal company newsletter in 1989.
Government and regulatory efforts to reduce the risk of climate change, Flannery wrote, would “alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry.” And he warned that the impact on the company from those efforts “will come sooner … than from climate change itself.”
The company’s shift — from embracing the science of climate change to publicly questioning it — emerged from interviews with former and current Exxon Mobil employees, and a review of internal company documents by Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.
The documents were obtained from the Exxon Mobil Historical Collection at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History. (Some of those documents have also been the subject of recent reports by InsideClimate News.)
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Record-breaking Hurricane Patricia pushed rapidly inland over mountainous western Mexico early Saturday, rapidly weakening to tropical storm force while dumping torrential rains that authorities warned could cause deadly floods and mudslides.
Patricia, which peaked as the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere, made landfall Friday on a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 5 storm, avoiding direct hits on the resort city of Puerto Vallarta and major port city of Manzanillo.
There were reports of some flooding and landslides, but no word of fatalities or major damage as the storm pushed across inland mountains while bypassing the metropolis of Guadalajara overnight.
Milenio TV carried footage of cars and buses being swept by floodwaters in the state of Jalisco.
“The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than those expected from a hurricane of this magnitude,” President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a taped address late Friday. He added, however, that “we cannot yet let our guard down.”
Patricia — the strongest hurricane ever recorded — barreled closer and closer Friday morning to Mexico’s Pacific coast, where residents have been told to brace for its 200-mph sustained winds and torrential rains.
The Miami-based meteorological center, in its 10 a.m. CT (11 a.m. ET) advisory, warned of a “potentially catastrophic landfall … in southwestern Mexico” late that afternoon or early evening. While its strength could fluctuate, “Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane through landfall.”
Patricia has potential to cause massive death and destruction over a large swath of the Mexican Pacific coast, including the tourist hot spots of Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco.Citing observations by hurricane hunters, Patricia is “the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins,” according to a Friday morning forecast discussion.
The closest contender, at this point, might be Hurricane Camille when it battered the U.S. Gulf Coast in 1969. Regardless, Patricia looks to be more powerful than that storm, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Katrina in 2005 and many others.
It’s already surpassed them in one way: Its central pressure reading — the weight of the air above a system — which is a key measure of any storm’s strength.
The early Friday central pressure recording of 880 millibars (the barometric pressure equivalent is 25.98 inches) “is the lowest for any tropical cyclone globally for over 30 years,” according to the Met Office, Britain’s weather service.
Below, my interview with Hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of MIT, after Sandy crushed the East Coast.
As he wrapped up nine years as the federal government’s chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science.
His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller’s legal counsel a century earlier. “What I rather imagine he would say is that you are on the wrong side of history, and you need to find a way to change your position,” he wrote.
Addressed to chairman Lee Raymond on the letterhead of the United States Global Change Research Program, his September 2002 letter was not just forceful, but unusually personal.
No wonder: in the opening days of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, Exxon’s chief lobbyist had written the new head of the White House environmental council demanding that MacCracken be fired for “political and scientific bias.”
Exxon was also attacking other officials in the U.S. government and at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), MacCracken wrote, interfering with their work behind the scenes and distorting it in public.
Exxon wanted scientists who disputed the mainstream science on climate change to oversee Washington’s work with the IPCC, the authoritative body that defines the scientific consensus on global warming, documents written by an Exxon lobbyist and one of its scientists show. The company persuaded the White House to block the reappointment of the IPCC chairman, a World Bank scientist. Exxon’s top climate researcher, Brian Flannery, was pushing the White House for a wholesale revision of federal climate science. The company wanted a new strategy to focus on the uncertainties.
“To call ExxonMobil’s position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement,” MacCracken wrote. “To be in opposition to the key scientific findings is rather appalling for such an established and scientific organization.”
MacCracken had a long history of collaboration with Exxon researchers. He knew that during the 1970s and 1980s, well before the general public understood the risks of global warming, the company’s researchers had worked at the cutting edge of climate change science. He had edited and even co-authored some of their reports. So he found it galling that Exxon was now leading a concerted effort to sow confusion about fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect.
NOAA has just published September’s global surface temperature, which turns out to be 0.90C above their baseline (20th century average). According to NOAA, this is the highest value for September on record, 0.12C higher than last year, which was also a record. The graph above shows the year to date average, though September, for NOAA’s entire data set.
Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, recently tweeted a graph he produced to show global surface temperatures since 1850, noting that 2015 year to date broke his graph.
Using NASA GISS data, climate scientist John Abraham broke his graph too:
LYRICS:
Hello skeptics not our friends, we’ve come to share with you again
Data proving that the Earth’s warming is a phenomenon that we’re causing
Because the carbon that we burn with such little care has warmed the air among the sound of skeptics
It’s not as if this is unknown, the trends consistently have shown
That global sea levels are rising, But our governments are left compromising
And the public misinformed by your false logic and cherry picks, still hear the sound of skeptics
In the AR5 we saw projections that left us in awe
Droughts and floods without warning, less Arctic sea ice forming
and the cure? We have to cut our emissions bare
But still you dare create the sound of skeptics
What else will we need to show before you’ll agree it’s time we go
Build infrastructure that’s sustainable, an RCP that is attainable?
But propaganda that you spread for the average joe just steals the show and promotes the sound of skeptics.
