[Updated 8-28, 1:00 p.m.: Tropical Storm Isaac has now been upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane with winds at 75 mph]
As tropical storm Isaac muddles across the Gulf of Mexico, and betrays the computer models by veering off-track (and still not a hurricane at press time), climate-change alarmists and the mainstream media (MSM) are once again linking it to the theory of man-made global warming.
Activists small and large had reveled in the fact that it had been coming eerily close to the national convention in Tampa of the GOP, who are known to be skeptical of global warming theory.
Fortunately, Tampa was spared any real damage as Isaac didn't follow the projected computer models. Unfortunately, misinformation is becoming more vitriolic and widespread as Isaac moves northwest across the Gulf of Mexico at 7 mph.
The MSM and warmist-leaning bloggers are making wildly desperate analogies to Hurricane Katrina (a Category 3 storm when it made landfall Aug. 29, 2005).
The LA Times weighed in, wondering if Isaac was a divine message to Republicans in Tampa. And actor Samuel L. Jackson tweeted it was "unfair" that Isaac spared the GOP convention. He later apologized.
Joe Romm, of the popular climate-alarmist blog Climate Progress, even had an article on Aug. 22 entitled, "GOP Climate Deniers Hold Convention In Tampa, But Mayor Warns He’s ‘Prepared To Call It Off’ If Hurricane Isaac Hits." (See screenshot in slideshow)
Perhaps the nearly week-old blog post was caught up in the Isaac hysteria by using "hurricane" in its headline and simply misplaced a quote-tick mark.
What Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn actually told CNN was that if Isaac hits during the convention and in the event of dangerous weather, "we're absolutely prepared to call it off" and "human safety, human life trumps politics." Watch video here.
Romm continued on to look under every nook and cranny for the most tenuous link between Isaac and global warming. He retrieved his alarmist quote-book and found this one from Kevin Trenberth, from the journal Climatic Change:
The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be…. The air is on average warmer and moister than it was prior to about 1970 and in turn has likely led to a 5â€"10 % effect on precipitation and storms that is greatly amplified in extremes. The warm moist air is readily advected onto land and caught up in weather systems as part of the hydrological cycle, where it contributes to more intense precipitation events that are widely observed to be occurring.
All of which allowed Romm to surmise:
Global warming fuels more intense deluges from major storms like hurricanes. At the same time, warming-driven sea level rise makes storm surges more destructive.
But when you look at actual facts regarding the expected uptick in tropical storms and hurricanes and sea level rise as predicted by computer models, a pattern does emerge. Just not the one that the alarmists and the MSM expected.
A 2011 paper by Gabriele Villarini et al focused on tropical storms that lasted less than two days and whose frequency has increased with time. They concluded the increase was primarily the result of "improved observational practices not a changing climate."
In a recently published 2012 paper, Andrew Hagen (University of Miami) and Chris Landsea (National Hurricane Center) concluded that "changing observational practices have resulted in more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes being identified in recent decades compared to past ones." In short, the perceived increase is not because of a changing climate but changing detection technologies.
As most people are unaware of this and other research, implying that an increase in hurricanes is due to climate change only makes for good headlines.
The illustration (see slideshow) shows the differing observing technologies since the early 1950s as applied to 2003 Category 5 Hurricane Isabel. In short, if Isabel had occurred in the late 1940s or '50s, it would have been labeled a Category 4.
Hagen and Landsea also identified three Category 4 storms from 2003-2010 that "would not have been classified as major hurricanes using the observational network and technology of the 1944-1953 period."
Hagen and Landsea write that:
This research suggests that the counts of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (at least through 1953 and likely beyond that year) are not nearly as reliable as they are today. Future studies that discuss frequency trends of Atlantic Basin Category 4 and 5 hurricanes must take into account the undercount biases that existed prior to the geostationary satellite era due to the inability to observe these extreme conditions.
This perceived hurricane intensity is also consistent with the observed increase of tornadoes in the U.S. While it appears the number of weak tornadoes has grown significantly in the last fifty years, the number of strong tornadoes has not.
And as World Climate Report correctly notes, "If you are doing studies investigating the changes in the number or intensity of tropical cyclones and you don’t take into account … improvements in observational practices over time, you will get the wrong answer. And most likely, the wrong answer will be that Atlantic tropical cyclones are increasing in numbers and growing in strength as the planet warms."
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