DT, the Dog is mostly right, aside from treating a TV interview as gospel and pooh poohing a research paper. Hurricanes are as complicated as hell, and the effects of global warming on them are tough to figure out. Landsea is a respected hurricane expert (although I don't think they crown a "foremost expert on hurricanes in the world.")
There are a ton of papers on global warming and hurricanes published in the last 10-15 years, and I don't think there is any consensus in the literature (a convergence of findings in the published literature) on much, if anything. Personally, what I've noticed in Atlantic hurricanes is that the current hurricane forecasting models seem to miss rapid intensification of hurricanes as they pass over warmer gulf water. But that's anecdotal observation, and I'd defer to the published research. I'm confident that Landsea or other hurricane experts will be taking a look at this.
This recent paper by Landsea looks pretty reasonable to me, although I haven't searched for any papers that have cited or critiqued it. I think he makes a good case that what some researchers thought was an increase in number or intensity of hurricanes in earlier papers was likely a reflection of better hurricane detection and measurement.
One thing, of course, that will make hurricane damage worse is rising sea levels, all other things being equal. The higher the sea level to start, the greater the tidal surge. Will that be offset by some other consequence of global warming that weakens hurricanes? I have no idea. I don't think anyone predicted this crazy loopy jet stream that is locking in highs and lows over the U.S. for long periods of time. One result of that, according to something I saw today, is increased transport of dust from Africa to the arctic, where it lands on snow and ice, decreasing albedo and increasing melting. I'm not sure anyone predicted that either.
But all this unpredicted stuff shouldn't be comforting in any respect. For every thing that might happen to make things not so bad, there is something that might happen that would make it much worse. I mean, what's our risk tolerance for Korea or Iran having a nuclear missile they can shoot at us?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Who is wasting who's time? Landsea just eviscerated this conjecture. Thomas, those aren't really statistics. Care to take a shot at explaining statistically significant sample sizes to me? There wasn't even consistent equipment in place from the period range 1949 to 2016 to allow for this data to be used like this. The data sources are reconstructed from a variety of disparate references. Moreover, there are all sorts of other variables which aren't even known and therefore can't be taken into account. A hurricane's behavior will vary according to the contours on the land, for example, and they never hit the same place. And the author knows this, so he tries to break things up by region a little. The paper proves nothing, it only puts forth a theory. Which, over time, might be validated through more data and more research, or rejected. I'm sorry you don't understand how this works. You're just wrong.
One note to add: Dog isn't quite correct when he describes the paper as just theoretical. Just as Landsea cited statistics on hurricanes, the paper looked at actually transit speed of hurricanes.
Here I show that tropical-cyclone translation speed has decreased globally by 10 per cent over the period 1949–2016, which is very likely to have compounded, and possibly dominated, any increases in local rainfall totals that may have occurred as a result of increased tropical-cyclone rain rates.
But Dog is still correct that this is one paper. And the first question I would have is how complete the data are for tropical cyclone speeds over the entire period. Paper's behind a paywall, so I can't see. I'm happy to wait to see how the literature as a whole shakes out.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Dammit, Dog. Just when you begin to resemble a rational person, you slide back into Lyin Dog mode.
Here is your quote from Landsea:
There’s no statistical change over a 130-year period. Since 1970, the number of hurricanes globally is flat. I haven’t seen anything that suggests that the hurricane intensity is going to change dramatically. It looks like a pretty tiny change to how strong hurricanes will be. It’s not zero, but it’s in the noise level. It’s very small.
That quote says absolutely zero about the transit speed of hurricanes. Your statement that:
Landsea just eviscerated this conjecture
is total, made up, 100% BS.
Also, to say that the new paper isn't "statistics" is also total BS. And you blithely accept Landsea when he cites 130 years of hurricane statistics, but throw a fit at about 70 years. And, unless you actually read the paper, you don't know how the information was compiled.
Geez, Dog, you actually talked like someone who cares about the truth. For a couple of paragraphs. But now, same old Lyin' Dog.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:But all this unpredicted stuff shouldn't be comforting in any respect. For every thing that might happen to make things not so bad, there is something that might happen that would make it much worse. I mean, what's our risk tolerance for Korea or Iran having a nuclear missile they can shoot at us?
It shouldn't be "not" comforting, either. It just is. There is no "baseline" from which we can compare and define how we want our hurricanes or other weather anomalies. And even if there were, we don't have a clue how to reshape them.
Res Ipsa wrote:But all this unpredicted stuff shouldn't be comforting in any respect. For every thing that might happen to make things not so bad, there is something that might happen that would make it much worse. I mean, what's our risk tolerance for Korea or Iran having a nuclear missile they can shoot at us?
It shouldn't be "not" comforting, either. It just is. There is no "baseline" from which we can compare and define how we want our hurricanes or other weather anomalies. And even if there were, we don't have a clue how to reshape them.
In the specific context of hurricanes, I agree. Too many variables to make an intelligent prediction yet, in my opinion.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:Dammit, Dog. Just when you begin to resemble a rational person, you slide back into Lyin Dog mode.
Here is your quote from Landsea:
There’s no statistical change over a 130-year period. Since 1970, the number of hurricanes globally is flat. I haven’t seen anything that suggests that the hurricane intensity is going to change dramatically. It looks like a pretty tiny change to how strong hurricanes will be. It’s not zero, but it’s in the noise level. It’s very small.
That quote says absolutely zero about the transit speed of hurricanes. Your statement that:
Landsea just eviscerated this conjecture
is total, made up, 100% BS.
Also, to say that the new paper isn't "statistics" is also total BS. And you blithely accept Landsea when he cites 130 years of hurricane statistics, but throw a fit at about 70 years. And, unless you actually read the paper, you don't know how the information was compiled.
Geez, Dog, you actually talked like someone who cares about the truth. For a couple of paragraphs. But now, same old Lyin' Dog.
Sigh. RI, perhaps the problem is you're taking yourself just a bit too seriously. I am tongue and cheek with a lot of this. Which isn't to say I'm not taking it seriously, but that I'm being playful. I am well aware that Landsea was not talking about this specific paper by Kossin. You can be sure he's aware of it, though. Not in every particular detail, no, but he is addressing many of the theories put forth by Kossin (and others). He also accounts for differences as being explained by things like advancements in measurement technology. For all practical purposes, for sake of this discussion, for sake of this little exchange with DT, this is a perfectly valid response.
And I didn't say Kossin didn't leverage statistics. What I said is that "those aren't really statistics." Which was my sloppy way of saying, "those are bad statistics." Have I gotten into the fine details of the math and sources? No. I'm not going to, either. I can reasonably glance at it and infer what it is. I don't need to get into the weeds and pick apart the variance, or why a correction factor was used in this place. I see that it compares hurricanes from 1949 to 2016. That is enough. Whatever data was collected about a hurricane in 1949, that looked a whole lot different compared to 2016. Moreover, there aren't that many hurricane's to begin with. Even if you have a full 100 years of high resolution data, all property calibrated, etc., that likely isn't enough data to form a valid statistic. And that's without even getting into how complex hurricane's are. Due to all those variables, data from the pacific may be useless when trying to discuss hurricane's in the gulf. Which means your already iffy sample sizes just became so low you're truly comparing apples to oranges.
At any rate, the paper isn't being taken seriously by anybody of note, I have no interest in going deeper with it.