Royal Society: Hurricanes doubled over century

The dearly held tenants that the global warming denialists cling onto so tenaciously are disappearing faster than the Arctic ice-shelf.

The latest one to crumble is the notion that global warming does not increase the number and frequency of hurricanes.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A new analysis of Atlantic hurricanes says their numbers have doubled over the last century. This new study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London, looks at the frequency of these storms from 1900 to the present and it says about twice as many form each year now compared to 100 years ago. The authors say that man-made climate change, which has increased the temperature of the sea surface, is the major factor behind the increase in numbers. "Over the period we've had natural variability in the frequency of storms, which has contributed less than 50% of the actual increase in our view," said Dr Greg Holland from the United States National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who authored the report. "Approximately 60%, and possibly even 70% of what we are seeing in the last decade can be attributed directly to greenhouse warming," he said. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Catastrophe reinsurance buffeted by hurricanes, global warming

Warren Buffett's AGM is described as "Woodstock for capitalists" by NPR.org. In a neat, closed economy, his investors have the opportunity to buy the products of the thousands of companies Berkshire Hathaway invest in. The guy knows how to make money, so his words on future reinsurance rates are worth hearing. As are those of his vice chairman, Charlie Munger, on counter-productive low-energy-yield corn-ethanol.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Buffett on Energy Posted by WSJ.com Staff Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger had plenty to say about energy and climate change at the company’s annual meeting this weekend. Buffett, whose holdings include the General Re reinsurance business, said global warming had increased the likelihood of hurricane damage, meaning his company would have to charge more for hurricane insurance. ” It would be crazy to offer catastrophe reinsurance at the same rate in 2007 as we did in 2006,” he said. Munger, meanwhile, spoke ill of corn-based ethanol, heresy in Berkshire Hathaway’s home town of Omaha, Neb. “I think running automobiles on corn is one of the dumbest ideas,” said Omaha native Munger, according to this MarketBeat post by Karen Richardson. “I love Nebraska to my core, but it’s not my home state’s finest moment,” he said.

The 76 year old investment guru is also looking for a new chief investment offer and plans to try out three or four candidates, if you think you have what it takes.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Californian heatwave kills 132

Not long ago I read research that indicated that a heatwave in America similar to the one that killed so many Europeans, particularly French, would have similar outcomes in America. I blogged about it. :::[Global warming worse than 9/11 terror attacks]

The research has turned out to be prescient with the death toll from California's record-breaking heat wave reaching 132 on the first day in nearly two weeks that temperatures were expected to stay below 38 degrees Celsius across most of the US state. :::[SMH]

"This is unprecedented for the county," said Stanislaus County Office of Emergency Services spokesman David Jones. The county, home to Modesto, typically sees one heat-related death a year, he said. On Friday, it reported 29.

The Central Valley bore the brunt of the heat wave with temperatures hitting 46 degrees Celsius. At least six Central Valley counties declared local states of emergency that allow farmers to bury livestock killed by the heat in landfills or on their own properties - disposal methods not normally allowed by state water laws.

Forty six degrees Celsius - those poor bastards. I know what 46 degrees Celsius is like; that what the temperature in Sydney hit on New Years day this year, and it is definitely not fun. :::[2006 starts with record temperature high].

Other blogs on: climate change, global warming, heatwave, california

Could US energy politics go Category Five?

At some point time in time, most likely soon, you are going to see something happen that will be big enough to snap the ordinary American right out of their climate change complacency.

It may not just be one big event, it could be a confluence of a number of different events. Perhaps a harbinger of this is when journalists start to regularly use extreme weather metaphors to describe politics and industry. Raymond Learsy of the Huffington Post believes he sees a perfect storm brewing over energy.
:::[A Perfect Storm Is Developing Around Energy Policy: Friedman On TV, Gore In Our Gut]

The speculation about Gore's political ambitions are flying fast and furious. But regardless of whether Gore decides to run again, I sense that something akin to the perfect storm is developing on the issue of energy policy. With $3-a-gallon (and rising) gasoline, an emerging consensus that global warming is real, and a growing sense that Big Oil's hand-in-glove relationship with the administration and Congress harms the average American citizen, Al Gore's return to the public stage may be the critical spark that finally lights a fire under the American electorate.

And yesterday Bill Blakemore of ABCNews announced he also believes he detects a perfect storm in the making. It seems an elm tree has been uprooted and has fallen across the driveway of the White house by a literal storm, and this has served to focus the so called "debate" on global warming. :::[A Perfect Storm Descends Upon The Nations Capital]

June 26, 2006: A perfect storm of drenching rain, irony, political rancor, public fear and - at the last minute like a fierce stroke of lightning - word from the highest court in the land, descended on the nation's capital today.

This storm - pulling in many parts of the global warming emergency - also broke through the White House perimeters and helped bring down a century-old elm tree, laying it across the driveway.

It seems even Mother Nature is not adverse to using the odd bitingly ironic metaphor to make her point. Denying access to and from the White House by use of an uprooted elm (possibly planted by a significant American in the good old days of 'for the people, by the people') until the U.S. Supreme Court announces that it will indeed hear the case brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that it should have regulated carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming.

How poetic and pithy a protest is that?

Not quite as poetic as the license George W Bush takes with the truth when he holds that there is a scientific global warming debate on whether global warming is man-made or natural. In what is a departure from the way US media generally cover global warming and politics, Blakemore takes the President to task for propagating propaganda:

"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary...… to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil"

The President - as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find - is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -— as he also did a few weeks ago - that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" - well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society" level.

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence - gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world - that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

I grew up in a county subject to big thunder storms, every summer day at 3:00pm for 15 minutes the rapidly darkened heavens would open up on an otherwise sunny sky. On occasion one got a sense during the build up of the storm that it was going to be a much bigger one than usual. You could smell the electricity in the air, taste it in your mouth (tastes like blood), and feel the beginnings of a tingle on the back of your neck. And you just knew you were in for one serious doozy.

That's kind of how it feels now, but on a global dimension.

Other blogs on: global warming climate change politics us supreme court co2 carbon dioxide