Excellent points. I just brought this up to my students two weeks ago. Looking at hurricane (or all natural disaster data), one should come to the conclusion that it's 1) highly variable year-to-year and 2) there don't seem to be any detectable trends one way or another (yet, if ever). But somehow we still believe things are getting "worse," mostly because of the headlines. The part people forget is that today, there's way more people and things in the way of each storm. So even with nothing changing, the disasters just seem worse!
It is physically not possible for atmospheric CO2, man-made or natural, to cause a significant increase in sea temperatures. El Ninos do it in the equatorial Pacific thanks to solar radiation but not in the Gulf, and in any case we are now entering a cooling La Nina. Prior to the current global temperature spike caused by the verboten-to-mention Hunga Tonga undersea volcanic eruption, global temperature had no more than flatlined (net) since 1998: https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998.
Great article … it is amazing how publications such as The New York Times — which, after all, reported on past events such as the 1916 Great Flood, somehow seem to have no institutional memory. Inconvenient facts I guess ..
Excellent points. I just brought this up to my students two weeks ago. Looking at hurricane (or all natural disaster data), one should come to the conclusion that it's 1) highly variable year-to-year and 2) there don't seem to be any detectable trends one way or another (yet, if ever). But somehow we still believe things are getting "worse," mostly because of the headlines. The part people forget is that today, there's way more people and things in the way of each storm. So even with nothing changing, the disasters just seem worse!
Agree with all of that. And everyone has a camera in their pocket so we see them all over the news all day.
It is physically not possible for atmospheric CO2, man-made or natural, to cause a significant increase in sea temperatures. El Ninos do it in the equatorial Pacific thanks to solar radiation but not in the Gulf, and in any case we are now entering a cooling La Nina. Prior to the current global temperature spike caused by the verboten-to-mention Hunga Tonga undersea volcanic eruption, global temperature had no more than flatlined (net) since 1998: https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998.
Great article … it is amazing how publications such as The New York Times — which, after all, reported on past events such as the 1916 Great Flood, somehow seem to have no institutional memory. Inconvenient facts I guess ..
If climate change is to blame for the Asheville, North Carolina flooding from the remnants of Helene, how come it was similarly devastated on July 16, 1916 by the remnants of the Charleston Hurricane when atmospheric CO₂ levels were at 302 ppm? https://x.com/ChrisMartzWX/status/1840433709960266023?t=A1pC5V-73nZEsKDB4j2Y8g&s=19
Matt , Nice well written article!