Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change

By on November 2, 2012 in News 21

Dr. Christian Shorey discusses what aspects of hurricane Sandy probably are, might be, and definitely aren’t related to climate change:

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  • whassup

    The Disinfo contact submission form is broken. When I try to send a message it says “FAILED TO SEND A MESSAGE. CONTACT SOME OTHER WAY.”

    • Barnubus

      I think the site is abandoned and is pretty much just cruising on auto-pilot these days. The contributors keep posting but there’s no one behind the curtain. Whoever used to run Disinfo got lost in the woods a few months ago. It’s an exciting experiment in anarchy. (“What if the government ceased to exist but no one knew?”)

  • Kevin Leonard

    “Munich Re company who insures insurance companies, clearly a company who should be concerned with climate change – whether it’s real or not – and they say, yeah, we see it as real. And we’re seeing that we are having to adjust our rates for this.”

  • Roark

    Climate change is not a fact. Trying to make rational scientific decisions based on pure theory is not only foolish but dangerous.

    • bobbiethejean

      Your argument might sound a little bit more respectable if you actually knew the FACT that a theory is an explanation of certain phenomena that is well-supported by a large body of FACTS and often unifies similarly well-supported hypotheses i.e. atomic theory, gravitational theory,
      germ theory, cell theory, some-people-are-dumb-motherfuckers-who-don’t-know-what-they-are-talking-about-theory, etc.

      • face palm

        You don’t know what you are talking about in some of your posts, yet you try your hardest to sound convincing. If the man wants a “law” instead of theory, let him ask for it, you are not expanding on the theory just attacking him personally, it accomplishes nothing. I don’t know if you realize but you come off as really arrogant and pompous at times.

        • Simiantongue

          Admittedly there’s no need for such bombast. But bobbie is essentially correct. There is a distinct difference between the colloquial use of the term “theory” and it’s scientific meaning. Generally when you hear someone say something like “It’s only a theory” that’s meant as a “guess” or perhaps a “hunch”. In scientific terminology a theory is a hypothesis backed by evidence. A fact based framework that is testable and can make predictions.

          Roark is using the term theory in relation to science, except he’s still using it in the colloquial sense. Something that’s often times perceived as a very deliberate attempt to introduce ambiguity in terminology. That connotes insincerity. Which inevitably results in that type of response from bobbie. The scenario is played out over and over on the interwebs.

          It’s actually a more civil response to accuse Roark of being ignorant rather than accusing him of deliberately lying. Don’t you think? Not how I would have handled it, but whatever.

          I can’t believe I’m actually engaging in internet pedantry rather than sleeping. Doesn’t even have any entertainment value, what a drag. Good grief.

          • Kevin Leonard
          • bobbiethejean

            [I can't believe I'm actually engaging in internet pedantry]

            Personally, I find it highly entertaining. Although perhaps I should tone down the bombastics a bit? ^__^;

          • Simiantongue

            Bombs away, you’re of course free to conduct yourself as you see fit. But I do think it detracts from any point you might make. If what Roark says gets you hot under the collar, you’re essentially letting on that he has some kind of point to get worked up about. If you read his/her comment history I don’t see anything to get work up about, it’s all pretty dull.

        • bobbiethejean

          Now you’re just arguing against known facts and at that point, there’s no point in further discussion.

    • kcorb

      Yeah, science should never make decisions based on theory. Alternates stated: never make any decisions. Leave the decisions up to George Bush and Jesus.

    • jimbo jones

      I suspect what you mean is that ANTHROPOGENIC “MAN-MADE” CC is not a fact… Because of course climate is changing. The real questions are, do we blame the humans?, and how fast is it changing? And the null hypotheses would be a “no,” and a “not so quickly.”

      And even if humans are causing “CC” (which, frankly, is an absurd proposition, but OK), one has to ask – instead of closing down factories and committing mass suicide, couldn’t we just plant some trees? Trees eat CO2… And reforest deforestation… Trees are nice!

      I’d go a step further and argue that “global warming” would be a good thing. Where do most people in the world live? In warm places! Icecaps gunna melt? OK, good, we could use more water. Water is like trees. Nice. As for the coastal cities going under water… A joke can only go so far. Cities going under water was a good joke, but we’ve laughed enough. Now let’s be serious.

      Like I said above, what a circus.

      • Andrew

        As the deforestation you mentioned probably plays a bigger role in climate change than Co2 emissions, the proposition that humans are causing climate change is far less absurd than you say.

        • jimbo jones

          That’s fair! To be accurate, I suppose it’s undeniable that humans are affecting the behavior of the planetary climate, just as it is undeniable that the climate is changing. The real question is, how significant exactly is the human effect? And what should we do to make things better? Since the climate has changed before, and drastically, one would assume that human activity is not that significant. Moreover, I say planting trees would be better than closing factories. And, of course, we are all for a clean environment and a nice “habitat.” But not at the price of industrial development, without which it would be impossible to support the current human population. Humans uber alles.

          • Andrew

            > Since the climate has changed before, and drastically, one would assume that human activity is not that significant.

            That doesn’t follow. Trees in the forest fall naturally all the time, but that doesn’t mean taking a chainsaw to one will have no effect.

            > And, of course, we are all for a clean environment and a nice “habitat.”
            But not at the price of industrial development, without which it would
            be impossible to support the current human population.

            I disagree. Our lives depend on a clean environment, because that’s what we’ve evolved to live in. My disagreement with many environmentalists is that we’re not destroying the Earth–it’ll survive us just fine–but that we’re destroying ourselves.

    • Ceausescu

      Climate change is not a fact ? LOL That’s like saying the heliocentric theory is not a fact.

      Whether human activity plays an important role, that’s yet to be lived.

  • jimbo jones

    So now every time something happens, it’s “Climate Change.” It’s like there never were any hurricanes before. If a temperature record is broken, it’s due to CC. If no records were broken, then we would have “global cooling.” Because CC can go either way, see. Which is the height of absurdity – either there’s “global warming,” or there’s “global cooling” (which is what they said in back in ’70s). Pick one! Can’t pick both heads and tails! “Climate Change” is a demented moniker anyway, since of course climate changes. It has changed before, will continue to change… It’s changing right now… What’s the big deal? Polar icecaps melting? Sometimes they melt, sometimes they freeze, who cares. Polar icecaps have been around for a while, they know their business. As for us humans, we’ve got an economic crisis to worry about.

    What a circus. Then, of course, we have the whole New Age Gaianism anti-Christian program and also the Malthusian enthusiasm… Ah well.

    • Roger Mexico

      I’m gonna guess you don’t care much for Al Gore, but the laziest way of brushing up on this would be to go rent his movie. There’s a pattern of hurricanes being bigger and more frequent, and that’s what you’d expect to see if oceanic and atmospheric temperatures are rising. Sandy is now the biggest hurricane on record. I’ll leave off there, since I’m not a climatologist, but the “theory” is that we’ve altered the atmosphere enough to start screwing with the mechanisms that drive the weather patterns we’ve become familiar with. “Freaky weather” is what you’d expect to see under those conditions.

      • jimbo jones

        Yep, apparently Sandy is the “largest” on record.
        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-largest-hurricane_n_2045163.html

        However, it was still a category 1 hurricane. Categories go up to 5.

        My point stands – every possible climactic event is now supposedly caused by “AGW.” Any broken record is cause for alarmism. Never mind that records are (statistically) supposed to be broken once in a while, and that storms and hurricanes have always occurred.

        I imagine if we get a new Krakatoa, it would be blamed on AGW. Frisco 1906 quake, blame it on (Mame and) AGW. Etc.

        I do see where you come from… The thing is, you really ought to look at the eugenics/ Club of Rome/ “global enemy” justification for the existence of, say, the UN angles. AGW is about politics, not science. But anyway.

        • Andrew

          And see, I believe anthropogenic climate change denial is about economics and not about science.