In the hallowed tradition of Rahm Emanuel’s “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” ThinkProgress followed Emanuel’s advice when it wrote, “As of 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, Trump had posted seven tweets from his personal @realDonaldTrump account. … Not a single tweet mentioned the potentially devastating storm or warned Gulf residents to prepare for the incoming wind, rain, and possible flooding.”
A frequent visitor to Cornwall Alliance’s Facebook page who excoriates us at every opportunity for our views about global warming, commented there:
HEY CORNWALL: GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH CREATED BY LIBERALS. “Trump’s tweets ignore a very real threat facing Texas Texas could see nearly two feet of rain this weekend, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at Trump’s Twitter feed. NATASHA GEILINGAUG 24, 2017, 11:25 AM The first major natural disaster of the Trump presidency could be making its way to Texas, with Tropical Storm Harvey threatening to bring winds up to 73 miles per hour and drop as much as 40 inches of rain in some parts of the Gulf. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has already declared a state of disaster for 30 Texas counties and ordered extra emergency preparedness throughout the rest of the state.”
Ignore the false insinuation that we think global warming is a myth created by liberals. His implication is that human-induced global warming is to blame for what has now graduated to Hurricane Harvey and is predicted to become a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) by the time it makes landfall. Mashable made the connection, too.
Harvey does pose a very significant risk to life and property for those in its path. We at the Cornwall Alliance are praying for God’s protection for them, and we ask others to join us.
Nonetheless, there’s no need to blame Harvey on global warming. Ttropical cyclones have occurred throughout Earth’s history, and they’ve dumped 2 feet of rain in various places throughout history. What’s about to happen in Texas will owe little or nothing to the CO2 we’ve added to the atmosphere.
Even on the IPCC’s assumptions, the CO2 we’ve added has reduced the climate system’s ability to cool itself (from the heat brought by incoming solar radiation) by about 1%, or, if we take into account the energy-holding potential of the oceans as well, only about 0.25%, as University of Alabama and NASA climate scientist Dr. Roy W. Spencer explains in his new book An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy, the print version of which is scheduled for publication by the Cornwall Alliance in the next few weeks.
Assuming a linear relationship (and though nobody knows whether that’s the case, there’s no good reason to think otherwise), that implies that 99 to 99.75% of the energy required to form storms cannot be attributed to human emissions of CO2, even if indeed those emissions are raising global temperature as much as the IPCC thinks.
So, let’s suppose that Harvey’s winds are clocked at 130 mph (the upper end of Category 3, the first level of a “major hurricane”) when it makes landfall. That would mean that 128.7 to 129.675 mph of that wind speed would have occurred without our CO2 emissions, and only 0.325 to 1.3 mph could be attributed to the CO2 we’ve added.
Now let’s suppose that Harvey dumps a full 2 feet of rain on Texas over the next seven days (the prediction of the Global Forecast System as of early afternoon August 24). Of that, 99 to 99.75% would have happened regardless of our CO2 emissions. That means that of the 2 feet, 1.98 to 1.995 feet of it would have occurred naturally, with only 0.005 to 0.02 feet (6 to 24 hundredths of an inch) being attributable to our CO2 emissions.
How much added damage do you think will come from the extra 0.235 to 1.3 mph of wind and the extra 6- to 24-hundredths of an inch of rain?
And that’s all before we also point out, as again Spencer explains in his forthcoming book, that because greenhouse warming is greater toward the poles than toward the equator, and the energy of storms is dependent partly on the magnitude of the temperature difference from equator to poles, the warming is as likely to diminish as to increase the intensity of storms. So one could even argue that global warming—such as it’s been—is as likely to make Harvey weaker as to make it stronger.
There’s no need to blame weather disasters on global warming, regardless how real it is, how much it is, and how much of it is driven by human CO2 emissions. Nature readily accounts for all but a tiny fraction of it.
louis wachsmuth says
Thank you for your response and answer. This shows you folk are honorable and respectfull people. I am out spoken because my view of human history in relationship to God’s plan is that since Adam and Eve destroyed the Garden, mankind has damaged or destroyed even good thing and perfect gift from God. The term “Global Warming” is just a small part of environmental damage throughout history. The newest example, of course, is the trashing of the oceans by plastic junk. This fits in perfect with the bible verses of Hosea 4:1-3, “because of the sin of mankind…therefore the land mouns…the beasts…the birds..and the fish of the sea disappear.
E. Calvin Beisner says
Here’s the full text of Hosea 4:1-3: “Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.” What are the sins in response to which God here says the land mourns, its inhabitants languish, and the beasts, birds, and fish are taken away? It’s significant that burning fossil fuels isn’t one of them. The sins named are swearing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery, and bloodshed. None of those, of course, NATURALLY causes land to mourn or beasts, birds, and fish to disappear. Clearly, therefore, what’s in mind is a supernatural, divine intervention in judgment for those sins, not natural consequences of some action. So this passage lends no support to the idea that our use of fossil fuels or plastics is causing harm to the environment. That doesn’t mean our actions AREN’T causing harm; it just means we need to do the empirical investigation needed to confirm whether they are or not—we can’t just cite a Bible passage like this, out of context, and leap from there to fears of dangerous human-induced global warming or oceans filled with plastic. (Human-induced global warming is real, and so is the pollution of our oceans with plastics, but both—especially the former—are considerably exaggerated by alarmists.)
The Third EYE says
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
Jesus Christos says
Now it’s projected at drop 60″ in a 1000 year flood. That’s after last years 1000 year + floods in South Carolina and California’s 1000+ year drought?
Perhaps the 60″ is God’s way of explaining Climate Change to conservatives.
E. Calvin Beisner says
Even on the IPCC’s assumptions, the CO2 we’ve added has reduced the climate system’s ability to cool itself (from the heat brought by incoming solar radiation) by about 1%, or, if we take into account the energy-holding potential of the oceans as well, only about 0.25%. That means that 99 to 99.75% of the energy required to form storms CANNOT be attributed to human emissions of CO2, even if indeed those emissions are raising global temperature as much as the IPCC thinks. So, assuming a linear (rather than exponential, which would increase it, or logarithmic, which would decrease it—and it’s more likely to be logarithmic than linear, and more likely linear than exponential) relationship between climate system energy content and the wind speed and precipitation of storms, that would mean that 128.7 to 129.68 mph of Harvey’s maximum sustained wind speed of 130 mph and 59.4 to 59.9 inches of Harvey’s predicted 60 inches of rain (in some locations) would have occurred without our CO2 emissions. How much added damage do you think will come from the extra 1.3 to 0.32 mph of wind and the extra 0.1 to 0.6 inches of rain? For further discussion of why we can’t blame Harvey on human-induced global warming, see https://cornwallalliance.org/2017/08/why-houston-flooding-isnt-a-sign-of-climate-change/, by NASA climate scientist and Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer.