NationStates Jolt Archive

I can't find any website reporting this, but I heard on the radio today, that the tropical waters are warmer than normal, and thus that'll equal bigger hurricanes. So we may see a repeat of Katrina. What's worse is that we may actually see a storm stronger than Katrina. So, for those of us who live in Hurricanes proned zones, please take this time to get your Hurricane Emergency Kit together. This website should help you.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/intro.shtml

Here's a little help ... i have a lot of this stuff ...
*ahem*
HURRICANES INTENSIFYING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE, THREE STUDIES WARN
Ten years ago, most hurricane researchers were skeptical of claims that
global warming would trigger an increase in hurricane activity.
Now some are changing their minds.
Three studies over the past year make the case that while the number of
hurricanes is not increasing, the strongest ones are more intense -- and
that this is just the pattern we should expect to see as the world warms.
``I think there are much more than cyclic and natural effects going on,''
said Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., commenting on the
studies.
``I think there is a global warming connection,'' he said. ``It may be
modest at the moment, but it's likely to grow over time.''
Hurricanes feed on heat -- drawing it up out of the ocean, funneling it up
into the atmosphere and releasing it to space. The warmer the air above the
ocean, the more water vapor it can hold. The vapor is sucked up into the
spiral and eventually released as rain. ``Together these things feed back
and intensify the storm,'' Trenberth said.
Not everyone thinks global warming is a factor.
Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean naturally waxes and wanes
about every 30 years. It's been on an upswing since 1995, triggered not by
global warming but by routine changes in the temperature and saltiness of
the ocean, according to William Gray and Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State
University.
Based on those natural cycles and on the record of past hurricanes, they
forecast in August that the current hurricane season would be one of the
most active on record. They said the chance that a major hurricane would
wallop the Gulf Coast was nearly 50 percent greater than the historical
average.
Greenhouse effect
With Hurricanes Rita and Katrina hammering the Gulf within a month, that
forecast would appear to be coming true.
No one would suggest that either of these hurricanes, or any other
particular storm, was the direct result of global warming.
But recent studies suggest that global warming may be a factor.
Last fall, Thomas Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and Robert Tuleya of Old Dominion University described
computer simulations of what the world might look like if carbon dioxide
released by human activity continues to build up in the atmosphere for the
next 80 years. The gas traps heat against the surface in a phenomenon known
as the greenhouse effect.
In this warmer world, they found a modest but significant increase in the
intensity of hurricanes.
``It's a long-term trend, not something that shows up from one year to the
next,'' said J. David Neelin of the University of California-Los Angeles,
who was not involved in the NOAA study. ``So any evidence for that, you
would expect it to basically emerge slowly. There's not going to be any
sudden smoking gun.''
In August, hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology reported in the journal Nature that the amount of sheer power
unleashed by hurricanes has gone up in lockstep with the warming of the sea
surface since the mid-1970s.
Worse storms
And this month, a group led by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of
Technology reported the results of a study that tracked hurricane activity
over the entire globe for the past 35 years.
They found that while the total number of hurricanes remained steady, the
number of Category 4 and 5 storms -- the most intense ones, with winds of
more than 131 mph -- nearly doubled, from 10 per year in 1970 to 18 per year
since 1990.
At the same time, the surface temperatures of the world's tropical oceans,
where hurricanes are spawned, rose 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit, and the air
above them also warmed by a degree.
Webster said he and his colleagues didn't think they'd find a link between
warmer sea temperatures and hurricane activity.
``We were rather skeptical about the impact of global warming, and we wanted
to check some of the statements made by earlier papers,'' he said.
Skeptic surprised
After all, he said, the up-and-down cycle of hurricane activity in the North
Atlantic is well-known, and ``my thoughts were that we were going to find
that other oceans were dominated by their natural cycles.'' But they were
not, Webster said.
Hugh Willoughby, a senior scientist at Florida International University's
International Hurricane Research Center, said Webster and his colleagues are
``the best people in the field. They're very mainstream, they're careful --
all the things you want.'' In a field where opinions can be highly
politicized, ``these folks are above all that,'' he said, and that makes
their results convincing.
Steps to Limit Global-Warming Gas
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: September 28, 2005
Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide generated by power plants and
factories could play an important role in limiting global warming caused by
humans, says an international climate research group associated with the
United Nations.
In a new report the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
says doing so could cut the cost of stabilizing carbon dioxide
concentrations in the atmosphere as much as 30 percent compared with other
options, like switching to cleaner technologies.
Altogether, sequestering carbon dioxide could eventually account for
slightly more than half of what is needed to prevent dangerous
concentrations in the atmosphere, says the report, which was released on
Monday and is online at www.ipcc.ch.
But the report cautions that while the method is cheaper than others, it
would significantly raise the cost of electricity for many years. For that
reason, several authors and United Nations officials said, it is unlikely
that the technique will be adopted voluntarily by industries in wealthy
countries.
"First there has to be a policy in place to provide the incentive" to adopt
such technologies, said Bert Metz, a Dutch environmental official who was
the lead author of the report.
Carbon dioxide is the main heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emission
linked by scientists to a prolonged global warming trend.
The report says the most promising methods for capturing and storing the gas
are those already in use in Canada, Norway and Algeria, where some
industries inject it into wells.
But many power plants are not situated over rock layers that can serve as a
long-term repository for the gas. In such instances, the carbon dioxide
would have to be piped or transported, raising the cost.
The report also said there were many unanswered questions about how much gas
might be stored.
"A lot of people, including myself, would like to think you can do
everything with renewables and energy efficiency, with photovoltaic panels
and wind turbines and more sensible urban planning and so on," said one
author, Kenneth Caldeira, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution's
Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. "The reality of it is
that the energy in fossil fuels is too attractive and cheap right now to
give
them up completely."
Scientists feeling heat of global warming
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
September 27, 2005
BROOMFIELD - Global climate change is "probably the most important
environmental issue facing the world," the Bush administration's point man
on the hot-button topic said Monday.
"We know that humans are influencing the climate. There's no question about
that," said James Mahoney, director of the U.S. Climate Change Science
Program.
"The real questions are: by how much, how reversible is it and what are the
best means to reduce the human impacts on the climate?" Mahoney said during
a meeting of about 400 atmospheric researchers at the Omni Interlocken
Resort.
The Bush administration has been lambasted by climate researchers for
failing to endorse the Kyoto Protocol or to otherwise play a leadership role
in addressing climate change.
The planet has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past century. Most
climate scientists agree that receding mountain glaciers, declining global
snow cover, thinning summer sea ice thickness in the Arctic, and rising sea
levels are environmental indicators of a warming world.
The Kyoto Protocol, which calls on 35 industrialized countries to rein in
emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, was ratified by
140 nations and went into effect in February.
"The United States has a really deep problem with credibility right now,"
said David Victor of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy in
Stanford, Calif.
"We have no credible emission policy at the federal level," Victor said on
opening day of the International Carbon Dioxide Conference.
Other researchers agreed, despite Mahoney's assurances that the U.S.
government "is doing a great deal" to combat global warming.
"It's pretty much a certainty that big changes will happen, so we should be
slowing down our CO2 emissions," said Susan Trumbore, a bio-geochemist at
the University of California, Irvine.
Mahoney said the U.S. government spends nearly $2 billion a year on climate
change research and another $3 billion annually to promote new energy
technologies.
"Not signing Kyoto doesn't mean that this government isn't doing anything,"
said Mahoney, who later amended his description of climate change to say
it's "one of" the world's most important environmental issues.
Each year, global combustion of coal, oil, natural gas and wood emits nearly
7 billion tons of carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, into the air.
The Earth's oceans, trees, plants and soils absorb about half of that
carbon.
The rest remains in the air, contributing to the 36 percent increase in
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since pre-industrial times.
Carbon dioxide levels are higher now than at any time in the past 450,000
years, Mahoney said. If the levels of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
gases continue to rise as projected, the planet could warm another 2.5 to
10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
The consequences could include a greater frequency of extreme weather
events, such as Katrina-intensity hurricanes, said Ken Caldeira of the
Carnegie Institution.
One of the "persistent myths" about climate change is that the problem "will
disappear on its own," said Jae Edmonds of the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory.
Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of easily accessible oil and
natural gas will be exhausted in a couple of decades.
After that, prices for those fuels will skyrocket, and other energy sources
will replace them.
It would appear the problem would be solved.
But that scenario ignores the world's abundant coal supply, Edmonds said.
Coal can be burned as a solid or converted into liquid and gaseous fuels.
In addition, higher prices for petroleum-based fuels and natural gas will
spur the development of new technologies to reach and extract
less-accessible deposits.
So, Edmonds said, waiting for the system to run out of fossil fuels won't be
a solution.

That might've appeared haphazard ...
perhaps this might apply as well (applied better, i hope)

*ahem*
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060622_study_earth_temperatures/
Study: High Earth Temperatures Manmade, Not Natural
The National Academy of Sciences, reviewing a broad swath of scientific studies, concludes that the presently high temperature of the Earth is due to human action, not cyclical natural temperature spikes.

The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.”

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is heating up and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy’s panel.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/22/warming-not-equal/

For those of you who live in hurricane and twister prone zones... please consider moving.

try a place with earthquakes or blizzards instead - trust me, they aren't so bad.