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CHANCY BUSINESS
MSNBC reported in May:
The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season will be very active with up to 10 hurricanes, although not as busy as record-breaking 2005, when Hurricane Katrina and several other monster storms slammed into the United States, the U.S. government’s top climate agency said on Monday.
“NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become ‘major’ hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher,” said Conrad Lautenbacher, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Those seduced by climate change globaganda might be shocked that Gaia’s anticipated whuppin’ never arrived:
Instead, it has been a long, lazy hurricane season with just half the number of hurricanes predicted and not a single one making landfall.
"Weather forecasting is a chancy business,” said Hugh Willoughby, a professor of hurricane science at Florida International University. “It’s gotten a lot better, but if you can’t stand being wrong, you shouldn’t be in the business."
Can’t predict tomorrow’s weather, can’t predict next year’s weather ... yet there’s a scientific consensus about weather in the coming century and beyond. Just as well these folks are adapting to being wrong.
It’s a lot easier to forecast the flow of public funds, or the audience ratings, depending on your actual business.
The Navier-Stokes equations are pretty well understood. They’re too hard to solve in real cases, so approximations are made, like, for instance, throwing them out and using something else.
Good thing I’m too incompetent to link to Wolcott.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 10 25 at 01:20 PM • permalinkOdd, half expected them to cite the lack of hurricanes as further proof of Impending DOOM.
You know, like how global warming is supposed to cause cooling and so on.
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2006 10 25 at 01:50 PM • permalinkHi, I’m Ned Olson, your local TV meteorologist here to help you understand
phen, ummm,phenoma, shit,phenmomawhy we have different weatherthingiespatterns. With all thebullshitWeather Satellites we have floating around in space (thank you taxpayers, I’m one too, but I get paid) “It’s gotten a lot better, but if youcan’tcan stand being paid to be wrong, (and they pay good bucks to be wrong and wrong, most of the time) you shouldn’tbe in the business.”Why in the hell they call us meteorologists, I have no idea. I couldn’t tell the difference between a meteor and a god damn squadron of Sopwith Camels. Hey, where is my dart board, I have a weather cast coming up soon? OK, who took my fucking dart board?
Say, where’s Ender? I want to ask him about this. I mean, if the computer models that forecasted such a nasty hurricane system (the lack of which, thus far, I am profoundly grateful for), just how accurate are those climate models?
According to Ender, the human race iz all gonna die!, and soon!
Or something like that—it was hard to tell, what with his screeching and ranting, and all.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 25 at 02:38 PM • permalinkWe’re all going to die.
I vote we start with global warmenisers and hippies.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 10 25 at 03:02 PM • permalinkHmmm.
Frankly: So what if there’s global warming?
If the world gets warmer then isn’t that a good thing? More areas of the world will be accessible, particularly the artic, for resource exploitation.
If the weather patterns change is that necessarily a bad thing? A warmer planet would result in a reversion to weather patterns of thousands of years ago where the Sahara was actually fertile grasslands.
So really? What’s the downside? So if the planet gets warmer and more humid, won’t the vast arid and largely uninhabitable areas of this planet become more useful?
Posted by memomachine on 2006 10 25 at 03:44 PM • permalinkWho predicted hurricane hilaly here in Aus? He is full of hot air and very very destructive.
Posted by surfmaster on 2006 10 25 at 05:29 PM • permalink"Instead, it has been a long, lazy hurricane season with just half the number of hurricanes predicted and not a single one making landfall.”
I can see the crests of the Chicken Little/Global Warming loons falling as we speak.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 25 at 06:25 PM • permalinkThere was some good money to be made on insurance stocks. People sold out expecting big hurricane payouts. No hurricanes = tidy profits.
Posted by attilathepun on 2006 10 25 at 06:47 PM • permalinkIn other news sure to cause great wailing and gnashing of teeth among the enviro doom sayers, Canada’s most famous delusional hysteric has decided that, after countless years of leeching a very comfortable living off the taxpayers’ teat, thanks to the ability of the global capitalist system, against which he naturally forever railed, to spin off enough excess cash to sustain even the clueless parasites who desire to destroy it and replace it with a ‘sustainable’ utopia of their fevered reality-impaired dreams, he can no longer go on with his endless predictions of Armageddon, and it’s time to call it quits.
He claims he will retire to lead ‘a simple life’, which either means a Stone Age existence, if he has the balls to practice the sustainable subsistence he advocates, or, more likely, involves an enviro-palace incorporating ridiculously expensive green technologies with payback periods measured in generations. The righteous wealthy can afford such piety.
I hope he doesn’t decide to live near an ocean shore, what with the coming Waterworld and all. That might get him too ‘in-tune’ with nature for even his tastes.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 10 25 at 06:58 PM • permalink”...after countless years of leeching a very comfortable living off the taxpayers’ teat, thanks to the ability of the global capitalist system, against which he naturally forever railed...”
The quintessence of leftardism.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 25 at 07:20 PM • permalinkThe final paragraph of that Suzuki article sums up the entire, hilariously hysterical enviro-religious movement:
"We are intelligent, so we create our own habitat and we don’t need nature except as entertainment or for the extraction of resources,” he said. "We still don’t get it, that the simple acts of eating a pizza reverberates around the world."
PW—I’ve noticed the act of eating a pizza reverberate around an elevator car, but past that I think you’re over-achieving a bit…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 25 at 08:12 PM • permalinkWell, I reckon that Douglas Adams would have put leftard global warmenizers in the B Ark along with the rest of the useless third of the population that includes hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants and telephone sanitizers. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we wouldn’t be putting the telephone sanitizers in there…
Posted by Jack Lacton on 2006 10 25 at 08:24 PM • permalinkGood Environmental News, Everybody!
Bill Clinton says it’s okay to rape the rain forest! Advocates energy independence for California by following the “Brazilian example” and switching to ethanol. BJ doesn’t seem to realize where they got the farmland to grow that corn…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 25 at 08:40 PM • permalinkSpeaking of failed predictions, this article really sinks the boot into Ehrlich and his ilk:
Ignore the doomsday prophets
... it is worth recalling a few Ehrlich gems. Perhaps most often quoted is this one from The Population Bomb: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”Another prediction was that the US would see life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1990 due to pesticide usage, and its population fall to 22.6 million by 1999. According to the US Census Bureau, life expectancy in the US in 2005 was 77.7 years and, as of yesterday, its population was 300 million and growing.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 10 25 at 09:43 PM • permalinkThe cold snap of the past two days here in Orlando, Florida broke records. You know what this all means, don’t you? Just watch—they’re going to start talking about the “Coming Ice Age” and how we only have ten years tops before glaciers will bury all the cities above the Tropic of Cancer.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 25 at 09:50 PM • permalinkWe still don’t get it, that the simple acts of eating a pizza reverberates around the world
For me, it takes a bowl of chili.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 25 at 10:28 PM • permalink”...they’re going to start talking about the “Coming Ice Age” and how we only have ten years tops before glaciers will bury all the cities above the Tropic of Cancer. “
What’s wrong with that, Andrea? Think of all the air conditioning you won’t need. And no need for an ice maker, or even a fridge. You’ll save oodles of money on utilities and appliances!
;-P
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 10 25 at 10:30 PM • permalinkWarren Zevon had Desperadoes Under The Eaves.
When the Ice Age hits Florida, Andrea will have Longjohns Under The Kaftan.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 25 at 10:40 PM • permalinkPerhaps its ironic that one of the leading hurricane forecasters, William Gray, is actually a global warming sceptic. Gray gained credibility with a good run of hurricane predictions a few years ago, but his last two years, 2005 (underestimate) and 2006 (overestimate) have spoiled his record. Even so he still has a better prediction record than anyone.
Gray may be inclined to GW scepticism because, unlike most climate modellers, his predictions are so soon put to the test, and so he knows the limitations of his science. The people who who are predicting disaster in 30, 50, 100 years have the luxury of knowing that by the time they are proven wrong, their predictions will be largely forgotten, but they will have made a good living in the meantime.
#9 - RJS, Ender has surfaced!
He’s posted a comment on Bolta’s blog in the story about the solar power station for Victoria.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 25 at 11:59 PM • permalinkDon’t you Bushitlers get it? There will be a big thick Global Warming ice belt around the equator, and hot bare desert at the poles.
Earth will look like a Sumo wrestler. And you Aussies will be stuck on the assward side of it.
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 10 26 at 01:29 AM • permalinkI remember reading a Carl Sagan book.While I appreciated a lot of what Carl did he was on the doomsayers side when it came to global warming.
At one stage he wrote about how hard it was to predict the weather. He immediately bracketed that with a comment how that it wasn’t necessarily as difficult to predict climate, as if he realised as he was writing that he had undermined part of his own global warming case.
And here was naive little me thinking that climate was just a collection of weathers.
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We were just talking about this at lunch. We were all disgusted (again) at the media for fearmongering by trumpeting these ridiculous predictions, then slinking away without a word when the “catastrophe” never materialized. Useless twits. They should be crediting Bush for stopping the onslaught!
At least lunch was good: several endangered species washed down with spring water from an endangered aquifer.