Did climate change impact Hurricane Harvey?

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ucfengr said:
Flooding is not unusual on a flood plain, like much of Harris County resides on.
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A storm that drops 50+ inches of rain in one place is unusual. When was the last time a storm dropped this much rain in one location in the continental United States?
 
J_Peterson said:
What’s wrong with you? You’re being weird.

Here’s what I responded to:
*My friends in Texas posted that the area where this is occurring has frequent floods. It’s not some new weird thing. *

I replied:
*So they frequently get 50+ inches of rain? The flooding was caused by the storm but it’s the storm that they are saying was intensified by global warming. That much rain would flood almost anywhere that’s not on a mountain. *

I can’t imagine what got you so upset.
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They got 50 inches of rain because a category 4 hurricane got stuck between 2 high pressure system, keeping it over Houston for an extended period of time. I know the first thought is to blame the angry weather gods, but really, it’s just a rare weather occurrence.
 
I think the OP has been confused by the space/time continuum.

The reference warming is hypothetical, a what might occur if the warming happens.

The rest of us are dealing with the here and now.

The OP is the one politicizing a natural disaster.
 
A big, bad heat wave is coming to my neck of the woods. The culprit: A high-pressure system that has also been blamed for helping to keep Harvey in place, at least more or less.
 
J_Peterson said:
A storm that drops 50+ inches of rain in one place is unusual. When was the last time a storm dropped this much rain in one location in the continental United States?
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You should recall Tropical Storm Claudette in 79 dropped 43 inches on Houston in just 24 hours, it was a much smaller and weaker weather event than Harvey.
 
Well the Earth is getting warmer. Sea level is rising the polar ice cap’s are shrinking. The ice is a great reflector for the sun’s energy (light/heat) Ocean water not so much. (It absorbs heat/energy) As well we do put a heck of a lot of carbon in to the atmosphere. A greenhouse gas. (traps the heat from the sun) So less ice more water added with a lot of greenhouse type gas’s = warmer earth/ocean’s Hurricanes feed’s and grows more instance the warmer the water it is feeding from are. So a category 4 storm today may have been a 2 or 3 with less water 30 or so years ago.
 
J_Peterson said:
A storm that drops 50+ inches of rain in one place is unusual. When was the last time a storm dropped this much rain in one location in the continental United States?
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Well if you read the news on this it is said that this is the worst flood in 130 years. So I assume that 130 years ago there was flooding that was as great or worse.

I didn’t realize global warming started so long ago.
 
Stephen_C said:
Well the Earth is getting warmer. Sea level is rising the polar ice cap’s are shrinking. The ice is a great reflector for the sun’s energy (light/heat) Ocean water not so much. (It absorbs heat/energy) As well we do put a heck of a lot of carbon in to the atmosphere. A greenhouse gas. (traps the heat from the sun) So less ice more water added with a lot of greenhouse type gas’s = warmer earth/ocean’s Hurricanes feed’s and grows more instance the warmer the water it is feeding from are. So a category 4 storm today may have been a 2 or 3 with less water 30 or so years ago.
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ROFL, absolutely no climate scientist agrees with your assessment,
that the storm would have been a Cat 2 or 3 storm if not for man increasing the CO2 levels.

Were you aware that melted ice also forms clouds, which incidentally also reflect the suns energy back into space. It’s all kinda complicated, which is why none of the GCMs are yet very accurate in their predictions.
 
Theo520 said:
ROFL, absolutely no climate scientist agrees with your assessment,
that the storm would have been a Cat 2 or 3 storm if not for man increasing the CO2 levels.

Were you aware that melted ice also forms clouds, which incidentally also reflect the suns energy back into space. It’s all kinda complicated, which is why none of the GCMs are yet very accurate in their predictions.
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Warmer waters not CO2. And the Oceans are getting warmer.
 
Stephen_C said:
Well the Earth is getting warmer. Sea level is rising the polar ice cap’s are shrinking. The ice is a great reflector for the sun’s energy (light/heat) Ocean water not so much. (It absorbs heat/energy) As well we do put a heck of a lot of carbon in to the atmosphere. A greenhouse gas. (traps the heat from the sun) So less ice more water added with a lot of greenhouse type gas’s = warmer earth/ocean’s Hurricanes feed’s and grows more instance the warmer the water it is feeding from are. So a category 4 storm today may have been a 2 or 3 with less water 30 or so years ago.
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Except PIC are not shrinking:
nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
 
No. “Climate change” and “global warming” are hoaxes designed to scare people into giving more power and money to “governments” to “save them”. “Governments” are constantly trying to centralize more and more power and control as part of Satan’s plan to centralize all power and control for his new world order.

This might sound nuts to some, but sadly it is all true. Wake up, Christian brothers and sisters.
 
Well no doubt about it, the earth is going through “climate change.”

But the debate has been focused on whether or not man causing it.

Whether or not man causes climate change is immaterial and should not have become part of that narrative.

Instead, the focus should be cleaning up the earth, which benefits everyone and everything regardless of climate change.

Jim
 
FirstFiveEighth said:
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would say, “this is why we have to fight climate change!”

You are claiming then that by NOT politicizing Hurricane Harvey, we are politicizing Hurricane Harvey? :confused:

You know why people are skeptical of climate change science? Because it is so broad and ambiguous that literally every weather event is used as proof of it.

I believe Harvey hit Texas because hurricanes are an annual occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean this time of year and at this particular time prevailing air and water conditions led it into Texas. Sometimes they hit Mexico. Sometimes they hit Florida, Alabama, or Mississippi. Sometimes they go the other way and hit Haiti and Cuba. Sometimes they go north and hit South Carolina and North Carolina. A lot of times they pitter out at sea or swing out into the vastness of the ocean. Some years there are 3-5 hurricanes. Some years there are no hurricanes. At the end of the day, hurricanes are going to hurricane, and blaming oil companies and the media doesn’t help anybody and it certainly won’t stop hurricanes from developing every year in the Gulf and occasionally hitting populated areas.

Back in 2003-2005 we had a whole rash of hurricanes. It was predicted that because of global warming they would get progressively more and more numerous and more and more powerful. Katrina was the definitive proof. Then suddenly we went back to having 1-2 hurricanes a year that might or might not make landfall as a tropical depression and that theory was quietly set aside. Now we have a big hurricane again and suddenly we are right back on track with armageddon. It is so predictable…
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I get the feeling people are skeptical of climate change warnings because they are unclear on the difference between climate change and weather. When a climate warms up, it does not mean that every year forever thereafter is always warmer by every metric than every year before that. It doesn’t mean breaking weather records every year. It does mean breaking them more often.

Insurance companies believe that we will have more frequent and more severe weather events. They are not into politics. They’re into realistic risk assessment. They are into competitively offering catastrophy coverage.

The other reason I think that people do not believe that climate change is real is that they are hearing about it from someone they do not like who are coming to conclusions they do not want to hear because it implies that changes ought to be made that they do not want to make.

I would remind people that agreeing that climate change is happening is NOT the same as agreeing about what ought to be done about it. The amount of energy being trapped by our atmosphere and the effect that is having on the behavior of our atmosphere is a fact. Maybe it is a fact we can only know with a certain amount of accuracy, given the limitations of our ability to observe and analyze what the atmosphere is doing but it is an objective fact.

What we are going to do, in contrast, even if that is nothing, is a collective exercise of free will. Admitting that the atmosphere is getting warmer does not require submission to a global government or any of the rest. It requires assessing what spectrum of effect is the most likely to follow from what possible decisions we ought to be making–because make no mistake, no one is saying we can predict the future–and doing our decision-making in the interest of the common good based on that.
Operations66 said:
No. “Climate change” and “global warming” are hoaxes designed to scare people into giving more power and money to “governments” to “save them”. “Governments” are constantly trying to centralize more and more power and control as part of Satan’s plan to centralize all power and control for his new world order.

This might sound nuts to some, but sadly it is all true. Wake up, Christian brothers and sisters.
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You are saying the entire scientific community that has examined the data and says the warming of Earth is real is not just wrong but LYING to everyone because they are tools of the government? You do realize those are not just serious charges but also an extremely unlikely possibility, right?

If you all really believe that the American Meteorological Society and all the other professional scientific societies in the entire world are really in cahoots with the government to steal your money and take control over you, then please explain what dog the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has in this fight. Why do you think they have joined the legions of “misleaders”? Can you imagine what level of collaborative LYING would be necessary to accumulate all of the evidence for global warming listed on the NASA web page?

…16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year — from January through September, with the exception of June — were the warmest on record for those respective months. –https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

To test your bias, answer this: If the planet WERE warming up, propose what evidence scientists around the world would have to assemble to get you to believe that? What would a warmer planet look like? Are you waiting for better evidence, or have you already decided that all of science is lying to you?
 
Theo520 said:
Please cite me a Climate Scientist that claims increased ocean temps caused this storm severity to increase by 1-2 categories
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Actually, scientists are finding new ways of classifying storms, due to the inherent limitations in the Saffir-Simpson scale.
journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00349.1
climatecentral.org/news/scientists-propose-new-way-of-classifying-hurricanes-15956

Even amateurs like you and me can see that one metric based on the intensity of sustained winds produced by the storm is not sufficient to describe the degree of catastrophic risk of a particular storm system.
(Well, maybe not you…you seem to have a good idea what you’re talking about.)
 
EasterJoy said:
I get the feeling people are skeptical of climate change warnings because they are unclear on the difference between climate change and weather. When a climate warms up, it does not mean that every year forever thereafter is always warmer by every metric than every year before that. It doesn’t mean breaking weather records every year. It does mean breaking them more often.

Insurance companies believe that we will have more frequent and more severe weather events. They are not into politics. They’re into realistic risk assessment. They are into competitively offering catastrophy coverage.

The other reason I think that people do not believe that climate change is real is that they are hearing about it from someone they do not like who are coming to conclusions they do not want to hear because it implies that changes ought to be made that they do not want to make.
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You are correct that climate change does not mean that it will get hotter every year and we will have worse weather every year on a defined linear scale.

The problem comes when people advocating massive economic regulations to combat climate change do point out these isolated events when it suits them, and when it doesn’t, well, its just a trend. It is a classic case of crying wolf. You can pull videos off youtube right now of mainstream news media telling us New York will be mostly underwater by 2015. Yet we are supposed to believe them when they then tell us “just kidding, we meant 2023!”

In addition, “climate change” covers literally everything, and therefore has no real meaning. It gets hot-climate change. It gets cold-climate change. Record storm-climate change. No storm-climate change. What climate phenomenon would NOT be evidence of climate change? It is so all-encompassing, it is unassailable. And why is it always inextricably tied to massive government taxes and regulations?
 
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