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Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

Climate change is the most likely reason behind rising sea levels, however, Houston is far enough inland to not have gotten any storm surge. What happened was the storm stalled over top of the city instead of moving on through. This meant that it picked up water on the south-east side of the storm and dropped it on the north-west side, right over the neighborhoods. And did it over a couple of days.

What it was .. was a severe rainfall event.

And the photo she led with, with the people walking along the highway divider? Houston's road network is designed to be a last-resort flood buffer to collect rainwater temporarily until it can drain to the east into the ship canal. So yeah, that's going to happen.

The good news is the $700+ million in FEMA money that was spent over the years since Katrina to prevent flooding at the city's medical centers appears to have worked. They stayed open.

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It was my understanding that climate change made events like hurricanes and extreme rainfall more likely.

Except that the US has had 10 years free of serious storms. Doesn't quite fit the narrative.

Please define "serious", as the US has definitely had multiple storms in the past 10 years.

See the link I posted above. Before this storm, the last hurricane of Category 3 or greater to strike the United States was Wilma, in 2005. The last Category 5 storm to strike the United States was Andrew, in 1992.

I'm sure the various people losing a collective $75 billion in effects of Hurricane Sandy will be pleased to know that it wasn't a "major storm."

Hurricane Sandy was expensive because it struck a densely populated region, not because it was a particularly strong storm.

So what?

1) The definition of "major hurricane" is one of Category 3 or greater. Sandy was only a 1.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutgloss.shtml#m

2) The actual topic of discussion here is whether climate change makes hurricanes worse. Unless you have some evidence that climate change was responsible for Sandy's track, its connection with the topic is dubious at best. Do you have such evidence?

Edit: No, they're not "more frequent", either.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

It is not just whether it makes them worse but also whether it makes them more frequent. If the country is experiencing more highly damaging storms who cares whether they're category 3 or not?

And, also whether it changes where they occur, since places where they have usually occurred are more likely to be adapted to them.

It's a good thing practically no large cities are built around ocean ports, or else it would be real cause for concern that even minor storms becoming frequent could wreak havoc.

Was Hurricane Sandy not a "Serious Storm?" There have been many others - winter storms, devastating tornadoes, etc. Also, the world is a bigger place than the US. There have been truly catastrophic storms in other parts of the world.

So sure, if you define "serious storm" as "hurricane of cat 3 or higher" and "the world" is "US" then yes, you might have a point, I guess...

Perhaps not more likely, but since they run on heat, hurricanes could possibly become stronger in the future. I haven't seen any articles which reference research on this, as it's hard to filter out the ones with bias (in either direction).

Strange how difficult it is to get a non-political unbiased view of man-made climate change, isn't it?

From major news outlets? No, not strange.

Luckily the AAAS, NASA, NOAA aren't nearly as political.

I disagree that organizations such as AAAS, NASA, and NOAA aren't political. Perhaps you and I have different definitions of "political." Do you define it as "elected official?"

Are newspaper editors elected where you live?

Pretty much -- every reader and advertiser is essentially a voter.

Many more layers of indirection for NASA officials. Still, I think NASA has heaps of politics.

> Pretty much -- every reader and advertiser is essentially a voter.

That is not the least bit similar to being voted for.

Cogent.

I think money talks -- in journalism and in traditional elections.

I agree to disagree with you.

If a newspaper editor is a democratically elected position because subscribers can cancel their subscriptions and advertisers can pull their ads, then Supreme Leader of North Korea is a democratically elected position, because if you don't like the way they rule you can just leave.

But, you cannot just leave the DPNK. See how you're wrong?

Many people do. But look at Xi Jingping instead if you're so hung up on the leaving being illegal part.

Also it's the DPRK

If in fact climate change is man made. There is strong evidence that this is a natural cycle. Are humans contributing greenhouse gasses? Yes, but what effect are they having? We don't really know, contrary to those who say they do. We have an idea, but climate prediction is still difficult and imperfect. So NO! The science isn't final.

You are using a straw man: science is never final. We however do really know what effect CO2 has, you even use the term "greenhouse gases", that's the effect right there in the name. You state "strong evidence", please post links to this I have a few debunking minutes left for today. Thank you

> science is never final

Why not wait till we're (more) certain? What's the worst that could happen? Catastrophic, runaway climate-change? I say we risk it - at least the science will have been settled...

FUD works both ways.

Proposed responses to supposed man-made climate change are not free.

For example, if you're a rich American, you simply hop on the bandwagon and pay more for stuff. Buy a Tesla, live in the city, pay some extra taxes, etc.

If you're not rich, you have to think carefully.

Human CO2 contribution and the basic warming effect are well understood.

Nature absorbs more CO2 than it emits, but not enough to offset the amount we are putting out. Thus, the global CO2 concentration has been rising over the past 100+ years, especially in recent decades.

A higher CO2 concentration blocks more thermal radiation from exiting through Earth's atmosphere into space. When this energy is blocked, it stays on Earth, raising the temperature.

Using models that have made successful predictions in recent decades, we can predict that we are in for at least another 1 degree Celsius raise in global temperature, and very likely more if we don't work hard to counteract the issue (and stop emitting so much CO2).

This temperature increase will have very real, significant consequences, and we saw it coming many years ago. There is a reason all other developed countries in the world don't deny climate change.

> Human CO2 contribution and the basic warming effect are well understood.

Could you please point me to your most convincing scientific argument, so that I can understand it too?

I'll take each downvote as evidence that such an argument does not exist.

The argument was right below the line you replied to. Perhaps try reading?

A google search for "case for climate change" would also give you meaningful results. But, you already knew that.

Sorry, I meant a convincing piece of scientific reporting. I did read your echo chamber babble.

What are your sources? Care to cite one?

Ignoring the gratuitous insult, here's the NCA 2014 report (the report itself is about the impact of climate change; Chapter 2 lays out the case for climate change caused by humans. Citations are at the end of the chapter.): http://s3.amazonaws.com/nca2014/low/NCA3_Climate_Change_Impa...

There's also a web version where you can explore the highlights: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/. The references are cited right there.

If you don't find this convincing, then I'd like to understand why. Also, if you don't trust this source (a US gov agency), I'd like to understand what kind of sources might you find more convincing.

You're right that we do not know what impact, if any, increased CO2 has on the environment. Of course people are downvoting your comment because cool-headed rational discussion of climate change is not supported on Hacker News.

"Perhaps not more likely, but since they run on heat, hurricanes could possibly become stronger in the future."

They run on heat differential, like any heat engine. A uniform global temperature increase would likely have minimal effects.

But the poles heat up faster than the equator, so we actually do have an increased differential.

Edit: apparently someone doesn't believe me. Here's a source: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/18/371438087/arctic-is-warming-tw...

Since the poles are currently colder, them heating up faster than the equator decreases that temperature differential. I don't think that's precisely the differential at issue with Atlantic hurricanes, though.

Hah I'm an idiot. Thanks.

No description of climate change involves uniform global temperature increase, just average global temperature increase.

Remember when Dr Roger Pielke Jr was fired because he didn't think climate change intensified hurricanes?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.

You might have that understanding because the media punishes disention.

> Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Roger A. Pielke Jr in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.

Huh. I think it's how HN parses the trailing suffix of '.' on the URL.

OK. I was able to read it with that information. So even the martyr you're holding up believes global warming is real, and man-made, and that it would make sense to limit greenhouse gases on this basis. And it seems he was not merely in trouble because he "didn't think climate change contributed to hurricanes" but because others objected to the way he did and presented his research. Not really compelling, to me.

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