Playing politics with every disaster: Vanuatu cyclone blamed on “climate change”

So far 24 are confirmed dead in Vanuatu, a figure that seems likely to rise.  About 100,000 are homeless, according to the local Oxfam director, which, if accurate, is an awful lot in a country of 270,000. There is no doubt the nation needs help.

Despite the pressing need to solve immediate problems, the predictable claims are already starting. How many journalists will bother to check these claims against the history of cyclones in Vanuatu?  Accuweather lists a lot, including one in 1951 that killed 100 people when CO2 levels were just 311ppm. In 1987 another storm killed 48.

President Baldwin Lonsdale is blaming “climate change”.

Pacific nations regard themselves as at the frontline of climate change, given many are low-lying islands dangerously exposed to rising sea levels, and Lonsdale said changing weather patterns were partly to blame for the destruction.

“Climate change is contributing to the disaster in Vanuatu,” Lonsdale told reporters in Japan, saying rain had been unusually heavy this year.

Even President Hollande, host of the Paris UNFCCC later this year, is milking this disaster: “…the cyclone “is a new cry for the international community to take seriously its responsibility in the fight against climate change, which primarily affects the most vulnerable.”

President Lonsdale went on to talk about the destruction, but probably wasn’t thinking about what his comments mean about his government building programs:

“After all the development we have done for the last couple of years and this big cyclone came and just destroyed… all the infrastructure the government has… built. Completely destroyed.” — Canberra Times

Vanuatu is regularly hit with cyclones. Could be time to reassess the building codes?

Here’s the effect of CO2 on South Pacific cyclones. If it is driving this trend, clearly we need more CO2.

Number and intensity of Cyclones in the South Pacific | Source: Met Service Blog 

http://blog.metservice.com/2013/10/tropical-cyclone-season-2013-14/

President Lonsdale could be forgiven for being confused, but others should know better.

Mashable

Scientists Mashable contacted said the storm intensified rapidly before hitting Vanuatu, aided by an area of unusually mild ocean waters and favorable atmospheric conditions. Ocean temperatures in the area where the cyclone intensified were up to 2 degrees Celsius above average for this time of year (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Some — but not all — of the sea surface temperature anomalies in the Southwest Pacific Ocean are likely related to global warming, according to Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, as well as other experts. According to Trenberth, about about 0.6 degrees Celsius, or 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, of the ocean temperature anomalies “can be blamed on human-induced global warming” while the rest is “natural”…

 Trenberth apparently can look at this noise (below) and see that CO2 is to blame for 0.6C of the 2C anomaly. His models can’t get the global average right, but they have insight on this tiny scale…

Image Weatherbell Analytics

At least one scientist is putting a tiny brake on the hype:

Climate research has shown that tropical cyclones in many ocean basins are becoming stronger and lasting longer than they used to. However, the Southwest Pacific, where Cyclone Pam occurred, is not one of these areas, possibly due to the relative paucity of data there.

Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist at MIT who is a prominent researcher examining global warming-related trends in tropical storms and hurricanes, told Mashable that not much can be said about trends in the vicinity of Vanuatu.

Though Emanuel can’t resist a strawman, and an ambitious claims about models:

“Ironically, this is a part of the world where we do not observe any significant upward trends in tropical cyclone metrics, and few models predict upward trends there as a consequence of global warming,” he said in an email.

Emanuel implies other parts of the world do show “upward metrics”? Which ones? The Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index is falling.

And which models got the cyclone predictions right? Did they also get the global temperature right?

As it happens, storms are not getting worse in New Zealand either:

There ought to be a more up to date graph on Fiji (can anyone find one?), but it appears Fiji has had a lot of cyclones, even when CO2 levels were low and ideal.

Source: Natural Perils and integrated hazard assessment in Fiji [PDF]

Cyclones are also not getting worse in Australia. (It would be good if the BOM updated this graph).

...

Source: BoM

 

The bottom line: No one should use their suffering to make spurious, unsupportable and political claims. I wish everyone in Vanuatu the best with their rebuilding, and we hope the toll does not rise.

Related posts: Do Tropical Storms correlate with CO2? In a word — No

h/t to Steve thanks.

9.3 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

105 comments to Playing politics with every disaster: Vanuatu cyclone blamed on “climate change”

  • #
    Just-A-Guy

    Our hopes and prayers go out to all the residents of Vanuatu.

    Abe

    170

  • #

    It’s a pity President Baldwin Lonsdale and his cronies flew off to attend a climate conference 24 hours before the cyclone hit – despite being warned of its potential to do damage to the island.

    Pointman

    450

  • #
    Colin

    Pointman – a pity or a well-timed coincidence?

    150

    • #

      A tragedy either way for the poor islanders. A leadership so busy pan handling for money, that they couldn’t be arsed flying home to support their own people as a disaster loomed.

      Pointman

      350

      • #

        Yes, his people were “blown off the map” but he didn’t seem in much of a hurry to get back. The ABC described it as very appropriate that he was at a UN climate conference.

        The cyclone swung after he got on the plane to put it on a collision course. Then it intensified.

        “We had a warning before we left, but the wind was still developing, it had not intensified,” Lonsdale said. “When it developed to become a cyclone, we had already left the country. We did not realize how bad it was going to be.”

        Part of the problem was a late change in direction that put Pam on a collision course for Vanuatu, but meteorologists said the severity of the storm was widely expected.
        Reuters news
        “Cyclone Pam before it formed was well picked up by weather models … and most people were aware that this will be a massive cyclone,” Stephen Meke, from the forecasting division of the Fiji Meteorological Service, told Reuters.

        Methinks they are trying too hard:

        While weather sites had been warning as early as March 9 that the cyclone could develop into top ranked category 5 storm, few were prepared for the devastation it would bring.

        “They knew a category 5 was predicted but nobody here knew what a ­category 5 felt like,” CARE International program manager Charlie Damon said from Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila.

        Nobody knew what a category 5 felt like? Perhaps they weren’t sure if it was an old fashioned Cat 5, or one of the new wimpy “spike” type ones where the winds are only modelled?

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        • #
          Peter Carabot

          Jo, you really are unfair!! The poor guy was trying to make a bit of coin for his country and there is definitely no conflict of interest in his comments about CC.
          On their ABC, last night, it must have been the PM of Vanuatu that was interviewed and said that they dont have a history of Cyclones, the guy is not young, he remembers only one cyclone about 10 years ago………… Milking, milking, milking!!! or maybe it’s dementia setting in??

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        • #
        • #
          Ross

          “We had a warning before we left, but the wind was still developing, it had not intensified,” Lonsdale said. “When it developed to become a cyclone, we had already left the country. We did not realize how bad it was going to be.”

          That is absolute rubbish. In NZ we had news items for a few days before it hit Vanuatu that this was a big one. As usual no one knew exactly where it would go but there was a very good chance it would in the area it did.

          Milking all the way !!!

          90

        • #
          Ross

          I forgot to add the original death toll report of 24 has now been officially reduced to 11.
          So while any loss of life is tragic this sort of “error” has to be questioned.

          91

          • #
            OriginalSteve

            The climate bed-wetters will be running around, clucking louder than ever , covering their head with their wings…….

            The “media” ( i mention specifically the journistically challenged shows that appear at 6:30pm on most commercial channels ) are the worst in all this – they hype the emotion through the roof.

            Yes i feel for the peopel who have lost homes etc, however, the 80% great unwashed are being trained to think emotively, not rationally.

            We just need to keep plugging away putting forth the truth soberly, carefully, so people have a solid reference to use.

            Again – please start keeping hard copies of all papers and journals and any proof of lack of man made climate change , so our kids and grand kids have something to read that hasnt been deliberately changed into a lie.

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          • #
            bemused

            What really gets me is that the likes of the Red Cross were calling this ‘apocalyptic’. What did they call the recent Victorian bushfires that killed nearly 200 people, thousands of livestock, homes, farms etc? Say anything to fill the coffers.

            110

        • #
          Peter Miller

          Jo, you need to send your first and final charts to GISS, or the BOM, to get them fixed.

          You may not believe this, but they have this highly sophisticated system called homogenisation, which gives you whatever results you want.

          As everyone knowledgeable about climate will tell you, big cyclones are becoming more severe and frequent; that’s why you need the GISS and BOM homogenisation fix it programs to fix your charts.

          That’s what I love about climate science, you can ‘prove’ whatever you want and no one in the Establishment ever says a thing, as long as the ‘proofs’ confirm the personal whims of their ‘political elite’.

          162

  • #
    Just-A-Guy

    Jo,

    There ought to be a more up to date graph on Fiji (can anyone find one?).

    Couldn’t find any graphs either but I did find this: Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Climatology

    The statistical significance of trends in TCs in the South Indian Ocean and the South
    Pacific Ocean has been examined. Calculation of significance was based on nonparametric
    Monte Carlo methods, and additionally it was explored whether a constant
    model, a linear model or a simple break-point model represents a best fit to the data. For
    the 1981/82 to 2006/07 TC seasons, there are no apparent trends in the total numbers of
    TCs (those tropical systems attaining a minimum central pressure of 995 hPa or lower),
    nor in numbers of 970 hPa TCs (such TCs being called severe in the Southern Hemisphere).

    Positive trends in the numbers of 945 hPa and 950 hPa TCs in the South Indian Ocean are
    significant, but appear to be influenced to some extent by changes in data quality

    In the Australian region, no significant trends in the total numbers of TCs, or in the proportion
    of the most intense TCs, have been found.

    Hope this helps.

    Abe

    Abe- Thanks for that. Good quotes. Very helpful. – Jo

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Also available is —
      Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity
      GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L14803, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711, 2011

      at

      http://models.weatherbell.com/maue_grl_2011.pdf

      130

    • #
      tom0mason

      This may be of use and is also available for free —
      INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol. 27: 1403–1419 (2007)
      Published online 6 February 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1477
      Southern Hemisphere cyclones and anticyclones: Recent trends and links with decadal variability in the Pacific Ocean Alexandre Bernardes Pezza,a* Ian Simmondsaand James A. Renwick b**
      a*
      School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
      b**
      National Institute for Water & Atmospheric Research Limited, Private Bag 14-901, Kilbirnie, Wellington 6003, New Zealand

      With the Abstract saying –

      Abstract:
      The aim of this paper is to study the association between the Extratropical Southern Hemisphere and the decadal variability in the Pacific Ocean (PO). We discuss a pattern of coherent Large-scale anomalies and trends in cyclone and anticyclone behaviour in light of the climate variability in the PO over the ERA40 reanalysis period (1957–2002). The two representative PO indices are the Pacific Decadal and Interdecadal Oscillations (PDO and IPO), and here the PDO is chosen owing to it being less associated with the southern oscillation index (SOI).
      ….
      …. but random changes in ENSO may play a part, to a certain degree, in modulating the results, and a physical mechanism of causality has not been demonstrated. Although global warming and related changes in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) may also help explain the observed behaviour, the large-scale response presented here provides a new insight and would be of considerable interest for further modelling studies.
      Copyright2007 Royal Meteorological Society

      Note the sting in the tail there.
      I got from —

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1477/pdf

      90

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Jo,

      You’re welcome.

      The paper has plenty of references to climate change and cites Trenberth, WMO and other warmists so they can’t claim this info comes from a skeptic source.

      Abe

      80

    • #
      RB

      Positive trends in the numbers of 945 hPa and 950 hPa TCs in the South Indian Ocean are significant, but appear to be influenced to some extent by changes in data quality

      Is it that previously cyclones were undetected unless passing over a ship or not categorised because the ship had better things to do than take readings? Or is it that estimates from satellite pictures and modelling make it seem worse?

      90

  • #
    tom0mason

    I note that Paul Homewood on his blog takes Tim Palmer in his official capacity as ‘spokesman for the Royal Society’ to task, for assisting the BBC’s in respinning this story to cyclonic proportions by saying –

    “…these are producing record breaking winds and it’s exactly this type of extreme cyclone that is predicted by the climate models to increase under climate change, under global warming”.
    And–
    “…wind gusts that have never been measured before, 200-plus mile an hour winds”. When Humphrys pressed him on this, asking him to confirm that they are quite unprecedented, Palmer repeated that “these things have never been seen”.

    Apparently the good Oxford professor Tim Palmer (a Royal Society Research Fellow), is “in charge of modelling and climate change”. I fear they left out that he is the RS’s alarmist-in-chief!

    210

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      tomOmason,

      I fear they left out that he is the RS’s alarmist-in-chief!

      Indeed.

      He foolishely believes that ppl will just hear Royal Society Research Fellow and simply accept his nonsense at face value. To wit . . .

      Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Climatology

      . . .In the SH, the
      Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) in La Réunion is responsible for
      providing cyclone watch over the western SIO. The responsibility for the preparation of
      marine TC forecasts and warnings in the SPO and the eastern SIO is shared amongst
      Australia (Brisbane, Darwin and Perth Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres), Fiji (Nadi
      RSMC), Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby) and New Zealand (Wellington).
      The National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) also archive records of TC
      occurrences in their areas of responsibility. Historical records of TC occurrences in the SH go
      back a few hundred years. For example, Australian records go back to the late 18th century.
      However, length of records in TC archives and their quality vary. It is widely accepted that
      TC records in the Australian region and the SH are complete and reliable after
      meteorological satellite came in operational use in the late 1960s (Holland, 1981).

      . . .
      [The] variation between different regions, in the time period for which high resolution
      satellite imagery is available, influences the accuracy of cyclone intensity estimations and
      imposes limitations on the analysis of historical data.
      For example, it restricts the accuracy of
      long-term trend analysis of changes in cyclone intensity – something required to address the
      important question of how TC activity is changing over decades . . .
      . . .
      Throughout the 1980s and in the
      first half of the 1990s, there still was a reluctance to assign intensities beyond 80 knots

      (central pressures below about 955 hPa). From the mid-1990s, as forecasters in Fiji became
      more proficient at the Dvorak technique, there was a greater range of intensities assigned in
      TC warnings. It appears that for the SPO east of 160E the most reliable estimates of TC
      intensity start in the early 1990s, with reliable estimates of LMCP of the most intense TCs
      from the mid-1990s. It is likely that prior to this time the number of TCs with reported
      intensities below 950 or 945 hPa in the eastern SPO is underestimated.

      While searching for graphs of SH cyclone inensity, I was puzled as to why no data was available prior to 1970 until I stumbled upon the above quoted paper. From the quotes it becomes obvious why this is. Without the ‘eye in the sky’ there’s no reliable way to measure intensity and/or wind speeds.

      So the obvious question to mr tim palmer is, “How would you know that these wind speeds were never seen in cyclones if no reliable data on wind speeds or intensity exists before 1970?”

      Abe

      Reference: Yuriy Kuleshov (2012). Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Climatology, Modern Climatology, Dr Shih-Yu Wang (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-0095-9, InTech, Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/modernclimatology/southern-hemisphere-tropical-cyclone-climatology

      140

    • #
      Glen Michel

      prophecies must be fulfilled!!

      30

  • #
    Mark D.

    Lonsdale told reporters in Japan, saying rain had been unusually heavy this year.

    Huh, doesn’t rain, and the process that makes rain possible, cause cooling?

    130

    • #
      RB

      Using the heat of vaporization and 1m of rain on average around the globe, you get 88W/m2. We are supposed to have 1.6W/m2 more back radiation since the 18th century so if it all goes into evaporating more water, we should have seen 2% more rain. “Unusually heavy” is not usually written if there is 102mm instead of 100mm of rain. I hope that they didn’t blame global warming at least.

      40

  • #
    sophocles

    Cyclone Pam beat up Vanuatu then headed straight for New Zealand. It was still rated a cyclone when it passed North Cape, but fortunately, it had slipped off to the east, so it was a glancing blow instead of a direct hit. The Cyclone was downgraded to an ex-tropical storm on Monday morning while off the eastern coast, and gave the East Cape of the North Island a bit of a beat up with high winds, heavy rain and heavy seas. Damage was minimal, with no loss of life and little loss of property.

    There have been cyclones checking in regularly since I was small. Fortunately they’ve usually fuzzed out into ex-tropical storms before they arrive, but they are still damaging. The first one I can remember was in 1964. It too passed by instead of making a direct hit. I can remember the tedium of it raining solidly for nearly a week. TC Pam was still rated a cyclone as it’s centre passed Auckland’s latitude, which is the first time I’ve seen one retain its eye so far south (which doesn’t mean much as I’m not a meteorologist), and it’s the first time I’ve seen one move so fast southwards, before fuzzing out into an ex-tropical storm as it parked itself to the east of East Cape.

    This is cyclone season. They happen, they’ve always happened. They always will. Sometimes there are more, sometimes there are less, sometimes they’re earlier, sometimes they’re later, but I cannot remember when there have been none. That doesn’t mean to say there hasn’t been a year when it’s happened!

    The loss of life is always tragic, and the clean up and restoration, afterwards, tedious and expensive. Vanuatu is no stranger to TCs in my lifetime. Instead of blaming the devastation on ‘climate change,’ which nobody can do anything about, they should look at how they can cyclone-proof their infrastructure, eg: in-ground power cables instead of overhead lines, redesign of buildings so the wind doesn’t tear them apart. Use reinforced concrete for public buildings (somewhere the population can shelter safely) and so on.

    Pam was the fastest moving TC I can recall (it’s what caught my interest), so Vanuatu wouldn’t have had much time to batten down in. If they planned and built for what has hit them in the past, then they will have a more survivable future. This is where our countries can help.

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    • #
      me@home

      Soph, I reckon all the cyclone vulnerable islands could have all their buildings rebuilt to an appropriate standard for a fraction of the squillions now being wasted on CAGW.Then next year we could commence providing cheap, reliable power to all the world’s poor.

      120

  • #
    Betapug

    The 1951 cyclone killed 100 of a population of about 53,000 and the 48 deaths in 1987 were from a population of about half the current 270,000.
    As a significant offshore tax haven, nautical “flag of convenience” and file sharing centre, Friends of the Earth “…estimated Vanuatu to be the most ecologically efficient country in the world in achieving high well-being.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5169448.stm

    The skyrocketing population and deforestation seem to be responsible for much of the environmental degradation attributed by President Lonsdale to “Climate Change”.

    250

  • #
    tom0mason

    From http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/02/hurricaneglobal-warming-link-weakened/
    I see this —

    University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Kyle Swanson in which he carefully examined the historical relationship between sea surface temperatures and tropical cyclone intensity in the Atlantic and western Pacific ocean.

    Swanson justified his research efforts, well summarizing the current state of things (including references):

    Recent studies have found an apparent increase in the proportion and number of tropical cyclones (TCs) that become intense [Webster et al., 2005] along with links of this increase to positive sea surface temperature anomalies [Emanuel, 2005; Hoyos et al., 2006] and possibly global warming [Trenberth, 2005]. However, the sensitivity of TCs to changes in sea surface temperature (SST) remains controversial [Landsea et al., 2006; Shapiro and Goldenberg, 1998], as modeling and theoretical studies suggest only small changes to TC intensities given the observed 0.5ºC SST warming that has occurred since the 1970s [Emanuel, 1988; Knutson et al., 2001]). Further, satellite reanalysis suggests no increase in the fraction of intense TCs outside the North Atlantic basin [Kossin et al., 2007]. Trends in TC intensity are difficult to discern, as statistics are inherently noisy due to fluctuating storm numbers and life spans. As the theory underlying TC intensities specifically predicts only the maximum potential intensity, it is necessary to control for these other factors if the response of the TC intensity to changes in SST is to be understood.

    And


    Swanson’s conclusions are similar to those recently reported by some folks working out of the University of Wisconsin’s more westerly Madison campus. Jim Kossin and colleagues conducted a research project (for more details of the Kossin et al., study, see here) in which they carefully constructed a homogenous tropical cyclone dataset for all the world’s ocean basins for the past 23 years. After examining their new record for trends, they concluded:

    Using a homogeneous record, we were not able to corroborate the presence of upward trends in hurricane intensity over the past two decades in any basin other than the Atlantic. Since the Atlantic basin accounts for less than 15% of global hurricane activity, this result poses a challenge to hypotheses that directly relate globally increasing tropical SST to increases in long-term mean global hurricane intensity.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      That is too say cyclone and hurricane intensity is only loosely tied to local sea temperature, if it is at all.

      60

      • #
        tom0mason

        Oops, not
        “That is too say cyclone and hurricane intensity is only loosely tied to local sea temperature, if it is at all.”
        but
        That is too say cyclone and hurricane intensity is only loosely tied to non-local sea temperature, if it is at all.

        50

  • #
    Ruairi

    When moved by fierce storms to give aid,
    It’s a shame that we skeptics must wade,
    Through each organization,
    Who want our donation,
    Claiming weather disasters man-made.

    240

  • #
    Don Penim

    Sad to see the deaths, damage and destruction, but there is indeed a long recorded History of Cyclones in Vanuatu.

    …”From New Hebrides [the former name of Vanuatu] for the 26 years, 1867-1893, 22 hurricanes are reported. There is a period of eight years with no record, and information for other years is lacking. As many as three hurricanes have occurred in one year. The average storminess may be two hurricanes a year. As to monthly distribution, nearly all the recorded storms have occurred in the first three months of the year, 12 in January, 11 in February, nine in March.”.

    From a study published by the VANUATU METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE
    Tropical Cyclones in Vanuatu / 1847-1994

    1847, January 16 hurricane entire Tanna
    1847, March 2-11 Hurricane southern Vanuatu
    1848, February 1-15 severe hurricane Erromango & Tanna, New Caledonia
    1848, December 25 hurricane near Vanuatu
    1852, February 18-24 severe hurricane Aneityum
    1854, January 1 hurricane East
    1860, March 14 Hurricane West of Vanuatu
    1862, January 17-18 hurricane ESE of Tanna
    1867, February 27 Hurricane West of Vanuatu
    1867, March 7 hurricane Futuna & Efate
    1868, January 30 hurricane
    1868, April 21 hurricane
    1868, May 17 hurricane
    1869, February 23 hurricane
    1871, March 17-22 hurricane Futuna & Fiji
    1872, February 17 hurricane Futuna & elsewhere
    1873, January 3-7 severe hurricane Vanuatu & Fiji
    1874, February 15-25 Severe hurricane Vanuatu, New Caledonia then moved north
    1874, October 2 hurricane
    1878, January 9 hurricane Sandwich island (off southern Malekula?)
    1879, January 9-10 hurricane
    1880, January 21-26 severe hurricane Vanuatu & New Caledonia
    1889, March 16 Hurricane West of Vanuatu
    1890, January 2 Hurricane passed between Vanuatu & New Caledonia
    1891, February 10-11 hurricane crossed southern Vanuatu, moved northeast
    1891, March 9-12 hurricane Vanuatu & Solomon Islands
    1892, February 14-18 hurricane did considerable damage
    1893, February 17 severe hurricane storm moved west over Futuna
    1893, March 5 hurricane Epi and elsewhere
    1903, March 3-6 hurricane West from Santo
    1907, April 11 hurricane very severe near Futuna
    1910, March 25 hurricane crossed Vanuatu from Fiji
    1916, January 8-9 severe hurricane western Vanuatu then New Caledonia
    1918, November 11 severe hurricane Tonga (Tongoa?) region
    1921, November 23 cyclone Luganville, Canal Segond (between Luganville & Aore Island), moved southeast
    1922, February 25-26 hurricane general
    1922, December 17 hurricane general
    1923, February 13-14 hurricane
    1928, February
    1932, February & April
    1933, April
    1936, January

    Full Report and more info here:
    http://www.pacificdisaster.net/pdnadmin/data/original/VUT_TC_1847_1994.pdf

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Don Penim,

      Makes me wonder why they (MSM and alarmist Royal Soc. professors) do not compare and contrast Pam with 1985 storms (from your link) –

      ERIC (Hurricane) 13 – 20 January 1985
      NIGEL (Hurricane) 14 – 28 January 1985
      ODETTE (Hurricane) 16 – 21 January 1985

      Between 14 and 21 January three Hurricane Force cyclones affected the south west pacific. Fiji and Vanuatu were particularly affected by all three. On 17/18 January a minimum pressure of 987.9mb and winds gusting to over 85knots were experienced on Santo. ERIC and NIGEL followed almost identical easterly tracks across the south of Santo within 48 hours of each other. ODETTE passed further to the south over Erromango.
      Considerable damage was inflicted to most of the norhtern islands and to Erromango
      .
      GAVIN (Storm ) 2 – 8 March 1985 GAVIN was named as a tropical cyclone som e 150 m iles east of Efate but quickly moved away from Vanuatu southeastwards reaching storm force winds over the sea well south of Fiji. – No damage reported
      .
      HINA (Hurricane) 10 – 20 March 1985 HINA m arginally affected Vanuatu while its winds were still of gale force. A maximum wind of 32 knots being reported on the 12th at Santo whilst a minimum pressure of 994.6mb reported at Sola on the 15th.

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      • #
        Robert

        Didn’t you know? 1985 is prior to recorded history. Anything from that time period was not properly adjusted and vetted so it cannot be considered reliable, therefore it didn’t happen. So they cannot compare something that happened this week to something that didn’t happen.

        Because if they did acknowledge that it did happen and compared now to then they would find something far too frightening for them to deal with.

        Reality.

        Don’t dredge up inconvenient facts as it only confuses the alarmists as they try and convince us of their inconvenient truths…

        30

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Ok fellow skeptics get ready for the attacks from the moral high ground of the warmista with indignant outrage that we have dared to belittle the CO2 sky god and it’s cult leaders with attempting to find factual answers instead of falling to our knees in appreciation of the “new science”, unfortunately they’re doing themselves a disservice in quickly running out of virgins to offer the volcano due to screwing everything the cult touches, maybe an IPCC climate affirmation made by the tainted will appease the gods?

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  • #
    el gordo

    There is no doubt in Hannam’s mind that Pam has given El Nino a kick start and we are all doomed.

    ‘El Nino years also mean the Pacific tends to absorb less heat, lifting global temperatures by 0.1-0.2 degrees. With 2014 already declared the hottest year on record, another year of near-El Nino or stronger conditions could see 2015 turn out to be even warmer, climate scientists say.

    ‘The first two months of this year have continued the trend of 2014, with the 12 months to February the hottest such period in about 130 years of records, according to US data.’

    SMH

    30

  • #
    manalive

    … the history of cyclones in Vanuatu?  Accuweather lists a lot, including one in 1951 that killed 100 people when CO2 levels were just 311ppm …

    And, according to the IPCC, that’s when the climate was perfectly ideal.

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    • #
      Richard C (NZ)

      >”one in 1951 that killed 100 people when CO2 levels were just 311ppm”

      >”And, according to the IPCC, that’s when the climate was perfectly ideal.”

      No, one year into the anthro attribution. 1951 is the beginning of the IPCC’s anthro attribution period 1951 – 2010 in the AR5 SPM. Minor problem that supposed anthro warming only started 3 decades later at the end of the 70’s and that only lasted 2 decades, see AR5 SPM Fig 1:

      https://muchadoaboutclimate.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/blog_ipcc_1.png

      Looks like it started with a bang in Vanuatu. If only that one had been a year earlier…..

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    bemused

    The Greens have to maintain the meme:

    If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

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      Dennis

      And as a former Labor leader once observed, Premier Goss of Queensland I think it was, every bit of mud thrown sticks until over time the (political) target is covered with mud. AbbottAbbottAbbott.

      50

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    llew Jones

    The claim by warmists, who mostly are scientifically illiterate, is that climate science can only be understood by scientifically trained specialists (“experts”).

    It does seem to be unquestionable, as in the Vanuatu incident, that a knowledge of weather history is all that one needs to debunk the CACC scam.

    Which of course means that warmists whether simple believers or experts are unaware either of long term weather history or fail to see that a knowledge of it devastates the claim that human fossil fuel use is changing the Earth’s climate.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Its funny how the Elite use “experts” to translate what they want the masses to hear.

      During and even up to the 1990s when the cold war was still ( sort of ) in effect, they used to use “experts” who translated what Moscow said into what they wanted the plebs to hear. I think they also uised to call them “Mosco watchers” – with the premise that the bloke int he street was too dumb to understand basic information.

      As such, any time I hear “an expert says” I often consider it an attempt to firewall off from the population any logic and common sense, so they are told what the Elite want them to hear. CLimate Change is no different – its just another war, except this time its a war on our western civilisation by the leftist loons.

      I guess you’d gall it “Goebbel-isation” of information.

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    Richard C (NZ)

    Not to hijack this thread but to point to a post at Climate Etc re adjustments to GHCN in a 1000km radius of Alice Springs:

    ‘Temperature adjustments in Australia’

    by Euan Mearns, March 17, 2015

    http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/17/temperature-adjustments-in-australia/

    Main points:

    # In summary I found that while individual stations are subject to large and what often appears to be arbitrary and robotic adjustments in V3, the average outcome across all 30 stations is effectively zero. At the regional level, homogenisation does not appear to be responsible for adding warming in Australia. But the thing that truly astonished me was the fact that the mean temperature trend for these 30 stations, 1880 to 2011, was a completely flat line. There has been no recorded warming across a very large portion of the Australian continent.

    # In Alice Springs the raw record is flat and has no sign of warming. In the adjusted record, homogenistaion has added warming by significantly cooling the past. Five other stations inside the 1000 km ring have similarly long and similarly flat records – Boulia, Cloncurry, Farina, Burketown and Donors Hill. There can be no conceivable reason to presume that the flat raw Alice Springs record is somehow false and in need of adjustment.

    # Six records show a significant mid-1970s cooling of about 3˚C (Alice Springs, Barrow Creek, Brunette Down, Cammoo Weal, Boulia and Windorah) that owing to its consistency appears to be a real signal. Homegisation has tended to remove this real temperature history.

    # Homogenisation appears to have added warming or cooling to records where neither existed. Homogenisation may also have removed real climate signal.

    # I find zero warming over such a large part of the Australian continent to be a surprise result that is consistent with Roger Andrew’s observation of no to little warming in the southern hemisphere, an observation that still requires more rigorous testing.

    # # #

    It’s GHCN V2 vs GHCN v3 but GHCN V2 is not strictly “raw”. Still an eye-opener even so.

    In comments Euan adds background:

    “I have completed analysis of S S America and Antarctica that have yet to be published. All this pretty well confirms Roger Andrews observation that there is little warming in the southern hemisphere which I find is a real puzzle.”

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    TdeF

    We now know that fossil fuels cause cyclones. Tim Flannery said so. It is an extreme event and climate change causes extreme events. So Climate Change actually Cyclone Tracey in 1974, long before the IPCC and we just did not know it at the time. Science has progressed in forty years. Cyclones are our fault and we should pay someone. That seems to be the entire idea but was it really our CO2 at fault?

    95% of the world’s population lives North of Vanuatu and Australia, so only 5% was our CO2 and Northern Countries should pay 95% of the damage. While generous Australia will help rebuild, we should also cry Climate Change and CO2 and be reimbursed because it is not our CO2 which did the damage. We should send 95% of the bill to the UN. Is that how science works now in the fantasy world of man made Climate Change?

    151

    • #
      Dariusz

      Currently looking at the Ordovician (400mln years old rock) core that was recovered from a petroleum well in Western Australia. I am counting cyclones there are a least 2 per year. They destroy islands that are 50 to 100kms away. And No humans to blame. Give me a pseudo scientitist and he will tell you that this is because of >10,000ppm of co2 in the atmosphere forgetting that during the same time we had also a glacial period elsewhere.
      But what do I know? I am only a geologist that interprets the core for living.

      150

      • #
        Dennis

        Sorry Dariusz the BOM climate change department would not agree with you.

        40

      • #
        Peter Miller

        These sorts of comments explain why the high priests of alarmism hate geologists.

        Geologists – at least those in the private sector – routinely tear huge holes in alarmist theory.

        10

  • #
  • #
    handjive

    Well, if we must blame man-made emissions, let’s start with the tourists burning fossil fuel:

    Six of the best: Resorts in Fiji

    Then, we can ban the raaf planes delivering aid, and bring it in via canoe.

    That oughta stop that nasty sea level rise & acidification.

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  • #
    Ian George

    The National Advisory Board of Vanuatu reported the following in its report ‘Profile of risks from climate change and geohazards in Vanuatu’
    ‘There does not seem to be a trend in the storm frequency, supporting the current view that climate change is unlikely to change frequency of storms in the South Pacific.’

    This is a rather alarmist document but does not rate cyclones as a an increasing risk. Report here at:-
    http://www.nab.vu/sites/all/files/documents/03/04/2014%20-%2012%3A45/risk_profile_report_draft_1.pdf

    Scroll down to see cyclone map and graphs.

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  • #
    TdeF

    Fifteen hurricanes a year hit Florida. So it is only a question of when you are hit. The Tropics is paradise for humans but a dangerous place to live if you do not build for hurricane strength winds, something Australia discovered in Darwin and redisovered with Yasi. Airconditioners, aircraft, good roads, water transport, desalination plants and the elimination or control deadly plagues like Yellow Fever, Malaria and many more have turned deserted, unliveable dangerous places into holiday locations. Most islands like Hayman island are actually unliveable because there is no fresh water. Coral reefs can make islands unapproachable, as Cook found.

    These Pacific islands, including New Zealand, were only inhabited in the last 1000 years. Even Hurrican central, Taiwan was almost empty when the Dutch arrived. Now it supports 20 million people.

    The risks are known. They have not changed. No one lived there and even if they did, no one reported what happened. What has changed is that millions more people are taking those risks, gambling every year for the chance to live in the tropics. To now say the risks are due to the use of fossil fuels is simple chicanery. If there is a mudslide in Brazil, climate change. A flood in China. Climate Change. A hurricane hits New Orleans. Climate Change. All make believe.

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    Peter Yates

    You might be interested in this time-lapse slideshow of Cyclone Pam’s track on a wind flow background … cheers …

    10

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    Leo G

    There is something odd about the early television news coverage of the damage in the outlying islands in the south of the archipelago.
    The damage shown wasn’t consistent with the windspeeds reported. Corrugated iron shacks with some roofing damage? Why are any parts of such structures still in place if the eye of the cyclone passed directly through them as reported. Other footage reportedly showing wind damage which looked much more like storm surge damage.
    Were those videos really taken where claimed?

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    • #

      “… something odd about the early television news coverage …”
      As a building designer in a cyclonic region, I spend time studying the video and stills from events like this.
      Spectacular newsy images of damage rarely show the details needed, but the numerous trees felled or standing that still had leaves attached suggests Cat 3 rather than 5. One image is a house apparently craftsman built, completely de-roofed but walls still standing. View is from above. All the wall top-plates are visible and intact. No remnants of cyclone rods, steel strapping, nail-plates visible. Just a few distorted nails. So the roof just peeled off. On the other hand, if the corrugated iron shacks incorporate steel strapping, bush vine lashings, even coat-hanger wire in sufficient quantities throughout the load path from roof sheets into the ground, then they will survive.

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  • #
    JohnM

    From an article in The Australian today by its Asia Pacific editor:

    IN A terrible irony on the eve of the cyclone that has devastated Vanuatu, the Pacific paradise was branded the number one nation in the world in its vulnerability to natural disasters.

    Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu as the UN was hosting its third world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan.

    That meeting heard that over the past 45 years the Asia Pacific region has suffered cumulative economic losses of $A1.49 trillion from natural disasters, and had lost more than 2 million lives. And Vanuatu, according to a key report presented to delegates, was the country most at risk in the entire world, followed by Tonga, The Philippines, Japan and Costa Rica.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Was it steered using Scalar, into Vanuatu on the same day as a UN climate conference?

      Love to see the probability of that…..

      It must have sent the climate bed wetters running for a change of clothes….

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  • #

    Climate news is getting soooo predictable!

    Funny enough it is the only predictable part of climate “science”

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  • #
    ROM

    These are the views of other climate scientists on the state of Ocean research and it’s effects on the climate.

    It goes a long way towards showing Trenberth’s comments are based on nothing more than Trenberth’s opinions and beliefs as he has had to find some explanation for the complete failure of the predicted warming to appear, a warming prediction which he backed to the hilt.

    And it reveals just how little is actually known in reality on Ocean flow patterns at a small scale both horizontally and rarely mentioned but for climate research, the very important vertical flows, the turbulence and flow of the great ocean eddies and gyres, the heat distribution in the oceans, Ocean heat uptakes and releases, time factors involved and etc.

    A subject about which almost nothing is yet proven or firmly based in real time observations made worse by the decrepit state and lack of maintenance of the mid ocean buoy systems [ commented on in this transcript elsewhere ]
    The funding is almost entirely going into climate modelling leaving the actual on ground and ocean observations systems and data acquisition systems very short of funding for even basic maintenance let alone replacement and further developments of new fixed mid ocean buoy systems that unlike the drifting, deep diving buoys of the ARGO system, always give reports from the single location/s enabling valuable continuity to be maintained in the data.

    Excerpts from the Complete Transcript of the

    1 APS CLIMATE CHANGE STATEMENT REVIEW WORKSHOP

    Participating workshop scientists
    Moderator; Dr Steven Koonin.
    Judith Curry
    Richard Lindzen
    John Christy
    Isaac Held
    Ben Santer
    William Collins

    Also members the policy review committee of the APS [ American Physical Society ]

    .
    Page 521

    19 DR. ROSNER: I want to follow

    20 up on what Judy said. So, it

    21 struck me that one area of physics

    22 uncertainty has to do with deep ocean

    23 sampling.

    24 The question I have is, so,

    25 what would be the experimental

    _______________

    Page 522

    2 campaign that you would need to mount

    3 in order to actually set up the

    4 physics to be able to improve the

    5 models? What is involved?

    6 DR. CURRY: Okay, well, there

    7 is tracers, argon and various other

    8 things that are used to look at that,

    9 gravity, wave breaking associated

    10 with bottom topography.

    11 It’s something that people are

    12 working on it. But to me, this is

    13 looming as if the ocean ate the

    14 global warming, we have to understand

    15 some mechanisms.

    16 DR. ROSNER: But I am asking,

    17 what would you need to do? That’s

    18 what I am asking.

    19 DR. LINDZEN: I think even in

    20 the oceanographic community, the

    21 people I know would not have

    22 something ready at hand saying “if

    23 only we had this.”

    24 DR. CURRY: Right. It’s very

    25 subtle. A lot of these things, yes,

    __________

    Page 523

    2 it’s a tough problem. But I think

    3 thinking about it in a meta way would

    4 be beneficial.

    5 DR. ROSNER: So, for example,

    6 if you wanted to understand

    7 thermohaline mixing, say, deeper

    8 down, are there experiments that

    9 people have —

    10 DR. HELD: Ongoing experiments.

    11 They are quite expensive.

    12 DR. ROSNER: Never mind that.

    13 I am just curious what has been

    14 talked about?

    15 DR. HELD: There’s tracer

    16 release experiments. People go out,

    17 release sulfur hexafluoride and come

    18 back five years later to measure it.

    19 DR. ROSNER: Where is it?

    20 DR. HELD: Yes, where is it?

    21 And there are natural tracers that

    22 are arguably even more useful. CFCs

    23 are the best.

    24 DR. LINDZEN: And our field

    25 benefitted greatly from the nuclear

    ___________

    Page 524

    2 tests.

    3 DR. KOONIN: You sold out!

    4 DR. HELD: I would just be

    5 careful. I don’t know if I still

    6 have the floor here?

    7 DR. KOONIN: Yes, you do.

    8 DR. HELD: We have heard

    9 discussions of mixing being important

    10 for getting the heat down. That’s

    11 not necessarily the case.

    12 You can get heat down below

    13 a certain level just by adiabatic

    14 rearrangement of water, just tilting

    15 the isoclines of temperature.

    16 You have to be careful when you

    17 talk about mixing, quote/unquote.

    18 It’s not clear that’s what is going

    19 on on these time scales at all.

    20 DR. CURRY: That’s a question

    21 whether to what extent it is mixed

    22 versus not in terms of —

    23 DR. HELD: That has a big

    24 effect whether it is going to come

    25 out quickly or not.

    ____________________

    Page 525

    2 DR. KOONIN: Yes, yes, yes,

    3 some better characterization of the

    4 deep oceans.

    5 DR. ROSNER: That’s what I am

    6 getting at.

    40

  • #

    There are too many superlatives used in the language of global warming…..

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  • #
    thingadonta

    The reason Magellan first named the Pacific Ocean the ‘Pacific’, was because it was relatively ‘peaceful’ when compared to the Atlantic. And the reason for this is because there is less temperature differential between different regions due to the larger ocean size, with more uniform temperatures across much larger regions. This creates less storminess and less cyclones/hurricanes.

    Under global warming, the poles warm faster than the tropics, meaning less temperature differential across large climate zones. This means it is likely that in many areas both storminess and cyclone activity might be expected to decline in frequency under global warming.

    There may be some areas which experience more cyclones, due to the shifting climate zones, and under more warming some cyclones might be stronger, but overall, less damage from cyclones, and less cyclones overall would be expected to occur as temperature differentials across the oceans decrease over time.

    This is in fact consistent with what is observed over the last several decades.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Paleo history suggests warmer conditions should produce less cyclones and a return to a LIA will increase the numbers and possibly ferocity of TC.

      http://research.jcu.edu.au/tess/news-and-events/tess-seminar-Jon-Nott

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    • #
      sophocles

      Under global warming, the poles warm faster than the tropics,

      err … no. The recent ‘global’ warming is more accurately Northern Hemisphere warming. The poles are out of phase. The Arctic has warmed by about 0.6 – 0.7 dC, but the Antarctic has cooled, laying down more ice. The land/sea ratio in the NH is 1:1.5 and in the SH 1:4, so GW in the SH is severly constrained (about 0.28 dC according to de Freitas et al) under the control of the oceans.

      The ice sheet in the Antarctic is almost all land based, not sea ice as in the Arctic, so its not as prone to melting as the Arctic’s (from the warm Gulf Stream water which ends up in the Arctic) and so the albedo of the poles differs significantly. The constant high albedo of the Antarctic has prevented GW from gaining much, if any, traction in the SH.

      The Arctic warms faster than the tropics would be more accurate. The Antarctic does what the Antarctic does; chills out.

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  • #
    Michael Whittemore

    “Some — but not all — of the sea surface temperature anomalies in the Southwest Pacific Ocean are likely related to global warming”

    This is the type of response I hear most from scientists, simply that the extra warming from CO2 increases natural events like Cyclone Pam.

    07

    • #
      Mark D.

      This is the type of response I hear most from scientists, simply that the extra warming from CO2 increases natural events like Cyclone Pam.

      Funny that “scientists” would resort to bold statements out of pure speculation. Cyclones and hurricanes are NOT increasing in numbers or even in relative strength. You have your ear tuned to professional guessers and not good ones even at that.

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      Just-A-Guy

      Michael Whittemore,

      In the BoM Forum Panel: One day wonder thread I asked you why you were here if you don’t believe one word that is uttered here and you replied that,

      The climate debate has become one of censorship, if you go against consensus you are silenced. A lot of climate science researched is done because sceptics have pointed out problems. I focus my time on sceptics points in the hope of finding an area to research.

      I’m curious then as to why you would get involved in a discussion with those you don’t believe rather than simply read what’s presented and go ahead with your research on sites where you would believe what was said. That would seem to be a more rational approach wouldn’t you agree?

      Abe

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      • #
        Michael Whittemore

        Abe it takes more than just looking around..

        00

        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          Michael Whittemore,

          Abe it takes more than just looking around..

          That’s not really an answer.

          I already know that this is how you feel. That’s the reason I was able to ask you why you feel a need to do this.

          So, how about it, would you be willing to answer my question?

          Abe

          10

          • #
            Michael Whittemore

            That is my answer Abe, its important to discuss sceptic claims and see what they have to say about the science. Why don’t you offer up your opinion on anthropogenic climate change so that I may take my time in determining the merit of your points? Ill also be sure to read all your comments from now on..

            00

            • #
              Just-A-Guy

              Michael Whittemore,

              Ill also be sure to read all your comments from now on..

              At this point, I only ask that you read this comment all the way through before responding to it.

              That is my answer Abe, its important to discuss sceptic claims and see what they have to say about the science.

              No. A discussion is not necessary to ‘see what a skeptic has to say.’ In order to see what a skeptic has to say it’s enough to simply read their words.

              A discussion is only necessary when one person makes a statement and someone else needs clarification in order to make up their mind whether to accept the statement or reject it.

              All of this, of course, is predicated upon whether the person doing the reading or listening, is actually interested in either accepting or rejecting the statement being made. The discussion has to have an equal possibility for each of the outcomes to prevail. Otherwise it’s not a discussion. It’s just an argument.
              .
              .
              Now refering specifically to you. From the very first comment of your’s that I’ve read, there has never been a time when what you wrote gave me the impression that you were interested in having a discussion. Your words betray you. You’ve shown, again and again, by what you write, that what you’re really interested in is finding a way to win the argument at any cost. Even if the price you have pay is everyone else seeing how silly and irrational your arguments are.

              I’m not a mod, I’m just a guy, but if I was a mod, I would be convinced that the only reason for your being here is to post link after link to warmist websites just so that those website can get badly needed hits. And this, with the hope that some unsuspecting first timer, who may not be aware of how all the warmist propaganda works, may get caught up in the web of deception and logical fallacies employed by those same sites.

              I’m fully aware, Michael, that all that I’ve said here so far is harsh. Very harsh. The real mods may not even like my affront.

              On the other hand, if I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to appologize and go forward. In order to prove me wrong though, you Michael, will have to exibit your ability and intention to use reason and rational discourse. Any thing short of that simply wont cut it.

              Abe

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              • #
                Michael Whittemore

                “No. A discussion is not necessary to ‘see what a skeptic has to say.’”

                No. It is absolutely necessary to point out the science of what they are saying. If they know what they are talking about they should be able to back up their point, this is what I want to hear. I look forward to doing this to your comments..

                02

              • #
                Dariusz

                I had exactly the same impression.
                In fact to get on their “sceptical” web is a pain. I will try to do so to engage them when I have more time. However once mentioned a geologist i have been banned from one of the leftie one immediately.

                10

    • #
      sophocles

      Cyclones (SH) and Typhoons (NH) form in the western Pacific tropical zones where there is much sun-warmed water.
      The tropical belt from the Coral Sea out to western Polynesia or thereabouts on both sides of the equator is the breeding ground.
      That’s more closely “the western Pacific.

      10

  • #
    handjive

    Life imitates art …

    “When you need that extra push over the cliff…”

    Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel explains how his band’s amplifiers go to eleven …

    SMH: Cyclone Pam: Is it time for a category-6 cyclone rating?

    30

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    handjive

    Reset the alarm clock from climate to Global Warming:

    SMH: Pacific nations to highlight Cyclone Pam in climate change talks

    Ian Fry, the chief climate-change negotiator for the tiny island nation of Tuvalu, said the establishment of a permanent fund to help countries cope with the impact of climate-related disasters and other “slow-onset events” such as rising sea levels was a key goal for negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year.

    SMH: Cyclone Pam lifts chance of El Nino this year in Australia, forecasters says

    20

  • #
    Ian H

    What alarms me is that the upcoming climate talks involve a proposal to set up an “International Court of Climate Justice” whereby nations like Vanuatu who feel aggrieved because of bad weather like this can bring a case against nations like the US or Australia who they feel are to blame.

    Shudder.

    40

    • #
      TdeF

      In an “international court of Climate Justice” no one would think of asking China and India to pay. China alone is responsible for 50% of the world’s CO2 while being a recipient of carbon credits for building hydro schemes while increasing CO2 every year more than Australia’s entire output. When did logic have anything to do with it?

      However the Pacific islands will claim that Australia and the US are the clear culprits simply because China and India and Africa and Russia will not give them a cent. China and India also have massive cyclones and weather disasters apart from being largely third world countries. So squeeze the West, the only ones rich enough and silly enough to hand over cash for climate. You cannot blame the island politicians. It is worth trying. Who cares that it is illogical, wrong and unjustified?

      30

  • #
    toorightmate

    I have been really impressed with the aid to Vanuatu from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and China.

    30

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      toorightmate,

      If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

      You may have noticed a comment by pat on the Michael Kelly Tells Royal Society Not to Hide Uncertainty of Climate Science thread about an iniciative by the UN to tackle finance question in disaster risk deal. The basic idea being to centralize disaster aid contributions into what they call a framework where they, The UN, would have some form of oversight capacity.

      The UN wants to stick it’s nose into every aspect of ppl’s affairs and by so doing stick their hands into everyone’s pockets and take a cut for themselves. They’re quickly becoming an octopus with 101 greedy tentacles.

      I’m glad you’ve pointed out how concerned parties will contribute aid without the need for UN intervention.

      If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

      Abe

      30

  • #
    • #
      David-of-Cooyal in Oz

      Thanks for that e g.
      It’s great to read a well written report giving facts available to us all.
      I wonder how that might fit with the “worst storm in the history of the Pacific” story…?
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      20

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    ROM

    After a couple of quite supposedly spectacular and highly exaggerated stunts like underwater meetings of the Indian Ocean’s Maldives government to publicise the apparent rise in Indian ocean levels due to global warming created sea level rise that were supposedly going to drown the Maldives along with their brand new mega million dollar international airport, the whole thing has backfired on the Maldives.
    Nobody believes them anymore and Indian Ocean sea level rises around the Maldives is now known to have barely changed over the many decades since sea level gauges have been established in the Maldives.

    So ended another great lie of the global warmers, a lie that was used primarily to try and extract as much money as possible from the western nations and a lie that was supposed to create an emotional reaction which the alarmists and green eco-fascists hoped to exploit to the fullest to their political and financial benefit and advantage.

    Tuvalu, the islands that were going to disappear under the ocean due to climate warming sea level rises if we had believed the catastrophe promoters.
    Tuvali is doing what it always has done.
    At a only a couple of metres elevation above sea level, very high tides coupled to storms and hurricanes as always lead to the sea washing temporarily across the lowest parts of the island chain.
    Something that has happened for centuries past and the Tuvalu islands are still there as is their growing over population.
    Another great lie to try and extract more money from the supposedly guilty western nations.

    Pacific Islands going to be submerged below the ocean due to sea level rises from global warming.

    Until a solidly researched study along with photos from the the WW2 plus from a number of photos from past decades of those same islands showed complete proof that the Island’s land areas in their lagoons in fact, had increased in many cases by a considerable amount due to the way in which the ocean had deposited sand onto various areas of the Islands .
    Further research has indeed shown that the low lying Pacific Islands adjust and adapt their elevation and area as do their living coral reefs that form their lagoons to the changes in sea levels over the vast period of time past..

    Not much has since been heard of the Maldives, Tuvalu and the Pacific Islands being submerged by rising sea levels since further research has shown just how utterly false the lies were that promoted all these disastrous claims due to the supposed global warming effects on sea levels.
    Lies and claims that were endlessly promoted by the climate alarmists and green eco-fascists along with their goading of the islanders to take advantage of those quite spurious claims, all made to fit the alarmists and hard left greens anti development, anti western agenda.

    Now we have the usual climate alarmist harp songs on the supposed increases in hurricane strengths and frequencies due to the non existent global warming, increases in hurricanes / typhoons strength and frequency for which no evidence exists at all .

    And in fact both central Australian temperature data AND South African temperature data shows NO increases in temperature over the last century since temperature measurements were initiated.
    The Southern Hemispheres temperature data profile according to the latest assessments of the data shows that the SH temperatures are FLAT for all of the period the data covers, that is close to a century’s worth.

    Ref; Euan Mearns @ Climate Etc;
    Temperature adjustments in Australia

    So the question becomes; If SH tempertures have been flat according to the BOM’s own data from it’s stations plus the South African data plus the “un-adjusted by NIWA” New Zealand data are all flat for close to a century how then can Cyclones / Typhoons be more intense due to global warming / climate change [ climate change ! what an oxymoron ] when there has been flat lining of the Southern Hemisphere temperatures right through the last century?
    So how can there be increasing cyclone strengths and intensities in the SH due to now known from the actual data to be a non existent global warming /climate change!

    Another lie like the Maldives and Tuvalu claims, all of which have been heavily promoted by an increasingly discredited climate alarmists, lies and spurious claims that has already been shot down by the actual scientific facts and data.

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    Alexander K

    Once again, the loss of life in this area can be laid at the door of ‘Lifestyle choices’ – I live in NZ, which experiences earthquakes, cyclones, etc, but our society attempts to maximise our survival chances by enforcing regulatory items such as building codes, et. If one chooses to live one’s life on an atoll and on the high tide mark of storm-tossed seas, one has to take precautionary measures, such as building to a code that takes account of cyclones and tidal surges.
    Yer pays yer money and takes yer choice. Climate change has nothing to do with the loss of life due to inadequate building design.

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    ROM

    The 35 Deadliest Tropical Cyclones in World History

    Rank Name / Areas of Largest Loss ____ Year ____________ Ocean Area ____________ Deaths
    1. Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh___ 1970 (Nov 12) __ __ Bay of Bengal_________ 300,000 – 500,000
    2. Hooghly River Cyclone, India and Bangladesh – 1737 _____ Bay of Bengal_________ 300,000
    3. Haiphong Typhoon, Vietnam ————–1881 _______ ___ _ West Pacific_________ _ 300,000
    4. Coringa, India————————-_____1839____________ Bay of Bengal___________ 300,000
    5. Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh____1584____________ Bay of Bengal___________ 200,000
    6. Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh;1876 ___________ Bay of Bengal__________ 200,000
    7. Chittagong, Bangladesh___________1897_____________ Bay of Bengal__________ 175,000
    8. Super Typhoon Nina, China________ 1975 (Aug 5) _____West Pacific_____________ 171,000
    9. Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh__________ 1991 (May 5)_____ Bay of Bengal___________ 138,866
    10. Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar_________ 2008 (May 3) _____Bay of Bengal___________ 138,366
    [ more ] _____________

    Largest cyclone ever recorded ;

    Typhoon Tip

    1979 ;

    After passing Guam, Tip rapidly intensified and reached peak winds of 305 km/h (190 mph)[nb 1] and a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 mbar (870.0 hPa; 25.69 inHg) on October 12. At its peak strength, it was also the largest tropical cyclone on record with a wind diameter of 2,220 km (1,380 mi).

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      tom0mason

      And this is the ‘normal’, ‘stable’ type climate that the warmists wish us to return to?

      What were the CO2 levels of 1839, or 1881, or even 1584?

      A few hundred thousand dead per storm, hummm,…
      The dream of misanthropic, eugenicists, Malthusians elitist.

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    ROM

    Instead of bleating for ever more aid and compensation from those terrible climate polluting developed western countries which their Greenpeace activists advisers [ Ian Fry, climate negotiator on then behalf of Tuvalu is a Greenpeace operative ] to the Pacific island nations and their climate alarmist advocates blame for those non increasing and non intensifying Pacific cyclones should be concentrating their energies and resources on developing a series of cyclone shelters such as the hundreds of heavily reinforced concrete shelters that have been developed and built by the Bangladesh government on the immense low lying delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.
    The immensely fertile delta which makes up most of Bangladesh being at the head of the Bay of Bengal is subject to devastating cyclones which through the centuries have taken an enormous toll of lives.

    Bangladesh has around 159 million population, has a population density of 1100 people per square kilometer [ Australia has 2.87 people / sq kilometre ] and all this in an area of 144,000 sq kms, a bit over half the area of Victoria and about twice the area of Tasmania.

    Things began to change after 1970’s devastating Bhola cyclone and the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone and the Bangladesh government set about building hundreds of very heavily reinforced raised [ cyclone flooding ] concrete cyclone shelter refuges right through out the near Ocean delta regions.
    The shelters are used as district centers of government when not threatened with cyclones.
    They have been life savers on an immense scale.

    For photos of a few of these shelters ;

    Windbreakers: Bangladesh Cyclone Shelter Architecture

    If the Pacific Island nations were really genuine in their beliefs that they are going to suffer from more and higher intensity cyclones and typhoons they would do well to start to invest in some Cyclone shelters similar to the Bangladeshi shelter.

    Or build heavily protected cyclone resistant reinforced cement core shelters within their houses and buildings such as is now mandatory in Darwin and the Top End following the devastation of Cyclone Tracy.

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    […] fel när de påstår att världen drabbas av fler och intensivare stormar och cykloner. JoNova har en bra sammanfattning (se även länkar till den vetenskapliga litteraturen) av det […]

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    DaveR

    Jo, the cyclone frequency and intensity graphs to me look like both the frequency and intensity are declining as atmospheric CO2 increases. But I am a scientist. To the poor mug reader (and the corrupt green journalist) we need an appropriate moving average which delivers a line trend, and a number for each year. This would make the data clear for all to see.

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    • #

      correct and easy to do if the annual data is in a spreadsheet. eyeballing is a terrible method (especially with my eyes), but I’d agree that several categories trend down with maybe the major category trending up. Note that even if there is a trend either way – i’d bet that none are significant. There is so little data.

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      sophocles

      CO2 is the wrong variable. CO2 concentration is dependent on temperature. Storms are heat engines, deriving their energy from the latent heat of the atmospheric moisture. Frequency and strength should therefore be plotted against Temp. not CO2 concentration.

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        sophocles

        Storm strength should be proportional to the temperature gradient. The steeper the gradient, the more energy which can be extracted.
        ie, greater delta T over the same height of atmospheric column, the more latent heat the storm can use, so the stronger it is.
        Cold weather is rougher than than warm weather.

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    Don Gaddes

    Why haven’t the obvious correlations been made by the BoM (and others), with the source of the four recent cyclones over a volcanically active Indonesia? Australia (and the rest of the planet) is currently under the influence of a Solar induced Orbital ‘Dry Cycle.’

    Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather Alex S. Gaddes (1990) p72
    “Quite apart from the cooling effect that the stratospheric dust from volcanoes has on the world’s climate, there is another effect which interests me, as a student of the climate/weather as it affects our region.
    “Well, the form that the stratospheric reaction takes is to set up a series of cyclones and anti-cyclones to absorb the extra energy.

    “To wit, the sudden and violent thrusting of the extra energy into the well-ordered circulatory system of the stratosphere sets up an equally violent reaction (Newton’s Third Law – for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction.)
    “It is also known (see Ref. No 14a) that the stratosphere superimposes the above reactions on the troposphere (the ‘trickle down’ effect,) so that those volcano-induced stratospheric vortices turn into Tropospheric deep low pressure systems which I suspect to be the genesis of the rather frequent, rain-bearing cloud masses, which have been feeding in from the north-west over the past year.

    No Accident

    “I’m of the opinion that it will be shown to be not just an accident, that the weatherman’s ‘upper atmospheric disturbance’ happens to be associated with a rain-bearing depression, or ‘deep low pressure system’ and that frequently, the cause might well turn out to be an exploding volcano.”

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      tom0mason

      A very interesting idea. 🙂
      It again get to ‘everywhere the wind blows’ ideas that other also have.

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      sophocles

      Perhaps the Solar Wind exerts physical pressure on the upper atmosphere. The last two weeks have seen some interesting space weather.
      See my comment at #45

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    Leonard

    I do not know where to post this, but, time to watch the BOM radars again. At 6pm today Thursday 19th, at the Bougainville Reef radar site, very close to the eye of the cyclone, the wind speed is 84kmh. Doesn’t look like a category 4 cyclone to me, and certainly no where near Cat 5 cyclone as forecast. Also time for someone (I don’t know how) to record wind speeds before BOM loses the records as they did with the earlier cyclone
    Leonard

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    4TimesAYear

    Good grief…have to respond to this claim with the question “what caused cyclones before?” *SMH* People who blame every storm on climate change don’t think at all.

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    sophocles

    Space Weather: does it affect Earth’s weather? Piers Corbyn thinks so and has made a good living from providing long range weather forecasts for his clients. He achieves, on a relative shoe-string, forecasts which outperform the utterings, prognostications and entrail readings of the UK Met Office with its new multi-million pound budget UK and its new 100,000,000 Pound Sterling Super Duper faster computer. At least the Met Office can be satisfied they can be wrong even faster than they were. Corbyn’s forecasts have been determined by others to be `better than chance.’

    Corbyn posted a Red Alert on the 5th of March after an active sunspot group emitted some energetic flares, which is his way of warning about potentially adverse weather. Pam formed the next day on the 6th. On the 9th there was a huge X-class flare from this crackling spot group and Pam ratcheted up to Cat 5, and we all know what heppened down here.

    There was a huge CME on the the 17th which made for spectacular Auraorae, both Borealis and Australis. (Murphy’s Law said my part of Auckland would rate 10/10ths cloud. Curses! All 13 of them! Other parts were luckier and a friend said the sky to the South looked `interesting.’ Maybe there was a bit of colour to be seen but he wouldn’t say. Pam had expired by this time and disappeared into the Southern Ocean.

    SC 24 is past peak–just barely—and showing signs of beginning to decay. Unlike Dr Svalgaard, I am not a solar expert, but my past observations suggest to me that this part of a solar cycle can and does become quite noisy with lots of hissing and spitting, with flares more flares and CMEs than the ramp up and peak of a cycle. This spell of space weather is not yet over as there are a couple of coronal holes keeping our ionosphere jizzed up with more auroral activity than otherwise.

    Pam was not have been triggered by Global Warming and had nothing to do with CO2, but perhaps there was an effect from the solar events. Space Weather creating Terrestrial Weather doesn’t seem all that far fetched. I think the timings are interesting and, if not coincidence (I have no proof otherwise), in light of Corbyn’s forecasting successes, and his timely Red Alert, perhaps it would be worthy of maintaining a watch on the space weather to see if what happens on the Sun might have a knock on effect locally (planetary-wise).

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      Just-A-Guy

      sophocles,

      Solar flares eject ionized particle in our direction. Ionized particles increase condensation in the atmosphere producing more clouds. More clouds, bigger storms. Piers Corbyn ain’t no fool.

      Abe

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    sophocles

    Curses, oaths and extreme expletives. I hate spelling errors and poor editing, particularly and especially when I make them.
    Sorry.
    Auroras or Aurorae (Oxford Dict); not what is above.
    I won’t mention the poor editing of the last paragraph …

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    hunter

    It is not simply that the climate hypesters are playing politics over these things.
    It is that the climate obsessed are playing politics and using untruths to do it.

    00