You forgot to note that I’d given him a perfectly formed html link in my first post above. (But as I expect no better from him – it seemed hardly worth mentioning.)

I prefer to avoid HTML links because the spam filter here doesn’t like them. I’ve had a couple of posts full of links to evidence vanish into the aether because of that. And anyway, I’ve no intention of doing his work for him.

I stopped the argument when I did because I thought his final post made my argument and case far better than I could. No significant new content. An obvious failure to answer the question. An obvious inability to stop appealing to authority, despite my having just made a big point of it. The continued deluded belief that science and scientists are in unanimous agreement with him, despite having just pointed out, and provided examples to show, that they’re not. It’s so weak, to any impartial observer the fight is clearly over.

As far as I was concerned, the slimy condescension seen in such close combination with the blatantly false assumption of his final point was the sweet glistening cherry perched atop a most amusing cake. What more was there to add?

This is textbook mental:

5. learn how to make HTML links. It’s really very easy.

From the asshole above who fucked up the link above.

4. have the wit to improve your understanding.

Good God, man. Get a fucking grip. Plus, you got 4 & 5 mixed up, which is an amateur rhetorical mistake, and evidence of your scientific stupidity.

You toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert.

1. read the journal paper, not the press release. You’ll find that the former is scientifically rather more accurate than the latter.

2. learn the difference between model simulations using estimated actual forcings, and model simulations using hypothetical forcings. The IPCC figure you quote doesn’t show what you seem to think it shows, and anyway I can’t even make sense of An advocate for you solar hypothesis are you now?

3. read up on how tropical cyclones form. The Emanuel paper from 1987 that I pointed you to describes the basic model, but if you want something even simpler, Wikipedia’s OK. The temperature profile of the atmosphere is only one factor.

4. have the wit to improve your understanding. If all the papers on hurricanes say that theoretically, global warming should lead to more intense hurricanes, then anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence would stop bizarrely claiming the opposite.

5. learn how to make HTML links. It’s really very easy.

“Increasing solar activity would have the same effect. What made you think otherwise?”

IPCC AR4WG1 Figure 9.1 a).
An advocate for you solar hypothesis are you now?

“For a nice simple exposition [...] read this paper.”

And once again, you confuse actually holding a scientific discussion with citing papers and quoting authorities. Which step in the logic do you dispute? What’s the evidence against it?

You’re like a parrot, reciting without comprehension.

Fine. I reply with Wang, B. and Zhou, X. 2008. Climate variation and prediction of rapid intensification in tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 99: 1-16.

The two researchers report that “over the past 40 years, the annual total of RI in the western North Pacific shows pronounced interdecadal variation but no significant trend,” noting that this fact “implies that the super typhoons had likely no upward trend in the last 40 years.” In addition, they found that “when the mean latitude, where the tropical storms form, shifted southward (either seasonally or from year to year), the proportion of super typhoon or major hurricane will increase,” noting that “this finding contrasts the current notion that higher sea surface temperature leads to more frequent occurrence of category 4 or 5 hurricanes (Emanuel, 2005; Webster et al., 2005).”

So, someone has claimed that it has no observable relationship with SST and is more likely a consequence of climate oscillations shifting weather systems around, and they’ve got away with publishing it in a peer reviewed journal!

Being published science, it is irrefutable and infallible. Right?

Faster warming in the upper troposphere than in the lower troposphere is not a response unique to greenhouse gas forcing. Increasing solar activity would have the same effect. What made you think otherwise?

For a nice simple exposition of why your understanding of the effect of global warming on hurricane intensity is deficient, read this paper.

Time and time again, you demonstrate either an unwillingness or simply an inability to grasp basic scientific concepts. If you can’t get the basics right, why would you think you can form any kind of judgement on the scientific issues here?

And as I said before, you speak only for yourself. Drop the ‘we’. It makes you look either seriously affected or just a bit mental.

Tribal? What are you talking about now? Who said anything about tribes?

“And what pathetic nonsense you spout.”

Funny!

“What touching faith you have in the mysterious forces which keep everyone in climate science reading from the same page in the book.”

What mysterious force? First tribes, now mysterious forces. What on Earth are you talking about?

Everyone in climate science doesn’t read from the same page in the book – that’s the mythical “consensus” that the politicians have invented. Quite a lot of them disagree.

“You really are quite paranoid, aren’t you?”

No. Whatever gave you that idea?

“Slip of the keyboard, was it? Emanuel (2008) actually specifically supports the connection between global warming and hurricanes that I described.”

It depends which Emanuel 2008 quote you’re talking about. The one I’m talking about is “The last 25 years’ increase may have little to do with global warming, or the models may have missed something about how nature responds to the increase in carbon dioxide.” How can he last 25 years’ increase have little to do with global warming if the models show a clear link? How is a link which sometimes has the wrong sign “clear”?

Incidentally, you haven’t commented on the quote. Do you accept it as true, or do you think Emanuel is wrong about his conclusion? Which of the alternatives he proposes do you think is more likely?

“How you can think you understand the science when you said standard peer-reviewed AGW climatologist theory says that general warming ought to lead to a reduction in hurricane intensity, I have no idea.”

I already explained that. Try paying more attention. That hurricanes are heat engines between the hot sea surface and cold air is standard meteorology. That the work done by heat engines depends on the temperature difference is standard thermodynamics. That the upper tropical troposphere will warm faster than the surface due to lapse rate water vapour feedback is so standard a prediction of AGW theory that it has been proposed as a fingerprint signature of the effect. The cold heat reservoir warming faster than the hot reservoir reduces the temperature difference, reducing the work done. Thus, it is a consequence of AGW theory that tropical cyclones should decrease in energy dissipated as a consequence of anthropogenic warming.

Precisely which step do you dispute?

“I’ve told you before you’re not competent to hold an opinion on the science, so woeful are your misunderstandings.”

Yes, I know. I found it very funny last time, too! And as I told you last time, you’re not competent to judge.

According to your standards, virtually nobody should be competent to hold an opinion on the science, which means that nearly everybody should be agnostic about it. After all, if one is not competent to have an opinion doubting it, one is not competent to have an opinion believing in it either. Do you regard Al Gore or Ted Turner as competent to have an opinion? Or politicians busily proposing green taxes? Or William Gray and Richard Lindzen?

How exactly do you judge ‘competence’, other than the obvious criterion of whether they happen to agree with you?

“I see nothing that makes me reconsider that view.”

That’s the problem. There is nothing that could get you to reconsider any of your views. Your beliefs are non-falsifiable.

If we know from the start that you’ll never accept that there might be any flaw in the climate consensus, your arguments in its favour become empty of information. Consensus position true => you speak in favour and Consensus position false => you speak in favour means that you speaking in favour conveys zero information about whether the consensus is true or not. Logically, we can dismiss your arguments without even reading them, because of your dogmatic approach. They’re only worth answering for the laughs.

1. Does that mean there were NO hurricanes in the 1960′s? Or for that matter during the LIA time frame? – how on earth would that possibly follow?

2. How did Hurricane Camille be so darn powerful in 1969.When it reached 200 mph.All the while it was in the cooling 1960′s? – if you really think about it, your question might just illustrate to you the difference between ‘climate’ and ‘weather’.

3. How come the last 2 years were below average in number of hurricanes and that even the intensity were down.All the while according to Jimmy “censored” Hansen years 2005 and 2007 were really hot hot hot years even more so than 1998. – did you really not get that numbers are not correlated with sea surface temperatures? Do you really think there is an exact proportional relationship between temperature and hurricane strength? Do you understand the difference between the global average temperature and the sea surface temperature in the tropics?

4. Surely hotter years should translate to bigger and more powerful hurricanes.Sadly they do not. – your ignorance is spectacular. Read Emanuel (2005). When the seas are hotter, the power dissipated in hurricanes increases. Try not to fall into the idiot’s trap of thinking you can say anything about climate based on one year of data.

“Slip of the keyboard, was it? Emanuel (2008) actually specifically supports the connection between global warming and hurricanes that I described. So the ‘slip’ made it appear that you had completely misunderstood what I was saying, but in fact you had completely misunderstood what Emanuel was saying. Fine.”

Does that mean there were NO hurricanes in the 1960′s? Or for that matter during the LIA time frame?

How did Hurricane Camille be so darn powerful in 1969.When it reached 200 mph.All the while it was in the cooling 1960′s?

How come the last 2 years were below average in number of hurricanes and that even the intensity were down.All the while according to Jimmy “censored” Hansen years 2005 and 2007 were really hot hot hot years even more so than 1998.

Surely hotter years should translate to bigger and more powerful hurricanes.Sadly they do not.That alone should make YOU wonder.

And what pathetic nonsense you spout. What touching faith you have in the mysterious forces which keep everyone in climate science reading from the same page in the book. You really are quite paranoid, aren’t you?

Slip of the keyboard, was it? Emanuel (2008) actually specifically supports the connection between global warming and hurricanes that I described. So the ‘slip’ made it appear that you had completely misunderstood what I was saying, but in fact you had completely misunderstood what Emanuel was saying. Fine.

How you can think you understand the science when you said standard peer-reviewed AGW climatologist theory says that general warming ought to lead to a reduction in hurricane intensity, I have no idea. I’ve told you before you’re not competent to hold an opinion on the science, so woeful are your misunderstandings. I see nothing that makes me reconsider that view.

Of course I understand the physics. You demonstrated that you don’t by ignoring the physical argument in favour of mere quotes and references.

Emanuel is of course committed to the AGW line and isn’t going to say anything against the ‘consensus’ that might get him into trouble, (and probably wouldn’t get published if he did,) but when he finds that even the sign of the supposed relationship changes depending on where he is, the relationship is clearly not working as originally supposed. “The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us.” That seems clear enough.

I should have said “more intense hurricanes”, agreed. (A simple slip of the keyboard, akin to the way you confused tornadoes and cyclones.) But if the sign of the relationship is sometimes negative, the connection claimed is thereby falsified.