HanKFranK
(User)
Fri Nov 18 2005 03:54 PM
hurricane politics

for those of you who have been keeping up with the global warming/hurricane news reports in recent months. lysis brought this to my attention.... it seems that dr. gray has taken up the banner of the opposition, though i've known for some time that he didn't subscribe to a lot of what gets floated out of the global change community.
http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=246768
to be honest i've been waiting for somebody to get up and put daylight on this stuff for a long time.
HF 1554z18november


Lysis
(User)
Fri Nov 18 2005 04:22 PM
Re: hurricane politics

... and he alludes that he is in the process of writing a direct rebuttal to the now infamous Emanuel text as well. Good, poignant stuff.

I was particularly struck by Dr. Gray's observation that most meteorologist have remained quite on the issue, lest they get branded a right wing bigot, lose respect and credibility. It is unfortunate that it has come to that… and equally unfortunate that Hank’s thread title bears the gravitas it does.


Then again, I think of the hurricane politics like in the day of Isaac Cline. Now that was bad.


HanKFranK
(User)
Sun Nov 20 2005 04:01 AM
Re: hurricane politics

the hurricane research by emanuel and that uga group may be in gray's specialty, but it isn't just he who is taking their findings with a grain of salt. more risky and serious are his comments directed at the entire global warming research community. to my knowledge nobody in the scientific community has stepped up and done this yet.
personally i think the world is getting warmer, and that the CO2 we're putting into the air is making some of it happen.. but to make a gross analogy our contribution may be no more than a surfer pissing on big wave. the effects land use change have contributed over the long run are likely underdone in the modeling, and more important are the poorly-understood heat and salinity mechanisms in the oceans, as well as the responses of carbon sink biota to higher CO2. geologic carbon sinks aren't even that well understood.
i liked the comment to the effect of 'the conclusions are made before the analyses are done', because with a lot of the research i've seen it sure appears that way. to be honest, though, i don't think that gray will be able to have much of an effect on the research community or the pols holding the pursestrings... there's too much already built around the hypothesis that human induced global warming is a real threat and too many true-believers in high places to run counter to such ideas. i hope he at least gets some scrutiny drawn to the issue.


Clark
(Meteorologist)
Sun Nov 20 2005 07:01 AM
Re: hurricane politics

Gray (and others in his camp) will have the greatest impact within the tropical cyclone community, where their influence is greatest and they already have the most support. On a larger level, however, it's in the media and the minds of people from the layperson on up to the President too much to see anything change unless there is an end-all study to prove it all wrong. With that likely not coming soon due to lack of funding and time, we're likely in for more of the same.


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