Are hurricanes more damaging, or is there just more to damage?

[Nords]

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Originally Posted by Rich_in_Tampa How far from the ocean do you live? *Just curious.

About eight miles and, more importantly, about 465 feet of elevation. *

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Originally Posted by Rich_in_Tampa Seen this? Hope you're not irresponsibly placed.

We have friends who work at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. *They said the most heartbreaking thing was watching the IO tsunami propagate while they were calling embassy after embassy and getting dead lines, busy signals, answering machines, or people who just didn't believe what they were being told. *Back then there was just no way to talk to their counterparts or direclty to the local governments. *It would've been a moot point anyway without some sort of civil-defense warning system.

The PTWC itself is near Ewa Beach and would be one of the first buildings to be wiped slick. *(They claim they'll have enough warning to get out.) *NOAA has about 13 different branches in Hawaii spread out among a number of buildings and is in the process of consolidating them to the most affordable military facility on Oahu-- Ford Island. *By a strange quirk of bureaucracy the PTWC staff managed to wangle themselves a third-floor watch center. *Either that or they know something that the other branches haven't thought of.

Hawaii's phone books show tsunami evacuation maps that ironically haven't been updated in over a dozen years, even after the lessons learned from the IO tsunami. *They're still wrangling over the money to fund the study to start the process, and they'll probably get it going just as soon as they rebuild the New Orleans levees for a Cat 5 hurricane. *Any day now.

I don't worry about the tsunami as much as the hurricane. *We're on a ridge overlooking a gulch (lots of running head-start room for the wind-blown debris) and we're about a mile from the nearest hurricane shelter. *Spouse has volunteered for shelter staff so if she's not watching the weather charts then we'll still get a Red Cross call with 3-4 days' warning.

Actually we just finished updating our hurricane checklist. *It's been almost 14 years since Iniki (Hawaii's other 9/11) so we have about as much chance of escaping unscathed this year as Bill Miller does of beating the S&P500 yet again.

[eridanus]

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Originally Posted by Alex Copernicus or 90% of the worlds scientists circa 1500?? hmmm...

You're comparing Copernicus to a fiction writer of adventure novels? He is extremely tall and wealthy though.

If you really care, and aren't just being obstinate, you can start with research by Mann. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/.../research.html

[cute fuzzy bunny]

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Originally Posted by Rich_in_Tampa Nords, How far from the ocean do you live? Just curious. Seen this? Hope you're not irresponsibly placed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon..._tsunami.shtml

Hope the wave stops before it makes it to Tampa

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

While I wouldn't automatically consider everything near the beach to be irresponsible (I'm about a mile or two from the bay) I do think some of those California hillside mansions on stilts which slide into the ocean every year or two to be a bit dicey. Then there was old Harry Truman who refused to leave the lava flows of Mt. St. Helens.

Few regions are without their own brand of natural vulnerability and I doubt we could muster the resources needed for the "big ones" at anything less than a national level. Unless, of course, Brownie was in charge.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

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Originally Posted by Cute n Fuzzy Bunnay http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon..._tsunami.shtml Hope the wave stops before it makes it to Tampa

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What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean.

oh good. something else for them to raise my insurance rates over.

curious why it wouldn't hit the caribbean before boston. looks to me like it is same longitude as daytona. also looks like the bahamas would break the wave before it would hit florida.

[Alex]

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Originally Posted by eridanus You're comparing Copernicus to a fiction writer of adventure novels? He is extremely tall and wealthy though. If you really care, and aren't just being obstinate, you can start with research by Mann. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/.../research.html

sorry eridanus there simply is no conscensus regarding the causes of global Climate change. Notice I said "Climate change' thats so the enviro-wackos can still blame those pesky humans when the current warming trend reverts to cooling.

[eridanus]

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Originally Posted by Alex sorry eridanus there simply is no conscensus regarding the causes of global Climate change. Notice I said "Climate change' thats so the enviro-wackos can still blame those pesky humans when the current warming trend reverts to cooling.

I beg to differ.

N. Oreskes, "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," 3 Dec 2004, p. 1686

"In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities...."


NRC? Agrees with the IPCC.
The G8 national academies of science agree with the IPCC.
The American Meteorological Society agrees with the IPCC.
Federal Climate Change Science Program (commissioned by the Bush White House) agrees with the IPCC.
AGU.org? Agrees.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Dec25.html

"Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it."

[Telly]

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Originally Posted by eridanus "Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it."

Talk seriously? Hasn't happened yet. Never will.
Why? Because the root cause is global population increase. So what if 300 million Americans and another, what, 300 million Europeans significantly reduce their carbon emissions? It's a drop in the bucket for the ever-growing 5 Billion plus 'developing" nations people.* What will be the world pop in 10 years? 20 Years? etc. etc.

The only real solution is to reset the world population back to year 1600-1700 levels. And who is going to sign up for that? Yeah, I know some of the enviro people will shoulder their way to the front, ahead of everybody else, and say that they need to be among the chosen few because of their views and "expertise" will keep the reset world on track.* And so indeed, they are chosen, and waived on through. And at the first station, they are unexpectedly spayed and neutered. Can't become part of the problem! that would never do...

Hey, I think there could be a Sci-Fi environmentally-correct movie plot here, and I'm giving it all away!*

*population growing fast * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *more people than McDonald's Burgers!* *Do you want Carbon or Hydrogen with that?

[justin]

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Originally Posted by lazygood4nothinbum interesting, i'm not sure. i would have to re-read my insurance policy. for now i do not believe coverage goes beyond the foundation and i'm not even sure the foundation is included. i was discussing this once with my brother who mentioned that i'd have to rebuild on my existing foundation. so i think if the foundation goes yer screwed. you might wanna check that yourself before a sink hole increases the size of your lake but decreases your property holdings. and i'd make regular checks to be sure those pipes run clear. sure sounds like you have a nice piece of property though. enjoy.

I guess I have what I have in terms of insurance coverage. Hopefully I won't need to use it (supposedly the new pipes and culverts recently installed has changed the flood plain and I'm no longer in the 100 year flood plain - FEMA just hasn't updated the map yet).

These culverts are sweet! 2 of em each ~6 ft x 10 ft, made of reinforced concrete right underneath my super heavy duty industrial strength wwf reinforced 8" thick high strength concrete driveway.

A couple weeks back during the Alberto storm, those culverts were shooting out jets of water and eroded the lake shore by 5 vertical feet in one place. Pretty powerful stuff. Old islands are gone, new islands were formed.

[HFWR]

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sorry eridanus there simply is no conscensus regarding the causes of global Climate change.

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"In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities...."

Well, I'm glad we got that straightened out... :

[lazygood4nothinbum]

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Originally Posted by Telly Talk seriously? Hasn't happened yet. Never will. Why? Because the root cause is global population increase.

i mostly agree the problem is population growth. but, even more, i think the problem has been greed. the problem is combustion engines burning fossil fuels. if you didn't have that, you could support the so-called over-population. well, until the cow farts got us. ok, but you could support that population of vegetarians.

the scarey thing is not the vegetarians, not the flatulence, not the overpopulation, not even the greed. the scarey thing is that we might be too late. that even if we got control of the greed and the growth, the melting would continue because there is not enough ice left to reflect the sun. the gulf stream might shut down and so future generations might see some pretty nasty winters.

but all hope is not lost. maybe after another 500 million years, the earth will reset itself.

after the nuclear war, after everyone was dead, after even the cockroaches could no longer survive, deep within a crevice, far below the surface, a cluster of algae grew. and one algae said to the other, "this time, no brains."

[Alex]

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Originally Posted by eridanus You're comparing Copernicus to a fiction writer of adventure novels? He is extremely tall and wealthy though. If you really care, and aren't just being obstinate, you can start with research by Mann. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/.../research.html

Actually no. I am comparing todays scientists to the scientists during Copernicus' time. There was a consensus then too and guess what, they were dead wrong. They are dead wrong today.

[HFWR]

I'm willing to check your sources; got any...

[Alex]

The whole global warming issue is no more than a tool being put to use by a group with an anti-capitalist agenda. I have no doubt that the earth is going to warm up. It has been going through warm and cool cycles since its begining. The fact is that the warm cycles outweigh the cool ones by a long shot. Ice at the poles (or anywhere on the earth) for that matter is the anomoly, not the norm. All of the climate data put out by the global warming crowd only goes back about half a million years , any further back and you get into an age where there was no ice at either pole. You'll never hear about that though because it would blow their whole agenda and theory to smitherenes.

And there isn't even the smallest shred of evidence to suggest that the earth is warming any faster in this cycle than it has during any other warming cycle. The fact is that this cool cycle has lasted far longer than the norm and a better argument could be made that we are keeping the earth unnaturally cool.

here is some very credible sources , there are literally thousands more if do the google -http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...familyfilter=1
http://www.friendsofscience.org/inde...familyfilter=1

If we don't act now, it is going to be too late." Where have I heard that before? Oh, I remember. From environmentalists...ad nauseum. Here are a few of my personal favorites from the wacko moonbat enviro-nazi's:

" In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."
—Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

"There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it."
—Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

”This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.” —Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling”, 1976

”The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.”
—Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”,(1971)

"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer."
—Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968)


"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
—Paul Ehrlich in (1969)


"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity…in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion."
—Paul Ehrlich in (1976)


"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. … This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
—Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

How many times can these guys fool you before you wake up? Hell, they can't even accurately predict whether or not it is going to rain on your yard tomorrow afternoon, why in the world would you believe that they can predict entire global cycles? The fact is that there is a political agenda at work and it is sad that so many have gotten so close to the issue that they can no longer see it clearly. The entire global warming issue is about political power.

What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.
—Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

" Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…. Capitalism is destroying the earth.
—Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.
—David Foreman, Earth First!

"If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.
—Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth–Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22

"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
—Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

And there is a more sinister aspect to this issue that is always present right under the surface.

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."
—Pentti Linkola

"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world."
—John Shuttleworth

"I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems."
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS"
—Earth First! Newsletter

"Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets…Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

"If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels."
—Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

"We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels."
—Carl Amery

"To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."
—Lamont Cole

"The sky is falling the sky is falling"
- Al Gore 2006

[Zipper]

As a Canadian, I really like your head in the sand approach Alex.

We are going to benefit at your expense.

[HFWR]

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwa...rtainties.html

Figuring out to what extent the human-induced accumulation of greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times is responsible for the global warming trend is not easy. This is because other factors, both natural and human, affect our planet's temperature. Scientific understanding of these other factors – most notably natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, and the cooling effects of pollutant aerosols – remains incomplete.

Nevertheless, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated there was a "discernible" human influence on climate; and that the observed warming trend is "unlikely to be entirely natural in origin." In the most recent Third Assessment Report (2001), IPCC wrote "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

[HFWR]

http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-HIGH.pdf

The fact is that Earth’s climate is always changing. A key question is how much of the observed warming is due to human activities and how much is due to natural variability in the climate. In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see Figure 1). Greenhouse gases have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation. Greenhouse gases are at their highest levels in at least 400,000 years and continue to rise.

[HFWR]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

Global surface temperatures have increased about 0.6°C (plus or minus 0.2°C) since the late-19th century, and about 0.4°F (0.2 to 0.3°C) over the past 25 years (the period with the most credible data). The warming has not been globally uniform. Some areas (including parts of the southeastern U.S.) have, in fact, cooled over the last century. The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia between 40 and 70°N. Warming, assisted by the record El Niño of 1997-1998, has continued right up to the present, with 2001 being the second warmest year on record after 1998.

[Alex]

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Originally Posted by Zipper As a Canadian, I really like your head in the sand approach Alex. We are going to benefit at your expense.

Again, greens have been warning us of imminent disaster of one sort or another for decades. None of it has even come close to coming to pass.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

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Originally Posted by lazygood4nothinbum the gulf stream might shut down and so future generations might see some pretty nasty winters.

It appears the gulf stream may have changed direction several times throughout history.

The result would be a 5-10 degree drop year-round in the northeastern US and europe. Pretty chilly.
http://www.wunderground.com/education/abruptclimate.asp

Its hard to say whether we're getting into trouble or not, but its probably a good idea to be alarmed and wrong than ignore it, as long as nobody does anything patently stupid. It appears to me that cutting back on pollution just makes good sense for everyone. As long as we arent nutjobs about it and try to force massive very short term changes at a cost of trillions of dollars.