Calling Al Gore: What About Cats 1 Through 5?

Hey dude, what happened to June, July, August and now much of September?  No hurricanes.

Yet Prince Al Gore promotes raising the scale for hurricane intensity -- global warming demands the boost he claims.

If you look at superstorm Sandy on October 29th, the ocean water east of New Jersey was nine degrees Fahrenheit above average. That’s what put so much more energy into that storm. That’s what put so much more water vapor into that storm. Would there be a storm anyway? Maybe so. Would there be hurricanes and floods and droughts without man-made global warming? Of course. But they’re stronger now. The extreme events are more extreme. The hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6. The fingerprint of man-made global warming is all over these storms and extreme weather events.

Cold Labrador current from north and warm
Gulf Stream current from south traverse
Atlantic seaboard.

Now I've spent some time on the beaches and in the ocean off the Jersey shore. I can attest from personal experience wading, swimming,and boating there that dramatic changes in sea temperature occur just off shore from week to week and sometimes day to day, throughout the summer and into the fall, depending on shifting currents. Jersey is generally along a section of coastline in a transition zone where warm Gulf Stream waters flow from the south and cold waters work their way down from New England (the Labrador current). Currents are constantly shifting. And there is stratification -- what is on top versus what is on the bottom. As a factual matter, associating these sudden, unpredictable and marginal (relative to the size of a hurricane born thousands of miles away) current shifts with human caused climate change and tropical storm strength is an absurdity almost beyond comprehension. 

An actual scientific read on the shifting currents goes like this,

The well-sampled ocean off the coast of New Jersey provides a data-rich environment in which to study ocean current variability over the inner shelf. Using a year-long HF radar data set, complemented with in situ and meteorological observations, the annual- and seasonal-scale variabilities are examined. The hydrographic variability of the inner shelf off New Jersey is largely bimodal between summer stratification and winter mixing.An annual oceanographic and atmospheric data set was separated into these two regimes. The influence of stratification is evident through a relatively steady current response strongly correlated with the wind during the stratified season and a more variable responses correlated with the wind during the mixed season. When the water column is mixed, the influence of the local topography on the surface current variability is dependent on the slope, with a tendency for the variability to be more aligned with steeper topography.

Let me translate -- Jersey shore current and ocean temperature variations within season and the timing of seasonal shifts depends on the wind. That's right Al, which way the wind blows. You are a politician, you know how to do it -- lick and put up your finger. See how it blows. Now that's not too complicated, is it?

The Goracle sermonizes.

Al's bellicose claim "they'll be adding a 6" is simply not true, there is no such decision. So Al came out with a clarification, correction or revision, whatever you want to call it, he now says"…some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5."

But Al, really, let's not worry about 6. I know you ignored the snowstorms last spring, but haven't you noticed, we aren't even using categories 1 - 5!!!!

Reliable hurricane records go back to the 1960s when weather satellites were first deployed. Over those 50 years the latest formation date for the first Atlantic basin hurricane was September 11, 2002. NBC owned, The Weather Channel, has invested enormous energy and expense building its programming plan this hurricane season around climate change myths. They are hoping, indeed praying, that Tropical Storm Humberto, harmlessly whorling in the mid Atlantic, will grow into a minimal Cat 1 hurricane sometime in the hours before 8:00 am on 9/11, so a new latest record will be averted. To this point no hurricanes, no numbered categories at all. Al, why should we be scared of that?

We would remind Prince Al, there is something less than 1s though 5s, they are called tropical depressions and tropical storms.  We've been having some of those -- what we are experiencing is not more intense than normal but something that is dramatically less, totally contrary to Gore's speculative, counter factual and unsupported category 6 theorem. So how about changing the scale by adding some negatives -- let's say categories minus 1, minus 2 and minus 3. Heck, I would be happy with a big category zero, which just about encompasses the value of Al Gore's specious claims.

Note: 9/12/2013. While still barely off the coast of Africa, Humberto was declared a hurricane with only 3 hours to spare,

Humberto’s maximum sustained winds increased to 85 miles (137 kilometers) per hour from 80 mph earlier. It was declared a hurricane at 5 a.m., missing the record for the tardiest big storm since satellites began watching the Atlantic in 1967. The mark for the latest that such a powerful storm has formed is held by 2002’s Gustav, born at 8 a.m. on Sept. 11, said Dennis Feltgen, a National Hurricane Center spokesman.

After a short run as a Cat 1, Humberto is expected to dissipate into a Tropical Storm by early tomorrow morning, and lose Tropical Storm strength altogether over the weekend, having impacted a few fish and a couple of buoys.