OT: Climate change in the New Yorker

Except his one of his first examples appears to be incorrect, Micheal was not the strongest hurricane to hit Florida according to your favourite source Wikipedia:

------------(quote)--------------- The strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall on the state was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which crossed the Florida Keys with a pressure of 892 mbar (hPa; 26.35 inHg); it is also the strongest hurricane on record to strike the United States. Out of the ten most intense landfalling United States hurricanes, four struck Florida at peak strength.

---------(end quote)-------------

I always suspect that other examples are questionable when the lead one is, so I didn't bother to read past that. Perhaps this is a personal bias, but I prefer journalism that isn't trying to make a point, rather it is showing what is happening and allows people to draw their own conclusions.

Otherwise it is simply propaganda for the cause.

On climate and environment (hell, on anything other than knowing how to suck up to Putin) I consider President Trump to be incompetent. Just in case you might think I follow that party line.

Humans are affecting the environment. So are termites, whales, seals, trees, meadows, and polar bears. No argument.

However I am more concerned about pollution and chemical use - than I am about carbon emissions - as those have a proven primary effect and the hidden side effects that can take years to recognize.

John

Awareness of both have enemies in common.

Rick C.

Tesla referral code -

This nice lady begs to differ about the thermal runaway.

My chemicals, plastic rubbish and other shit ends up in the whales, seals and polar bears back yard.

I've yet to find a polar bear, whale or seal turd in my back yard. Perhaps I just don't live close enough to the ocean.

That's based on Wikipedia's definition of strongest, which depends on the a ir-pressure in the eye of the hurricane - "Intensity is measured solely by central pressure".

The Saffir?Simpson scale is based solely on wind-speed.

There is a proposed Hurricane Hazard Index, which is based on surface wind speeds, the radius of maximum winds of the storm, and its translational ve locity.

Bill McKibben may be basing his idea of "strongest" on that or something si milar.

Where there is obvious conflict between possible definitions of "strongest" it's a bit unreasonable to fault a journalist who has chosen one that does n't match Wikipedia's.

Since the "strength" of a hurricane would have more to do with the mass of the air circulating, and the speed of it's circulation, than central pressu re or a maximum observed air-speed there's definitely wriggle room.

This sounds more like finding an excuse not to read on.

g to make a point, rather it is showing what is happening and allows peopl e to draw their own conclusions.

Which translates into a preference for journalism that is trying to sell yo u an idea you are already sold on.

What cause?

Bill McKibben doesn't like Trump, but nobody who writes for the New Yorker does. Educated people do have this prejudice against ignorant liars.

Humans have pushed up atmospheric CO2 levels about ten times faster than an ything else in the geological record.

CO2 emissions have a perfectly obvious primary effect,and while we may be s low in paying attention to it, it is going to hang around for quite a while .

We don't actually know the source of the methane that fueled the Paleocene- Eocene thermal maximum, but we do know that it took about 85,000 years for the carbon dioxide level to get back down to normal.

The author started this activist dot org

Hurricanes weren't instrumented well in the past. They often hit the coast without warning, and certainly didn't have planes exploring their eyes looking for the low-pressure point, and we didn't have radar finding the peak wind speed in 3-space. The really good ones usually destroyed the coastal weather stations before the wind speed peaked. The deadliest hurricane in US history was the great Galveston storm of September 1900. I have a couple of books on that one.

Agree about journalism. Most reads like preachy high-school essays, and most get basic facts and especially numbers wrong.

Fear sells, and hyperbole is necessary to be competitive in the modern news market.

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Just ask Donald J. Trump and all his Trumpanzee dumbfuck followers.

The thing I like about you is that you are dependably, Always Wrong.

Ah, the same site that recommended killing/blowing up all deniers in that video a few years back...I thought the writing style seemed familiar.

As some of us here think CS isn't a religion!

John :-#)#

e:

me.

ne

er

to

in

How about raccoon or rat turds?

Sorry, I wasn't very clear was I? Humans have a far greater (and more dangerous) impact on the Earth's environment than other animals - but every living thing affects the environment. Not to mention the non-living like volcanoes, asteroid impacts...

am

John

Polar bears are a menace. They kill hundreds of eskimos every year and nothing ever gets done about it. So looking on the plus side, in the unlikely event the arctic ice disappears, Greenland will be a hell of a lot safer place to live and to visit.

Cartoons, maybe; articles no.

Well it would, wouldn't it.

Bill thinks one can apply the physics of semiconductor junctions to the planet. In his mind they're scalable!

But the UK won't.

No ice sheet means no Gulf Stream, so the January 0degree isotherm of Europe will migrate southwards. Realise that London is on the same latitude as Churchill in Canada - the "polar bear capital of the world".

Is the New Yorker a peer-reviewed scientific journal?

Yeah, the past was different, but we DO have some data, like storm surge heights and landfall observations, and we can fill in the details. Hindsight is wonderful that way, and having a model for the storms means only a few observations are required to fill in the blanks.

No, only a minority among us ever use hyperbole. Necessary? Hardly. That claim was hyperbole, and it's your style choice, nothing more.

"Fear sells" has the sound of truthiness. But, anything that causes fear is probably a matter of concern: it ought to focus our attention, even if a purchase is required. After the Galveston 1900 events, a lot of attention was lavished on seawalls, which DID pay off.

Try reading the article. The New Yorker isn't into fear or hyperbole. There are a range of journalistic standards, and Fox News isn't into competing on intellectual quality.

But not about Donald Trump ..

Anybody who can read the Daily Msail and tolerate Russia Today would find the New Yorker a demanding read.

Unlike you, I can distinguish between the medium and the message.

Cursitor Doom couldn't work out that it was Boris Mohar who posted that link - probably sarcastically.

Professor Valentina Zharkova is predicting a drop in sunspot numbers, not a decrease in solar output, so it's an irrelevance - except perhaps to the kind of rubbish journalists who get hired by the Daily Mail.