NOAA Protest
June 1st, 2006Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Kevin Vranes has the scoop on the protest by some environmental groups calling for the NOAA administrator and NHC director to resign because they haven’t said the politically correct things about hurricanes and global warming. I don’t have much to add to Kevin’s post which is right on target. However, it is worth adding that NHC Director Max Mayfield has co-authored (with me and 3 others) two peer-reviewed papers on the hurricane-global warming issue over the past year. Here is the conclusion from the first paper, which clearly shows the rantings of madmen unfit for public service (PDF):
. . . looking to the future, until scientists conclude a) that there will be changes to storms that are significantly larger than observed in the past, b) that such changes are correlated to measures of societal impact, and c) that the effects of such changes are significant in the context of inexorable growth in population and property at risk, then it is reasonable to conclude that the significance of any connection of human-caused climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small.
June 1st, 2006 at 9:16 am
Roger,
I do not support this call for resignations, I think the embarassment and the chance to change their policy is sufficient.
However, both you and Kevin have constructed strawmen. Kevin quotes the protestors as saying “stop covering up the growing scientific link between severe hurricanes and global warming” and then claims “the protesters are arguing [...] that a strong scientific consensus exists” and attacks that argument.
You have supported his attack by citing 3 conclusions of a paper, the stronger conclusions of which are soley about societal impacts and not at all about the warming-intensity link, the other a very mild caution about needing more evidence.
In fact, though this may be a misimpression, ISTM you do this very frequently, if not all the time. You quietly change the subject from “are storms growing stronger” to “are storms more destructive” which are very different questions as you know.
It is not clear to me at all why it is not legitimate to study/discuss/warn about increasing storm intensity. Nor is it clear to me that the fact that more damage is primarily the result of more coastal population means more intensity is not relevant to both these people and to policy decisions.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:58 am
Coby-
Thanks for your comments. But “quietly change the subject”? Gimme a little more credit – loud and clearly, more like;-)
Of course a focus on storm intensity is a valid and interesting scientific topic. But my interest is in the “so what?” question, as presumably is the interest of the NOAA protesters. (Surely they are protesting for purely scientific interests!) I am a policy researcher after all.
So long as people continue to debate and discuss hurricanes and global warming, I’ll continue to ask “so what?”. And as I have published in the peer reviewed literature, I don’t think that the outcome of the current debate does much to alter calculations of policy effectiveness. Using hurricanes as a political symbol may in fact distract attention and resources from those policy options likely to be most effective withr espect to disaster mitigation.
Thanks!
June 1st, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I am inclined to think that arguments on effective hurricane preparedness and protection will be more persuasive than wrangling over the hurricane science debate which, let’s face it, is essentially lost (notwithstanding mediocre evidence). At any rate, most observers know where the train is heading when the editors of Nature Mag enunciate “an emerging consensus” on human-driven hurricane intensity.
While Nature declares the scientific debate basically over – before it has hardly begun (I’m pretty sure, Science Mag will follow suit soon) -, the debate about effective hurricane protection is far from over.
As the anti-NOAA protests demonstrate, environmental campaigners and green researchers seem convinced that linking hurricanes and AGW will automatically provide them with compelling arguments for Kyoto-style global warming policies. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this tactic backfires as it come across as exceedingly imprudent if not completely daft.
Seriously, doesn’t it look patently absurd for hurricane researchers and green campaigners to call on states like Florida to reduce its CO2 emissions and to advertise this as an imperative hurricane mitigation policy? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/3918630.html
A “disaster-prevention” strategy based on greenhouse gas emissions will, I suggest, look even more off the wall as CO2 emissions of some of the world’s leading Kyoto-promoters (let along rising superpowers such as India and China) are steadily on the rise
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/30/cncoal30.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/05/30/ixcitytop.html