Climate Deniers, Super Typhoon Haiyan Is Looking At You

One year after superstorm Sandy became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Super Typhoon Haiyan just became the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone on record, hitting the Philippines with sustained winds of 190-195mph and gusts to 235mph. That's as strong as a top-of-the-scale EF-5 tornado ... except Haiyan's eye is eight miles wide.

Why is the storm so historically strong? NOAA blames warm deep water. When climate science deniers claim a global warming "pause," the heat isn't missing - it's right there lurking in the ocean, waiting to put super typhoons on steroids.

Better burn all the coal and oil while we still can.

Climate Change Turning Northeast Into New Hurricane Alley?

Climate change is shifting hurricane tracks away from the Gulf Coast and towards the Northeast, according to a new study that's backed up by both previous research and the historical record. Reports Paul Voosen of E&E News (sub. req.):

By the end of this century, fewer hurricanes are likely to barrel through the Caribbean Sea into the U.S. Gulf Coast, with the storms instead curving back into the Atlantic Ocean -- and possibly toward an East Coast newly sensitive to hurricanes, according to climate models developed by researchers in Hawaii and Miami. [...]

Their results match a modeling study published in 2010 by Hiroyuki Murakami and Bin Wang, two Hawaii-based researchers who used a powerful Japanese climate model to simulate the Atlantic basin. Like [researcher Angela] Colbert, they saw storm tracks shift east. But they went a step further, finding that this shift increased influence of tropical storms for Florida and the northeastern United States.

"I feel these results are very robust," Murakami said.

In fact, a slight eastward shift can already be seen in historical records since the late 19th century, compiled by the National Hurricane Center and corrected by Gabriel Vecchi, a co-author of Colbert's paper and researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These observations are far from definite but do lend some credence to the models' results, Colbert said.

Research also shows global warming is making hurricanes stronger (though climate change's impact on hurricane frequency is still being debated). 

It's not exactly reassuring for this stormy future that Congressional Republicans doing all they can to skimp on Superstorm Sandy aid. Maybe time to cut carbon pollution now?

Rush Limbaugh: Hurricane Isaac a Liberal Plot to Disrupt GOP Convention

Rush Limbaugh long ago untethered himself from reality (the oxycontin may have something to do with it), but this is a new level of crazy even for him:

Rush Limbaugh is even blaming Obama for the weather. On his radio show, Limbaugh claimed that Hurricane Issac is an Obama conspiracy to shut down the Republican convention: "The National Hurricane Center, which is a government agency, is very hopeful that the hurricane gets near Tampa. The National Hurricane Center is Obama." [...]

If the Republican Party wanted to avoid any potential weather problems, they could have made the decision not to hold their convention in South Florida at the peak of hurricane season. Seriously, who in the Republican Party thought it would be a great idea to hold their convention in South Florida in late August?

My favorite part of Limbaugh's rant:

We don’t need the National Hurricane Center, and we don’t need all these weather dolts analyzing this for us. Well, we need the center, we can look at their charts and graphs, we know what to do, we can read the stuff. 

We don't need Big Government telling us when a hurricane is coming! OK, yes, we completely do.

Audio courtesy Media Matters:

Hurricane Irene Links (Or: Print These for Blackout Reading!)

As I charge my electronics in case we lose power, here are a few Hurricane Irene links:

• At ClimateProgress.org, Joe Romm details how global warming makes hurricanes more destructive.
• The National Wildlife Federation's Kevin Coyle lists 7 ways hurricanes impact wildlife.
• Could the storm surge in New York City lead to a flood of rats? 
• Ron Paul reminds us that if the libertarian wing of the Republican Party had its way, Virginia & other states would be on their own for disaster response.

Exploiting the Earthquake & Hurricane Irene to Point Out We've Cut Earthquake & Hurricane Monitoring

Since I never waste an opportunity to exploit a tragedy, I thought I'd point to this tweet from the Center for American Progress' Michael Linden in the wake of yesterday's earthquake:

US Geological Survey's budget was cut by some $20 million this year. #justsaying

And as Hurricane Irene approaches, CAP's ThinkProgress.org reports on budget cuts hurting weather monitoring & emergency response. You may also remember Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) mocking funding for life-saving volcano monitoring and Republican efforts to cut tsunami monitoring at the same time the Japanese earthquake & tsunami struck.

"[P]ointing out that they cut funding on this stuff doesn’t constitute 'politicizing' any ongoing natural disasters," writes Matt Yglesias, "Astute readers will note, however, that the meaning of across the board spending cuts is that you’re cutting spending on all programs."

"Across the board" spending cuts sound equitable, hence are more politically palatable. But as Matt points out, that means cutting funding for feeding hungry children, taking care of sick people, and fighting forest fires - things that cutting might get you voted out of office. Any politician who'd rather cut funding for earthquake monitoring and feeding hungry children than raise taxes on the wealthy should have to explain that choice to voters.

Connecting the Dots: Global Warming & Stronger Hurricanes

As Hurricane Ike comes ashore in Texas, here's a short, easy-to-understand video explaining the connection between global warming and stronger hurricanes:

New in the News: Hotter Heat and Stronger Storms

I'm heading out of town for work for a few days, but I'll try to keep the blog updated while I'm on the road!

Before I head to Dulles, I wanted to pass along a couple of really stunning climate stories that have gotten very little media attention.

The first is a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, "Greenhouse Gases Likely Drove Near-Record U.S. Warmth in 2006". The most disturbing nuggets:

The NOAA team also found that the probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth’s atmosphere. [...]

The annual average temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F above the 20th Century average and marked the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures. Each of the contiguous 48 states reported above-normal annual temperatures and, for the majority of states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895.

As if that wasn't shocking enough, now we have the twin powerhouses of Hurricanes Dean and Felix. Conservatives had been bragging that the until-now quiet hurricane season proved global warming must not be happening. This Jack Abramoff pal even went so far as to say, "A few more hurricanes seasons like these and Americans may begin clamoring for global warming."

Dean and Felix have quickly turned this season from one of "impotency" to a record-breaker:

MIAMI (AFP) — For the first time on record, two Atlantic hurricanes have made landfall at category five in the same year as Hurricane Felix slammed ashore Tuesday at the topmost intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, according to data from the US National Hurricane Center. [...]

Its landfall marked the first time two hurricanes hit land at the topmost category in the same year since a storm was first reliably recorded at that intensity in 1928.

Dean, this year's first hurricane, hit Mexico's Caribbean coast at category five on August 21. Its rampage through the Caribbean and Mexico left 30 people dead.

For some reason, the fact that two category five hurricanes have made landfall in the same season for the first time in recorded history isn't seen as an important fact in most of the storm coverage I've read. For example, it's not mentioned until the 24th paragraph of this story on the Washington Post's website.

How much longer will we ignore the signs of a climate in crisis? Why are only two Virginia representatives sponsoring climate action legislation in the U.S. House? What are Tom Davis and Frank Wolf waiting for? A category five to come up the Chesapeake Bay? Or to come ashore at Virginia Beach?