Hurricane Season 2005's Clear Message

Hurricane Season 2005's Clear Message - Despite Media/Corporate Spin

By Cheryl Seal

Since Katrina hit, the media and the National Weather Service folk and corporate armchair experts have working hard to downplay the ferocity of the current deadly hurricane season. For example, the week after Katrina, the NWS spokesfolk were presenting as "fact" that the 2005 season was just part of a "natural cycle," and pointed to peak activity cycles in the past, as in the 1940s. They scoffed at the idea that there was anything unusual about 2005 in the bigger scheme of things. Yet a look at the historic data alone reveals the lie. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

The average number of major (category 3-5) hurricanes making landfall in the mainland US per decade from 1851-2004 was 6. That's less than one per year. But the number of major hurricanes making landfall just so far in 2005 is 4! And, as for the 1940s, the NWS historical data does indeed show that decade (1941-1950) as the busiest of the century, with 24 hurricanes (total) and 10 major hurricanes making US landfall. That works out to an average of 2.4 hurricanes making landfall each year, with one each year a category 3-5. But in just the last FIVE seasons (2001 - 2005), there has already been 14 hurricanes making landfall, with 4 major hurricanes making landfall JUST IN 2005.(make that 5 if Wilma hits Florida)! 2005 has also seen the lowest pressures ever recorded for a hurricane (Wilma). Rita was the third most intense Atlantic basin hurricane in meteorological history, while Katrina was the fourth. So, that means that hurricanes in 2005 will include three of the five most intense hurricanes ever to hit the Atlantic Basin.

In September, several studies came out in science journals that showed that 2005 was indeed an anomalously intense season and that climate change had contributed to the formation of extremely intense storms..

The "natural cycle" theme having failed, we began hearing about the "busy-ness" of the 2005 season, busy meaning numbers of named storms (tropical storms and hurricanes). This motif avoids using hurricane category, intensity, or destructive potential as the criteria. Using the busy-ness criteria, NWS and the media have been able to claim that the season wasn't unusual because it just wasn't as "busy" as 1933. Then, with the development of Vince, 2005's "busy-ness" threatened to pull even with 1933. So about then, the "experts" and media suddenly began to talk in terms of "number of named hurricanes," pointing to 1969 as the record to beat. Now with Wilma, the "experts" have been downplaying 2005 by observing that the season "only tied" the 1969 season for number of named hurricanes. This conveniently leaves out the "little detail" of hurricane category and intensity. So while Camille, a category 5, made landfall in 1969, the rest of 1969's storms were either low-category, or stayed out to sea.

In the totally false statement department, right after Rita, I heard a meteorologist (I did not write the name down at the time, alas, but it was on CBS) scoff at climatologist' claim that storm intensity is greatly amplified by areas of anomalously high water temperature. The meteorologist argued that "one degree" of added water temperature (and he cleverly did not specify celsius or Fahrenheit) in the Gulf of Mexico would be totally insignificant. And yet any storm expert will tell you that with each degree Celsius of water temperature above about 26 C, maximum wind velocity for a storm increases by at least 20 miles per hour. So, that "single degree" can make the difference between a category 3 and 4 which, as we have seen this year, can make a very big difference in destructive power.

So why the downplaying spin?

You won’t hear anyone, even the most cut-throat corporate executive, debunk the belief that an oceanliner should have lifeboats. You also won’t find “grassroots groups” arguing that “more evidence is needed” before it can be “conclusively” claimed that children should not play with matches.. No one would ever recommend waiting until the oceanliner hit an iceberg to buy lifeboats. And no one would wait until the

child set fire to the house before taking the matches away. Yet there is an army of corporate executives, politicians and grassroots groups who are, in essence, doing just that. These folk are dedicated to debunking global warming – a threat which may jeopardize the safety of billions of humans and trillions of other life forms on the planet.

But then, concern for safety is not what drives the global warming debunkers. Most are driven by greed, pure and simple. The corporate executives do not want to shoulder the cost of anti-pollution retrofitting of factories, building nonpolluting new facilities, or phasing out products and processes that contribute to climate change. The politicians don’t want to lose the money funneled to them by these same corporate execs. The “grassroots groups” are either covertly funded by corporate and/or political interests or are in fierce denial, for religious and ideological reasons that anything so frightening could be happening – and that it could be cause by humankind.

Unfortunately for the public, the corporate faction has had the deepest pockets and controls the media. Thus we are still getting spin – even by meteorologists who know better - that the season of 2005 had nothing to do with climate change.

Meanwhile, the climate continues to shift in response to greenhouse gases, deforestation, and runaway biomass burning (as in slash and burn farming and major forest fires, most of which are now driven by human activity). There is little doubt that storms will indeed become more unpredictable and intense as Earth tries to redistribute thermal energy to maintain balance. Meanwhile, instead of investing in lifeboats, the Bush administration and its corporate and ideological cohorts continue to rearrange the deck chairs, hoping no one will notice the iceberg looming just ahead.

www.cherylsealreports.bravehost.com