OT: The Thread About Nothing 203

[Emperoreddy]

While rare, I almost guarantee it's happened a lot more, it's just that we didn't know it.

A lot of this stuff you keep hearing as "unprecedented", really isn't, it is man's ability to know it's occurring that's unprecedented.

For instance, these hurricanes survive for days on end and sometimes only last as a Category 5 for mere "hours", and technology has only been good enough for so many years to monitor / acknowledge it. Until recently, if something went Cat 5 over a bunch of fish, who would have known? Nobody. But now we can record those windspeeds even when the hurricane is miles from land.

We have reliable records that go back all the way to 1851.

A season like this has only been recorded 5 other times since then. That is rare.

 

[BenedictGomez]

We have reliable records that go back all the way to 1851.

A season like this has only been recorded 5 other times since then. That is rare.

Did you have aircraft recorded drop-soundings in 1851?

Did you have hurricane hunter aircraft in 1851?

Did you have a strategically interconnected system of ocean buoys collecting meteorological data in 1851?

Did you have global satellite technology in 1851?

Did you have weather collecting technology on SHIPS in the middle of the ocean in 1851?

Did you have GPS technology in 1851?

Did we have 1/1000th of the number of land based weather-recording locations we have now in 1851?

I could keep adding to this list, but no, we didn't have any of these things. There's no way these storms are "as rare" as we're being told, and it's not a coincidence that we're finding them in places that we literally could not have found/sampled them even 30 or maybe 40'ish years ago. If you take a list of the "old" Cat 3 and Cat 4 hurricanes, I'm sure some of them reached Cat 4 or Cat 5 if only for a handful of hours, but there was literally no way for people to know about it. I think it's statistically silly to think otherwise.

 

[tr83]

Did you have aircraft recorded drop-soundings in 1851?

Did you have hurricane hunter aircraft in 1851?

Did you have a strategically interconnected system of ocean buoys collecting meteorological data in 1851?

Did you have global satellite technology in 1851?

Did you have weather collecting technology on SHIPS in the middle of the ocean in 1851?

Did you have GPS technology in 1851?

Did we have 1/1000th of the number of land based weather-recording locations we have now in 1851?

I could keep adding to this list, but no, we didn't have any of these things. There's no way these storms are "as rare" as we're being told, and it's not a coincidence that we're finding them in places that we literally could not have found/sampled them even 30 or maybe 40'ish years ago. If you take a list of the "old" Cat 3 and Cat 4 hurricanes, I'm sure some of them reached Cat 4 or Cat 5 if only for a handful of hours, but there was literally no way for people to know about it. I think it's statistically silly to think otherwise.

Do you need a dead body to determine the guilt of a suspect?

You don't need a network of buoys or hurricane hunters to determine how strong a hurricane is. Think of the amount of ship traffic that existed back then. Boats that get caught in hurricanes have basic meteorological tools like barometers, thermometers, and anemometers. Boats have the capability of measure wave heights and clocks to determine the duration of the storm. Storm surge on land can be measured. There were weather balloons that could be launched.

You can model using everything we know today about hurricanes and extrapolate, using the data available at the time, to determine a hurricane's strength and path.

Is it perfect? No. But it's pretty damn good.

We don't have pictures of Earth from 250M years ago, but based upon clues in tectonic shift, rock, and fossils, we know what the Earth might have looked like back then

 

[devilsblood]

While rare, I almost guarantee it's happened a lot more, it's just that we didn't know it.

A lot of this stuff you keep hearing as "unprecedented", really isn't, it is man's ability to know it's occurring that's unprecedented.

For instance, these hurricanes survive for days on end and sometimes only last as a Category 5 for mere "hours", and technology has only been good enough for so many years to monitor / acknowledge it. Until recently, if something went Cat 5 over a bunch of fish, who would have known? Nobody. But now we can record those windspeeds even when the hurricane is miles from land.

Well you can't say that either.

Almost guarantee's should be avoided as well. Especially with no evidence.

 

[devilsblood]

Did you have aircraft recorded drop-soundings in 1851?

Did you have hurricane hunter aircraft in 1851?

Did you have a strategically interconnected system of ocean buoys collecting meteorological data in 1851?

Did you have global satellite technology in 1851?

Did you have weather collecting technology on SHIPS in the middle of the ocean in 1851?

Did you have GPS technology in 1851?

Did we have 1/1000th of the number of land based weather-recording locations we have now in 1851?

I could keep adding to this list, but no, we didn't have any of these things. There's no way these storms are "as rare" as we're being told, and it's not a coincidence that we're finding them in places that we literally could not have found/sampled them even 30 or maybe 40'ish years ago. If you take a list of the "old" Cat 3 and Cat 4 hurricanes, I'm sure some of them reached Cat 4 or Cat 5 if only for a handful of hours, but there was literally no way for people to know about it. I think it's statistically silly to think otherwise.

We wouldn't have found/sampled Irma or Maria or Jose or Harvey 40 years ago?

 

[BenedictGomez]

We don't have pictures of Earth from 250M years ago, but based upon clues in tectonic shift, rock, and fossils, we know what the Earth might have looked like back then

Not even remotely similar circumstances. Not by a very, very, very, long shot.

You have a Cat 4 hurricane hundreds of miles off the coast in 1851, nobody is likely even going to know about it.

But that point's almost irrelevant, because even if they did, they sure as hell weren't able to precisely monitor it's lifetime maximum wind speed through a 8, 12, 14 day storm duration. LOL. That's just an absolutely absurd statement.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Do you need a dead body to determine the guilt of a suspect?

You don't need a network of buoys or hurricane hunters to determine how strong a hurricane is. Think of the amount of ship traffic that existed back then. Boats that get caught in hurricanes have basic meteorological tools like barometers, thermometers, and anemometers. Boats have the capability of measure wave heights and clocks to determine the duration of the storm. Storm surge on land can be measured. There were weather balloons that could be launched.

You can model using everything we know today about hurricanes and extrapolate, using the data available at the time, to determine a hurricane's strength and path.

Is it perfect? No. But it's pretty damn good.

We don't have pictures of Earth from 250M years ago, but based upon clues in tectonic shift, rock, and fossils, we know what the Earth might have looked like back then

The database is called HURDAT and it is the result of literal decades of work to track down, analysis, and record thousands of individual first hand accounts off ships, diaries, local weather people. Hell they believe they can reliably push the dates of the records to 1800 in a decade or so.

Hell the record was a big part in improving hurricane warning forecasts in the 60s and 70s because it gave NHC historical trends to help them track new storms.

It isn't perfect, and they openly admit they can't add a storm that formed out at sea that no one saw, but for the topic at hand about Cat 5s the record is accurate enough to say that since the 1800s multiple storms as strong as we have seen in the Atlantic basin is rare.

We can only work with the data we have, and this is the data we have. It is extensive though, and not something to just be easily dismissed.

 

[BenedictGomez]

We wouldn't have found/sampled Irma or Maria or Jose or Harvey 40 years ago?

All those storms you mention would have been "found" 40 years ago, and Harvey & Irma they could have gotten down pretty well. Jose probably too with buoys etc..., but I'm not 100% sure. Keep in mind, we didn't even use hurricane seeking aircraft until AFTER World War II, that' the mid 1940s! Pre-aircraft era, you're likely almost totally blind to just massive geographic areas. No sampling. No precise data. So at best you can say data collection has gotten much better in the last 70 years. Well, that's not exactly a very long time. And it's not like using the aircraft was a big thing even then. Then we got better in the satellite era, and we got much better in the 1990s with GPS technology. Point is, being able to accurately measure the wind speed maximum (the entire freaking point here) over the entire life of a hurricane is a fairly recent phenomena. The likelihood that some of the hurricanes on the books "officially" as Cat 2, 3, or 4, were almost certainly Cat 3,4, or 5. And some tropical storms that were never classified as hurricanes, likely were Cat 1 hurricanes.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Not even remotely similar circumstances. Not by a very, very, very, long shot.

You have a Cat 4 hurricane hundreds of miles off the coast in 1851, nobody is likely even going to know about it.

But that point's almost irrelevant, because even if they did, they sure as hell weren't able to precisely monitor it's lifetime maximum wind speed through a 8, 12, 14 day storm duration. LOL. That's just an absolutely absurd statement.

You are greatly underestimating the record keeping of the NHC

 

[BenedictGomez]

You are greatly underestimating the record keeping of the NHC

No, I'm not.

The NHC wasnt even created until after the Beatles released A Hard Day's Night!

 

[BenedictGomez]

Here's a great example.

Hurricane Gert from just last month.

What's that you say? You never heard of Hurricane Gert?

Yes, that's because it happened way out in the Atlantic, miles away from anyone. Tell me who in 1851 (or 1871, or 1891, or 1911 etc...) was going to be around at just the perfect time to air sample the maximum wind speed on this sucker?
Not only would this storm almost certainly never have been classified as a Cat 2 hurricane, there's a good chance it would never have even been recorded.

This. Was. Just. Last. Month.

Every year for decades there were likely "Gerts" that were never properly captured, because it wasn't technologically possible (or likely) yet. Versus today, when we can capture a hurricane's wind speed incredibly accurately (though even today it's worth pointing out we can get some brief "holes", happened with Irma).

 

[tr83]

No, I'm not.

The NHC wasnt even created until after the Beatles released A Hard Day's Night!

And there was no Air Force before 1946. Does that mean that that there were no military aircraft in the air before 1946?

 

[BenedictGomez]

And there was no Air Force before 1946. Does that mean that that there were no military aircraft in the air before 1946?

In terms of hurricane data collection, which is the actual relevant topic, the answer is NO, there were no "military aircraft in the air" until roughly 1946.

You dont get accurate data when you're........ummm........not getting data.

 

[tr83]

Here's a great example.

Hurricane Gert from just last month.

What's that you say? You never heard of Hurricane Gert?

Yes, that's because it happened way out in the Atlantic, miles away from anyone. Tell me who in 1851 (or 1871, or 1891, or 1911 etc...) was going to be around at just the perfect time to air sample the maximum wind speed on this sucker?
Not only would this storm almost certainly never have been classified as a Cat 2 hurricane, there's a good chance it would never have even been recorded.

This. Was. Just. Last. Month.

Every year for decades there were likely "Gerts" that were never properly captured, because it wasn't technologically possible (or likely) yet. Versus today, when we can capture a hurricane's wind speed incredibly accurately (though even today it's worth pointing out we can get some brief "holes", happened with Irma).

You're trying to poke holes in these arguments like a lawyer.

It's one thing to understand basic concepts of science. It's clear that you don't understand how science is done.

You don't need to observe the max speeds of a hurricane in order to extrapolate from other data what the max speeds are.

I'll put it to you another way. Absolute zero is the temperature in the Kelvin scale where all molecular motion ceases. Does a scientist need to observe absolute zero to know that your can't go below that temperature? No. Interestingly enough, mathematical and thermodynamic models state that you can't get to absolute zero. Furthermore, the temperature of absolute zero was determined before the refrigerator was invented.

Plugging in 100 years of data about meteorological conditions isn't good enough for you?

 

[devilsblood]

I think BG is right on this point. We see every bit of cyclonic action that occurs on earth today. Relative to today we were pretty blind about it 70 years ago. I think he undersells the research that has been done in regards to tracking hurricanes prior to the satellite and aircraft era's, but just the same, there were definitely storms back then that we did not know about.

Now does that mean that this hurricane season is not rare, and there were likely many others like it in between 1850 and the present? No, that is an assumption based completely upon lack of evidence.

 

[BenedictGomez]

It's one thing to understand basic concepts of science. It's clear that you don't understand how science is done.

Guess the degree in Biology, the ~ 5 years interpreting biotech & pharma clinical research, and the almost 20 years I've spent in healthcare industry have all been for naught. Tis' a pity.

You don't need to observe the max speeds of a hurricane in order to extrapolate from other data what the max speeds are.

Yeah, that make no sense.

 

[BenedictGomez]

I think BG is right on this point. We see every bit of cyclonic action that occurs on earth today. Relative to today we were pretty blind about it 70 years ago

And 70 years in the history of man is the blink of an eye.


But in terms of the accuracy we have today? It's was less than 70 years, I'd argue the revolutionary leap was the 1990s, but certainly pre-1970s anyway we had virtually nothing of the accuracy we have today.

Now does that mean that this hurricane season is not rare, and there were likely many others like it in between 1850 and the present?

In terms of "the season", this will almost certainly go down as the worst in history, or maybe 2nd place. But that doesn't mean that a lot of "seasons" decades ago, or 100 years ago, weren't in fact energetically much worse than we will ever know. And from a standpoint of human humility, it's worth pointing out that when your solid data set is comprised of only 40 or 50 or even 70 data points, terms like "rare" and "unprecedented" really need to have some context wrapped around them. As a species, we're not as smart as we think we are. If there's one thing I've learned about, "how science is done", it may be just that. Every generation of man thinks they're so smart, until the next proves how little they actually knew.

 

[Emperoreddy]

In terms of hurricane data collection, which is the actual relevant topic, the answer is NO, there were no "military aircraft in the air" until roughly 1946.

You dont get accurate data when you're........ummm........not getting data.

Except we were getting data. Lots of data. It wasn't put together or understood back then like it is today, but the data exists. Where the storm was, dates, times, wind speeds, pressure. All this date complied with what we know about Atlantic basin hurricanes, allows NHC to put this together and create tracks these storms.

They have gone back through it multiple times and they know when a season looks unusually light based on known trends and have actually been able to find more storms thanks to new data points that are found.

The NHC has worked for decades to piece all this data to make accurate tracks for old storms.

Saying that this is an unusually strong season since 1851, also doesn't automatically imply there is a knowable reason for why. It might just be a quirk of the climate, or some normal cycle we don't understand, or just plain bad luck.

No one has made that leap to trying to explain it. It is just pointing out a valid observation that this is a unusually bad year.

 

[Richer's Ghost]

you don't break records 3 hurricanes in a row that make landfall and say it's just because we're better at data collecting.

It's because the storms are getting stronger, and making landfall both. That doesn't happen back to back to back in a month because of informational availability.

 

[Ripshot 43]

Craaaaap, I just read 2 pages in the TaN with Dr Jo and Bill Harding arguing over Twisters.

 

[devilsblood]

And 70 years in the history of man is the blink of an eye.


But in terms of the accuracy we have today? It's was less than 70 years, I'd argue the revolutionary leap was the 1990s, but certainly pre-1970s anyway we had virtually nothing of the accuracy we have today.



In terms of "the season", this will almost certainly go down as the worst in history, or maybe 2nd place. But that doesn't mean that a lot of "seasons" decades ago, or 100 years ago, weren't in fact energetically much worse than we will ever know. And from a standpoint of human humility, it's worth pointing out that when your solid data set is comprised of only 40 or 50 or even 70 data points, terms like "rare" and "unprecedented" really need to have some context wrapped around them. As a species, we're not as smart as we think we are. If there's one thing I've learned about, "how science is done", it may be just that. Every generation of man thinks they're so smart, until the next proves how little they actually knew.

It's true we don't know what happened prior to point in time X(whether that be 1990, 1970, or 1851) so when people go on about "unprecedented", or "in history" there is a large amount of hyperbole there. However we should not say, "well we don't know, thus we can assume things were equal", at least not in a debate which centers around changing weather patterns.

Now, we should also point out the discussion here has been strictly about the Atlantic basin, which makes up a pretty small % of global hurricanes, I think I read about 13%. And unfortunately I've been finding it pretty difficult to find the global data in regards to the total energy produced by hurricanes.

There are a couple metrics by which they measure tropical storms, the most popular seems to be ACE (others are IKE and TIKE but I can find very little on those), and again much easier to find stuff regarding ACE in the Atlantic basin then globally.

BUT, and this one is big for BG's argument, by this metric, and going back through 1970's ish, it appears the time frame between 2010ish and 2015 was historically(see what I did there) low in terms of total global hurricane energy.

Was not able to find anything yet on 2016, and of course 2017 is still ongoing.

 

[BenedictGomez]

you don't break records 3 hurricanes in a row that make landfall and say it's just because we're better at data collecting.

Good thing nobody is saying that.

It's because the storms are getting stronger, and making landfall both. That doesn't happen back to back to back in a month because of informational availability.

Hurricanes are not "getting stronger". That is media scare nonsense.

This year, 2017, is simply a statistical outlier, which will happen with any data set you analyze, with virtually anything.

Before the last year, there hadn't been a Category 5 hurricane in a decade.

In 1932 - 1933 there were four Category 5 hurricanes in 1 year (that we know of), as well as five Category 4 hurricanes in that very same timeframe. Were hurricanes "getting stronger" in the early 1930s?

 

[None Shall Pass]

Craaaaap, I just read 2 pages in the TaN with Dr Jo and Bill Harding arguing over Twisters.

"Cow!"

 

[tr83]

Guess the degree in Biology, the ~ 5 years interpreting biotech & pharma clinical research, and the almost 20 years I've spent in healthcare industry have all been for naught. Tis' a pity.



Yeah, that make no sense.

Does a pharma company need to perform a clinical trial on every patient on earth to determine the side effects of an experimental drug?

 

[devilsblood]

Some cat 5 stats.

Starting with Mathew, there have been 3 cat 5's in the last year.

Prior to that there were zero cat 5's going back to Felix in 07.

But between 1998 and 2007 there were 9 cat 5's.

Gotta go, will continue on later.