Strongest NWS Hurricane Ever Recorded: Patricia (UPDATED)

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Update, Saturday AM:

On Twitter, people are shocked and amazed that Hurricane Patricia turned into a tropical storm. Some had prayed to god and now claim those prayers were answered. There is at least one claim of a death on Twitter, but The Twitter Lies, and this is probably someone’s sick idea of a joke.

Naturally, what happened is Patricia made landfall as a very compact hurricane in a region with very few people, but as a strong category five hurricane. It had the highest sustained winds, and the lowest pressure ever observed for a hurricane, but again, Patricia was a small hurricane, not a monster. It was almost like Patricia was pretending to be a tornado.

And, since it came on quickly, and had some unusual characteristics, and was badly reported by almost all major media including the meteorological media, Patricia will now join cousins Sandy and Katrina in the ranks of the Most Misunderstood Hurricanes.

It is not over until it is over, and the storm is still moving across Mexico where it plans to hook up with a Gulf system and cross the border, Donald Trump be dammed, to hose Texas with major rains. In the mean time we’ll have to see what the storm does in the Mexican highlands. Watch the news reports.

Update, Friday PM:

We probably won’t know much until morning, but Hurricane Patricia’s eye has made landfall and the hurricane is falling apart.

This image from The Wundermap shows the last IR satellite image that clearly shows an eye just before it came ashore.

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 8.33.06 PM

The part of the hurricane running from the eye to the right is where the strongest storm surge and strongest winds will be. You may have seen videos on the Weather Channel and CNN from Manzanillo, the nearest large settlement (see below for more details) but that is actually pretty far from the eye of this relatively compact storm. It looks pretty windy and rainy in those videos, but I’d be more worried about Costga Careyes, Emiliano Zapata, La Manzanilla, and San Patricio, especially anywhere where there are harbors or bays that might concentrate a storm surge. Here’s a rough drawing of where that eye is, and the zone to the right of the eye where the storm will pack the most punch:

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 8.38.27 PM

Update, Friday PM

I updated the graphic above.

Odd point: I’m seeing news stories talking about the “giant size of hurricane Patricia.” Why is the press so dumb?

This is a very very strong, record breaking hurricane. It is not, however, giant.

And, Patricia is making landfall right about now, and for the next couple of hours. Remember what landfall is.

Power has been shut down in the area in anticipation of the power grid being affected by the storm.

Update, Friday early PM:

Nothing too new from the NWS but Jeff Masters has a lot of information on Patricia.

Patricia is not big, as in area covered, but has very low pressure and very fast winds. Depending on context, Patricia has broken or nearly broken a number of records, but this is all very complicated because some of the records are hard to pin down. For example, several hurricanes from the 50s and 60s had higher wind speeds than we have seen since, but we now know that the methods for measuring wind speed in a powerful hurricane were not adequate at the time, and most hurricane experts assume all those numbers are at least 10 mph or so too high. If that is the case, Patricia may have the fastest winds ever recorded. Patricia will end up bing in the top five (or should I say lowest five) in terms of pressure. Also, very few other hurricanes did something Patricia did: The storm turned from a tropical storm to a category five hurricane in less than 24 hours. That is just plain astonishing. Weather experts around the world are in shock.

Putting it another way, Patricia is doing some stuff we didn’t really think hurricanes do, even though a few have done here an there. This is a little like this year’s hurricanes globally; we are breaking records all the time in terms of numbers, size, strength, how many going at once, and all that. The combination of hurricane favoring conditions caused by global warming and the extra boost this year from El Nino is producing quite a bit of storm activity.

It does look like the general vicinity of Manzanillo is the most significant populated area near the most likely landfall. Hurricanes are bigger than cities, of course, and the details matter. In case you don’t know much about Manzanillo, here’s some information from Wikipedia:

Manzanillo is a city, seat of Manzanillo Municipality, in the Mexican state of Colima. The city, located on the Pacific Ocean, contains Mexico’s busiest port that is responsible for handling Pacific cargo for the Mexico City area. It is the largest producing municipality for the business sector and tourism in the state of Colima.

The city is known as the “Sailfish Capital of the World”. [1] Since 1957, it has hosted important national and international fishing competitions, such as the Dorsey Tournament, making it a very attractive fishing destination.[2] Manzanillo has become one of the country’s most important tourist resorts, and its excellent hotels and restaurants continue to meet the demands of both national and international tourism.

The main part of the storm is coming ashore now, as seen in this satellite image:

vis-l (2)

Videos and twitter reports from Manzanillo indicate strong winds and heavy rain.

Update, Friday Mid Morning:

The National Weather Service thinks Patricia will make landfall in around 12 hours, but tropical strength conditions are already developing on the coast.

Paul Douglas told me that this is the fastest he’s ever seen a hurricane develop.

The storm surge for this hurricane is expected to be very serious. If you look at the Mexican coast in this area, highlands start right after the coast and there are several small to medium size settlements sitting, in some cases, along small embayments. The worst case scenario is that the hurricane does in fact strengthen, as expected, and the right front punch of the storm aims directly into one of these embayments, flooding the settled area.

The NWS is saying this morning that “Residents in low-lying areas near the coast in the hurricane warning area should evacuate immediately, since the storm surge could be catastrophic near and to the east of where the center makes landfall.”

Sustained winds will be about 200 mph, with gusts of 250 mph.

Coastal and off shore waves will be very high (this is aside from the storm surge).

The dome of water being brought to shore by the storm ranges from 15-25 feet in height, and this could be concentrated in some areas by terrain. The most likely ground zero for a major storm surge may be the vicinity of Manzanillo. It is recommended that areas below about 20 feet elevation be totally evacuated, as there is the possibility of total destruction in those areas. But this “ground zero” could move.

The graphic above shows the most likely are of landfall, but watch this closely because the track could move. The most likely direction of a shift is probably to the north.

Once the storm lurches inland, it will dissipate quickly and turn into a big wet thing, that will drop a LOT of rain in hilly or mountainous areas. The highest death tolls from hurricanes tend to come from flooding inland, and with this sort of terrain, serious inland flooding and significant landslides are inevitable.

After the storm “dissipates” it is likely to join up with a cyclonic system forming in the Gulf. This will cause a major storm in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Parts of Texas and Louisiana could get a foot of rain or more, with further significant rain across a much larger region including Oklahoma and Arkansas, starting over the weekend and into early next week.

Original Post:

Holy cow, man. Patricia, an Eastern Pacific Hurricane, became what is probably the strongest hurricane ever recorded by the National Weather Service in the NWS Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR), which consists of the Atlantic and the Eastern Pacific.

The storm is heading straight for Mexico. This is serious.

There are various ways to measure hurricanes. Maximum wind speed, central pressure (lower is badder), overall size (of hurricane force wind field), and overall total strength (using one of a couple of different metrics). Although weather forecasters and normal people tend to focus on wind speed hurricane experts are more impressed with central pressure. These things are all related, of course. But Patricia is the strongest hurricane with respect to its central pressure, and winds.

From the NWS:

Data from three center fixes by the Hurricane Hunters indicate that the intensity, based on a blend of 700 mb-flight level and SFMR-observed surface winds, is near 175 kt. This makes Patricia the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins. The minimum central pressure estimated from the aircraft data, 880 mb, is the lowest ever for our AOR. It seems incredible that even more strengthening could occur before landfall later today, but recent microwave imagery shows hints of a concentric eyewall developing. If the trend toward an eyewall replacement continues, it would cause the intensity to at least level off later today. The official forecast shows only a little more strengthening before landfall. Given the very mountainous terrain that Patricia should encounter after landfall, the cyclone should weaken even faster over land than predicted by the normal inland decay rate.

The storm will hit Mexico as a strong category 5, the kind of category 5 that makers you wonder why there is not a cateory 6, TODAY (Friday). Incredibly, the storm is expected to get STRONGER before that happens. Winds will reach 200 miles per hour before landfall.

Huge coastal waves, a huge storm surge, intensive inland flooding are expected. This is a catastrophe unfolding.

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 7.24.32 AM

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41 thoughts on “Strongest NWS Hurricane Ever Recorded: Patricia (UPDATED)

  1. Dear lord. That’s just below 26 inches of mercury. That’s a number that doesn’t even look like a barometric pressure.

    For comparison, Sandy’s minimum pressure at landfall was something like 27.7 inches, and it resulted in the highest waters ever recorded in the New York Harbor region, by a considerable margin.

    For something like this to happen so fast… people are going to die just because they didn’t hear the news.

  2. Are these stronger storms with ever lower barometric pressure and ever higher storm surges going to be the breakthrough signal that the general public needs to hear in order to begin to repair their broken climate-change-belief-evaluation-system?

    I certainly hope so. A few millimeters of sea level rise per year is not yet getting many people excited, but perhaps the increase of storm power and the videos of the resulting effects will help raise awareness.

    We can track the origin of delusional belief systems back to their funding sources,( places like Exxon Mobil), but helping undo the damage to people’s lives from those who have constructed and then acted upon a whole intricate belief system based on total rot will not be easy or quick. Or cheap.

  3. SteveP, you underestimate the power of The Dark Side…

    Most delusional belief systems trace back to nothing more complicated than “self-centered interest”. No funding required.

  4. Brainstorms #3:

    Absolutely true.

    No one is paying me anything.

    I think you believe I am on the “dark side”.

    My doubt is based on the precautionary principal – but from the flip side of the “light side” (to adopt your terminology).

    I don’t think it would be very good to shut down all coal powered electrical power stations in the USA (or really anywhere) without having a way to generate the same amount of power they generate for the same cost or lower.

    If it costs more – than people will die.

    Money is fungible – so more money for electricity means less money for food (and visa versa).

    Not a good experiment to run in my opinion.

    We could try a carbon tax – but I think only bad things would happen.

    Still – say we make gasoline cost (you pick – but say 5 or 6 dollars a gallon). Or triple the cost of coal or any example you like.

    What will happen – well people will drive less or people will use less electricity – so we will see some real savings there.

    But people can only decrease their driving by a certain amount and then they just have to pay more – so they are poorer now – which means people die (because money is fungible).

    People can use less electricity – that is true – but there is a certain minimum amount you need to run your household.

    I use electricity to heat my house (geothermal heat pump).

    Sure I can turn the thermostat down – but not to zero – so I will always use a certain minimum amount for electricity to heat the house in the winter – no matter how efficient I am.

    Triple the cost of my electricity and I will end up paying more – which means I have less money (and to generalize – people will die because money is fungible).

    Not a good experiment to run in my opinion.

    I would like to see a market based solution – which requires that someone invent a cheaper power generation technology than coal, oil or natural gas.

    No one has invented that thing yet – but that is what I think we need.

    So lets do a manhattan project for that.

    Lets do federal funding for that.

    I am not adverse to spending some tax dollars to achieve a goal – and I am not against spending less on energy, and as a by-product it is non-CO2 producing. That is a win win.

    Why not work on that – all the market economy guys would be on your side.

    Eventually, as hydrocarbons are used up the price should rise until wind and solar are cheaper – but that is not the case today or for the forceable future.

    Those pesky inventors keep inventing ways to get more hydrocarbons cheaper and cheaper from more and more places.

    Maybe fusion – someday.

    Maybe space based solar – someday.

    None of these are here yet.

    Nuclear is more expensive than hydro-carbon power today – but I am sure if we decided to change our regulations and build – say 300 reactors – we could get the cost per megawatt down so it was competitive with coal.

    Then we could replace every coal power plant with a nuclear plant as the coal plants reached end-of-life.

    I would be in favor of that.

    So there are things I am willing to do.

    In the meantime – I keep trying to understand the science.

    But as a voter – I gotta tell you – I am not convinced that we have a plan.

    I am not convinced that the plan (which I really don’t see yet) makes sense from a cost/benefit point of view.

    I think every person in the world is entitled to the same standard of living that I have – so I fully expect each country to keep lifting its people our of poverty – which is happening.

    Now – all those people want electricity and clean water. I don’t want to make their electricity more expensive than it needs to be – especially if the benefit of doing so is really only .01C over the next hundred years.

    Not that I am saying it will only by .01C over the next hundred years – but we really don’t know what the benefit in warming avoided will be over the next hundred years (at least that I have seen or read).

    So we have to look at what each plan will do to warming – how much will it avoid – how many countries have to be on board – what if it is just the UK or the USA – or hell everybody except China and India (as a hypo).

    I don’t feel like we have a very good handle on that analysis.

    Then we have to look at the cost and what that additional cost (because as far as I can see it will be more expensive) does to the cost of food, fuel, transportation, energy and the trickle on effects of more expensive goods, more expensive to ship the goods, and they cost more to boot. How many more people will die under that world than our current world – wood cooking fires and particulate and global warming and all.

    As a conservative type person – I don’t want to just willy nilly make everything more expensive for no good reason.

    Just wanted to give you a little insight into the “dark side”.

  5. RickA, humor us for a minute, and let’s both assert that climate scientists are honest and competent and have been telling us something that’s true.

    Start with that as a given. I.e., don’t argue THAT point.

    Now, given our above assertion, we know that if we continue business as usual, we will cause a VERY, VERY expensive catastrophe. (The costs of just the coastal flooding alone, not counting the costs of all other catastrophes that will be occurring will exceed the ability of us to cover by many yearly GNPs — that type of expensive.)

    From this, we realize that business as usual is the MOST expensive option — by far. It will cost the most, kill the most, destroy the most property, have the greatest negative impact on production of food, extinction of flora and fauna, etc.

    Now, with that assertion firmly in mind — and not being argued, being asserted — re-cast your #4 above and let’s hear what your thoughts on responsibilities and solutions are…

    Remember, if you cave into the temptation to continue to argue the assertion, you have failed, enlightenment will again escape you, and you will gain nothing but further derision. I.e., you will have chose the Dark Side.

  6. So lets do a manhattan project for that.

    Lets do federal funding for that.

    But money is fungible, so people will die.

    Not a good experiment to run

    Indeed, a much better experiment is to let the earth’s surface heat up by 3, 4, 5 degrees and see what happens. Should be fun.

  7. Brainstorm #5:

    I will give it a try.

    I will assume business as usual will cause CAGW.

    So the goal is to reduce human emissions of CO2 to try to prevent as much of the CAGW warming as we can.

    Therefore, I would recommend a crash building program of nuclear. I would build enough nuclear in the United States to replace all the hydro-carbon power generation – and I would target getting it online in less than 10 years.

    I would sprinkle the country with a few recycling nuclear plants to reuse the waste from all the other plants – which would involve shipping the waste from all the plants to the closest recycling plant.

    This dramatically reduces the 1/2 life of the waste and is basically free power.

    I would phase out coal, oil and natural gas power stations as additional nuclear came on-line – so in 10 years we would be generating all our power carbon-free.

    I would still do a manhattan project to invent a cheaper form of non-carbon generating power as compared to coal, oil and natural gas – because we need as much cheap energy as we can get.

    I would do a manhattan project on power storage as well.

    A good power storage solution would solve a lot of the problems renewable energy has.

    What difference this would make to world CO2 emissions I have no idea – but we can only lead by example and hope the rest of the world joins.

    Nuclear is the only baseload power solution we have which isn’t dependent on location (i.e. dams) and which we have all the existing technology for and which doesn’t emit CO2 – so we have to go for that solution – assuming CAGW.

    Not sure what to do about cars or heating homes.

    Not sure there is enough lithium in the world for all the batteries we would need for electric cars – if everybody switched over to electric over a 10 year period.

    So I guess we need a manhattan project for sustainable electric car battery technology or fuel cell technology.

    We would probably have to provide massive tax credits to get homes and businesses to switch over to some form of electric heat – geothermal heat pump of some other for of heat based on electricity – so we could use our nuclear carbon free electricity to heat with.

    I have no idea what all this would cost – but ultimately the electricity users would pay for the switchover via their electric rates – which I am sure would go up (at least double if not triple) due to rebuilding all carbon generation with nuclear in 10 years.

    I would imagine my various manhattan projects would cost 100 – 200 billion – but one cannot predict invention – so we would have to hope it paid off.

    How does that sound.

  8. “The storm will hit Mexico as a strong category 5, the kind of category 5 that makers you wonder why there is not a cateory 6, ”
    5,83 definitely rounds up to a 6.

  9. Chris #10:

    I prefer business as usual.

    I personally don’t believe we will experience warming of 3, 4 or 5 C from our emissions – I think that number is grossly exaggerated and we will see perhaps another .4C to .8C of warming until 2100.

    Since we have already seen .8C of warming since 1880 with no perceptible problems, I don’t think .8C will be anything we cannot handle.

    Chris – what is your alternative to business as usual?

    I mean – exactly how do you want to change business as usual?

    Stop emitting carbon is not a plan.

    Producing all power with renewable energy is not a plan (it cannot be done) and the backup baseload power needed when it isn’t windy or sunny would use up almost as much hydrocarbons as just burning coal.

    I would be interested in your thoughts about how to change business as usual, how much it will cost over what we are spending on business as usual now and what benefit the change will yield.

  10. I think we will see perhaps another .4C to .8C of warming until 2100

    What? It would be very foolish indeed to believe you rather than people who actually know something about the subject. Business as usual has produced warming at the rate of 1.8?/century since 1974 and it is currently above that trend. Even at that rate and assuming zero acceleration, there will be another 1.5? by 2100.

    .8C of warming since 1880 with no perceptible problems

    It’s obvious this claim is just personal belief without any evidence. Someone who actually knows something about the subject points out an estimated 150,000 deaths annually currently from the effects of climate change due to global warming. You live in a country that isn’t affected much yet so it’s not surprising that you don’t see any problem.

    what is your alternative to business as usual?

    If you don’t think there is really a problem then there is hardly any point in talking to you about solutions to that problem, is there?

  11. Chris #12:

    The only reason to talk to me about solutions is to see you solutions make sense.

    Also, you (I mean collectively of course) need to persuade me your solutions makes sense, because I am a voter.

    If you cannot persuade me – you will probably have trouble with the the others who don’t favor taking extreme expensive action which will make everything more expensive for potentially zero benefit (or perhaps a very small benefit 50 years or more in the future).

    But if you don’t want to talk about solutions, than don’t.

    As you can see above – I have set forward an idea – assuming CAGW is true – even though I don’t believe it is.

    Why not critique it, if you have no solution of your own?

  12. RickA,

    If you would explain what “baseload” means, and provide some numbers for individual dwellings, then it might be possible to evaluate your plan.

    What is the “baseload” for your house?

  13. zebra #14:

    When I use the term “baseload” when talking about energy I am talking about power plants which can provide power 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

    Wind and solar don’t do that – so they are not baseload.

    Nuclear, hydro, coal, oil and natural gas are baseload.

    I live in Minnesota.

    In the coldest month last year (January) I used 5800 kilowatt hours of electricity. My lowest month (August) was 1400 kilowatt hours of electricity.

    I have two meters – one which can be turned off by the utility and therefore is 1/2 price power, which I use for my in-floor heat in the basement floor (electric mini-boiler), my geothermal heat pump and my hot water heater.

    The second meter is for everything else.

    The numbers above are for the total of both meters.

  14. I tweaked my spreadsheet to get an annual total.

    For 2014 I used 26177 for my heating meter and 8480 for my regular meter.

    So that is a total of 34,657 kilowatt hours of electricity per year – using electricity to heat a house in Minnesota.

    Maybe those will be more useful numbers for you.

  15. RickA,

    There’s a difference between a “load” and a “source”. What we call power plants are “sources”. This is taught to every physics 101 student in a couple of weeks sequence.

    So, you are beginning with a demonstration that you don’t really understand what you are talking about.

    The question is, what is the load that requires a source 24/7, 365 days a year?

  16. RickA:

    you need to persuade me your solutions makes sense

    You clearly do not have much sense when it comes to understanding the problem so there is not much point in discussing anything else that requires you to have sense.

  17. Zebra, it’s worse than that. RickA is on record claiming to be an electrical engineer. Correction: He claims he has such a degree.

    No EE would confuse the difference between a “load” and a “source” and term a power plant as anything but a “source”. This is taught to every EE 101 student in a couple of weeks sequence.

    We now doubt his claims of being a lawyer…

  18. Brainstorms,

    I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Lots of people claim to be “engineers” these days who are really IT/software people. Physics– whether it is about climate or heating and cooling an moving things and so on– is about the physical.

    This is one of the reasons I tend to rant about how we communicate these issues to the public– I think people can relate better than some think if we present things in terms that are experientially accessible.

  19. Zebra, I very much agree… If you want to be an effective teacher, link what you’re teaching to things your students are already familiar with — and give them the distinctions to understand the differences.

  20. RickA 22,

    We never said we hadn’t heard the term used.

    I was just pointing out that you don’t understand what you are talking about.

    Since you are still evading the question even when it is explained to you, I’m going back to my original diagnosis from an earlier thread– you are a “lazy troll”. All you want to do is make superficial assertions and give your opinion without having to back it up.

    What is the baseload of your house?

  21. zebra:

    I already told you the load my house requires.

    It is a pretty typical dwelling in Minnesota.

    See #15 and #16 above.

  22. RickA,

    When people question the effects of CO2 and climate change and so on, I give them a bit of a pass because there is some hard physics and math involved, and lots of prediction, which, as Yogi said, is especially hard when it’s about the future.

    But here you are embarrassing yourself over stuff you could look up and learn in half an hour, that is all well-established and non-controversial.

    If Brainstorms or someone else wants to give you lessons about kW-h and sources and loads and so on, I will wish them luck. I had some pretty weak students back in the day, but this is ridiculous.

  23. I’ll pass. I train people who are genuinely interested in learning. And I don’t mean “learning how to use propaganda to dodge issues”.

  24. zebra #25:

    google Define:baseload power

    I cannot help it if the terminology that has developed is confusing to you.

    Baseload power is a reference to a power plant – even though a power plant is a source.

    My house is a load – even though I talk about its baseload power requirements.

    Really – is it that confusing to you?

    I have given the numbers that were asked for – the baseload power requirements of my house – lets see what you guys do with them.

    Or is the real problem that you guys have no idea what to do with the numbers you asked for and are trying to distract from that with your juvenile insults?

  25. RickA

    I prefer business as usual.

    I personally don’t believe we will experience warming of 3, 4 or 5 C from our emissions – I think that number is grossly exaggerated and we will see perhaps another .4C to .8C of warming until 2100.

    You are not a climate scientist, so your opinion carries no weight. It’s important to bear this in mind.

    Rather than more back-and-forth about sensitivity etc, let’s just go with the basics as solidly supported by the scientific evidence:

    – More CO2 = more rapid warming

    – From an ecosystem perspective the *rate* of any environmental change (eg. warming) is typically more important than the magnitude. Fast = bad. Fast and large = worse.

    – Yes, a transition to low-carbon electricity generation will be very expensive and extremely challenging. So it should be begun in earnest as soon as possible

    – Since the cost of unmitigated climate change is very likely to be much greater than the cost of an energy transition (expensive as it will be), then the CBA favours change, not BAU

  26. BBD #28:

    Unless you are a climate scientist – your opinion carries the same weight as mine.

    I dare say that most of the bloggers here (and elsewhere) are laypersons, sharing their opinions back and forth.

    Nothing wrong with that.

    But don’t pretend your opinion carries any more weight than mine.

  27. Unless you are a climate scientist – your opinion carries the same weight as mine.

    It doesn’t matter who we are. Not even if I am the King of Old Siam. The scientific understanding of climate is unaffected.

    But if we are forced to weigh the merits of two conflicting opinions, we need to think about what informs them.

    Yours is, apparently, a guess. Mine is a recitation of the standard scientific position.

    Tricky, I know. But one has to work with what is on the table.

  28. #15
    “When I use the term “baseload” when talking about energy I am talking about power plants which can provide power 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.”

    No power plants “provide power 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.” All baseload plants need maintenance and repairs, and work on a nuclear plant can take months or years, during which time the plant can be completely shut down.

  29. #29
    “Unless you are a climate scientist – your opinion carries the same weight as mine.”

    Here’s another version:

    “Unless you are a climate scientist you know no more than I.”
    http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/06/22/mark-steyns-newest-attack-on-michael-mann-and-the-hockey-stick/#comment-626317

    To quote my reply:

    This is patent nonsense. The attainment of knowledge doesn’t start at nothing and then jump to expertise. There are different levels, and your knowledge of climate science leaves much to be desired. The information you possess comes from sources that provide misinformation, not information, and you stubbornly refuse to be corrected. You suggest that climate scientists know more than you, but you consistently reject their results. You are incapable of answering legitimate questions, e.g. regarding the natural forcing(s) you claim are responsible for our warming climate. You almost never back up your assertions with links to scientific papers, and when you do, you show that you haven’t understood what you’ve read. You have no understanding of chronology or logic, and turn the latter on its head by confusing cause with effect. You are a persistent, painful-to-observe manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Your thoroughgoing incompetence prevents you from recognizing that some of the persons who comment here have more scientific knowledge than you (or I ) will ever have.

    “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
    Daniel Patrick Moynihan

    This statement presupposes that the reader knows the difference between opinions and facts, and it’s clear that you don’t.
    http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/06/22/mark-steyns-newest-attack-on-michael-mann-and-the-hockey-stick/#comment-626322

  30. But don’t pretend your opinion carries any more weight than mine.

    Interesting comment, since on another post (the Mark Steyn ongoing discussion) you have a comment that implies (correct this if it is wrong) that even if there were climate scientists posting here you would say they are wrong. I base that on this:

    He (Mann) and his cadre of like minded climate science advocates have lost their credibility with me.
    I no longer trust anything they have to say – as they are no longer just reporting the facts – they are spinning the facts to try to encourage certain actions which they think would be the best actions to take.

    So you refuse to deal honestly with the people who have spent a good deal of time explaining to you, as they have me, what the science says, because “they are not climate scientists”, and you say you would not trust a climate scientist. Win win for the resident science denier.

    You could have said it more simply with “Nah nah nah I can’t hear you, I have my thumbs in my ears.”

    You never had any intention of carrying on an honest discussion did you? Why don’t you come up with another “profession” and make new proclamations based on that.

  31. dean #33:

    As far as I can tell, I am the only honest one here.

    I at least admit when I don’t know something – and I appear to be the only one willing to be honest about the limits of my own knowledge.

    I read, and form my own opinions and I express them,

    Just because a bunch of people who read, and form their own opinions, and disagree with me – that doesn’t make me wrong.

    Especially when I am saying we don’t have perfect knowledge of the climate and some are saying oh yes we do – we know every force and feedback perfectly.

    What a joke.

    As an electrical engineer with a law degree I have taken a great deal of science courses and math.

    So when I hear people say that humans have caused 110% percent of the warming from 1950 and that natural forcings just disappeared from 1950 to the present – well it doesn’t pass the smell test.

    I answer all the questions put to me as best as I can and then am taunted, name called, called a liar and called psychotic

    I have been very honest and am the only one to suggest a plan – which has received crickets in response.

    What is your plan to deal with CAGW (if it actually is catastrophic).

    You know the other side is losing the argument when they resort to name calling.

  32. You’d have to show where people have said the things you claim have said them: you’ve spewed far too many lies to make it worth the effort tracking down where someone said what you’ve claimed.

    As an electrical engineer with a law degree I have taken a great deal of science courses and math.

    As someone who’s taught engineers I know you are not as versed in mathematics as you think you are. And if you truly are a lawyer – then we might have to modify “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” to say something about the foolhardiness of someone who has you for a lawyer.

  33. I am the only honest one here.

    The dishonest always claim this.

    crickets in response.

    Don’t talk to me about crickets. I responded to your claim in the other thread:

    “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

    This means that it is NOT very likely that most (> 50%) of the observed increase in global average temperatures BEFORE mid-20th century (before 1950) is caused by humans.

    with:

    No it does not mean that. It just means they do not want to claim that most of the observed increase in global average temperature in the first half of the 20th century is very likely (>90% IPCC definition) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. It just means they are not making any claims about likelihood in that period. That doesn’t mean they are making a claim about proportions in that period. They’re just leaving that open with the proviso that the anthropogenic part is (significantly) greater than zero.

    The only response from you is crickets. What hypocrisy.

  34. RickA

    As far as I can tell, I am the only honest one here.

    I at least admit when I don’t know something – and I appear to be the only one willing to be honest about the limits of my own knowledge.

    How is deferring to expert knowledge intellectually arrogant?

    I at least admit when I don’t know something

    But you argue from assertion constantly. This is a mess.

  35. RickA:

    “I at least admit when I don’t know something – and I appear to be the only one willing to be honest about the limits of my own knowledge.”

    You don’t know squat.

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