Global warming question for those that know

[Horse with no Name]

Is the increased hurricane activity last year--and this year (which already looks to be double the activity last year) a result of global warming?
Also, with these monster storms coming in to the coastline, would they just permanently evacuate those areas as they become demolished by hurricanes--or continue to rebuild?
With the global warming--where will be the most ideal place to live?
Obvious the coastlines would be out--I read that Africa would be toast--but ideally, where would someone want to live?
Thanks.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. We need to become a nation of trailer dwellers... (with wheels)

[kittenpants]

5. yes, trailers are a GREAT idea during a terrible hurricane season!

:hi: I kid! I kid!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

8. You laugh.... but have you ever seen some of "trailers" actually

double or triple wides (which I know are immobile) that certain Hollywood types inhabit?? It is amazing to see how nice they can be.

[damntexdem]

13. Ah, trailers are tornado magnets.

;-)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. Must be the aluminum... makes 'em look like a plane, should be

flying... ;) I should know.. I'm in one now.

[kittenpants]

2. the warm waters in the Gulf (92 degrees) are contributing to the terrible

hurricane season we are having now. I don't know if that can be attributed directly to global warming or if it's more of a weather pattern though. I'll be interested in the rest of the responses.

[G_j]

3. it is an on going discussion

many think it is.
At least we know that warm water temps are necessary for hurricanes to form.

[kestrel91316]

4. Global warming>>>>>

warmer oceans>>>>>>more and stronger hurricanes. This is happening exactly as the climate change scientists predicted years ago.

[G_j]

6. Climate Change news

one of the best sites to find news, articles etc. on climate change:

http://www.climateark.org/

[Toots]

7. These storms and even worse ones yet to come were predicted as results

of Global Warming so to answer your question Yes if you believe the scientists that say we are experiencing Global Warming. If you are one of the 19% in America that don't believe the World's Scientific Community then I suppose it is all God's doing and that would indicate God is pissed at those RED States.

[damntexdem]

14. But the signal-to-noise ratio needs to be strong before ...

the hypothesis can be considered to have received sufficient support.

[BillZBubb]

9. No one can say with certainty that the increased activity

is due to global warming. It may be, but in science you need a longer trend period to say anything with high probability. Two years of increased activity just isn't enough. It's is not unreasonable to speculate that warming is contributing to the activity, but that is all it is, speculation.

It is certain that ocean temperatures are rising. It is certain that warm water feeds hurricanes. It is certain that as the water warms more and more that hurricanes will be stronger and stronger. So, we can surely look forward to a future with some very intense storms.

As for where to live, that's a tough question to answer. Right now there are still some big unknowns. For instance, will the melting arctic ice make the North Atlantic water not saline enough to support the Gulf Stream? A lot of models predict that. If so, Europe will get colder on average, rather than warmer. A collapse of the Gulf Stream would make Great Britain and Northern Europe nasty places to live.

The US great plains probably would resemble the Dust Bowl years. Florida would be a mess. My guess is that Northern California, Oregon, and Washington would be the best US locations--but they've got earthquakes!

[amazona]

17. california will be un-inhabitable

The New Yorker article (link http://www.ecologycenter.org/alerts/alert.php?alertID=11691)
predicts worldwide drought with the worst effects in the west:

When he applied the index to the giss model for doubled CO2, it showed most of the continental United States to be suffering under severe drought conditions. When he applied the index to the G.F.D.L. model, the results were even more dire. Rind created two maps to illustrate these findings. Yellow represented a forty-to-sixty-per-cent chance of summertime drought, ochre a sixty-to-eighty-per-cent chance, and brown an eighty-to-a-hundred-per-cent chance. In the first map, showing the giss results, the Northeast was yellow, the Midwest was ochre, and the Rocky Mountain states and California were brown. In the second, showing the G.F.D.L. results, brown covered practically the entire country.

"I gave a talk based on these drought indices out in California to water-resource managers," Rind told me. "And they said, 'Well, if that happens, forget it.' There's just no way they could deal with that."

If this model is correct, some hurricanes in the Gulf or on the east Coast would be the least of our problems. If the storms brought rain, they might even be something of a blessing in such a dire situation.

I'm not clear that we would even have the same type of hurricane or tropical storm formation in the Atlantic if the Gulf Stream shuts down -- one of the possible effects of global climate change. Rain might become rare and precious.

The West Coast will be on fire.

[BillZBubb]

18. I don't doubt that everything below SF would be desert.

Is there a link to the map itself? I'd like to see that.

[Michael_UK]

10. No, with reservations

I write this as someone who fully believes in climate change, but I would be very cautious to blame any increase on hurricanes (yet)

If you look at the literature

Tropical Cyclones and Global Climate Change: A Post-IPCC Assessment.
Henderson-Sellers et al


Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 79, Issue 1, pp.19-38


The very modest available evidence points to an expectation of little or no change in global frequency. Regional and local frequencies could change substantially in either direction, because of the dependence of cyclone genesis and track on other phenomena (e.g., ENSO) that are not yet predictable. Greatly improved skills from coupled global ocean-atmosphere models are required before improved predictions are possible.

In short, I would be very careful pinning this increase on climate change until more evidence comes in.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. As others have answered...

the present computer models for gauging the effects of warming are hopelessly inadequate, and the scientists know that.

If the full effects of actual warming take place-- head for the high ground, since the melted land ice will raise the sea levels at least 6 feet, and possibly up to 30 feet. The will doom most coastlines worldwide, and entire nations, like Bangla Desh, will be almost completely under water.

However, before that happens, changing Atlantic sea temperatures might reverse the Gulf Stream, which would bring a new ice age to the US and Europe, and possibly worldwide. Glaciers would cover everything down to Georgia.

Or, the Yellowstone volcano might blow.

Or, another New Madrid earthquake.

Or, a huge comet could hit.

Or...

In other words, our 15,000 years of recorded human history has been in a particularly quiet geological time, and anything could, and probably will, happen eventually.

So don't plan on anything and just hope it doesn't happen, because whatever it is, we'll all be screwed.

[etherealtruth]

16. ...and that CAN be said with certainty : )

[damntexdem]

12. I'm no climatologist, but ...

as I understand it, the problem with pinning down global warming was from the start the inherent variation in climate -- it was hard to separate the signal from the noise. Now, the signal has been received fairly clearly, but there's still a lot of noise. Wait for a few years and see whether hurricane seasons get worse and worse: or otherwise try to hear the signal above the noise.

Hint, when it's the Port of Twin Peaks rather than the Port of San Francisco, that'll be a fairly-strong signal.