🧵
Happy Monday
I'm going to let you in on a secret
It is out in the open but I doubt you've heard about it
Th most recent CMIP6 modeling studies of tropical cyclones/hurricanes project no detectable changes in storm metrics most associated with damage ... under RCP8.5 ... 1/n
Kreusseler et al GRL look at "integrated kinetic energy" (IKE) as a metric of potential damage and in model projections find "no significant changes in lifetime maximum IKE between present climate conditions and a projected climate scenario" agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…
Very important
Kreussler et al support Klotzbach et al 2020:
"minimum in MSLP seems to be a better predictor of IKE in HR than the max wind speed, which tends to support the use of central pressure deficit as a better proxy than max surface winds to estimate TC damage"
Kreussler et al provides additional confirmatory evidence of the robustness of the normalization methods most recently applied in Weinkle et al 2018 for hurricane damage 1900-2017 nature.com/articles/s4189…
Even under "enhanced signal" of RCP8.5 Roberts et al are unable to detect in projections meaningful changes to TC behavior (only a few hints of small changes)
This passive voice construction made me laugh out loud:
"the relatively short reliable historical record may also be conflating multidecadal variability and climate change signals"
I can say authoritatively that it is not the historical record doing any conflating 😎
Bottom line
On hurricanes . . .
The long-term historical record doesn't support claims of detection of a climate change signal
Most recent, state-of-the art models don't support claims we should now or soon be seeing such signals
Feel free to accept or deny the evidence
/END
PS. None of this argues against any climate policies
I support net-zero by 2050
But what it does mean is that if you are using hurricanes to try to sell climate policies (looking at you @ClimateEnvoy) then you are risking your claim to be well-grounded in evidence and science
PPS
Despite evidence & research the weight of conventional wisdom is heavy
Compare this group of NOAA GFDL authors who say at one place that climate change "probably" increasing intensity (L) & elsewhere it is "premature to conclude with high confidence" (R)
Confusing? Yeah🤷♂️
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The idea it was perfect under Democrats, as @afreedma & other advocacy journos suggest, is simply wrong
The most recent NCA was totally capture by interest groups and companies that would benefit from the report - UCS, TNC, EDF, CAP, Stripe etc
Below just a few of its authors
@afreedma The head of the NCA5 stated publicly that she would never cite our work in the assessment, even though our work is by far the most cited research on economic losses in the US associated with floods, hurricanes, tornadoes
🧵Let's take a quick look at the implications of the regulations that have followed from the 2009 EPA endangerment finding
According to @C2ES_org the 2021 GHG standards for light vehicles would reduce projected CO2 emissions by a cumulative 3.1 billion tons to 2050 c2es.org/content/regula…
Over the next 25 years the world would emit 925 gigatons of CO2 assuming constant 2025 emissions and ~690Gt assuming emissions are cut in half by 2050
That means that the projected impact of the regulations would reduce global emissions by 0.0003% (constant) & 0.0004% (halved)
The idea that CO2 can be regulated out of the economy is flawed
If the purpose of CO2 regulation is to create a shadow carbon tax, then it is a horribly inefficent way to do that
Once again, all this leads us back to Congress and the need for smart energy & climate policy
🧵
The percentage of a percentage trick is increasingly common & leads to massive confusion
Here a undetectable difference of 0.01 events per year per decade is presented as the difference between a 31% and 66.4% increase (in the *likelihood* of the event, not the event itself)
The resulting confusion is perfectly predictable
Here is a reporter (NPR) explaining completely incorrectly:
"The phenomenon has grown up to 66% since the mid-20th century"
False
Also, the numbers in the text and figure do not appear to match up
I asked Swain about this over at BlooSkeye
A Frankenstein dataset results from splicing together two time series found online
Below is an example for US hurricane damage 1900-2017
Data for 1980-2017 was replaced with a different time series in the green box
Upwards trend results (red ---)
Claim: Due to climate change!
The errors here are so obvious and consequential that it is baffling that the community does not quickly correct course
The IPCC AR6 cited a paper misusing the Frankenstein hurricane loss dataset to suggest that NOAA's gold standard hurricane "best track" dataset may be flawed
JFC - Using flawed economic loss data to suggest that direct measurements of hurricanes are in error!
We’ve reached the point where an IPCC author is openly rejecting the conclusions of the IPCC out of concern over how their political opposition is correctly interpreting the AR6
The integrity of the IPCC on extreme events is now under attack
The IPCC explains that a trend in a particular variable is DETECTED if it is outside internal variability and judged with >90% likelihood
For most (not all) metrics of extreme weather detection has not been achieved
That’s not me saying that, but IPCC AR6
The IPCC also assesses that for most (but not all) metrics of extreme weather the signal of a change in climate will not emerge from internal variability with high confidence (ie, >90%) by 2050 or 2100, even assuming the most extreme changes under RCP8.5