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This piece has value. This passage from it is a morass of cognitive dissonance and bad faith rhetoric: "The claim that CO2 causes worse hurricanes is unproven

This piece has value. This passage from it is a morass of cognitive dissonance and bad faith rhetoric: "The claim that CO2 causes worse hurricanes is unproven and controversial, even to believers in climate change. Regardless, even if you believe that CO2 is causing climate change, you should be thanking the energy entrepreneurs in Houston for bringing cheap, clean natural gas to the nation. The increasing use of gas in power generation has led to a much-improved carbon dioxide picture in the U.S."

nico_h 9y ago
"clean natural gas" should read as "slightly less dirty" but it would be much less dirty to leave it in the ground, as both raw and burned it is a greenhouse gas, and I'm pretty sure liquifying and transporting it is definitely energy intensive (and thus dirty) .
toomuchtodo 9y ago
For every 1C degrees increase in atmospheric temperature, the air can hold 7% more moisture. While not proven, it's a sound theory that more CO2 in the atmosphere allows hurricanes to absorb more energy from oceans (which themselves are warming, creating a positive feedback cycle; warmer water fuels hurricanes).
- emn13 9y ago
  ...and there's no doubt that warm ocean temperatures are a requirement for hurricanes; so making the assuming that a warmer waters overall nevertheless won't affect hurricane frequency and intensity is at the very least weird enough that you'd want evidence of that.
  - liberte82 9y ago
    Temperature differential creates hurricanes. If everything is warmer, it doesn't necessarily mean more hurricanes. Not really disputing what you're saying, just adding some precision.
    - emn13 9y ago
      Since outer space is still cold, that temperature differential always exists. But to transfer heat, the system uses water vapor, and that is not relative. If the whole system is warmer (and still firmly below absurd extremes such as boiling point), then even though the differential to the rest of the planet may be the same, that does not mean the system will behave identically. Beyond the really fundamental and abstract "differential must exist" (which is true of any heat engine and is in any case always satisfied) I cannot find any reference to the notion that relative temperature (to the rest of the nearby weather?) is what matters. Various sources I find talk of absolute water temperatures in the 26-27 degrees centigrade range (of course these aren't 100% strict limits).
emn13 9y ago
His comparison of wetland absorption and rainfall is comparing apples to oranges - if his numbers are accurate in the first place; which given the lack of citations and a piece that clearly is trying to prove a point, I think is an unreasonably optimistic assumption. His scaling of the costs to a personal budget is also misleading (not terribly so, but still). Individuals have buffers that are proportionally much larger than those of large organisations; and if indeed you encounter a setback that's larger than you can absord you usually have a whole network of contacts to help you mitigate the effects. Conceptually: relying on your neighbors doesn't work so well when your neighbors were hit too. The comparison isn't crazy, but it's a little misleading nevertheless. If the core premise of this piece really had value, then city of houston should be comfortably able to cover the bill without undue burden, and not need support from texas or the federal government. That does not appear to be the case. Also: note that the estimates of damage almost certainly only include straightforward economic damage. That's of course an absurd proposition; much will have been damaged in houston that has value to various people but simply isn't trivially measurable. Losing family heirlooms, pictures... your house... does damage beyond the trivial value of the object. Finally: even if it turns out the damage is merely 10s of billions and not hundreds (as he's implying), then it's still reasonable to assume it's worthwhile to mitigate that damage. Just because you can deal with the setback doesn't mean it's best to ignore the risk.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  It's pretty wild, he seems to suggest that because wetlands wouldn't prevent the whole thing, they aren't worth having, or something like that.
  - emn13 9y ago
    And it's totally normal in dynamic systems for even tiny buffers to have huge impacts on how the whole system behaves. It's sort of like saying having a network stream buffer is pointless because the complete transmission doesn't fit into the buffer at once. Say what? That just doesn't follow. And again, I really wouldn't take this guy at his word as to the numbers anyhow.
- 9y ago
xixi77 9y ago
What's so controversial about this (other than perhaps the "if you beleve")? Seems like a pretty factual statement, the shift from coal to gas is currently the primary driver of CO2 emissions reduction. Particularly since he writes it as a response to a claim that Houston should blame its own industry for the hurricane.

nico_h 9y ago

"clean natural gas" should read as "slightly less dirty" but it would be much less dirty to leave it in the ground, as both raw and burned it is a greenhouse gas, and I'm pretty sure liquifying and transporting it is definitely energy intensive (and thus dirty) .

toomuchtodo 9y ago

For every 1C degrees increase in atmospheric temperature, the air can hold 7% more moisture. While not proven, it's a sound theory that more CO2 in the atmosphere allows hurricanes to absorb more energy from oceans (which themselves are warming, creating a positive feedback cycle; warmer water fuels hurricanes).

emn13 9y ago
...and there's no doubt that warm ocean temperatures are a requirement for hurricanes; so making the assuming that a warmer waters overall nevertheless won't affect hurricane frequency and intensity is at the very least weird enough that you'd want evidence of that.
- liberte82 9y ago
  Temperature differential creates hurricanes. If everything is warmer, it doesn't necessarily mean more hurricanes. Not really disputing what you're saying, just adding some precision.
  - emn13 9y ago
    Since outer space is still cold, that temperature differential always exists. But to transfer heat, the system uses water vapor, and that is not relative. If the whole system is warmer (and still firmly below absurd extremes such as boiling point), then even though the differential to the rest of the planet may be the same, that does not mean the system will behave identically. Beyond the really fundamental and abstract "differential must exist" (which is true of any heat engine and is in any case always satisfied) I cannot find any reference to the notion that relative temperature (to the rest of the nearby weather?) is what matters. Various sources I find talk of absolute water temperatures in the 26-27 degrees centigrade range (of course these aren't 100% strict limits).

emn13 9y ago

His comparison of wetland absorption and rainfall is comparing apples to oranges - if his numbers are accurate in the first place; which given the lack of citations and a piece that clearly is trying to prove a point, I think is an unreasonably optimistic assumption. His scaling of the costs to a personal budget is also misleading (not terribly so, but still). Individuals have buffers that are proportionally much larger than those of large organisations; and if indeed you encounter a setback that's larger than you can absord you usually have a whole network of contacts to help you mitigate the effects. Conceptually: relying on your neighbors doesn't work so well when your neighbors were hit too. The comparison isn't crazy, but it's a little misleading nevertheless. If the core premise of this piece really had value, then city of houston should be comfortably able to cover the bill without undue burden, and not need support from texas or the federal government. That does not appear to be the case. Also: note that the estimates of damage almost certainly only include straightforward economic damage. That's of course an absurd proposition; much will have been damaged in houston that has value to various people but simply isn't trivially measurable. Losing family heirlooms, pictures... your house... does damage beyond the trivial value of the object. Finally: even if it turns out the damage is merely 10s of billions and not hundreds (as he's implying), then it's still reasonable to assume it's worthwhile to mitigate that damage. Just because you can deal with the setback doesn't mean it's best to ignore the risk.

sliverstorm 9y ago
It's pretty wild, he seems to suggest that because wetlands wouldn't prevent the whole thing, they aren't worth having, or something like that.
- emn13 9y ago
  And it's totally normal in dynamic systems for even tiny buffers to have huge impacts on how the whole system behaves. It's sort of like saying having a network stream buffer is pointless because the complete transmission doesn't fit into the buffer at once. Say what? That just doesn't follow. And again, I really wouldn't take this guy at his word as to the numbers anyhow.
9y ago

xixi77 9y ago

What's so controversial about this (other than perhaps the "if you beleve")? Seems like a pretty factual statement, the shift from coal to gas is currently the primary driver of CO2 emissions reduction. Particularly since he writes it as a response to a claim that Houston should blame its own industry for the hurricane.