Hypocrisy alert: Don't make us pay for Harvey floods sez Eric Worrall at WUWT. We paid for his, though.

Credit: Trudy Lampson

I made a comment the other day about paying for floods. I was remarking about how Roger Pielke Jr likes to view the cost of disasters as a function of GDP. He says that GDP is going up faster worldwide than the big spike in the cost of weather disasters and implies that therefore the world can afford to pay for them.

There are flaws in Roger's GDP argument. One I didn't mention was that the cost of the clean up and restoration is part of GDP. The other is that I think a lot of wealthy people will object to their money being paid to recover from disasters unless they themselves are the victims. Remember how many Republicans voted against aid after Sandy.

We can't say Hurricane Harvey caused climate science deniers but it certainly worsened them

Harvey. Credit: NASA

Science deniers were so put out by the deadly rains from Hurricane Harvey that they lost their sense of sight. Now we can't say that Hurricane Harvey caused climate science deniers, they've existed since we changed climate in a big way. We can say that Hurricane Harvey hasn't improved them.

Joe Bastardi, a science denying weather forecaster, got all excited and wrote a dumb article that was copied and pasted in the deniosphere. Danny Hayes first alerted us here at HotWhopper. It took some time before it was copied and pasted at WUWT (archived here). It was in response to an article in the Guardian, by Professor Michael Mann. The Guardian article had the following:

Hurricane Harvey through the eyes of science deniers

This image of Hurricane Harvey from NOAA and GOES shows water vapour is, in parts, almost off the scale.

The recent 5:00 am CDT statement from the National Hurricane Center includes these tidbits:

A NOAA tide gauge at Port Lavaca, Texas, recently measured a water level of 6.6 feet above Mean Higher High Water.

An automated mesonet rain gauge near Victoria, Texas, is reporting a 24 h precipitation total of 16.43 inches.

From the deniosphere

It's wrong to regard climate science deniers as being harmless idiots. It's not enough for them to deny, lie and play down the dangers of climate change. Not acting on climate change will cause a lot of death and destruction and ruin the livelihoods of many. It will also threaten world food supplies in future.

As can be seen today, climate science deniers are a threat to people in the here and now. In the last day or so, prominent climate disinformers have been playing down the dangers of Hurricane Harvey. Their motive seems to be, as always, because they want people to reject the fact and risks of climate change. Why they would want to downplay an immediate risk for ideology is unfathomable.

Hurricane Harvey - realising the worst

Hurricane Harvey is fulfilling the worst case predictions and is now a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. This is equivalent to a Category 5 cyclone on the Beaufort scale, used to categorise cyclones in Australia.

Hurricane intensity is measured by wind strength. Although winds are hugely destructive, Harvey brings bigger problems. As with all hurricanes, Hurricane Harvey is likely to dump huge amounts of rain and bring storm surges. Harvey will be worse than most because it is expected to hang around for several days. Below is the quantitative prediction forecast from the National Hurricane Center of NOAA as at 4:08 pm Central Daylight Time (USA). It shows horrific rain in Texas. Although the scale goes to 20 plus inches (500 plus mm), see how big that area is. There are warnings that the rainfall may be much higher in parts of that purple area. (I wouldn't want to be in the middle of it.)

Figure 1 | Rainfall potential from Hurricane Harvey: 120-hour Day 1-5 rainfall forecast (inches). Source: National Hurricane Centre, NOAA.

When extreme weather hits these days, it often breaks all records. This prompts science deniers to become more vocal, shrieking their denial of science. They seem to think that if they yell loudly enough, then some idiot will believe them and they'll be able to keep the coal fires burning a bit longer.

I'll write more about this, with despicable examples, shortly. (I am only able to write in short bursts at the moment, as I am dealing with other commitments. This might be a good thing, as some articles in the past have ventured into the TLDR category.)

Meanwhile, you can read more from the Cat6 team at Wunderground.com.

My thoughts are with everyone in the path of the hurricane and its effects, and with all the volunteers and agency workers who will be assisting with response and recovery.