While thousands may have died in Typhoon Haiyan, be prepared to "throw up in your mouth" at this article on WUWT

Update: Anthony Watts cannot help himself - see below

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Greg Laden has written an article about Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda, as it's called in the Philippines.  I've already written a comment about the first reaction from deniers at WUWT.  Anthony Watts has surpassed that denial and now posted an article (archived here and here) about which Greg Laden writes (h/t MikeH):

Watts needs to take this offensive and absurd post off of his site. Homewood needs to apologize, and to do so sincerely. But before they do that, go have a look. It will probably make you throw up a little in your mouth.

Maybe 10,000 dead in the province of Leyte

Now that more reports are coming in, there could be as many as 10,000 people who have been killed by the typhoon so far.  And that's just in the Philippines.  According to reports, the typhoon has weakened to the equivalent of a Cat 2 cyclone and is heading for Vietnam.

Anthony Watts chastises "alarmist" media

Paul Homewood makes a token acknowledgement to those killed, but is more concerned about "unsubstantiated claims", writing as his opening paragraph:

Sadly it appears that at least 1000 1200* lives have been lost in Typhoon Yolanda (or Haiyan), that has just hit the Philippines. There appear to have been many unsubstantiated claims about its size, though these now appear to start being replaced by accurate information.

The slant taken by Paul Homewood is bad enough.  What's worse are the opening sentences at the very top of the article, which were written by Anthony Watts himself. What is Anthony Watts concerned about?  He's concerned about "alarmist" reporting.  Here is Anthony Watts' headline and opening lines (archived here and here):

Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – another overhyped storm that didn’t match early reports

Here is the sort of headlines we had Friday, for example this one from Huffington Post where they got all excited about some early reports from Andrew Freedman:

Super Typhoon Haiyan Could Be One Of The Strongest Storms In World History

Super Typhoon Haiyan — which is one of the strongest storms in world history based on maximum windspeed — is about to plow through the Central Philippines, producing a potentially deadly storm surge and dumping heavy rainfall that could cause widespread flooding. As of Thursday afternoon Eastern time, Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, had estimated maximum sustained winds of 195 mph with gusts above 220 mph, which puts the storm in extraordinarily rare territory.

Ah those estimates, they sure don’t always meet up with reality later – Anthony

"Overhyped storm?" and "They sure don't always meet up with reality"?  Well, Anthony, it looks to me as if Huffington Post got the numbers from NASA and the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center.  Not real enough for WUWT?  I'd say the people in the Philippines don't regard one of "Earth's strongest storms ever" as "overhyped" and they certainly met up with reality.

Arguing over numbers and getting it wrong

Anthony and Paul go on to try to argue that everyone got the wind speeds wrong, writing that it really wasn't all that bad:

So at landfall the sustained wind was 235 kmh or 147 mph, with gusts upto 275 kmh or 171 mph. This is 60 mph less than the BBC have quoted.

The maximum strength reached by the typhoon appears to have been around landfall, as the reported windspeeds three hours earlier were 225 kmh (140mph).

Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall “

"Only ranks as a Category 4 storm when it hit land"!!

Paul Homewood is writing to complain to the UK Press Commission about this headline in the Daily Mail (which paper deniers usually love because of it's frequent disinformation on climate science.)  This is the headline that Paul Homewood complained about:

NASA JPL: One of the most powerful storms ever recorded on earth

Paul Homewood objected to the headline describing the typhoon as 235 mph.  But according to NASA that's exactly right.  This is from NASA JPL:

November 08, 2013

New satellite images just obtained from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the Indian Space Research Organization's OceanSAT-2 ocean wind scatterometer provide a glimpse into one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth. 

According to the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Typhoon Haiyan had maximum sustained winds of 195 mph (314 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 235 mph (379 kilometers per hour) shortly before making landfall in the central Philippines today. That would make it one of the strongest storms ever recorded. Weather officials in the Philippines reported the storm, known locally as Typhoon Yolanda, came ashore with maximum sustained winds of 147 mph (235 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 170 mph (275 miles per hour). 

I'm finding it hard to imagine winds of 235 kph let alone gusts of 379 kph.


Anthony Watts is also objecting to these lines from newspaper reports, writing:

UPDATE4: Kent Noonan writes in with this addition -

CNN has had several articles stating the same numbers for wind speed as BBC and Mail. I saw these numbers first last night at 10PM Pacific time.

Today’s story: “Powered by 195-mph winds and gusts up to 235 mph, it then struck near Tacloban and Dulag on the island of Leyte, flooding the coastal communities.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

If these “news” agencies don’t issue a correction, we will be forever battling the new meme of “most powerful storm in world history”.

Notice the "it then struck", which shows that it is entirely consistent with what NASA JPL reported.


(If any reader wants to play the numbers game, here is a list of tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.  Typhoon Tip led the scoreboard in terms of wind speed until Haiyan, with sustained wind speeds at its maximum of 305 kph, a bit less than Haiyan, which is reported to have had sustained wind speeds of 314 kph.  But Tip was much weaker than Haiyan when it reached land.)

What is really disturbing...

Anyway, what I think is really disturbing is that while maybe 10,000 people perished in the Philippine province of Leyte, all Anthony Watts is worried about is whether the newspaper reports have the wind speed right.  He is so focused on denying global warming that he cannot lift his brain out of the slime.

Thing is that, despite what Anthony Watts would have his readers believe, the science is not yet clear on what global warming will mean for tropical cyclones.  It is expected that the proportion of fiercer storms will rise but whether there will be more tropical cyclones or not has not yet been clearly established.

Vietnam is next in its path

Here is the current image from the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center (click to enlarge):

The winds are currently at 85 knots (157 kph) gusting to 105 knots (194 kph) and expected to weaken to 60 knots (111 kph) as it approaches Vietnam, with gusts to 75 knots (139 kph).

From the WUWT comments

Tim Walker says it's sad, but people die in cyclones all the time:

November 9, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Trying to correct (mistakes – SARC) after the MSM informs the public will make very little difference. The public’s perception is made by the first news articles. It is a very sad situation we are in. The deaths and trouble in the Philippines are sad, but this kind of thing happens each year in different places of the world. What the MSM does in creating false perceptions is worse, because the clowns the public elect based on the false perceptions are causing worse problems. The future is very grim. Good luck to one and all.

albertalad says he's busy telling the Canadian media they are over-reacting:

November 9, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the information – I used your info to correct two newspapers in Canada – The National Post,m and the CBC – which of course wen crazy as usual with hopes of the Philippines themselves being wiped off the face of the earth as THE global warming event they all desperately needed to be that destructive. It never ceases to amaze me how excited the global warming ghouls are with something like this – they really cheer for death and destruction.

Jimbo says back in 1882 there was one tropical cyclone that was as bad.  (Jimbo's link is bad - try this one.):

November 9, 2013 at 2:33 pm
But what about the past? [H/t Steven Goddard]

Oct 22, 1882
“Observatory says lowest barometer at 11.40 a. m., 727.60 ; highest velocity wind registered, 144.4 miles an hour. Unable to measure greatest velocity of typhoon as anemometer damaged.”

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38278695
more typhoons from the past in the Philippines.

Paul Homewood says the wind speed reported was "strangely exact".  Well, Paul - maybe that's because they reported "exactly" what the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported:

November 9, 2013 at 3:01 pm
The “mistake” of the Mail seems apparent, but I wonder if it is their source of information that is to blame? The BBC are well known for attempting to convert everything into metrics to make us “more European”.

Their “379 kmh” seems strangely exact. Have they also seen the “235″ figure and assumed it is mph (just as the Mail did) and then decided to convert it to kmh to get to 379kmh? Indeed, it suggests the original source, whatever it may be, is where the original error crept in.

Stuart Lynne says it's because they are poor:

November 9, 2013 at 3:31 pm
As always this disaster is based on the poverty of the area. Populations living in areas that are inadequately prepared for whatever natural events that may occur where they live because they do not have adequate financial resources to do so (or like Katrina) where the resources are misapplied.

eric1skeptic comes up with all sorts of "reasons" and builds a straw man in the process:

November 9, 2013 at 4:04 pm
The satellite presentation was basically perfect at landfall. There is little doubt this was the strongest possible storm given the physical limits of storms that size. Typhoon Tip in 1979 was much larger but did not have such good symmetry. Tip only brushed land and many similarly strong storms never hit land or weakened before landfall.

The point that will be lost on the alarmists is that the near-perfect symmetry of Haiyan is only possible with nearly perfect weather conditions surrounding the storm. If anything isn’t perfect then the storm becomes asymmetric and can’t achieve top strength. That kind of weather will have no correlation to warning. Furthermore the (theoretical) decrease in the lapse rate will work against any increase in SST’s The SST’s provide better evaporation but the lapse rate provides the condensation which releases latent heat and causes the convection.

Anthony Watts has convinced people like pokerguy who, being misled by Anthony Watts, complains:

November 9, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Meanwhile, someone competent ought to get into Wikipedia and fix things…Currently they’re saying this in first sentence:

“Typhoon Haiyan of November 2013, which is known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda, is one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.”

Rob Honeycutt calls them out and says that WUWT "should be ashamed":

November 9, 2013 at 5:14 pm
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.

You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.

gregladen says:

November 9, 2013 at 5:57 pm
“Check reuters for the latest numbers,” is a citation of a source. Please do not add stupidity to your callousness. One locality is now citing 10,000 via the governer’s office.

Let me ask you this but you better answer quick because the ground is sliding from underneath you as I type this. How important is 1,200 vs. tens of thousands? If it turns out to be tens of thousands instead of 1,200 will you STFU forever? Please?

Let me know right away, I want to watch.

To which Anthony Watts, underlining his callous self-serving attitude, piously replied with the pathetic excuse "the problem with early estimates is what this post is about".

No it wasn't Anthony.  You posted it in "Alarmism":

Your article was about "alarmism" and news outlets getting "over-excited":

REPLY: its an estimate from a meeting last night. Since it was too hard for you to make a link, I searched. See here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/philippines-typhoon-casualty-idUSL4N0IV00F20131110

“We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,” Soria told Reuters. “

The problem with early estimates is what this post is about. We’ll wait until something more concrete than an estimate from a late night meeting is given.

The Red Cross in the Phillipines says 1200, I trust them more than government officials making estimates. If it turns out the number is higher, I’ll report it. In the mean time feel free to be as upset as you wish.- Anthony

And in true conspiracy ideation, Anthony writes that he trusts the Red Cross more than "government officials".

And true to his policy of censoring posts from those he regards as "warmists", Anthony Watts is now busy deleting comments (latest archive here).

Update

Now Anthony Watts has trotted out his third article making light of the super typhoon.  He's picked up a comment by Bjorn Lomborg arguing that global warming means that while cyclones may get more fierce with global warming, they might not happen as often.  And by the end of the century people will be able to better afford the worsening tropical cyclones. (Archived here.)

All while people are still in turmoil in the Philippines and Vietnam is waiting.

Sickening and bizarre behaviour at WUWT.

11:39 pm 10 November 2013

Ignorance & callous indifference from Anthony Watts for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, just to protest global warming!

Addendum: See below for my reaction to Bob Tisdale having a shot at me.

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The people living in the Philippines and Vietnam are in our thoughts this weekend, with the devastation being wrought by a mammoth typhoon.  This article is about how some science rejectors reacted to the news.

Anthony Watts wrote an article about Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). True to form, he peppered it with protests about global warming, writing this as his opening line (archived here):

Prepare yourselves for the second coming of Katrina, because you can bet that this storm will be hyped as an indicator of “global warming”.

Anthony liked that line so much that he adapted it in the body of his article.  Anthony didn't mention the people in the path of the typhoon, but he did manage to get in mentions of two of deniers' pet targets: Al Gore and Bill McKibben, writing:

With winds like that, expect to see complete devastation as it makes landfall. That of course will be hyped into an AGW caused storm, just like Katrina. Al Gore and Bill McKibben are already testing lies language on Twitter. Bear in mind that we have a very short historical record of Typhoon strength, and any claims that this is the strongest storm ever need to be qualified with that fact. Nobody has any credible record of typhoon strength back more than a few decades.

I'm not going to write at length about the devastation the storm is causing.  The news is still coming in, with recent reports that more than 100 people perished in the typhoon in just one of the areas hit, Tacloban.

What I'm writing this article for is to point out a bit of idiocy by Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale.

Anthony wrote that the NOAA was wrong.  Actually he said that Heidi Cullen was wrong.  But Heidi was linking to an NOAA article.

Anthony Watts wrote (archived here):

UPDATE4: Dr. Heidi Cullen of Climate Central wins the “First Haiyan BS award” with this missive. 

RT @NOAA: What's fueling #SuperTyphoon #Haiyan's intensity? Deep warm water: http://t.co/tfNWljssms Via @NOAASatellites #climate
— Heidi Cullen (@HeidiCullen) November 7, 2013

Super Typhoon was fueled by lots of heat energy from throughout the water column

Anthony says that both Heidi Cullen and NOAA were writing bullshit.  Here is the NOAA article Dr Cullen linked to in her retweet:

Nov 07, 2013

Warm Water Fuels Haiyan Intensification

The intensification of Super Typhoon Haiyan is being fueled by "ideal" environmental conditions - namely low wind shear and warm ocean temperatures. Maximum sustained winds are currently at 195 mph, well above the Category 5 classification used for Atlantic and East Pacific hurricanes. Plotted here is the average Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential product for October 28 - November 3, 2013, taken directly from NOAA View. This dataset, developed by NOAA/AOML, shows the total amount of heat energy available for the storm to absorb, not just on the surface, but integrated through the water column. Deeper, warmer pools of water are colored purple, though any region colored from pink to purple has sufficient energy to fuel storm intensification. The dotted line represents the best-track and forecast data as of 16:00 UTC on November 7, 2013.

Here is a low resolution copy of one of the NOAA images with the colour bar indicating energy (click here to see the images at NOAA):

Source: NOAA

(In following the above NOAA link, make sure you click on the link at the bottom of the NOAA page to NOAA View, for a nice tool provided by NOAA - or click here and have a play.)

Seas are warm in the tropics - warm enough for tropical cyclones to form and grow

Anthony continues putting foot in mouth, writing:

As Bob Tisdale observes, there’s nothing to support this along the track of Haiyan:

Lots of the typical BS accumulating already about Typhoon Haiyan.  Let’s push some of it aside and present the sea surface temperature anomalies for the early portion of Haiyan’s storm track.

There was nothing unusually warm about the sea surface temperature anomalies for the early portion of Typhoon Haiyan’s storm track last week, the week of Wednesday October 30, 2013.  We’ll have to wait for Monday to see what the values were for this week.

"Nothing unusually warm" - says Bob.  But the seas don't have to be "unusually" warm.  Tropical cyclones need warm water to sustain themselves and grow.  Sea surface temperatures in the tropics are generally warm, and often warm enough or else there'd never have been tropical cyclones.  As stated here on a NASA page about the Super Typhoon (my bold italics):

AIRS infrared data also revealed that the sea surface temperatures are warm in the area of the South China Sea where TD30W is moving. Warm sea surface temperatures over 26.6C/80F are needed to maintain a tropical cyclone's intensity and those in the path of TD30W are warmer than that, enabling the storm to intensify through increased evaporation.

And there's no need for Bob to wait until Monday.  He can come here and look at the chart provided by the Bureau of Meteorology from the link on this page (Daily/Globe/Analysis).  I've animated the global sea surface temperature for the 7 and 8 November 2013.  I colour matched the parts on the charts before inserting the arrows.  The sea surface temperature is shown as warmer than 26.6°C over a large area:

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology Australia

Now the sea surface temperature just has to be warm enough to fuel a tropical cyclone.  Contrary to what Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts implied, the sea surface does not have to be anomalously warm to fuel a tropical cyclone.  It just has to be above 26.6°C to sustain a tropical cyclone, according to NASA.  Here is the anomaly chart for the 8 November from the link on this page (Daily/Globe/Anomaly).  It shows that most of the area didn't differ from the baseline by more than +/- 1°C, although some areas were 1 to 2°C above the baseline.

Source: Bureau of Meteorology Australia

Now we can understand why Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale keeps getting things wrong, even though we can't excuse it.  Bob's not had any formal training in meteorology or climate science and is, by inclination, a climate science denier.  He spends his days trying to figure out how to reject science - ironically having to start with real science from real scientists so that he can distort it and pretend the facts aren't the facts.

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Addendum

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale thinks I don't know what I am talking about, writing hopefully "Why Few Find Sou at Hot Whopper to be Credible"  (archived here).  He got distracted by the arrows which I put in to match the map colours to the scale at the bottom (the arrows were not to show where the typhoon was located), so he missed the point I was making.  Surprised?  Not really.

The point I was making was that Bob's comment which Anthony reposted (as quoted above) that "There was nothing unusually warm"  is irrelevant.  As long as the seas are warmer than 26.6C then if there's a tropical cyclone or typhoon it's warm enough to sustain it.

If Bob has a gripe he should take it up with Anthony Watts.  It's got nothing to do with me.  However looking at the post that Anthony Watts copied and pasted (archived here), I have to say that it would be reasonable to assume that Bob's comment about sea surface temperatures were intended to relate to the super typhoon and Anthony and I interpreted it as Bob intended.   Which just goes to prove my point made earlier - Anthony Watts should know better.

Bob expands on and explains in his later post (archived here) that all he was trying to show was that it wasn't global warming that caused the hurricane.  That may be what he was trying to say, but it's not what he wrote at the time (archived here).  I'll leave it to scientists to consider attribution, though I very much doubt it's possible to determine what impact global warming had on a single typhoon.  (Global warming affects all weather but that's not to say that huge typhoons could not happen in a cooler world.)

Oh, and Bob's wrong when he writes: "And one of the persons on this planet she dislikes most is me."  Bob has tickets on himself doesn't he.  I neither like nor dislike Bob Tisdale.  I've never met the man.  I think what he writes is mostly nonsense and I laugh at his sad attempts to show that global warming is caused by magical leaping ENSOs.  But he could be as sweet as a cuddly teddy bear as a person.  I neither know nor care.

Sou 10 Nov 7:53 pm AEDST

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However, Anthony Watts studied meteorology for several years (he didn't graduate) and he spent several more years announcing the weather on television.  So what's his excuse?  Did he waste his time all those years and not learn a thing?  Or is it that he doesn't care about facts.  Is it just a matter of "anything goes" as long as it supports his rejection of climate science.

The big question for Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts: Is it magic or warm oceans?

How do Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts explain how this super typhoon got started and how did it grow so huge?  They both claim that the sea surface temperatures weren't anomalously warm, which is a straw man because nobody claimed that they were.  Bob and Anthony were trying to argue that NOAA was wrong and there wasn't a lot of energy in the ocean fuelling the storm.  So are they dropping back to the "it's magic" meme so favoured by science deniers?

Will tropical cyclones become more frequent in a warming world?

Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda (depending where you live) was one of the biggest if not the fiercest in the measured record when it made landfall. The science isn't in on whether tropical cyclones will become more frequent.  As I've commented elsewhere, the IPCC latest report, AR5 WG1 it indicates tropical cyclones are projected to stay the same or decrease, but the ones that emerge will be fiercer and wetter.  But there is low confidence (still considerable uncertainty and conflicting analysis, particularly whether all strengths of cyclones will increase in frequency or whether it will only be the biggest ones.)

From the WUWT comments

There were quite a few WUWT readers who didn't slavishly follow Anthony Watts' lead, and who recognised the devastion.  However others mocked the plight of those in areas devastated by the typhoon. For example, philjourdan doesn't appreciate how unusual was Sandy or Super Typhoon Haiyan.  He says:

November 8, 2013 at 12:55 pm
One thing I think most of us have missed (and if I missed a comment addressing this, my apologies).

Haiyan is a pussy cat of a storm! How do we know? Climate Alarmists tell us this. They claim Sandy was a superstorm because of the billions in damages done! Haiyan’s damage total is going to come no where near that. So it cannot be a bad storm.

While there were some who decided that "warmists" would hijack the issue, not seeing that it was Anthony Watts himself who used the tragedy to push his denialist barrow.   For example, Andy Wilkins says:

November 7, 2013 at 2:18 pm
It’ll be horrific for anyone in the direct path, and what annoys me most is that people such as the odious Joe Romm will use these peoples’ suffering to advance his warmist agenda.

I checked climateprogress and found an article, not by Joe Romm but by Katie Valentine.  She did reference climate change at the end of her article about the typhoon, but with a much lighter touch than Anthony Watts' protest and in context - writing this:

The Philippines are no stranger to typhoons — around 20 hit the island nation each year. Just last December, Super Typhoon Bopha slammed into the country with 175 mph winds, causing widespread destruction and killing nearly 650 people.

The Philippines has appealed for international help on the role of climate change in such weather events before. During last year’s international climate talks in Doha, which were underway when Super Typhoon Bopha made landfall, the lead negotiator for the Philippines broke down as he asked participating countries to do something about climate change, saying the country had “never had a typhoon like Bopha.”

“I appeal to all, please, no more delays, no more excuses,” he said. “Please, let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around. Please, let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to find the will to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”

This year’s international climate talks will begin next week in Warsaw.

TomRude probably dismisses any expert in meteorology and says:

November 8, 2013 at 12:28 pm
It’s been a long time since Jeff Masters could be taken seriously…

jonny old boy might reject climate science but he knows a Super Typhoon when he reads about it and says:

November 8, 2013 at 11:04 am
this storm will make history if its track prediction is accurate…. it is shaping up to be Vietnams biggest natural disaster in its modern history. This is nothing proven to AGW/climate blah blah blah but this IS unusual and extremely violent.

Old England couldn't give tuppence for people living far from the motherland or for climate science, and mockingly says:

November 7, 2013 at 1:51 pm
Typhoons of this strength are unprecedented before tens of thousands of wind turbines were been erected – ergo they must be related to and with 95% certainty caused by the number of wind turbines – or have I misunderstood how the reasoning behind most of warmist ‘climate science’ works ?

If you're interested you can read more comments archived here.  They are a mixed bag of sympathy, mockery and, of course, the usual rejection of science.