Tuesday
Oct302012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Site down
Oct 30, 2012 Blogs My blog host, Squarespace, is located in New York. Its data centre has been hit by the hurricane and they are apparently unable to get fuel to the backup generators. The centre is going to have to close down shortly. I'll therefore be offline for a while.
Update on Oct 30, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The latest is that the fuel for the generator has held out slightly longer than expected but we are still expected to go down soon.
Update on Oct 30, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
They're pedalling like crazy in NYC and the site is still up and running - just. Apparently there is still a possibility it will go down if they can't get more fuel supplies delivered soon.
Reader Comments (36)
Gaia smites the unbeliever :)
Bet they wish they had a windmill on the roof!
Bloody Climate Change... you need to write some blog posts after this attacking those denying b*stards...
So much for Scottish Independence!
Hi,
Perhaps I can take the opportunity to ask this:
Is water vapour increasing in the atmosphere, tropospheric or stratospheric because I thought I'd read CO2 reduces water vapour in the atmosphere and I am currently arguing the toss elsewhere as to whether it is or not.
I have subsequently found this site and it seems to indicate water vapour levels are flat or declining at any altitude.
Any comments would be gratefully recieved.
http://www.climate4you.com/GreenhouseGasses.htm#Atmospheric water vapor
Cue Zebedee shouting "schadenfraude" or some such piffle.
Cue Wikipedia Historic Hurricane Record East Coast of America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800%E2%80%931809_Atlantic_hurricane_seasons
Climate Change didnt cause Sandy or Irene or Katrina
20 Century Population trends from Agriculture to Industry from Land Locked Farms to Cities on the Coast .From Tornado alley to Hurricane alley.
"Oh i do like to be beside the seaside"
Swiss Bob -
See Dr Pielke Snr's column here.
As I understand it, the assumption in estimating feedback from water vapor is that the relative humidity would remain constant as temperature rose. Per the paper discussed in the above column, while absolute humidity has risen, relative humidity has declined. That is, while there is a positive water vapor feedback, it is not as strong as postulated.
Harold,
Thanks for that. I know the models and theory say that CO2 should have some correlation with specific and or relative humidity given that it is believed that the CO2 will create warming. However, looking at the charts on the site I gave and having gone to ESRL at NOAA and plotted the data myself (take no one's word!) it would seem that there is little or no correlation. I'm just eyeballing the charts but it's interesting to me having 'discovered' that!
In what may go down as the high water mark of climate denial dementia Watts Up With That? has already begun denying that Sandy was a hurricane,
Why don't they use windmills?
In typical alarmist dementia Russell is unable to correctly parse the sentence:
Russell: a fake website - wattsupwiththat.blogspot.co.uk (!!) - demonstrates the desperation of the warmist cause.
Wow. "Russell" is almost in the Gleick class here. What a d**kh**d.
By the way, Russell, even the BBC said that it was no longer a hurricane at landfall. I suppose they're all deniers too.
Russel,
As hurricanes are weather events and their study pre-dates climatology, we have a clear definition of them: winds exceeding 74 mph. Below that speed lie storms. New York Times "As Hurricane Sandy churned inland as a downgraded storm on Tuesday..."
Donna Laframboise has an amusing piece (link) on Sandy's downgrading from hurricane to tropical storm.
Judith Curry has a good article on Sandy here. And she's "spotted two articles that [in her opinion] treat this issue appropriately." They are here and here.
This calls for a blue ribbon task force into the possibility of nuclear-powered servers. Obviously, the windmills and solar panels aren't cutting it.
Thanks for all those links Robin. As Judith says:
The name Frankenstorm is one of the great coinages of our age. Nasty to be directly affected but great to see governments, state and federal, doing what they're meant to, based on good forecasting. A lot to learn from but not about AGW. That kind of climate->weather non-sequitur we will no doubt be batting back for a little while now.
"data centre has been hit by the hurricane"
No. The Utilities voluntarily shut down the power because the transformers are located underground without water protection.
Which is very stupid in case they need electric powered pumps.
Listening to Auntie's World Service - World Have Your Say - the show host breathlessly asked a resident of Long Island what the conditions were like for him. One could hear the audible hiss of a deflating cushion as the resident reported that while it had been somewhat windy and raining, he had enjoyed a normal evening and had eaten out at a local restaurant. This was repeated with some of the other interviewees in different parts of NY. The now flaccid pin cushion asked the resident whether he had an explanation for his observations given the forecasts and the other reports of widespread damage and loss of life? The resident suggested that low lying areas, areas next to the coast and at the river appeared to be most affected, studiously avoiding an obvious explanation - incessant media hyperbole surrounding catastrophic end-times devastation.
Without diminishing the distress, worry and loss of life for many affected by this storm, there are regions where it is clear that the impact of the 'Superstorm' are negligible.
It is shown again how difficult it is to determine where reality lies, were one to rely solely on the MSM. Auntie's programme also illustrates a palpable disappointment in the MSM when expectations of catastrophic mayhem are unrealised, instead replaced by the balm of business and life as usual.
Looking at the NPR article pointed to by Dr. Curry, I came to the part where they discuss increased evaporation which the models require to increase the water vapor (and hence positive feedback).
It occurs to me: does anyone know if the models include the energy (heat) required for the phase change of water to water vapor, which would actually cool the earth's surface (particularly oceans)?
This heat is removed from the surface and transported high in the atmosphere where it is eventually released as the vapor condenses, leading to the "hotspot" which the models predict, but reality fails to show.
But the question is, is this surface cooling accounted for in the models??
I've been watching on and off, yesterday evening and throughout today, the Weather Channel on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yXMU2qwCVag#! - which has been excellent. Not once in the extensive coverage I have watched has the phrase "climate change" been used. A big hand to the meteorologists involved.
Hope you are not off-line for too long. Your new book arrived this morning, and awaits completion of my current read (with no little anticipation)
On Channel 4 news this evening Jon Snow tried hard to get a scientist at Stanford to confirm that there must be some connection between this storm "unprecedented in US history" and climate change. To his palpable frustration, the scientist repeatedly failed to do so.
Was Sandy caused by global warming? Vote here.
BoM in Australia are said to be "reluctant" to blame a single weather event on CAGW, but immediately do so:
30 Oct: Sydney Morning Herald: Peter Hannam with Reuters: Sandy has lessons for Australia, BoM says
Scientists are ***reluctant to attribute any single weather event to the effects of global warming. Climate models, though, predict fewer – but more intense – major storms such as cyclones or hurricane
“This is the sort of thing we're warning about increasing over time,” Dr Braganza said. “We are breaking records across metrics where we'd expect to break records as the planet warms.”...
Dr Will Steffen, a member of the Australian Climate Commission, noted that Sandy is only a category 1 hurricane, but the damage will likely be significant because of its huge size and the fact that its landing coincided with a high tide.
“Sea-level rises - the observed sea-level rise around the world over the past century, and the projections for further rises - are related to climate change,” Dr Steffen said.
“It is the combination of sea-level rise, storm surge (like the one coming in from Sandy on the eastern USA coast) and high tides that lead to the worst flooding events.”
“The point here is that even modest rises in sea-level - of just tens of centimetres - can lead to much higher probabilities of high sea-level events,” Dr Steffen said.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sandy-has-lessons-for-australia-bom-says-20121030-28gyg.html
Pat: "“The point here is that even modest rises in sea-level - of just tens of centimetres - can lead to much higher probabilities of high sea-level events,” Dr Steffen said."
We long-time readers of the SMH know just how extremely biassed it and its Fairfax stablemates are when it comes to anything to do with "global warming" aka "climate change". (Earth Hour, anyone?)
They simply wouldn't print a story that wasn't alarmist in the extreme or utterly dismissive of any counter argument. Given his usual alarmism, Steffen's comments seemed to be a quite reasonable summation of the Sandy situation, but Hannam couldn't resist painting them black on black.
Hasten the day when Fairfax's looming corporate collapse will put most of these clowns on the dole, although the ABC will no doubt launch the lifeboats and provide a safe haven for the truest of True Believers.
Bah, humbug!
Well, you're still up with a quarter of an hour to go to midnight. The emergency fuel is holding up pretty well, if the server farm consumes power like most of them appear to.
Has anyone ever worked out an approximate figure for the total power consumed by the interweb btw? It'd be interesting to be able to put it in some perspective. (I'm thinking of infrastructure here, rather than trying to count everybody's desktop pcs, laptops, tablets, iphones and what have you.) I'd bet it adds up to a fair bit of energy.
Res ipse dixit: live from New York, it's WUWT:
TROPICAL STORM SANDY
Willis Eschenbach
I had said a couple of days ago, when Sandy was a hurricane, that it would not be a hurricane when it hit the coast. How did that go?
Well, as of the time that this location and projection of the path was done, the NDBC has shown all the nearest stations. Not one of the actual observations is showing sustained winds over 50 knots, and that’s a long ways from the 72 knots that marks a hurricane.
Please note that the big damage from such storms is the flooding, so I am not minimizing the likely extent of the damage. It will be widespread. However … not a hurricane.
w.
Theo Goodwin says:
October 29, 2012 at 6:25 pm ...
I cannot find a photo or video that looks like a major storm surge. In New York City, all I see are events of water sloshing over seawalls. Wind damage seems all but nonexistent, though one crane happened to collapse. I just do not see the major storm that has been hyped for two days. Sorry, but the MSM are demented. Given the MSM’s propensity for unbridled hype, they should not be allowed to play with computer models.
October 29, 2012 at 7:40 pm
What we are seeing in NJ and NYC I would call storm slosh. For the most part, the flooding does not reach the top of wheels on vehicles. Those vehicles are undamaged and can be driven as soon as the water recedes just a tad.
I see no wind damage at all. That screams “not a hurricane.”...The MSM needs to get a life.
October 29, 2012 at 8:49 pm
My argument is with the MSM. ..Preposterous. The totality of their hype was Preposterous. They should have told the truth that it would become a tropical storm at landfall or soon after... Tropical storms are tree killers. Hurricanes kill trees, buildings, streets, and everything.
J.Hansford says:
October 29, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Yep, It’s no hurricane…..There’ll be damage and flooding. Any big storm arriving during a full or new moon is going to have exacerbated flooding over the 12-24 hours it takes to arrive, cross and pass…. and the news teams which are nothing now but glorified info-tainment purveyors, with the emphasis on hype, catastrophe and propaganda, will be whooping it up for all it’s worth… sigh.
I long for the days when people just got on with the job of making the best of the day and went about their lives with a bit of decorum….;-)
DJ says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Frankenstorm downgraded to Frankenfart?
Andres Valencia says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Thanks, Willis. A voice for sanity!
Day By Day says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:29 pm
If you poke around in the history here at WUWT and look at some recent (within the last 3 months) topics, you can find many references to weather being LESS, not more severe at this time. Everytime the weather sneezes is not a reason to exaggerate in order to support a failing alarmism agenda... I enjoy these types of posts for my sanity.
Juanse Barros says:
October 29, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Sharks in N.Jersey Subway
Willis Eschenbach says:
October 30, 2012 at 10:17 am
Not only is the MSM hyping a storm as though it were a hurricane, you’ve been so sucked in and fooled by their BS that now you want to come here to scream about how there were “SUSTAINED wind speeds of around 50 knots” … color me unimpressed...
Don’t try to lecture a sailor about storms until you know what you’re talking about …
I remember reading somewhere in the technical press after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans that something similar could hit New York.
Remember that 99% of the New Orleans damage and fatalities was caused by neglected and inadequate flood defences - Katrina just found the weak spot.
Anyone who has been to Lower Manhattan with eyes to see would realise the vulnerability to a high tide + major storm.
One might enquire what precautions had been constructed to cope with storm surges? The fact that the tunnels and subway flooded as quickly as they did, despite the obvious danger, speaks volumes.
Perhaps if some of the Billions poured into alarmist shroudwaving cAGW "research" and Ruinable energy (that doesn't work) - not to mention several major Hollywood disaster blockbusters - had been spent on some barriers, they would have paid for themself by this morning.
Err, your Grace, as Willis has pointed out, Tropical Storm Sandy was a hurricance, but not by the time it hit land, wind speeds dropped to 50 kts or less so just a storm in the Atlantic only, wind speeds need to be at 72 kts + for a weather system to be classified as a hurricane! However, people will be please to know that Auntie Beeb were still calling it a hurricane at 7am on Radio 2 this morning, yet they too scaled back the melodrama to tropical storm by 7:30am - interestingly?
Alan
They were calling it a "superstorm" this morning.
Yep, Russell, the comments say it all:
It WAS a hurricane, until it hit land and was dropped to tropical storm status, and then to tropical depression status, and now, Nothing.
And the comments reflect that.
You have FAILED to make your case.
Trust the yanks to have a 'superstorm'... :-)
Glad to hear your hosting is being kept alive by people running upstairs with cans of diesel. That will enrage the greenies!
They were calling it a "superstorm" this morning.
Oct 31, 2012 at 10:12 AM | Registered Commenter Bishop Hill
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstorm
superstorm
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