Old Man Yells at Cloud

If the oil economy causes global warming, and global warming causes hurricanes, then what city is more to blame than Houston? Taking the crazy old man's argument to its logical conclusion, and it just amounts to victim blaming. I haven't had the immense please of arguing this one out with any liberals, but I can guarantee it would take less than two minutes before they blamed the 10% of Houston that are straight white males for being the recipients of petrol largess, while the oppressed 90% saw no benefit whatsoever from Houston's heavy oil industry.

 Also, I can't help but note that cities housing 2 of the 3 largest oil hubs in the US have been drowned by acts of nature. If Cushing, OK gets taken out by a freak earthquake or tornado we can be certain that Mother Nature is methodically exacting her revenge. I'm not an ideologue on the climate change issue, I'm just very skeptical of the scientism cult and Big Research. If it appears that oil cities are being ravaged by angry gods, I am prepared to make whatever human sacrifices are necessary to regain their favor.

Bernie isn't posing a question when he says we need to determine global warming's contribution to Hurricane Harvey. He's making a statement. He's saying it was climate change. The implication is clear, and all that's left is to round up the details. Like everything Bernie says, his statement betrays some lack of understanding on subject, even for a tweet.

To get the understanding that Bernie wants "tomorrow", we must ask two questions. (1) What is the effect of global warming on hurricanes? and (2) What is the global warming? Clearly, we must know how much the Earth has warmed since some previous time to know its effect, and we can't be entirely sure of that, with all the measurement corrections and cherry-picked sensor data. But even most climate skeptics agree the warming is a bit over one degree per century, so let's go with that.

As to the other question, every eco-obsessed halfwit knows for certain the science - Holy Science! - tells us that global warming means stronger hurricanes. That certainty comes from studies such as this one run by Nature in 2006. While I have no reason to doubt their analysis, can you spot the flaw in making the conclusion that global warming drives stronger hurricanes?

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta examined data for a range of climate variables thought to contribute to the formation of hurricanes in categories 4 and 5, the upper end of the strength scale. Only sea surface temperature showed a strong correlation with the observed increase in the occurrence of these storms since 1970.

At first blush it makes sense. Hurricanes are fueled by heat. More heat $$\rightarrow$$ stronger hurricanes. That is junior high science. Everyone can understand it! No one can deny that kind of scientific fact! But it is a simplistic understanding. College-level thermodynamics gives a better insight. Hurricanes are heat engines. (Most people have at least heard that.) Higher temperature does not mean more heat. Technically speaking, heat is the movement of thermal energy caused by a temperature gradient. There must be a temperature differential for heat engines to run. Hurricanes are powered by temperature differences between the sea and the atmosphere, as well as within the sea and within the atmosphere.

The study narrowed in on surface temperature but said nothing about the other variables. Of course, if all other things are held constant, higher surface temperatures drive stronger hurricanes. That's to be expected. But we could get a similar effect by holding surface temperate constant and lowering deep sea and upper atmosphere temperatures. What really matters is the thermal gradient.

If the global temperature rises, the surface of the ocean will warm. But so will the atmosphere. And so will the rest of the ocean (which will lag but catch up). There's no reason to expect that global warming will only increase the temperature of the ocean's surface.

So how much did global warming contribute to Hurricane Harvey? How much did a monarch butterfly flapping its wings in South America last June contribute to it? It's hard to say. It's not due to global warming that a hurricane would strike a hurricane-prone locale during peak hurricane season. And it's not due to global warming that the storm would happen to stall out and dump almost all its contents over coastal Texas. And it's not due to global warming that Houston is a concrete jungle on a flood plain. But for Bernie, this isn't about science. It's about blame. Oppression causes all bad things. Houston must be a victim of evil greedy capitalist forces. It's just a bit inconvenient for him that so much of the Houston-oppressing oil economy would happen to reside in Houston.