Dr. Roy Spencer refutes the climate change celebrities

Washington Times:

Sparring with celebrities and Al Gore over global warming may not be what Roy Spencer had in mind when he earned his Ph.D., but it’s certainly become a bustling sideline for the University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist.

A month after rebutting Mr. Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel,” Mr. Spencer has published another short e-book, this one challengingstatementsby Jennifer Lawrence, Bill Nye, Stevie Wonder and others linking global warming to this year’s active hurricane season.

Called “Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed on Global Warming,” the 50-page book was released Monday, and like his August e-book, “An Inconvenient Deception,” it’s already made landfall on the Amazon bestseller list.


As of midday Thursday, “An Inconvenient Deception” and “Inevitable Disaster” ranked number one and two on Amazon’s list of bestsellers in the category of Environment & Nature, while Mr. Gore’s companion book to “An Inconvenient Sequel” ranked 100th.
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“Often in the past these storms would churn up cold water from deeper down in the ocean and reduce the temperatures that drive the strength of these storms, but the heat went all the way down more than 200 meters to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, so it didn’t short-circuit,” Mr. Gore said. “It stayed. As many of the climate scientists are now pointed out, the melting of the Arctic is disrupting the northern hemisphere and storm track. You may remember the discussions last winter of polar vortex. It’s the same phenomena except it’s the summer.”

Mr. Spencer called the former vice president’s analysis “some sort of pseudo-meteorological gobbledygook.”

“What made Harvey rain totals exceptional was the system stalled next to the coast, which was due to a very temporary weakening of atmospheric steering currents,” said Mr. Spencer. “Virtually the whole month of August was below normal in temperature over most of the U.S., not what global warming theory predicts at all.”

He cited a graph of all major hurricane strikes in Florida since 1900 showing no increase in frequency or intensity as measured by wind speed. The worst hurricane on record to strike Florida was the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, one of only three storms on record to make U.S. landfall at Category 5.

If there is a trend, it’s that hurricanes seem to come in waves. The period from 1941 to 1961 was especially active for hurricanes making landfall, followed by a dip in the 1980s, then peaking again in 2004 and 2005.

Based on the frequency of Category 4 or higher hurricanes striking the continent since 1851, he said, “we should get two Cat 4+ strikes once every 50 years, on average,” which hasn’t happened in 150 years, meaning “we were overdue.”

Far more unusual is the 12-year hurricane drought, he said, which should occur based on probability once every 250-300 years, but so far nobody is attributing that fortunate happenstance to climate change.
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Spencer's arguments are more credible.  His point about Harvey which dropped a lot of rain is important.  It did not contain more rain than several past hurricanes, but it also did not blow right through like most hurricanes.  Nothing in the global warming theory suggests that steering currents will weaken.  In they predict they will be stronger because of increased water heat.