…New Danish Hurricane Study Faulted…
The University of Copenhagen announced a new study that, quoting from its website:
“Surveyed the most destructive hurricanes on the south and east coast of the USA, using new calculation methods that show, unequivocally, a connection between climate change and the most destructive hurricanes.”
Roger Pielke, University of Colorado, has debunked the study, but not until after millions around the world were misled by the new misinformation.
Quoting Pielke:
“The first big problem with [the study] is that it purports to say something about climatological trends in hurricanes, but it uses no actual climate data on hurricanes.”
“Instead, it uses economic losses from hurricanes to arrive at climate trends.”
Here is what Pielke found:
The data set used for the Copenhagen study was flawed in that it used a data set that combined data from an earlier study with new data beginning in 1980. This created a hybrid data set that incorporated greater economic losses from 1980 onward.
The new data included “federal disaster aid, federal flood insurance payouts, national and local agricultural commodity effects and other macro-economic impacts,” none of which were included in earlier data.
Pielke had seen this error and corrected it in a third dataset (W18) that was consistent from 1900 onward.
The extra economic loss data resulted in economic losses for storms after 1980 being 33% greater than would be the case using dataset W18, i.e., the data set corrected to be consistent from 1900 onward.
The second major problem with the Copenhagen study is that it incorporated the wrong number of hurricanes.
The Copenhagen study said there were 25 fewer storms than actual from 1900 to 1958, and 64 more than actual from 1958 to 2018. It included storms that were not hurricanes in the period after 1958.
Conclusion
The Copenhagen study was seriously flawed using data that resulted in greater economic losses from hurricanes in recent years.
The Copenhagen study:
- Used economic data that skewed the results to show greater losses than actual after 1980.
- Used the wrong number of hurricanes, including non-hurricanes, skewing the data so there were more hurricanes after 1958 and fewer before 1958, the exact opposite of what actually happened.
- Didn’t use climate data and reached conclusions about climate from data that was unrelated to climate.
The study also demonstrated that the peer review system is not working. An objective peer review would never have allowed this study to be published.
The media headlined this study but hasn’t reported its being discredited, leaving millions of people believing a false narrative.
Pielke’s article is available at http://bit.ly/37lDwBr
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It should be a criminal offense to invoke panic on people.
I agree. It’s like crying Fire in a crowded movie theater.
If you don’t get the result you want, move the goal posts.
That about sums it up.
Donn, you have to give the alarmist credit as they have done a masterful job of spreading their propaganda via a cooperative media. The local editor of our newspaper dutifully prints everything the AP and other wire services feed them. I will be sending your blog to them for whatever that may be worth. As for economic loss – it will rise in the future as more people and the necessary infrastructure is put into harms way. NOAA data shows 123.3MM (39%) people live in a coastal county and the next census is expected to show an 8% increase.
Thanks for sending my articles to the paper. It would be great if they would refer to them.