Failed Predictions - Hurricanes
Hurricanes were predicted to become dramatically worse. But the graph below, shows Accumulated Cyclone Energy from 1970 to 2017 with no clear trend:
Looking at the United States, major hurricane activity is at a record low. Before Harvey, it had been 11 years and 10 months since a category 3 to 5 hurricane last struck the U.S. mainland. According to NOAA Hurricane Research Division data, the previous record was nine years, set in 1860-1869. (Harvey, Cat 4, just hit, August 25, 2017)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/10/real-climate-science-shows-trump-was-right-to-exit-paris/
The Accumulated Cyclone Energy is an index that combines the numbers of systems, how long they existed and how intense they became. It is calculated by squaring the maximum sustained surface wind in the system every six hours that the cyclone is a Named Storm and summing it up for the season. It is expressed in 104 kt2.
[Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a measure used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to express the activity of individual tropical cyclones and entire tropical cyclone seasons, particularly the North Atlantic hurricane season. It uses an approximation of the wind energy used by a tropical system over its lifetime and is calculated every six hours. The ACE of a season is the sum of the ACEs for each storm and takes into account the number, strength, and duration of all the tropical storms in the season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy ]
This is basically a measure of seasonal hurricane strength as it varies from year to year and should definitively answer the question of whether hurricanes are stronger and more frequent, or not.
The chart below shows another view of the data for the Accumulated Cyclone Energy from 1985 to 2016:
While there was indeed a peak in 2005, the index has been substantially less – not only in the actual year of Al Gore’s movie debut, but also in every year since then, through 2016.
We should revisit occasionally what the proper role of government is. As the constitution was a good sense of direction, we need a core set of principles to add in order to deal with the future.
So many want to engineer society, remove risk, assist certain groups, rather than let individuals thrive and raise communities. Why?
Is Democracy where we all "get it good and hard" or is it the best means to a free society?
Should we roll with the special interests, or make the government achieve its proper role, what is that role, and how to do this?
When do deficits and governments become too large?
Government is becoming more elitist while trying to sell corrections to problems it created, what makes this possible?
This could also be inserted into the field above, or erased
Currently as a society, we are having a most difficult time discussing political issues. What is driving this? And why a rebirth in political culture would be a good thing.
Are "markets" dead as some would conjecture? Or is free enterprise what got us here?
At the heart of economics there are several possible economic schools of thought, the essence of these schools of thought and how they relate to our lives.
