In 2000, we wrote a paper titled, “Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as Means to Reduce Weather Imapcts.” The metaphor implied that some viewed energy policies as a means for decision makers to tune the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in such a way to modulate the number or intensity of extreme events, and thereby also modulate the resulting societal impacts. Frequent readers of Prometheus will know that this subject has been the subject of many discussions on this site of late, and will know that we think that while there are good reasons for concern about climate change, and for reducing GHG emissions, the Big Knob strategy is a loser when it comes to disaster impacts.

Upon hearing from several critics of our work comments to the effect that no one really believes that GHGs can be used to intentionally modulate hurricanes or their impacts, I thought it worth showing the figure below. This was part of a major media campaign by a leading (and typically very thoughtful) environmental group last fall focused specifically on hurricanes (not GHG reductions generally). This image was taken from their WWW site at the time. See the Big Knob?

knob.png