Hurricanes and Hubris

It has been 2,251 days since a Category 3 or higher hurricane made landfall in the United States.

Weather.com reports on the 2011 hurricane season.

Amazingly, the U. S. has now gone six consecutive hurricane seasons, 2006-2011, without experiencing the landfall of a major hurricane, category 3 or stronger. The last such occurrence was Wilma in October 2005, although Ike (2008) and Irene (2011) were large systems that had major impacts despite being less than category 3 at U.S. landfall. This has been the largest number of consecutive years on record without a U. S. major hurricane landfall since at least the 1870s.

This chart shows that days between Cat 3 and higher hurricanes since 1900 which was published in Real Science.

You wonder how the National Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups can continue to argue that global warming is responsible for stronger storms and hurricanes? This is an example of the arguments that they continue to make as taken directly off of the NWF website.

The latest science connecting hurricanes and global warming suggests more is yet to come: tropical storms are likely to bring higher wind speeds, more precipitation, and bigger storm surge in the coming decades.

We must get at the root of the problem and reduce the global warming pollution that fuels stronger storms and leads to increasing sea level.

How can we prepare for future hurricanes and reduce the risk?

• Reduce global warming pollution to minimize future hurricane risk
• Restore and increase protection for coastal wetlands, lowlands, and barrier islands
• Take global warming into account when choosing where to build
• Take global warming into account when choosing how to build
• Global warming must be factored into hurricane and coastal planning: Over this century, maximum windspeeds could increase 13 percent and rainfall could increase 31 percent.

This is an excerpt from the a speech Al Gore gave to the National Sierra Club convention in San Francisco on September 9, 2005, shortly after Katrina and a month before Wilma.  He speaks of an onrushing catastrophe with hurricanes getting stronger because of global warning.  However,  in the six years after that speech we had the fewest number of strong hurricanes in 140 years.

There are scientific warnings now of another onrushing catastrophe. We were warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda; we didn't respond. We were warned the levees would break in New Orleans; we didn't respond. Now, the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming.

Where is the accountability in the scientific community?  Science is supposed to be about establishing a hypothesis and making predictions that can be tested and verified.  If the tests produce negative results then the hypothesis must be faulty.  The global warming theorists have nothing but a theory as the objective evidence does not seem to support their hypothesis and predictions.   It is time to put the science back into climate science and take the hubris out of many of the climate change advocates and their predictions.