A big blow to Al Gore
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
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Al Gore won't like this. One of the world's leading agencies monitoring climate change says there's no link between global warming and the frequency or severity of hurricanes hitting the United States over the past century.
Scientists affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report last week assessing 105 years of hurricane activity in the U.S., from 1900 to 2005.
They conclude "economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not (due) to any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes."
"There is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts," said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer of the NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, one of six authors of the study, published Feb. 1, in Natural Hazards Review.
Claims that damages caused by hurricanes are rising exponentially due to the influence of global warming failed to take into account rapidly increasing coastal populations, denser housing, and the huge rise in coastal land values over time, the study said.
Contrary to conventional wisdom that Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, was the most destructive ever to hit the U.S., once these factors are considered, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 caused almost twice as much damage as Katrina -- $157 billion compared to $81 billion.
HISTORICAL NORMS
While the decade from 1996 to 2005 saw heightened hurricane activity, particularly in 2004 and 2005, none of it was outside historical norms and the worst decade was actually 1926 to 1935.
Last month, NOAA oceanographer and climate scientist Chunzai Wang and University of Miami scientist Sang-Ki Lee concluded higher ocean temperatures linked to global warming may have actually decreased the number of hurricanes hitting the U.S. because of how this affects hurricane formation.
"The attribution of the recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity to global warming is premature," they write. "Global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States."
Wang and Lee based their research on 150 years of U.S. hurricane records and published their findings in Geophysical Research Letters.
The NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is a world leader in monitoring, recording, assessing and researching weather and climate. Its data bases, including information from weather satellites, are among the most comprehensive in the world.
These latest findings run contrary to the fear-mongering by Gore and Co. who insisted there is a direct, causal relationship between global warming and hurricane formations in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth (AIC). AIC's iconic image was of a hurricane forming around a smokestack -- implying man-made greenhouse gases create hurricanes. Absurd. In AIC and in speeches, Gore, has said global warming makes hurricanes stronger, that Katrina was man-made, cited rising damage and insurance costs as evidence of global warming's impact on hurricanes, and implied the number of hurricanes is increasing.
SOME AGREE
To be clear, other scientific studies, including work done for the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, argue global warming increases the frequency of severe hurricanes. But that's the point. The reality is there are many credible scientists who disagree with each other and much that we don't know. Further, NOAA researchers aren't trying to minimize the damage caused by hurricanes, with or without global warming. In fact, they argue much more must be done to protect vulnerable coastal populations from hurricanes.
Finally, thanks to Sun reader Brad LeMee and climate blogger Anthony Watts for alerting me to the NOAA study.
