No one storm says anything about climate change; but nevertheless, climate change may affect weather in the aggregate. ... bearing in mind the scientific expectation that global warming ought to intensify the average hurricane (by how much remains hotly disputed). How does Dean fit into that ongoing scientific argument? Well, first of all, Dean now takes its rank among the top ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes. If you look at that list you’ll see that six of the strongest (Wilma, Rita, Katrina, Mitch, Dean, and Ivan) have been in the past ten years. That’s not the kind of statistic that’s easy to overlook. According to these data we are getting stronger storms in the Atlantic basin now than we ever have before.
Bullshit. Complete intellectually dishonest bullshit.
The truth is we only have complete data on intensity from the late 1960's. For example, look at the data for 1960. Of the seven tropical storms that season only three have recorded pressure readings, and one of those seems suspect to me. (Category 5 hurricane Ethel only had a pressure of 981mb?)
Or check out 1950, where only three of 13 storms have pressure readings. This includes no pressure reading on the massive category 5 storm Dog.
How do we know this wasn't one of the strongest storms ever? We don't. Our data isn't good enough.
Unfortunately, this type of unscientific demagoguery is par for the course with the GW hysteria crowd.
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