Blinded to science

I am so looking forward to the spectacle of Bob Walker and his buddies at Tech Central Station falling all over themselves to spin this:

Study Attributes Stronger Storms to Warmer Seas

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (AP) - Storms with the power of Hurricane Katrina are becoming more common, in part because of global warming, according to a report from a team of researchers that will be published Friday.

The number of storms in the two most powerful categories, 4 and 5, rose to an average of 18 a year worldwide since 1990, up from 11 in the 1970's, according to the report, which will be published in the journal Science.

Paging Chris Mooney…

- Thad

Comments

[C.JoDI]

They don't need to spin it. They'll just declare it more NYT "left wing" propaganda. These people are masters at discounting the evidence in favor of their fairytale cosmologies and therefore there is no amount of evidence that will ever convince them. If only they'd be willing to live in a world (i.e. circa the Old Testament) without any trace of the scientific method, I'd better tolerate their mewlings.

[Njorl]

I would expect that the large change in tropical ocean surface temperatures is not due (primarily) to greenhouse gasses. The increase is bigger than expected to a significant degree.

I guess that it is due to the decreased albedo or a change in the absorption profile of the ocean. Tropical land temperatures have been shown to experience up to 5 degrees of temperature increase in a short period of time as darker, more fertile topsoil is applied for farming due soley to the change in solar energy absorbed. Runoff from the Amazon river basin has an enormous effect on the ocean surface in the tropical Atlantic, and the Mississippi basin affects the Gulf. If the surface reflectivity of the ocean were reduced, it would increase the temperature of the ocean locally. If the absorption at the surface were increased, either by the presence of particulate pollution, or the presence of algae blooms thriving on that matter, that would also increase ocean surface temperature.

[Victor]

Just as a gesture to statistics - the 1970s were the decade with the lowest number of severe hurricanes ever. There were way more in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, for instance. So the numbers in this release start from an artificially low base.

Also, the press release sounds like it's gotten something wrong - both 11 and 18 category 4+ storms *per year* sound way too high. Maybe 'per decade'? When my copy of _Science_ arrives (probably Tuesday), I'll read the article and follow up.

[djw]

I recently asked an atmospheric scientist what the status of this thesis (climate change is probably contributing to the occurance of severe weather events already) and he said, essentially, that at this point it's not an established finding of the scientific community, because the evidence just isn't established enough, but it probably will be pretty soon.

[hack]

I don't think TCS will have any trouble spinning this. After all, this is just a "finding" by "scientists", you know, the same crackpots who think we descended from monkeys.