Here's what she said about hurricanes:

"Recall that the experts told us last year would be a record-setting hurricane season, but the series of Katrinas never materialized."

Except that no expert made such a prediction.

"Now, Gore and others say that Katrina was a product of global warming and that we can expect more and bigger storms. But there is actually brisk scientific debate over the role global warming plays -- if any -- in the creation of hurricanes."

Not exactly.  The debate is over whether the global warming signal is large enough to be detectable now.  

A point that keeps getting made all the time is that even if the global warming signal is present we can't blame any particular hurricane or increase in hurricane strength on global warming, which implies that there will come a time when we can.  But that's not true.  Even with a large and incontrovertible signal, it would remain possible for any given storm to be largely the product of "natural" factors.  We can only describe the AGW-hurricane connection in statistical terms, which IIRC is what Gore did.  

"A study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution last month, looking at 5,000 years of Atlantic hurricanes, found 'large and dramatic fluctuations in hurricane activity, with long stretches of frequent strikes punctuated by lulls that lasted many centuries' -- with the stormier periods occurring during cooler ocean temperatures. But talking about Earth's constant, and still inexplicable, climate changes and cycles is not useful if you're trying to shock."

Contrast that with the Post's own coverage of the study:

"In their paper in the journal Nature, Jeffrey P. Donnelly and Jonathan D. Woodruff conclude that the issue remains unsettled -- that the occurrence of intense hurricane activity even when global and ocean temperatures are relatively low does not necessarily mean that global warming will not lead to greater hurricane dangers. Rather, they say it means that patterns of hurricane intensity can change significantly without a global ocean temperature rise, and that with the increase the effect could be greater."

Which is rather the opposite of what she implied.  What a lot of these denialists really don't seem to get is that AGW + natural cycles = worse juju than AGW without natural cycles.

If one examines the climactic record as reconstructed, shifts in hot and cold periods were very rapid.  Similar events would perhaps be comet strikes, massive volcanoes, magnetic pole switches, and hypothesized algae blooms.  So far, the science cannot deal with these "paradigm shifts" other than to note that they happened with remarkable quickness and severity.  

My understanding is that the secrets lie in places such as the arctic ice pack, where centuries of ice can be carbon-dated for and analyzed as to CO2 and  particulate content.  Few trees are left from the 1700's although they would be fantastic to examine.  Results are almost bizarre and shocking, although I wish I could put my finger on a single and authoritative study.  To me it is clear that mankind has at least had a slightly measurable effect on the climate since the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800's, maybe moreso than we prevously thought.

What say you sir?
-sammie

Onward through the fog

It begins a long term period of unprecedented prosperity due to the beneficent effects of solar heating.

Positive effects include health, wealth and overall good tanning.


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35 years ago, I spent a year working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Contrary to the myth that reactor scientists never looked at the big picture, ORNL had many environmental scientist and a number of social scientists including Dr. Claire Nader, Ralph Nader's sister.  At a time when the popular press was concerned about global cooling, the scientists at ORNL were concerned about the long term consequences of CO2 emissions, including global warming.  In 1974 Alvin Weinberg discussed global warming in an article in Science, and in 1975 he testified about it before congress.  There were no climate models then.  Just an appreciation for facts.  Since 1971, I have not have the least doubt about what the future held.  The forecasts from ORNL in the early 70's have turned out to be entirely accurate.  

Charles Barton