The idea that this year's hurricane season can be linked scientifically to "global warming" is straight out of Bizzaro world.

But, hey, in today's world of emotional rhetoric, who needs facts?

You've been listening to too much Rash Limberger.

Careful scientists are only saying that there is the possibility that the warmer than usual ocean temperatures MAY have increased the power of the Hurricanes.

After all, they ARE "heat engines".

I am merely commenting on the statement in the article:
"current hurricane season putting increased public focus on global warming" which implies a direct correlation between the two, as well as the subject of the article, which implies that we have some sort of control over the event.
Yes, all weather systems are heat engines. I am stating that,considering the fact that there have been worse hurricane seasons in decades previous, the connection to this year's hurricane season and the hypothesis of man-made global warming is not well substantiated. If we see increased severity of storms over the next few years, then we'll have something to talk about.

I am merely commenting on the statement in the article:
"current hurricane season putting increased public focus on global warming" which implies a direct correlation between the two, as well as the subject of the article, which implies that we have some sort of control over the event.
Yes, all weather systems are heat engines. I am stating that,considering the fact that there have been worse hurricane seasons in decades previous, the connection to this years hurricane season and the hypothesis of man-made global warming is not well substantiated. If we see increased severity of storms over the next few years, then we'll have something to talk about.

Oops, sorry for the double post!

I've looked at parts of the plan but I don't see tough timelines like
1) a coast to coast route with hydrogen refuelling stations by year 2010
2) a 100+ megawatt working coal station with 90% emissions capture, also by 2010.

Tough targets will make clear what works and what doesn't. In other words no pain no gain.

I'm sensitive to statements like "If we see increased severity of storms over the next few years, then we'll have something to talk about" because I see them used elsewhere as a delying tactic. This may not be your intention, but as I say it is my sensitivity.

It very much seems to me that if evidence continues to roll in, across the board, which is "consistent with" global warming, that is sufficient cause for action. This can certainly be a measured response, comensurate with available evidence.

But I have this image if what happens when we wait for the ultimate proof ... a couple scrawny old men in a dry dusty room. They’re clutching warm Budweisers. It is hot and winds howl outside the broken-down tract home. One says “Nobody can PROVE this is global warming”

BTW, I think we are basically screwed, because those "old men" (now young and partisan) have deadlocked our response.

The climate scientists over at Real Climate tackle this specific issue in a post: Hurricanes and Global Warming - Is There a Connection?

Katrina was the most feared of all meteorological events, a major hurricane making landfall in a highly-populated low-lying region. In the wake of this devastation, many have questioned whether global warming may have contributed to this disaster. Could New Orleans be the first major U.S. city ravaged by human-caused climate change?

The correct answer—the one we have indeed provided in previous posts (Storms & Global Warming II, Some recent updates and Storms and Climate Change)—is that there is no way to prove that Katrina either was, or was not, affected by global warming.

For a single event, regardless of how extreme, such attribution is fundamentally impossible. We only have one Earth, and it will follow only one of an infinite number of possible weather sequences. It is impossible to know whether or not this event would have taken place if we had not increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as much as we have. Weather events will always result from a combination of deterministic factors (including greenhouse gas forcing or slow natural climate cycles) and stochastic factors (pure chance).

Due to this semi-random nature of weather, it is wrong to blame any one event such as Katrina specifically on global warming—and of course it is just as indefensible to blame Katrina on a long-term natural cycle in the climate.

Yet this is not the right way to frame the question. As we have also pointed out in previous posts, we can indeed draw some important conclusions about the links between hurricane activity and global warming in a statistical sense.

[...] In the same manner, while we cannot draw firm conclusions about one single hurricane, we can draw some conclusions about hurricanes more generally. In particular, the available scientific evidence indicates that it is likely that global warming will make—and possibly already is making—those hurricanes that form more destructive than they otherwise would have been.

[...] climate science can help us understand how human actions influence climate. The current evidence strongly suggests that: (a) hurricanes tend to become more destructive as ocean temperatures rise, and (b) an unchecked rise in greenhouse gas concentrations will very likely increase ocean temperatures further, ultimately overwhelming any natural oscillations.

Scenarios for future global warming show tropical SST [sea surface temperature] rising by a few degrees, not just tenths of a degree... That is the important message from science. What we need to discuss is not what caused Katrina, but the likelyhood that global warming will make hurricanes even worse in future.

The post itself contains useful explanations and analysis, and references to the literature.

I have read the "Real Climate" article; overall very interesting. However, one must accept that the scientists over at "Real Climate" are proponents of the hypothesis of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. Whenever there is a relatively nacent scientific hypothesis offered, "camps" of scientists tend to form, for and against. I'm just pointing out that there is a bias.

The article, grossly summarized, says this:

1)A study suggests that hurricane strength is connected to sea-surface temperatures.
2)Our models, that stipulate anthropogenic global warming, show an increase of SST, thus possibly, increasing the intensity, if not the frequency, of ocean storms.

So if you accept the hypothesis of man-made global warming, storms may become more severe.

The problem that I see is that people are accepting anthropogenic global warming as fact, and are rushing to give government more power to control commerce, industry, and personal behavior to stop this "problem". It is far easier to give power away than to take it back, thus this could cause a grave problem in and of itself.

To those of you that are snippy with me,sorry. I say that expecting consistent and dependable empirical evidence does not make me a partisan, it makes me a scientist.

To those of you that are snippy with me,sorry. I say that expecting consistent and dependable empirical evidence does not make me a partisan, it makes me a scientist.

As it happens I have a background in science, medical engineering, and environmental monitoring. It strikes me that those disiplines call on us to do what thinking creatures have always been required to do: make the best posibile decision from available data.

This stuff is as old as time itself. If you reach a fork in the trail and one side as lion tracks, you take the other. You don't demand that everyone wait until it is absolutely proven that the lion is not on the trackless side.

Partisans who push the demand for absolute proof are asking us to suspend our very ability to reason.

When it comes to 9/11 or a so called WMD, no need for a shred of credible evidence, shred the constitution and send our military off to illegal wars that increase terrorism. But when it comes to dramatic global increase in CO2 due to human consumption of the very fossil fuels we go to war over, we have to wait until there's absolute proof that it's changing our climate before we take collective preventative measures.

Anyone else get the feeling we've been led down a very dangerous path?

The burden of proof is now on the global warming skeptics to prove that manmade CO2 emissions are not increasing the intensity of hurricanes.

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One of my favorite quotes about Leadership is attributed to Rosalynn Carter. It's really one of the best definitions of a leader I've ever found: A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.