Wicked Weather

I got a kick out of reading this on Anthony Watts' blog but it originates from Alan Caruba as a post on his blog...

In March, William J. Broad, reporting in The New York Times [in this article], noted that Gore’s “scientific audience is uneasy” in the wake of his global warming documentary. “These scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.”

In Great Britain, a judge ruled that the documentary could not be shown in the schools unless teachers read a long list of its erroneous claims.

Since an increase in hurricanes was one of his dramatic claims along with rising sea levels and disappearing polar bears, Gore is batting zero these days. The sea levels have been rising a few inches every century for millennia and it is generally conceded that the polar bear population since the 1950s has been thriving.

In May, hurricane specialist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in Miami disputed theories that “global warming” has caused more hurricanes. His study was published in The Journal of Climate.

Landsea, like all meteorologists who haven’t been in a coma since the 1980s, knows that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998. Thus, the warmth that feeds hurricanes has diminished and is likely to stay that way for decades to come.

Landsea’s research showed that, since the mid-1990s, the average number of hurricanes per year had almost doubled what it was during the few prior decades, about on par with hurricane activity in the early 20th century. “It’s busy, yes, but not anything we haven’t seen before,” said Landsea while attending the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference in May.

For the non-scientist, that should confirm that hurricanes are governed by natural cycles, not some non-existent, dramatic increase called “global warming.”

Though what I know about hurricanes would fit comfortably in a bug’s ear, I am nonetheless tempted to suggest that the cooling cycle the Earth entered in 1998 may be a contributing factor to why this year’s hurricane season is, at this writing, minus any hurricanes.

So, where are the hurricanes of 2009, Mr. Gore?

And here is the real weather data (from US NOAA) from the same blog, different post. This doesn't look like "global warming" to me:

Record Events for Sat Oct 17, 2009 through Fri Oct 23, 2009
Total Records: 2682
Rainfall: 812
Snowfall: 72
High Temperatures: 152
Low Temperatures: 252
Lowest Max Temperatures: 1129
Highest Min Temperatures: 265

Funny how as it "warms" you get more record lows than record highs. I guess that just proves that climate science is "complex" and that mere mortals need to sit at the feet of the great gurus of climate modelling and simply lap up what they tell us!!!