Talking of
shrill polemicists, I’ve just seen the front page of today’s
Independent. Here’s their
lead story:
Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.
The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
In support of Lawton’s remarks, the article refers extensively to a paper published in last week’s
Science. If they’re referring to the
recent paper by Webster, Holland, Curry and Chang: Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment then I think they must have got their wires crossed somewhere, as the authors themselves conclude:
[A]ttribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.
Does that sound like the "smoking gun" of global warming to you?
