

UN's climate link to hurricanes in doubt - anamax
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7044158.ece

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brazzy
Does anyone have a source that explains the results of the report with a bit
more scientific depth, specifically _why_ global warming would lead to fewe
but slightly stronger hurricanes rather than more?

AFAIK the fundamental cause of hurricanes is the evaporation and condensation
of water. Higher temperatures cause more evaporation, so it seems pretty
obvious that it would cause more opportunities for hurricanes to form.

~~~
ars
No, that's not the fundamental cause of hurricanes.

The fundamental cause of hurricanes is the _difference_ between water and air
temperatures. If both go up together nothing changes.

The difference is measured from absolute zero, so if both go up 1 degree there
is actually even less of a difference than there was before.

Since the water is warm, and the air cold, and every model shows water
temperature rise lagging air temperature rise, global warming should cause
less hurricanes.

The higher intensity might be because the water would become warmer, and air
temperature is not a constant. If a hurricane should happen to form when it's
cold out, it'll be somewhat more powerful.

~~~
jamesbritt
" ... global warming should cause less hurricanes."

Do you mean lesser, or fewer, hurricanes?

~~~
gambling8nt
The original article indicates fewer, but slightly stronger.

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KirinDave
NEWSWIRE: Continued scientific research updates predictions. Slightly less
devastating storms predicted. This is normal for science. Deniers try to use
process as wedge for false-dichotomy argument.

Aside, this exact same story from a different news outlet already flooded
through here last week and got no play. Why submit it again?

~~~
dantheman
Well it's not just that the prediction was off a by a bit, the entire
relationship was wrong.

It was GW -> More Storms, now it's GW -> Less Storms.

Now of course this is just science being done, there's nothing wrong with
that. The problem is that Climate Scientists claim to have a much better
understanding than they do. As Feynman said, it is the duty of the scientist
to bend over backwards to inform you of all the ways they might be wrong. In
Climate Science, you hear this is the consensus, not that we have data for 30
years of 10000 year cycle and we think that this will happen. In my opinion
it's not honest.

~~~
KirinDave
> In Climate Science, you hear this is the consensus, not that we have data
> for 30 years of 10000 year cycle and we think that this will happen. In my
> opinion it's not honest.

I don't know how much more honest an admission that a prediction was wrong by
respected scientist can be. What do you want? This AGW issue is so politically
charged that we _want_ the scientists to be constantly going over the data and
trying to reproduce it.

It's not like the IPCC was trying to hide this. If anything, the entire way
this scenario played out should be a _reassurance_ that the IPCC and
cooperating scientists are acting in good faith. They're not trying to "cover
up" failures; they're acting on the established scientific process.

~~~
gambling8nt
_It's not like the IPCC was trying to hide this. If anything, the entire way
this scenario played out should be a reassurance that the IPCC and cooperating
scientists are acting in good faith. They're not trying to "cover up"
failures; they're acting on the established scientific process._

Actually, the linked research came from a survey commissioned by the WMO, not
the IPCC...the IPCC fabricated the original claims that there would be more
and more severe hurricanes due to global warming, according to the original
article, with "no science so [sic] substantiate them."

One of the authors of this research, who resigned from the IPCC in protest
over the original hurricane claim, indicated in 2005, "All previous and
current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable,
long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones." It has
taken the past several years to compile data to change this stance, and the
results contra-indicate the IPCC's original claims.

There are, undoubtedly, scientists who act largely in good faith based upon
the existing climate data; the limited amount of data that I have seen
indicates that there are aspects of global climate change that are quite real.
The IPCC, however, is a political organization that appears transparently to
be acting (or, at least, to have acted) in bad faith--between its baseless
claims regarding hurricanes, its inaccurate estimates and later denial of the
rate of melt of glaciers in the Himalayas, and various dubious data practices
(failure of some members to comply with freedom of information requests,
"lost" data and storing only reduced results of data, and selectively ignoring
the tree ring data, to name just a few examples).

This is not the story of a claim being well-founded, but being corrected by
advances in data or theory. This is the result of a political claim based on
little or no evidence being examined by an outside body and found inaccurate.

