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Jewish World Review August 31, 2005 / 26 Av, 5765 Are we to blame for hurricanes? By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If cable TV had existed in 1886, everyone in the U.S. might have
been whipped into a hurricane panic. A record seven hurricanes made
landfall that year, including a Category 4 storm that hit Texas and
would have had on-the-spot cable newscasters dramatically fighting
the wind to deliver their reports. All during the 1890s, reporters
could have done the same along the Atlantic seaboard, as it was
hammered by more powerful hurricanes than it would be in any decade
except the 1950s.
Hurricane Katrina, which slammed the Gulf Coast and got
eyewall-to-eyewall media coverage, is sure to increase the sense
that there is an epidemic of hurricanes (along, of course, with an
epidemic of shark attacks and missing blond girls). Which inevitably
raises the question: "What can we do about it?" For some scientists
and activists — working on the assumption that anything they don't
like must be caused by industrial emissions — the answer is stop
global warming.
There is hardly an undesirable natural event, from wildfires to
hurricanes, that former Vice President Al Gore hasn't blamed on
global warming. As if it weren't for fossil-fuel emissions, the
weather would always be predictable and pleasant. An outfit called
Scientists and Engineers for Change put up a billboard in Florida
before last year's presidential election stating it starkly: "Global
warming = Worse hurricanes. George Bush just doesn't get it." Ah,
yes: Why are Bush and the neocons focused on the war in Iraq, when
there is a very real threat to the U.S. they should be addressing in
the waters of the Atlantic?
Has global warming increased the frequency of hurricanes? One of
the nation's foremost hurricane experts, William Gray, points out
that if global warming is at work, cyclones should be increasing not
just in the Atlantic but elsewhere, in the West Pacific, East
Pacific and the Indian Ocean. They aren't. The number of cyclones
per year worldwide fluctuates pretty steadily between 80 and 100.
There's actually been a small overall decline in tropical cyclones
since 1995, and Atlantic hurricanes declined from 1970 to 1994, even
as the globe was heating up.
It seems that Atlantic hurricanes come in spurts, or as the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts it in more
technical language, "a quasi-cyclic multi-decade regime that
alternates between active and quiet phases." The late 1920s through
the 1960s were active; the 1970s to early 1990s quiet; and since
1995 — as anyone living in Florida or Gulfport, Miss., can tell you
— seems to be another active phase.
But if hurricanes aren't more frequent, are they more powerful?
Warm water fuels hurricanes, so the theory is that as the ocean's
surface heats up, hurricanes will pack more punch. An article in
Nature — after questionable jiggering with the historical wind data
— argues that hurricanes have doubled in strength because of global
warming. Climatologist Patrick Michaels counters that if hurricanes
had doubled in their power it would be obvious to everyone and there
would be no need to write controversial papers about it.
None of this data matters particularly, since proponents of
global warming will continue to link warming with hurricanes. It
generates headlines in a way that debates about tiny increments of
warming don't. And it feeds a conceit that is oddly comforting: that
whatever is wrong with the world is caused by us and fixable by us.
Alas, it's not so. Mother Nature can be a cruel and unpredictable
mistress, and sometimes all we can do is head for the high ground.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
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