Mention global warming to some folks (including some readers of this blog) and they'll tell you you're totally full of it.
Sorry, folks. It's real stuff, though the projections of how warm we'll be in 50 or 100 years may or may not have anything to do with reality. But it is happening.
This is from USA Today, which suggests the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic are more intense than they used to be, because the prevailing temperature is a bit higher than it was.
I'll have to admit, this does make for edifying reading while I wait for Hurricane Hanna to create some new gullies in the Charleston area.
Florida State University geography professor James B. Elsner, after studying some 2,000 hurricanes and cyclones worldwide from 1981 to 2006, said the strongest hurricanes were around 140 mph in 1981 to 156 mph in 2006. The sea-surface temperature where these storms blew also showed an increase, from 82.8 degrees to 83.3.
OK. In my own mind, an increase of less than half a degree in 25 years isn't all that much.But maybe that's enough to breed stronger hurricanes, as Elsner suggests.
"As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind," he said.
National Hurricane Center scientist Christopher Landsea (love that name) challenges these findings, though.
Sorry, folks. It's real stuff, though the projections of how warm we'll be in 50 or 100 years may or may not have anything to do with reality. But it is happening.
This is from USA Today, which suggests the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic are more intense than they used to be, because the prevailing temperature is a bit higher than it was.
I'll have to admit, this does make for edifying reading while I wait for Hurricane Hanna to create some new gullies in the Charleston area.
Florida State University geography professor James B. Elsner, after studying some 2,000 hurricanes and cyclones worldwide from 1981 to 2006, said the strongest hurricanes were around 140 mph in 1981 to 156 mph in 2006. The sea-surface temperature where these storms blew also showed an increase, from 82.8 degrees to 83.3.
OK. In my own mind, an increase of less than half a degree in 25 years isn't all that much.But maybe that's enough to breed stronger hurricanes, as Elsner suggests.
"As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind," he said.
National Hurricane Center scientist Christopher Landsea (love that name) challenges these findings, though.
"The paper has some elegantly calculated
statistics, but these are generated on data that are not, in my
opinion, reliable for examining how the strongest tropical cyclones
have changed around the world," wrote Landsea in an e-mail.
Elsner does acknowledge that "we still do not
have a complete understanding of why some cyclones intensify, sometimes
quite rapidly, and others don't."
But global warming? You bet it's real, although the causes are murky. Right now the favorite culprit is carbon dioxide emissions from industry, from cars, from people.
Maybe. But in my book, the chief cause of global warming is from all these blasts of hot air emanating from Washington, D.C. All this governmental bloviating has to cause some damage.
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