Environmental Expert Casts Doubt on Global Warming-Hurricane Link
by Mary Rettig
September 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - A professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia is criticizing a recent paper published in the journal Science, which claims global warming plays a part in the increase of powerful hurricanes. He contends the author of the paper, Peter Webster, fails to show the whole picture.In addition to his post at the University of Virginia, Professor Pat Michaels is also a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. He says Webster only told part of the story in his scholarly paper because the data he presented in his arguments only went back to 1970, when satellite technology effectively began.
However, Michaels points out, "There's another record of hurricanes that goes back much longer and is very, very good. It's the record of Atlantic hurricanes measured by hurricane hunter aircraft, and that goes back to 1944. When you look at that, you see that the proportion of Category 4 and 5 storms in the 1940s and 1950s was as high as it is today."
Also, the professor notes, "I just looked at the data from the National Hurricane Center that counts the number of Category 3 or higher hurricanes that hit the U.S. every decade back to 1860 -- that's 145 years worth of data. And what you see in that data is no trend whatsoever."
Environmental scientists who tout the "global warming" theory have noted that research shows the Earth has warmed by one degree during the last century. But Michaels points out that statistics are available going back to well before this warming took place. He says if Webster had availed himself of this data, he could never have come to the conclusion that global warming plays a part in making stronger hurricanes.
Looking at all the data, instead of just the short period since 1970 that Webster examined, gives a very different picture of global warming and hurricanes, Michaels asserts. He says today's severe weather patterns, including the stronger hurricanes being seen now, are much like the trend of storms from the 1940s and 1950s.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
