A remarkable new study, published in the March 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, concludes that global warming can’t be blamed for an increase in the number of hurricanes over the last 27 years.
While the new study is consistent with findings by hurricane scientists at the National Hurricane Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that global warming has not caused any increase in hurricane activity, the new study is most remarkable because the author of the study is none other than Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Emanuel has been in the forefront in asserting that humans have caused an increase in hurricane activity.
But his article, “Hurricane and global warming: results from downscaling IPCC AR4 simulations,” concludes, that “… the greater part of the large global increase in (hurricanes) over the past 27 years cannot be ascribed to global warming.”
Emanuel writes that wide spread predictions of increased frequency and power of hurricanes “depends on rather simplistic representation” of global-warming models.
Global warming alarmists have received a tremendous amount of media attention, and have panicked many Americans into believing we must “do something” about global warming, by asserting after hurricane Katrina that global warming is causing, and will continue to cause, more frequent hurricanes.
Indeed, a Google search for “global warming” and “hurricanes” turns up roughly 692,000 media documents.
So how has the media responded to the news that the godfather of a global warming-hurricane link has switched sides and joined the “Flat Earthers”? A Google News search showed only three newspapers – the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, and the Christian Science Monitor – thought Emanuel’s reversal was worthy of news coverage.
James Taylor is managing editor of Environment and Climate News, published by the Heartland Institute. Taylor can be contacated at [email protected].
For more information about The Heartland Institute contact Harriette Johnson, Heartland’s media relations manager for at 312/377-4000 or at email [email protected].
