The link to the article doesn’t quite work. Could you provide a link (or email me the article?)

Thanks!

Your dismissal of the link between global warming and hurricane intensity is a bit premature. You write, “It is detrimental to the credibility of climate change activists when they augment their case with things like the link between hurricane intensity and global warming.” From our understanding, there is admittedly a lag between global atmospheric temperatures and SSTs. However, there has already been an increase in SST of 0.5 degrees C, showing that irregardless of this lag, ocean temperatures are an issue.

Though we agree that various oscillations, in particular the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, are the major factors of varying hurricane activity, you cannot claim that there is absolutely no room for global warming. Kerry Emanuel’s recent publication in Nature is telling proof that there is some correlation. Granted, the Washington Post highlights some of the flaws of Emanuel’s research (e.g. data collection). However, there is no denying that increases in hurricane intensity have roughly correlated to rising global temperatures over the past 30 years. You may wish to refer to his graphs.

If Emanuel, who once disbelieved the link between global warming and hurricanes, came to these conclusions, we cannot easily dismiss this possible link.

I am an outsider and a student, so correct me where I go wrong. Even if there was an established 100% link between hurricane intensity and frequency, it seems that the rise in potential damage from GHGs would still not enter our policy calculus, assuming we have some sort of reasonable discount rate. From my understanding, sea surface temperature rise will lag significantly behind atmospheric temperature rise. Accordingly, hurricane intensity will pose problems only after we have experienced the more imminent results of climate change (i.e. desertification, ablation of ice sheets, weakening of THC, disease).

As an aside, there seems to be an outpouring of discontent in climate change literature over media potrayals of the climate policy debate. Everyone, including Dilling, points to the problem of the media giving equal time to climate change action activists and climate change deniers. I won’t present my opinion on this, however, it seems that it is detrimental to the credibility of climate change activists when they augment their case with things like the link between hurricane intensity and global warming. NOAA just refutes the point, and it makes for a great story. If climate activists would stick to evidence that is widely accepted while making their point, the point-counter-point style of climate coverage will eventually fade. In this way, I think your paper, Dr. Pielke, serves the climate activists well. The debate shouldn’t be between ‘cooler heads’ and climage hot heads, it should be levelheaded.

Now, starting from the point that at present you do not believe that any link has been shown between climate change and hurricane intensity and frequency, assume that a strong link was shown to a high degree of certainty. How much additional potential damage would have to be shown likely for additional efforts to be made limiting anthropic climate change?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/26/AR2005112600355.html

Thanks for your comment. You write, “However, if there were a 100% demonstration of no connection, these actions would simply not be taken.”

In my view, the case for climate mitigation does not rest significantly on preventing future hurricane damages. That is, whether there is a 100% connection or 100% no connection, the case for climate mitigation is strong in either situation.

“More important, if this isn’t denial, then could some one please tell me what it is. (I can think of an alternative: a “lie”.)”

He was referencing the ‘Cooler Heads’ website, which, in my opinion, decided to fight fire with fire. In other words, they employed the same type of argumentation that the other side uses constantly. For example, while the site was posted in 2000, their claim of ’slightly cooling’ satellite temperatures consisted of 18 years of a 21 year record. Until 1998, the satellites DID indicate a slight cooling trend, so that was the period they decided to reference.

They do not deny climate change at all, indicating in their very first point that surface temperatures appear to have warmed about .5 degrees C in the last century. They also cleverly and correctly indicate that the human influence on climate has been very small, which, of course, is absolutely true when compared to the total concept of climate! Also, the amount of the human contribution to greenhouse gases is very low, just like they indicate, but the argument on the other side has never been that human contributions to greenhouse gases in the Earth’s Atmosphere is a significant percentage of the total.

What they have done is simply taken factual information and phrased it in a way that leads the reader to believe what the authors intend.

What is so amusing to me is that you find this practice a gross misrepresentation of the facts on the Cooler Heads site, but fail to recognize the same methods used blatantly on most sites warning of impending doom! (I assume this because of your previous use of the phrase ‘climate change deniers’ as a reference to all those who question the validity and ‘robustness’ of the IPCC scenarios. Such mischarachterizations are rampant on those sites.) The skeptics have been demonized for quite some time with such phrases, as well as unfounded accustations of corruption and of miniscule numbers (i.e. there are only 5 skeptics), none of it true. Data, or even antecdotes, that supports the AGW theory are trumpeted as proof, while data that contradicts the theory is simply ignored. I have watched it for 15 years.

While most of this has been taking place in the media and with environmental organiztions, outside of scientific circles, there have been some interesting trends in otherwise fine papers over the last decade. Reports on past climates, from extended droughts in the Southwest US to recent cooling in the Antarctic, presented reasonable evidence in the body of the works, but in the conclusion expressed some opinion about future conditions due to man-made global warming, even though there was nothing in their work related to or even implying future climate change. During the 90s, it seemed to be some kind of ‘future grant’ insurance policy for all contributors of Climate Papers, but it gave the impression that everyone excepted the the company line on climate change.

My whole point of this diatribe is that persuasive techniques that are not representative of the body of scientific evidence have been thrust at the public for 15 years, with very little of it coming from skeptics. So much of this has come from climate change catastrophists that the public is actually getting pretty numb to it all. Even Europeans are starting to have doubts, which is amazing considering that most have never heard a dissenting view point.

If you wish to critize ‘Cooler Heads’, that is fine with me, but please include the myriad of AGW doom and gloom web sites that are even more guilty of selective arguments, or as you call it… lying!

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=889
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=891
from 2005 on the same site

and of course the evergreen

http://www.john-daly.com/

Yes Virginia, the nile is not just a four year old river in Egypt.

“Even a 100% level of evidence of a connection between global warming and hurricanes is unlikely to radically change the ORDERING of policies most likely to be effective with respect to addressing future hurricane damages. This is because of the overwhelming influence of growing societal vulnerability to storm impacts.”

I emphasized ORDERING, because I think it is very important. I take this to mean that there are short term policies which can (should) be put in place, but are in no way related to or driven by any possible connection between hurricances and global warming. With this I agree, both as a practical matter (it will happen that way) and a moral and economic one (it should happen that way). OTOH, assuming a 100% connection between hurricanes and anthropic (I added a word) global warming, actions which over the long term are likely to diminish hurricane damage through their diminution of anthropically driven global warming, would come later. However, if there were a 100% demonstration of no connection, these actions would simply not be taken. Thus I have to reject the first sentence in Prof. Pielke’s statement.

The second is completely valid, but vapid. We know that hurricanes are major bad and given population shifts which make them even more dangerous, something is going to be done in some order.