While Nature declares the scientific debate basically over – before it has hardly begun (I’m pretty sure, Science Mag will follow suit soon) -, the debate about effective hurricane protection is far from over.

As the anti-NOAA protests demonstrate, environmental campaigners and green researchers seem convinced that linking hurricanes and AGW will automatically provide them with compelling arguments for Kyoto-style global warming policies. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this tactic backfires as it come across as exceedingly imprudent if not completely daft.

Seriously, doesn’t it look patently absurd for hurricane researchers and green campaigners to call on states like Florida to reduce its CO2 emissions and to advertise this as an imperative hurricane mitigation policy? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/3918630.html

A “disaster-prevention” strategy based on greenhouse gas emissions will, I suggest, look even more off the wall as CO2 emissions of some of the world’s leading Kyoto-promoters (let along rising superpowers such as India and China) are steadily on the rise
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/30/cncoal30.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/05/30/ixcitytop.html

Thanks for your comments. But “quietly change the subject”? Gimme a little more credit – loud and clearly, more like;-)

Of course a focus on storm intensity is a valid and interesting scientific topic. But my interest is in the “so what?” question, as presumably is the interest of the NOAA protesters. (Surely they are protesting for purely scientific interests!) I am a policy researcher after all.

So long as people continue to debate and discuss hurricanes and global warming, I’ll continue to ask “so what?”. And as I have published in the peer reviewed literature, I don’t think that the outcome of the current debate does much to alter calculations of policy effectiveness. Using hurricanes as a political symbol may in fact distract attention and resources from those policy options likely to be most effective withr espect to disaster mitigation.

Thanks!

I do not support this call for resignations, I think the embarassment and the chance to change their policy is sufficient.

However, both you and Kevin have constructed strawmen. Kevin quotes the protestors as saying “stop covering up the growing scientific link between severe hurricanes and global warming” and then claims “the protesters are arguing [...] that a strong scientific consensus exists” and attacks that argument.

You have supported his attack by citing 3 conclusions of a paper, the stronger conclusions of which are soley about societal impacts and not at all about the warming-intensity link, the other a very mild caution about needing more evidence.

In fact, though this may be a misimpression, ISTM you do this very frequently, if not all the time. You quietly change the subject from “are storms growing stronger” to “are storms more destructive” which are very different questions as you know.

It is not clear to me at all why it is not legitimate to study/discuss/warn about increasing storm intensity. Nor is it clear to me that the fact that more damage is primarily the result of more coastal population means more intensity is not relevant to both these people and to policy decisions.