Experts settle hurricane and global warming feud; predict bigger storms, but fewer ones

Cox News ^ | 2-21-10 | Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

[cajuncow]

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there's not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun.

Since just before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, dueling scientific papers have clashed about whether global warming is worsening hurricanes and will do so in the future. The new study seems to split the difference. A special World Meteorological Organization panel of 10 experts in both hurricanes and climate change _ including leading scientists from both sides _ came up with a consensus, which is published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

[dsrtsage]

Here is the funny thing. Big storms are driven by temperature differentials between the poles and the equator. So if global warming is true, we should see greater warming at the poles, which drops the differntial between the poles and equator which should mean less storms and of less intensity. Ironically, that is what we have seen since Katrina, but the global warming people are so wedded to scare stories, that they can’t even latch onto the one thing that can possibly corroborate their predictions, because it doesn’t sound scary enough. (Note: yes I understand the weather is much more complicated than that)

[norwaypinesavage]

The global warming theory is extremely robust to scientific observations: ALL observations confirm it.