[palmer]

Some scientists note satellite data starts in 1966. Some say 72 and some say 1980.

First scatterometer laumched in 96 and better ones since then. I would say the good scatterometer data for tropical storms (not yet hurricanes) is less than 10 years old.

[ealgeone]

yep...the technology keeps getting better and better.

our records only go back to 1851. I always ask the climate believers if hurricanes happened prior to then.

then I ask them how do they know and do they know how many happened?

at this point their brain (?) shuts down and they fall back on their talking points learned from slate, cnn or wherever...they refuse to think.