In a report on the relative infrequency of hurricanes in the U.S. during the past decade nationwide, and many decades in certain coastal areas, the Associated Press's Seth Borenstein detected a problem.
The problem is that those who contend that human-caused global warming is ruining our planet believe that hurricane frequency should be increasing, but it's not. So Borenstein tried to cover his tracks (bolds are mine throughout this post):
It has been more than nine years since the U.S. was struck by a major hurricane — Superstorm Sandy did major damage but didn't qualify meteorologically as a major hurricane. That's a streak that is so unprecedented that NASA climate scientist Timothy Hall went looking to see if it could be explained by something that has happening with the weather or climate. He found that big storms formed, they just didn't hit America, coming close and hitting islands in the Caribbean and Mexico. The lack of hurricanes hitting the U.S. "is a matter of luck," Hall concluded in a peer-reviewed study.
But that point still dodges the question, which is whether hurricanes and serious storms are on the increase or not. Even broadening the scope to include all "recorded storms affecting the United States," they're not:
Additionally, Accuweather reported the following at the end of 2014 for the entire affected Atlantic Ocean area:
For the second year in a row, the Atlantic hurricane season was below average.
There have been 10 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin in 2014, eight of which have reached tropical storm intensity, AccuWeather.com Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said. Six of the storms became hurricanes with two of those reaching major hurricane status.
In a normal year based on the past 30-year averages, we see 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic, six of which are hurricanes and three are major, Kottlowski said.
Borenstein's paragraph above was an attempt at an artful dodge. He asserted that "big storms formed," but "forgot" to tell us that in 2013 and 2014 there weren't as many of them. How "clever."
An item typifying the hysteria over the alleged link between human-caused global warming and increased hurricane frequency was published in July 2013 at USA Today:
Storm warning: Climate change to spawn more hurricanes
The Atlantic Ocean -- where most hurricanes that impact the USA come from -- is projected to see more hurricanes develop.The world could see as many as 20 additional hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century because of climate change, says a study out today.
The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), written by top climate researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On average, about 90 tropical cyclones form each year around the world, Emanuel says. ("Tropical cyclone" is an umbrella term that includes hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones, which are all the same type of storm that have different labels depending on where they form.)
One of the biggest debates in the climate change research community in recent years has been the projected impact of global warming on hurricanes. Will it make them stronger? More frequent? Longer lasting?
Emanuel's study used six newly upgraded global climate computer models ...
Anyone who has followed global warmists' shenanigans over the years knows that they can tune out their contentions once the term "computer models," where the appropriate description is "garbage in, garbage out," gets used. Of course, Kerry Emanuel was engaging in very long-term forecasting, and two seasons of data don't end the argument. But it's not good for him that the past two years have gone decidedly the "wrong" way.
I suspect, like the unbroken streak of 18-1/2 years of no global warming the world is currently in the midst of, that global warming true believers will insist that all of this relative calm on the storm front is some kind of "pause." They need to tell us the point at which they will admit that such "pauses" prove their hypotheses wrong. But I'm sure they won't. Heck, we could hit 50 years and they'll still insist that global warming is just around the corner.
Most of the rest of Borenstein's writeup conveyed the impression that many parts of the U.S., spoiled by the lack of a hurricane making landfall for decades, are woefully unprepared if one does. That doesn't seem plausible, but being in the Midwest, I can't address that matter directly. Perhaps other readers can.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
