September 3, 2007

Happy Labor Day

A hurricane is once again on the warpath. Hurricane Felix has reached Category 5 status, the greatest for any hurricane. We all know what this means. Global warming strikes again.

I can only hope that people will not come out of the woodwork claiming that global warming, caused by humans, is the cause of hurricanes. To me, this claim is only slightly more plausible than the claim that hurricanes are generated by a machine located in Africa. (Why did that farfetched idea locate the machine in Africa, anyway? A location in the Caribbean would make more sense.)

After the devastating hurricane season of 2005, everyone and their research assistant came forward to tell the media that human-caused global warming was going to cause just as many, or even more, violent hurricanes in 2006. Instead, America was largely spared, and apart from Texas' recent misfortune, such has generally been the case in 2007.

Global warming advocates would probably be the first to agree that the people who made the dire, gloomy predictions of frenetic hurricane seasons were clearly opportunists taking advantage of the national attention given to those suffering from the effects of 2005's hurricanes. There are still two points resulting from the outpouring of dire predictions that convince me that human-caused global warming and attendant catastrophe cannot be true.

First is the reiteration of an old principle in environmentalism: It's okay to lie, as long as you're doing it for the right reasons. I can't recall anyone specifically applying it to the erroneous hurricane predictions, but in the global warming debate as well as other contexts, environmentalist apologists have repeatedly advocated using sensational arguments and exaggerating scientific figures to make their case. When many scientists stepped forward to claim there would be more hurricanes in 2006, based on little data, or no data at all, they used this propagandistic technique.

If environmentalism is prepared to lie about scientific data, then how far can we trust the studies of scientists? Science is based on the idea of examining and reporting what really exists, not figures that would give a 'number of hurricanes' chart a smooth upwards curve. What is environmentalism not telling us about the true state of the environment? We can't really trust their data on anything.

The second point that causes me doubt is the failure of the predictions that 2006 would have an even worse hurricane season. Not only that, but hurricane forecasters cannot perfectly predict where hurricanes will go within a few days- remember the meandering tracks of some of the 2005 storms? Forecasters thought that other regions of Florida would be hit while the city of Orlando was spared. Evacuees rushed to Orlando- but the hurricane's course changed and Orlando was hit.

Hurricane forecasters have gotten much better over the years, and to their credit, they've always advertised their fallibility by indicating hurricane tracks with very wide margins, indicating the many paths a hurricane could take. We still need to face the reality that humans can't tell where a hurricane will be a few days in the future. Hurricane scientists have worked for decades and still can't account for and model all the variables.

What makes us think that scientists and computer models can accurately predict the temperatures a century from now?