Global Warming and Hurricane Strength Debate Not Over

Ronald Bailey | July 28, 2006

"The voluminous evidence now strongly suggests that unless we act boldly and quickly to deal with the underlying causes of global warming, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes, including more and stronger storms like Hurricane Katrina, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific," said former Vice-President Al Gore and global warming campaigner on NPR recently.

There is considerable evidence for man-made global warming, but the vice-president may have prematurely jumped to a conclusion about hurricanes. A new study in Science co-authored by Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center suggests that the trend toward stronger hurricanes that some researchers find in the data may be a result of faulty data. Obviously this scientific debate is far from over.