Hurricane Bullshit

Sometimes Reason contributor, overzealous Dow predictor, and former New Orleans resident James Glassman has a searing piece up over at Tech Central Station. His topic? How various environmentalists, ranging from Robert Kennedy Jr. to Ross Gelbspan to Jurgen Tritter have all blamed Hurrican Katrina on global warming and a failure to adopt the Kyoto Protocol.

That's crap, sez Glassman, who points out:

There is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying…. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: "Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased."

Yes, decreased.

Not only has the intensity of hurricanes fallen, but, as George H. Taylor, the state climatologist of Oregon has pointed out, so has the frequency of hailstorms in the U.S. (see Changnon and Changnon) and cyclones throughout the world (Gulev, et al.).

But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit.

Whole thing here.

Reason checked the barometer on hurricanoes and global warming a while back. The forecast: nothing to worry about.

Back in 1993, when Hurricane Andrew was still the big storm everyone was yapping about, Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin drew a devestating portrait of how pols screwed up the recovery while lining their own pockets. Check it out here.