The Associated Press reports:

The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say.

The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research “sloppy science” and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase.

In other words, the NHC thinks the storms were always there but they just didn’t have the means to detect them. They didn’t use aircraft to check out storms until 1944 nor have satellites up there looking for storms until 1970, so it seems reasonable to me that some of them could have been missed.

But Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that the increases in the number of storms occurred in 1930 and 1995, which is inconsistent with the 1944 and 1970 upgrades in storm detection capability. What Emanuel doesn’t emphasize, though, is that neither can the incremental increases in the number of storms be tied directly to climate change. I’m unaware of any sudden significant increases in the earth’s temperature occurring in 1930 and 1995. In fact, as late as the 70s scientists believed the earth was cooling.

It seems that now any observed change in the earth’s climate is attributed to global warming — whether or not there exists any tangible evidence to support that conclusion. I read that even the trouble in Darfur has been blamed on global warming. Do you think the fact that I can’t keep the grass in my yard cut as well as I used to is due to glowarm?

A reader sent two links to articles describing the global warming skepticism of two scientists — one in Australia and one in the United States. The first article is written by Bob Carter, an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change. He feels that heads of state are being misled by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other organizations:

It is past time for those who have deceived governments and misled the public regarding dangerous human-caused global warming to be called to account. Aided by hysterical posturing by green NGOs, their actions have led to the cornering of government on the issue and the likely implementation of futile emission policies that will impose direct extra costs on every household and enterprise in Australia to no identifiable benefit.

Carter says that “the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.”

The second article quotes Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology. Bryson considers global warming “a bunch of hooey”:

The University of Wisconsin professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the “Little Ice Age,” he said in an interview this week.

“However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time,” Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

“It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis,” he said. “It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence.”

Galen McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison disagrees with Bryson, but her analogies destroy her credibility:

“We understand very well the basic process of the greenhouse effect, which is that we know that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the heat trapped by the atmosphere. You put one dollar more in the bank and you have one dollar more there tomorrow. It’s a very clear feedback,” she said.

Well not neccesarily, not if you or someone else takes the dollar out of the bank. And I don’t think she meant to reveal to us that putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like money in the bank for her.

“If you saw smoke in your house, it would be irresponsible not to get your family out, right?”

Well no, not if you know the source of the smoke and know that it doesn’t present an imminent danger to your family.

I predict that we will soon see a lot more articles on glowarm skepicism.  The media will soon become bored with shilling for the global warming alarmists and start seeing more interesting news in what the skeptics have to say.  When everyone is saying the same thing it is hardly news.  And scams don’t usually hold together for very long.

The Associated Press reports that Michael Griffin “regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview.”  My previous post reported his comments.

I regret that he regrets airing his comments.  I want to emphasize, though, that he did not say he has changed his views on global warming.  He only said he regrets airing those views.  Apparently he believes the politics of glowarm are such that he should have kept his personal views to himself.

ABC News reports that “NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency’s preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.” Here are the comments he made on NPR:

“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told (NPR’s Steve) Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

“To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change,” Griffin said. “I guess I would ask which human beings – where and when – are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Sounds like a very wise man to me. But one of his employees, climate scientist James Hansen, thinks otherwise:

“It’s an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement,” Hansen told ABC News. “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change.”

“It’s unbelievable,” said Hansen. “I thought he had been misquoted. It’s so unbelievable.”

I guess being featured prominently in Al Gore’s movie has given Hansen some balls. He’s talking about his boss!

Griffin thinks Hansen is arrogant. Hansen thinks Griffin is arrogant. I agree with Griffin, but I want to offer another reason to believe that Hansen and his ilk are arrogant. After this planet has experienced many cycles of extreme climate conditions lasting millions of years, and most all of them occurring before humans inhabited the planet, what is the likelihood that an impending dramatic change in the climate is caused by humans or can be mitigated by humans? Ants are as likely to be able to dramatically affect the earth’s climate as are humans.

Today I was listening to CBS News on the radio while hauling a load of trash to the dump (somehow that seems appropriate). They reported that some expert (didn’t catch the name) had issued a new warning of dire consequences to come from global warming. He estimates that the world will face severe food shortages within about a hundred years. Whoa! I think I’ll run to the market tomorrow and stock up.

He also said that people who are “most vulnerable and least able to adapt” to the adverse effects of global warming will suffer the most. Where do they find these experts? The weak will suffer more than the strong? The poor will suffer more than the wealthy? They should hold a conference to discuss and expand on this guy’s thinking.  I’ll suggest another twist on his logic:  A person standing in the path of a speeding bullet is more likely to be hurt by the bullet than a person not standing in its path.

I’ve noticed that there are about three articles per week on global warming in the news feeds that I track on the internet. They seem to follow a particular format. Each article contains at least two elements: a new warning of its consequences and a declaration that the debate of its causes is over. I’m sure there is an organization somewhere that is tasked to pump the articles out.

Glowarm dissenters can take comfort in the fact that the people staffing that organization don’t appear to be all that bright.

The temperature got down to 40 degrees here at my house this morning — in Florida!  And we are almost a month into Spring.

Jonah Goldberg asks a good question in a recent column:  “Isn’t it interesting how the same people who think “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” when it comes to the war think that dissent when it comes to global warming is evil and troglodytic?” If the global warming alarmists were truly confident in their position they wouldn’t mind dissent. The reason they want to stifle dissent is exactly because they know their position is weak.

Glowarm (I’m tired of typing the whole phrase) is looking more and more like a religion. It has its prophet. You have to take it mostly on faith. Non-believers are labeled heretics and publicly ridiculed. It promises an apocalypse. You have to repent now and change your ways in order to stave off the apocalypse. You’re allowed to compensate for your sins (using ‘dirty’ energy) by performing good works (purchasing carbon offsets).

My aim of course is to firmly establish Glowarm as a religion so that government won’t be able to touch it. You know, the ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion’ thing.

… is the title of a film that attempts to rebut Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth.  You can view the video here.  I got this link from a Steven Milloy column at FoxNews.com.  I haven’t had time to view the complete video yet.  When I do I might post a review.

Update:  Milloy covers the film quite well so I won’t bother to repeat what he has already said.  If you are interested in the global warming debate (no, the debate is not over), then I recommend that you take the time to watch the video.

Canada.com’s National Post has a series of articles on The Deniers of global warming.  The intent of the articles is to show that the science of global warming is clearly not as settled as most of the alarmists claim.  They show that there are many very reputable scientists who are quite skeptical of the assertion that warming is man-made or that disastrous effects are imminent.  The last article reports that a French scientist who had a role in issuing the original warnings about warming is now having second thoughts.  Here are links to the articles:

Statistics needed — The Deniers Part I
Warming is real — and has benefits — The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science — The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice — The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold — The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change — The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? — The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability — The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming — The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 — The Deniers Part X
End the chill — The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research — The Deniers Part XII
Allegre’s second thoughts — The Deniers Part XIII

Can you imagine the embarrassment a father must feel to turn on his computer and learn that his son is interested in who Al Gore is wearing to the Academy Awards? The Washington Post has published a fawning article by William Booth about how Gore has become a rock star:

In the annals of vice presidential history, tonight will be something different. In his black tux, the man known to his most fervent fans as “The Goracle” will arrive by hybrid eco-limo and, surrounded by fellow Hollywood greenies Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio, will stroll down the red carpet at the Academy Awards to answer the immortal question: “Al, who are you wearing?”

It would be bad enough to learn that a son is interested in what Gore is wearing, but who!? Perhaps Booth is poking fun at Gore or the Oscars, but I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m embarrassed at what a sissy nation we’ve become. There was a time when men had better things to do than talk about clothes — especially what some other man is wearing.

No matter what he’s wearing I think that Al Gore strongly believes in what he’s doing. In fact, I think that is why he was chosen for the role. He is the global warming alarmists’ suicide bomber. Suicide bombers are chosen because they can be convinced that their mission is worth more than their life. Fortunately for Gore he only has to sacrifice his credibility for his mission. After a few years people will become bored with global warming, the climate will swing in another direction or another ‘crisis’ will take its place, and Gore will again be regarded as a dunce. There is the possibility that Gore is just doing it for the money. In that case he’s not dumb, just devious.

Booth mentions that Gore “is on first-name basis, for real, with Ludacris.” On first-name basis with a man with only one name? Perhaps he is poking fun at Gore.

Booth says that Gore is “totally carbon neutral.” How does that square with this?:

Gore worked the premieres in Edinburgh, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, Sydney, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Zurich, Brussels, Berlin and Tokyo. In France, he not only attended the film opening, but presented his 90-minute Apple Keynote lecture to the National Assembly. He did the slide show at the United Nations, the American Geophysical Union, and before conservative activist Grover Norquist’s regular Wednesday meeting.

Does his airplane produce no carbon? No, what they probably mean by ‘carbon neutral’ is that Gore is buying ‘carbon offsets’ to compensate for the carbon his transportation (and several large houses) are producing. To offset carbon one has to consume carbon equal to that produced. An example of a carbon offset is planting trees. It seems that a global warming prophet like Gore would want to do better than just carbon neutral. He could plant all those trees and still not burn all that jet fuel in the atmosphere. (Would that be carbon positive or carbon negative?)

Gore needs to plant a lot more trees than those needed to offset his carbon production because he wants to produce ethanol from wood chips instead of corn. Plant trees for one purpose, cut them down for another and make both seem like saving the planet. That Gore is a clever guy — at least he thinks he is.