On 8/29/05, Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I heard a slightly different message. He said that the
> effect was not significant for Atlantic Hurricanes --
> I don't know if he meant the entire Atlantic or just
> the US coast, but for the entire hurricane system global
> warming was a factor in increasing the power, not the
> frequency. Was I mistaken? Traffic drowned out part
> of what he said. *
The text of the full Goodman-with-Emmanuel interview was posted at the DN
website (democracynow.org) after I wrote the posting quoted below, and so
one can read it there in its entirety.
I suggest that so doing will confirm that I fairly characterized what Prof.
Emmanuel said.
(This does not mean, of course, that I disagree that there is an already
compellingly made scientific case for substantial political action to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and related human-caused environmental
degradation -- but so saying is quite a different matter than invoking a
"whack job" in support of a story one tells oneself putatively to "explain"
what, in actuality, there appears not to be scientific evidence to support.)
--------------------------------------------------
* On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >On today's D.N, Amy Goodman interviewed someone far from being whacko --
> >MIT Prof. of Meteorology Kerry Emmanuel (who Goodman undoubtedly sought out
> >precisely because of his recently published studies of global warming) --
> >who took an at most agnostic position re. whether "Katrina" or the
> >comparative effects of that storm can be said scientifically to be ascribed
> >to global warming (saying "it would be very hard" to make such a claim).
> >
> >He said "it would be very hard" to blame the fact of comparatively greater
> >hurricane frequency during the last ten years on "global warming" ("a very
> >difficult connection to make") and said that, instead, he "think[s] what
> >you are seeing mostly is a natural cycle in this case" adding later in the
> >interview that "what we thought a few years ago was, well, global warming
> >should have an effect on hurricanes, but it's small enough that you won't
> >really see it for many decades to come."
>
> I looked into this a few years ago for a piece I wrote on catastrophe
> bonds and other financial instruments tied to weather disasters. The
> scientific consensus was that Florida enjoyed a several-decade period
> of milder and less frequent hurricanes, and the increase in frequency
> and severity we started seeing the 1990s was a reversion to mean.
> That said, part of the insurance industry - notably European-based
> reinsurers - are concerned that climate change is going to lead to
> bigger losses. Sadly, they're more interested in financial fixes
> (e.g. catastrophe bonds) than in political action to reduce
> greenhouse gas emissions. Or at least they were a few years ago.
