| | Datum: | 03.07.05 | | Titel: | electricity-online.com v. 17.06.2005: Analysis: Modified, Limited Hurricane Hang-out | | Link: | www.electricity-online.com/daily.html | | Details1: | Analysis: Modified, Limited Hurricane Hang-out
By Kennedy Maize, editor
From the June 17, 2005 Electricity Daily. http://www.electricity-online.com/daily.html
Call it a "modified, limited hang-out." Climate researcher Kevin Trenberth,
writing a "Perspective" article in today's issue of Science, acknowledges
that there is no proof that global warming is responsible for increased
Atlantic hurricane activity, but insists that he thinks it is.
Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colo., is implicitly -- but decidedly not explicitly -- responding to
heated criticism from one of the world's leading hurricane experts, Chris
Landsea, who figuratively stomped out of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change in January, charging that Trenberth, among others, was
politicizing the issue of hurricane origins (Electricity Daily, Jan. 19).
Landsea, who is the major domo of the Enso-Clipper hurricane model and The
Atlantic Hurricane Reanalysis Project for NOAA's laboratory in Miami,
objected to Trenberth's organizing a press conference at Harvard that
asserted a link between hurricanes and man-made global warming. Landsea
said, tellingly, "To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press
conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were
they reporting on any new work in the field."
Landsea said specifically that "the evidence is quite strong and supported
by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from
global warming upon hurricanes will likely be quite small. The latest
results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory suggest that by
around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5 percent more
intense than today."
Trenberth's Science article -- which was not part of the peer-reviewed
section of the magazine -- simply ignores this challenge. Landsea called
Trenberth out, and Trenberth answers with an artful waffle. Trenberth's
Perspective includes no references to Landsea or the research Landsea
cites, although it does include several references to Trenberth's own work.
Trenberth notes, "In statistics, a null hypothesis -- such as there is no
trend in hurricane activity -- may be formed, and it is common to reject
the null hypothesis based on a 5 percent significance level. But accepting
the null hypothesis does not mean there is no trend, only that it cannot be
proven from the particular sample and that more data may be required."
Translation: Just because there's no evidence doesn't mean it's not true.
Thus, argues Trenberth, without clear empirical evidence, "trends
associated with human influences are evident in the environment in which
hurricanes form, and our physical understanding suggests that the intensity
of and rainfalls from hurricanes are probably increasing, even if this
increase cannot be proven with a formal statistical test."
When I studied logic in undergraduate school, this was known as the post
hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (A implies B, or increased hurricanes implies
manmade climate warming). Trenberth's penultimate two sentences are
classic: "Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident
in hurricane regions. These changes are expected to affect hurricane
intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear."
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