Apparently I am one of those alarmists who, following the 2005 hurricane season in the Atlantic, hyped the connection between hurricanes and global warming.

Only…I didn’t. In my book on this subject, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, I actually criticized those who had oversold this connection.  That’s probably why the American Meteorological Society called Storm World “an accurate and comprehensive overview of the evolving debate on the impacts of global warming on hurricanes that illustrates the complexities of this significant scientific problem.”

So how then can rightwing science pundit Michael Fumento write the following?

…[in] 2005 [the] the coincidence of two major hurricanes striking the U.S. and causing lots of damage, Katrina and Rita, led to a storm of allegations that global warming was causing cyclones to rise up in revenge against man. Most notable was far-left science writer Chris Mooney’s Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, which Amazon.com informs us is “bargain-priced” and probably for good reason. Mooney not coincidentally is also author of “The Republican War on Science” and “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future.” Perhaps it threatens our future, but in the meantime it’s very good for his wallet.

Actually, I’m sure I would have sold more books by hyping the hurricane-climate connection in Storm World, rather than painting it in a nuanced way. But I found that I couldn’t. Because the science was complex and uncertain, as a nonscientist I felt I was best equipped to tell the real story of hurricane scientists at work and in conflict in a high stakes environment–rather than taking a polemical stand on a live scientific issue that I might not be able to defend later.

The irony here is huge, because even as he incorrectly criticizes me for overhyping science, Fumento himself engages in seriously flawed scientific reasoning. In order to lampoon the view that hurricanes are worsening, he relies on this year’s weather in just one hurricane basin of the world–it was a quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic (although busy in the Pacific). The problem is that weather is not climate, and if global warming’s impact on Atlantic hurricanes is to be detected, it will be through the manifestation of multi-decadal trends in a noisy record–rather than in the evidence presented by any one particular year. That’s especially so for an El Nino year like 2009; these tend to suppress Atlantic hurricanes (and rile up Pacific ones).

The importance of El Nino is one of the many complexities of hurricane-climate research, and one of many factors that makes it difficult to detect climate driven trends in hurricanes–as carefully explained in Storm World.

CNN’s got an interactive map of the progress since Hurricane Katrina:

Many are still struggling: The city ranks first for murder and second in poverty. More coverage here.

The following post was originally published on August 30, 2007.

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In January of 2003, I sat in Joe Kelley’s seminar at the University of Maine as he foretold the devastation that was to come to New Orleans. I’d never heard this chilling story before and listened intently as he explained that as far back as when The Big Easy flooded in the 1920′s, scientists realized that the Mississippi Delta would continue to change its course (rivers have a habit of doing that you see). I began to understand that over time, the already vulnerable city faced increasing threat and felt dizzy amid the whirlwind of so many alarming facts and figures.

The levees are inadequate… Louisiana loses 25-35 square miles of land each year to the ocean… Coastal wetlands (natural buffers to storm surges) are disappearing…. Many parts of the city are below sea level… Which by the way, is rising… Residents are supposed to keep axes in their attics… and on and on…

What?! This surely couldn’t be true. If the situation were really that bad, no one would stay. Did the federal government know? Did residents realize? Maybe the scientists were a bunch of alarmists… (Hey wait, isn’t that what they’re claiming now with regard to global warming?! Michael Crichton take note!)

But Professor Joe Kelley is a nationally renowned marine geologist who’s scientific expertise on the Louisiana coastline has long been sought by private and government organizations. Surely he knew what he was talking about, not to mention he even used to be a professor at the University of New Orleans. So evidently, there was something to all this coastal geology.

In 1984, Joe wrote ‘Living With the Louisiana Shore‘ predicting much of what has come to pass. Obviously, for more reasons than Orwell, we should have paid better attention to what we were warned about that year. The science and history of hurricanes in Louisiana sounded terrifying and it was obvious to me – and everyone in the room – that New Orleans didn’t stand a chance.

Pre-Katrina, Kelley was asked to participate in a National Academy of Science Panel when the Bayou State wanted to request federal funds to address it’s obvious levee problem. The panel recommended $14 billion from the federal government over 50 years to save the Delta, but the Bush Administration ultimately decided it couldn’t commit Congress to 50 years of funding.

Then came the August Category 3 hurricane that ravaged the city.

Exactly two years ago today I saw Joe Kelley at the local market in Old Town, Maine. “Joe,” I said. “You told us. We knew this was coming.” He’s looked tired. He looked so sad. He could only shake his head.

Hundreds of lives lost. Families torn apart. Homes and memories gone forever. And as I stared speechless at him, my thoughts in repetitive sequence like a skipping phonograph, ‘But we knew Joe. You told them. They knew. And did nothing…‘

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Just published in PLoS ONE:
Business Return in New Orleans: Decision Making Amid Post-Katrina Uncertainty

Yesterday, as previously mentioned, I was at the magnificent National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, giving a speech to this conference about science communication. I’m hoping that the talk—which covered anything from the work of the 18th century French philosophe the Marquis de Condorcet to the unfortunate depictions of science in Hollywood films—will eventually be available online. Meanwhile, though, I’d like to remark on a spectacular encounter I had at the event. We tend to complain and critique on blogs; this post will be the opposite.

In the first floor lobby of the airy National Weather Center, where the tornado investigating devices “Dorothy” and “TOTO” are on display, there’s also a large suspended globe which acts as a spherical screen. Four projectors flash onto it simultaneously, so that it is possible to fully project the entire globe’s weather as provided by satellites. It’s called SphereCasting, NOAA’s “Science on a Sphere” program, and I can only call it magnificent. If there’s a better technology for explaining science to the interested public, I can’t think of it. And apparently there are now 30 such spheres in existence.

The sphere doesn’t merely allow one to display weather everywhere all at once. You can pretty much project anything onto it with the right program. You can make the sphere into Mars, or Jupiter, or Titan, or the Sun. The woman who gave me a brief tour of how it works even said she was waiting for the program that would let her turn it into the Death Star. And it’s hard to see why one couldn’t also project the results of global climate models up there. Frankly, the possibilities are vast, if not endless.

It was only a coincidence, but I encountered the Sphere while in the middle of reading a great early 19th century work of scientific exploration, Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctical Regions of the New Continent (South America). Humboldt, as our Princeton prof D. Graham Burnett explains, had a pioneering global vision of science. Frankly, it was far more than any single man could accomplish, but Humboldt sure tried. As he scaled mountains and thwacked his way through rainforests, he was constantly taking measurements with dozens of instruments—gauging temperature, pressure, humidity, and so on—as well as analyzing the ecological distributions of plant and animal species, rocks and minerals. Humboldt felt that by having a fully geographic picture of how all these different parameters varied, across the planet, universal laws would gradually present themselves.

Science on a Sphere is, in a sense, the ultimate culmination of Humboldt’s vision. Our instruments are vastly better–especially our satellites–and we now have so much good data that we can spatially organize it on an actual globe in real time. And then you can just go look—watching as hurricanes form, as the easterlies and westerlies flow, as the fronts move through and the temperatures change. While I’m not sure that there are any more universal laws to discover in this way, there’s still a great need to share those laws with the non-scientist public, and I can’t think of a better way of doing so.

It’s been a while since I had a good string of talks lined up–it’s harder, I think, to do a lot of them from the West Coast. But now I’m back east and about to embark for the first two of these four upcoming appearances; so mark them down if you’re in the area. And of course, when Unscientific America comes out, we’ll both be traveling up and down the country (mostly the coasts, as usual):

Lynchburg, VA

Randolph College

Annual Thayer Lecture: “The War on Science is Over. Now What?”

Monday, March 16

7:30 PM-8:30 PM

The Wimberly Recital Hall, Presser Hall

Web site

Jupiter, FL

Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment

Florida Atlantic University

Environmental Writers Speaker Series Lecture: “Science at High Wind Speeds: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming”

Wednesday, March 18

7:00 PM-8:00 PM

Administration Building Auditorium, AD 119

John D. MacArthur Campus
Web site

Norman, OK

National Weather Center

University of Oklahoma Research Campus

Keynote Lecture, Conference on Communicating Weather Risks: “Communicating Science”
Thursday, April 2

12:00 PM-1:00 PM

Web site

Pittsburgh, PA

Council of Science Editors Annual Meeting

Panel: “How to Make Science Interesting, and Why Its Important”

Sunday, May 3

11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Hilton Pittsburgh

Web site

“The War on Science is Over: Now What?” is a new lecture that has many elements of the new book in it.

And then of course, there’s the “Two Cultures” conference May 9….

Like everybody else, I’m pretty surprised about Hurricane Paloma, which has just become the fifth major hurricane this year–a powerful Category 4 and tied for the second strongest storm ever to show up in the Atlantic in the month of November.

And Paloma sets an even bigger record, because this is the first year we’ve ever had an intense hurricane–Category 3 or greater–in July, in August, in September, in October, and in November. That’s right, you can see it all here. As usual, this is consistent with, but no proof of, the idea that global warming is lengthening the Atlantic hurricane season.

[Ike gathering strength in the Gulf.]

With Hurricane Ike on course to–probably–slam Texas as a serious hurricane, I address my latest Science Progress column to the question of whether we can, defensibly, discuss global warming during hurricane season. My basic answer: Yes, but it’s probably better to use other messages, particularly economic ones (“Green Jobs”).

You can read the full piece here.

So here’s some news: The paperback of Storm World, with a new author afterword and a new Katrina cover, is officially published today. I haven’t held a copy in my hands yet, but I know they’ve shipped from Amazon. You can click here to pick one up online.

Meanwhile, we already seen our fifth named storm of the season develop–Edouard, which could strengthen into another Texas landfalling hurricane. I don’t like all this action in the Gulf of Mexico–or for that matter, all this early season action period.

We’ve had 8 Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic in the past five years. The way things are shaping up this year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number go to 9 or 10 over the last six.

It has recently come to my attention that Amazon is selling them for $ 8.49–a dramatic markdown from the list price of $ 26.00–so if you haven’t gotten one yet but had planned on it or wanted to, now is the time.

Alternatively, you can wait for the paperback with the new cover and afterword, which is due out in August.

There has been some buzz of late over the idea that with a recent paper, MIT hurricane guru Kerry Emanuel is backing down from the stance that global warming has intensified recent hurricanes. But after reading the paper, I just don’t see it. Sure, Emanuel admits he might be wrong but that’s no more and no less than any other scientist might do.

I explain in a lot more detail over at The Daily Green.