From the AP and FoxNews
Each year climate specialists try to prognosticate the upcoming hurricane season. Ideally they could give us an insight to what to expect, and thus help especially those on our coast be better prepared.
The truth of the matter is that the forecasts are often more wrong than right. The year of Katrina, 2005, they had estimated 15 tropical systems and 8 hurricanes, when instead there were 28 storms and 15 hurricanes.
The next year was supposed to be another very active year, politicians touting the effects of global warming and so forth. The prediction was 17 storms and 9 hurricanes, but the result was 10 storms and 5 hurricanes.
Last year was again forecast to be a very active season, and again they were very much off base.
So here comes this year's forecast:
Each April, weather wizard William Gray emerges from his burrow deep in the Rocky Mountains to offer his forecast for the six-month hurricane season that starts June 1. And the news media are there, breathlessly awaiting his every word.
It would seem that the forecast is for between 12 and 16 named storms this year. In reality it only takes one storm to make a mess of things, and currently it would only take one major storm to go through the oil fields of the Gulf to create more woes for us at the pumps and the grocery store. It only takes one storm in a very light season, as pointed out in the article. 1992 had only 6 named storms, but one was Hurricane Andrew, over $26 billion in damages and 23 people killed.
In recent years it seems that the criteria for naming a storm has been lessened, or perhaps the technology for looking at these storms thousands of miles away has gotten better. I don't know which or if it's both. The net result has been it seems like there is so much more activity now, so it must be global warming, right?
Think back to 1900, the City of Galveston, Texas. September 8, 1900, the Galveston Hurricane caused between 6000 and 12000 deaths. The storm did not come wholly unannounced. Its passing had been noted through the Caribbean, over Cuba, offshore of the northern Gulf coast. Ships had reported about it, and some forecasters of the time had predicted that it would strike the Gulf Coast of Texas.
Using the current systems and technology in place, the people of Galveston would have known much further in advance that their lives were in peril. The storm surge of this hurricane was 15 feet, the highest point in the city was only 8.7 feet above sea level. Armed with the information of today, many thousands could have been saved. But even armed with the information of today, we have recent history to prove that even now, with 24/7 news and weather, with warnings and supposed forced evacuations, thousands will still exercise their free will, and that free will costs them dearly.
So what does this all mean? Do we need to track and try to predict these storms (and other non tropical storms)? Of course. Can we do it with great accuracy? That depends, long term forecasts, I think not. Once a storm has formed or is forming, the science takes over from the reading of goat entrails and the accuracy improves greatly, but even then there is variability in direction, speed and strength so nothing is a slam dunk.
Last, we have all of these folks forecasting the man made global warming effects. Melting ice caps (here and on Mars?), More active hurricane seasons (really? I'm sure technology and a global warming bias has nothing to do with that). Again for the several hundredth time, I say if you can't even accurately forecast tomorrow's weather, how can I have faith in your global warming forecast over the next 10, 20, 50 or 100 years? Simply I can't. I very much believe that the climate is changing, I can absolutely guarantee that, the climate is a system that seeks equilibrium and will always change from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, eon to eon, epoch to epoch. It probably has more to do with the things we don't understand than those things that we do understand poorly.
