Monday, May 27, 2019

Are hurricanes getting worse or not?

Help me build a skeptical climate education portal

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https://www.gofundme.com/climate-change-debate-education

Students and teachers need skeptical science and we plan to deliver it.

There are many on-line sources of alarmist climate change education materials but none for the realistic skeptical view. A recent poll says that many teachers want to teach about the real climate debate, not just the alarmist side. But skeptical teaching materials are scarce, so we propose to build a climate change debate education website, with your help.


Some scientists argue that global warming is making hurricanes stronger, or more numerous, or both. Others disagree and there is a great scientific debate over this question.

On the physics side, hurricanes are formed by a combination of factors. Sea surface temperature is just one of these, so it is not certain that simply raising global temperatures a bit will increase hurricanes, either in number or in strength. These other factors include wind, humidity, and atmospheric pressure, among others.

Note too that on the physics side even how to measure the strength of a hurricane is a matter of debate. The simple Category system uses maximum wind speed, but this only occurs in a few small places within a hurricane, and it may be quite temporary. Some scientists argue that total energy is a better measure, but it is not directly observable, while wind speed is.


Moreover, prior to modern times there was no way to measure the wind speed of most hurricanes. This is especially true for hurricanes that do not come to land, which is most of them.

On the data side the problem is that we do not have good historical data. Before the satellite era, which is quite recent, many hurricanes occurred out in the oceans that we never knew of. This is especially true for the vast Pacific Ocean. If we do not know how many hurricanes there used to be there is no way to tell if their number is increasing.

So data on the number of hurricanes is incomplete. Even in the case of known hurricanes we have very little accurate data on their strength. For this reason the debate over hurricanes and global warming is largely a debate over the interpretation of incomplete historical data.

Help build the Climate Change Debate Education project:
https://www.gofundme.com/climate-change-debate-education
David

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