Could global warming reduce hurricanes?

Why not?

As a (current, at least) south Floridian, sounds good to me.

Personally, since I don't think Global Warming exists, I think hurricanes will continue to be affected by dust from the Sahara, El Nino, and ocean currents....like they've always been. I believe the trend towards warming will eventually reverse itself, proving the cyclic nature.

This National Center for Policy Analysis article notes the relationship between hurricane intensity and the 20-year cycle of wet and dry periods going back for hundreds of years in the western Sahel region of Africa. So if we want fewer hurricanes, we should pave Africa.

I'm rather skeptical on the subject, but let's assume there is some actual validity to the idea that higher temperatures reduce hurricanes (or their destructiveness).

Do you think the information will be prominently in the next IPCC report?

--Fred K

I'm skeptical of our ability to influence global climate in either direction in the first place, so this seems kinda moot to me.

I think global warming causes male pattern baldness and droopy breasts.

Actually, I think Ann Coulter is correct on this subject. Folks seem to just require some god. If they reject the conventional one, they'll just adopt a faith in something quite similar. Global warming in the hands of a lot of people acts suspiciously like an Old Testament God, smiting us because we don't believe in him, because we laugh at his priests, live too high on the hog, and carry on singing and dancing instead of prostrating ourselves in the temple and begging for mercy. There's a moralizing self-righteous component to their campaign that would be familiar to Jesuit missionaries from the 1600s.

"There's a moralizing self-righteous component to their campaign"

Bing-double-O, Carl.

They're no different from anyone else who tries to force his/her religion on me. And I give them about the same respect.

They think humans are so all-powerful that we can materially affect the climate of the entire globe. That's beyond self righteous; that's hubris to the nth degree.

They think humans are so all-powerful that we can materially affect the climate of the entire globe. That's beyond self righteous; that's hubris to the nth degree.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut at April 21, 2007 12:44 PM

Not at all.

Whether you believe in anthropogenic GW or not, the question of whether it is possible, if not now, in the future, is certainly a reasonable one.

It's a reasonable question to ask, Mr. at. But Barbara's default answer to the question ("that's absurd!") is equally reasonable, when you look at the magnitudes of the quantities involved, when you compare the size of geological cycles and the Earth's energy budget versus the size of human activities.

That means it's perfectly reasonable that the burden of proof lie with those who would propose the more astonishing answer, that relatively miniscule activities by humans can shift the climate of the entire planet in mere centuries.

I don't think Barbara is saying she knows the answer. She's just expressing a perfectly reasonable -- a perfectly scientific -- skepticism.