Hot-air rhetoric clouds global warming opponent’s study of hurricanes

That’s the only way to explain hurricane-researcher Roy Spencer’s blather in the Sunday opinion section of The Dallas Morning News (Well, that and the fact that the column first appeared on the webpages of science-spinning Tech Central Station

Spencer claims the problem with hurricane damage in the U.S.
is entirely due to overdevelopment of our coasts.

Now, he’s right that overdevelopment is a problem. Indeed, the most recent issue of Sierra notes that Alabama was spared some of Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s Katrina damage because an endangered species of mouse prevented as much coastal development there.

BUT, but, but, this is not “coastal development” versus”global warming.” First, Spencer knows that he’s making a straw man false dilemma. Second, he knows that the “global warming doesn’t exist” side of that false dilemma is itself false.

Here’s an extended version of the e-mail I sent him, interspersed with explanatory and transition comments by me, and quotes from his column.


I totally agree that we've overbuilt our coastlines. However, I disagree that we should ONLY concentrate on this because, because, global warming isn’t affecting hurricane intensity duration, or anything else about hurricanes, because, because...

Global warming really can’t happen.

In essence, that’s what the guts of your column says.

(Spencer goes on to claim that a cooling ocean has offset alleged global warming, and has refuted, nay, destroyed, the modeling accuracy and ability of global warming scientists.)

The rapidity of this observed temperature change is beyond what computerized climate models can explain. This is perplexing for modelers, who tend to believe that their models contain all of the important physics of the problem.

As for variability in sea-surface temperatures, well, that issue has NOTHING to do with global warming. Any sufficiently complex climatological system is going to have variability within constituent subsystems, no matter where the thermostat is set at (unless you're at absolute zero, or so hot that you have no liquid water, or something like that).

For example, even with a 3-5 degree C bump in the average Earth temperature, we'll still have El Nino/La Nina, or something similar.

Fact is, while it may be true that climatological modeling is harder than it looks at first glance, global warming predictions do have a strong scientific background.

As for your claim that "stablizing feedbacks in the climate system ... keep Earth's temperature from varying too much," sorry. That fails to explain either severe ice-ages or an Earth saturated with ferns in the days of the dinosaurs. Spencer claims just this:

But it is not so surprising for those of us who believe that there are stabilizing feedbacks in the climate system that keep the Earth's temperature from varying too much. If there weren't such stabilizing mechanisms, the climate system would have spun out of control long ago.

Spencer then delivers what he sees as an additional smackdown to global warming scientists.

While it is still quite possible for this hurricane season to end up being above normal in activity, the unexpectedly cooler sea surface temperatures should humble long-range forecasters at least a little.

Given how quickly Ernesto ramped up in the middle of the Caribbean, shouldn’t you keep your own mouth shut, Spencer? Maybe you need to eat a little of your own crow a la humility.