Global Warming Will Stop Doves From Cooing

Anyone paying attention could watch as Katrina somehow changed the 'accepted truth' about global warming and hurricanes. Before Katrina, maybe 8 years prior, the models predicted less severe hurricanes. Then Katrina came, and looky-here, the models prove that global warming caused it. Well, no:

While opposing factions wage war over global warming and what calamities it might bring upon the earth, research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on ocean temperature and land-falling hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean seems to indicate that a globally warmer ocean may actually produce fewer killer storms.

In an article published in Geophysical Research Letters, physical oceanographer and climate scientist Chunzai Wang of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory explains that the effects of a warmer tropical oceans region have reduced the number of storms reaching the U.S. mainland.

I'm sure this story won't get much play. It's only news when it confirms what we want it to confirm, that global warming is making the bus seats harder, and giving puppies bad breath.

One odd concept I tried to get across to lumberkid recently had to do with what to do when her (high school) chem labs don't turn out as expected. That's when it's most important to report your results accurately, I told her. Because that is when new science happens, when things don't turn out as expected. Sure, most likely the unexpected result is due to old chemicals, or an error in measurement, or something you did wrong. But the science is in trying to find out what gave you the result you observed, whatever the reason.

A good chemistry teacher won't penalize you for an experiment gone wrong, so long as you show diligence in trying to find out why it went wrong. It's an old concept; it's called "scientific integrity" and when I was in school, about half of us tried to at least give it a hat-tip when necessary. Others, though, noticed that it was much easier to just change your numbers to give the expected result. Those guys went on to work for Al Gore. The rest of us fell victim to a guidance counselor who classified every single child as having an aptitude for forestry, and we've been jacking lumber ever since.