Clinton: GOP Policies Will Cause More Hurricanes

According to an AP report, Bill Clinton appeared at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party Monday and attacked current GOP environmental policies saying that they will lead to more severe hurricanes:

"It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming," Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. "It's a serious problem. It's going to lead to more hurricanes."

As 8daysawk points out in his blog, The Voice of Reason, one problem with Mr. Clinton's logic is the fact that Gore mentions in his quackumentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," that global warming actually got worse during the Clinton administration. That is, if you even believe in global warming.

As far as Clinton's remarks are concerned, I have already linked to many articles which debunk global warming, many dating back as far as 1997, all using the same logic to debunk this junk science. What is important about Clinton's statement is the fact that he makes a direct correlation between this "global warming" and increased hurricane strength. Back in October 2005, I posted a link to an article by Philip Klotzbach, research associate with the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State, which debunked the idea that global warming had an impact on hurricane strengths. The linked article in that post is no longer available, however World Climate Report has an article summarizing Mr. Klotzbach's findings on his research:

These findings are contradictory to the conclusions drawn by Emanuel (2005) and Webster et al. (2005). They do not support the argument that global TC [tropical cyclone] frequency, intensity and longevity have undergone increases in recent years. Utilizing global ‘‘best track’’ data, there has been no significant increasing trend in ACE [accumulated cyclone energy] and only a small increase (~10%) in Category 4–5 hurricanes over the past twenty years, despite an increase in the trend of warming sea surface temperatures during this time period.

The results of this paper are more in line with a prior study by Shapiro and Goldenberg (1998) and a project report by Gray and Klotzbach (2005). Shapiro and Goldenberg (1998) showed only marginally significant correlations between SSTs in the tropical Atlantic and major hurricane development in the basin. Vertical wind shear was shown to be a much more fundamental component for major hurricane development and maintenance. Gray and Klotzbach (2005), while developing seasonal hurricane forecasts for TC activity, found only a modest correlation (~0.4) between seasonal and monthly Atlantic basin SSTs and major (Category 3–4–5) hurricane frequency. This study indicates that, based on data over the last twenty years, no significant increasing trend is evident in global ACE or in Category 4–5 hurricanes.

The simple fact is, Clinton and Gore were both wrong about global warming then and they're wrong about it now. The sad part is that they know they're wrong...they simply don't care. They are high-profile political celebrities and they're going to use their status to help the Dems gain control of Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008. This is simply another example of political pandering from the looney left.

Tags: an inconvenient truth, Global Warming, Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Gore, environment, Climate Change, Politics, Current Affairs, Science