An Inconvenient Truth vs. The Truth

Transcript from An Inconvenient Truth:

Of course when the oceans get warmer, that causes stronger storms. We have seen in the last couple of years, a lot of big hurricanes. Hurricanes Jean, Francis and Ivan were among them. In the same year we had that string of big hurricanes; we also set an all time record for tornadoes in the United States. Japan again didn’t get as much attention in our news media, but they set an all time record for typhoons.

Al Gore's 9/12/05 speech:

Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are facing us right now. [applause]

The Truth:
In 2006, no hurricanes landed in the United States. In 2007, there was one.
As far as tornadoes go, here are recent confirmed landings:
2003 - 464
2004 - 655
2005 - 169
2006 - 146
2007 - 196

“We found that although some decades were quieter and less damaging in the U.S. and others had more land-falling hurricanes and more damage, the economic costs of land-falling hurricanes have steadily increased over time,” said Chris Landsea, one of the researchers as well as the science and operations officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami. “There is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts.”

source

Englehart et al. gathered data on hurricanes in this region from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mexico’s Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, the Mazatlan Observatory, and the National Hurricane Center. In describing the graph below (Figure 1) of their compilation, they note “From this graph it is apparent that long-term TC frequency exhibits a significant (p = 0.05) negative trend (r = -0.30).” Folks, they are becoming less frequent, and the trend is highly statistically significant. They then present the data for early (May to July) and late season (August to November) hurricane activity and find that the downward trend is prominent in the August to November period. They comment that “The fact that a significant trend (p = 0.01) is evident only in the late season provides one (albeit indirect) indication that the apparent decrease in near-shore activity is not substantially conditioned by data and measurement issues.”

Original article is from GMi.