The tropical seas of the Atlantic have been quiet this summer. There have been no hurricanes and only three tropical storms. The official hurricane season begins in June and peaks from August to October. Last year disappointed the global warming fraternity - now re-branded as the extreme climate brotherhood. After getting 2005 billed as the worst hurricane season in history including Hurricane Katrina which came close to wiping out New Orleans they could claim just five hurricanes in 2006, none of which hit the US.
El Niño continues to confound the brotherhood every four years. Nobody has much idea how to model it and last year was no exception. A surge of warm water in the Pacific shifted high-altitude winds across the North Atlantic and ripped apart many fledgling storms before they could develop. Huge clouds of dust sweeping off the Sahara into the Atlantic choked off several other storms.
But that is only one small part of our planet’s 2006 hurricane story. The Earth has Seven Oceans and it was a different story elsewhere. The Eastern Pacific had ten hurricanes with Hurricane Ioka in the Central Pacific breaking all records. Over in the Western Pacific there were twenty-three typhoons and together they killed more than two thousand people with the Philippines being struck five times. The Australians also had a bad year that included Hurricane Monica, the biggest one on record for the southern hemisphere.
The better forecasters reckon that hurricanes probably wax and wane in natural cycles lasting decades. They tell us that, if it turns out with hindsight that we are in a period of growing storminess, then this could last for many years. The best forecasters admit they are just guessing.
Their present view is that neither past trends nor the millions of dollars of computer modelling have been much help. Indeed the suspicion is that global climate modelling is turning out to be counterproductive because it has produced a well-funded priesthood imposing its flawed visions, partial theories and bad science on fellow climate scientists at the behest of those who delight in spreading fear and despondency among the global elite’s chattering classes.