Storms getting worse - or getting milder?
Having spent the evening checking out statistics on previous storms, I don't see any evidence that they are getting worse. In fact, they seem to be getting a lot better. As they used to say in the old cigarette comercials, "Milder - much milder." Sure you can skew the results any way you wnat if you cherry pick your data - but look at all the data you can find for as large an area as you can, and you will get a more accurate picture. For example, take a look at Texas Hurricane History by David Roth of the National Weather Service (I know this is just one area, but I mention it because the data is very complete, and it's just a starting point for looking all around the globe). You can focus on recent history and say that the number of hurricanes has quintupled over the past 20 years (from 1 in the 1990's to 5 in the 2000's), or you can go back a little further and see that we had 8 in the 1940s and 8 in the 1880s...which presents a totally different picture. From another perspecitive, the death toll of Sandy presently stands at 72 (though it can only go up). Compare that to the Lower Texas Coast Hurricane of 1553 (1700) or the Galveston Hurricane of 1818 (over 1,000) Global Warming must have been REALLY bad back then, ya think? If you want to see some real devastation, look at the 1900 Galveston Hurricane...8,000 dead! Eight thousand!! Sandy was a gentle breath of air compared to that. Here in Florida where I live, we've had a number of hurricanes in the past that were far worse than anything we've seen recently. Storms just SEEM worse now because coastal areas are much more built up than they were in the past, so the damage is correspondingly greater. I don't want to be accused of name-calling, but what can I say about people who are completely blind to historical facts?
