I am not a climatologist by any means. Probably you aren't either. That's why reports like the one made today by CNN leave me perplexed and confused. For those of you who understand science and politics, hopefully you can clear things up a bit for me. Why is there so much dissension over the idea that hurricanes are or are not influenced by the prospect of global warming?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/09/23/hurricane.cycle/index.html
Experts at the National Hurricane Center have stated publicly and repeatedly now that Katrina and Rita are by no means an indicator or a result of global warming. However, I have read elsewhere that the respected publication "Nature" has said more or less just the opposite in a major article just this year, and that global warming may not be increasing the frequency, but rather the intensity, of hurricanes.
So who's right? It's easy for scientists to dismiss the rest of us as rubes who will believe anything, and I don't want to be one of those. But I don't want to have to go back to college and get a Ph.D. in meteorology to make an honest and fair assesment of wise public policy on climate.