Here’s a smattering in reaction to this column :

–Dear Rich,
That’s a nice article on Katrina in today’s NRO. There is a basic fact that people don’t understand. The world is full of random events.
Anything that is random will happen in “streaks.” That’s why we study most natural phenomena based on statistics, averages, and historical data. Last year when there were seven hurricanes, I saw a cable news guy interview a meteorologist. The reporter asked, “Why are we having so many hurricanes this year?” I could sense the reporter wanted the response “global warming.” However, the answer he got disappointed him.
The meteorologist said, “It’s the weather.” I got the sense the meteorologist wanted to add, “You dumba**.”
–Rich,
A couple of specific facts in support of your global warming/Katrina article: The deadliest natural disaster in US history was a category 4 hurricane that hit Galveston, TX in 1900, killing 8-12,000 people. The most powerful hurricane (in terms of low pressure, which is the primary way that the experts measure strength of storm) was the category 5 Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys. That both of these storms occurred before the modern age of man defiling the environment (according to the enviros) serves as stark (even if anecdotal) evidence that there is nothing new about strong hurricanes hitting America. The thing that has changed, however–and for the worst–is that now our coastlines are much more populated than they were when some of these killer storms hit 50 or 100 years ago.
–Rich,
When experts differ it is hard for the lay person to sort out what is what. Patrick Michaels recent piece in Reason criticizes Kerry Emmanuel’s article in Nature or Science that argues for an intensification of hurricanes. The gist of his criticism is that Gray disagrees with it and that everyone one know through damage claims if hurricanes had grown more intense. I respect Michaels’ scientific work on global warming, and his popularization of it, but think his recent article is quite a stretch.
First, Gray gets a lot of press but, unless he’s picked up a lot of theory in the last twenty years, he is still basically a phenomenological statistician, not a hurricane dynamicist, like Vic Ooyama or Emmanuel, for instance. Also, the last I heard, parts of his methodology of seasonal forecasting of hurricanes were proprietary, so they can’t be checked by scientists other than his collaborators, so he his operating outside normal science.
As to Michaels second point about damage claims, this seems to me to rely a lot on the assumption of the uniformity of hurricane lifetimes and trajectories. The hurricanes have to reach high-value areas with high intensity for there to be many insurance losses. If they are strong out in the open ocean, or over Cuba or Mexico, there probably won’t be many losses.
Kerry is a full professor at MIT, and was at one time, I believe, the youngest American professor of meteorology. He has had a stellar career and doesn’t need to “get along by going along.” Also, one of his long-time collaborators is both a conservative-libertarian and a solid scientist; I got to know him when we worked at the same government lab.
–You write: “According to the work of Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, of the top five most destructive storms this century, only one occurred after 1950 . . .”
Actually, they all happened after 1950. In fact, they all happened after 2000. Writing last year’s date on a check in February is embarrassing, but we’re several years into the 21st century now.

ME: Re Kerry Emanuel, I don’t doubt that he’s a serious guy. As a layman the arguments against his paper seem more persuasive, but I’m no meteorologist obviously. Re “this century,” I hope to get it right by the end of the decade.