Hurricane Smurricane

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A Hurricane by any other name would still be a tropical cylclone. The usual denialist suspects are making a big deal out the the mild Hurricane season we had in the North Atlantic. Since it's likely to be an el Nino year next year they can probably expect another mild one next year.

None of this has much relevance to the (in my opinion) still speculative notion that global warming produces a larger proportion of intense tropical storms. The relevant word here, as always, is "global." A hot day at Aunt Melba's house doesn't prove global warming, and a cold one doesn't disprove it. Ditto, a mild season or two in one ocean basin. As it happens, this has been a somewhat violent season in the Pacific (there are two tropical cyclones in the Pacific and one in the Indian Ocean, right now. As always, cherry picking the evidence is the favorite tool of every scientific fraudster, from anti-evolutionist to GW denier.

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