Hurricane Hype
Was Hurricane Irene God's way of telling New Yorkers that gay marriage was a bad idea (by killing people mostly in North Carolina, etc)? Maybe, but wouldn't it have been more efficient for him to just get a twitter account? Or go on the Sunday talk show circuit? What a significant landfalling hurricane always is is a good publicity opportunity, so those with a climate axe to grind are as quick to jump on that boat as fundamentalist ministers and rabbis. Bill Mckibben blamed Irene's (as it turned out, overestimated) strength on global warming. Planet denial was quick to respond. James Taylor, writing in Forbes, claimed that there has been a 100 year plus trend of decrease in landfalls of Atlantic hurricanes on the US. The facts are a bit more ambivalent. NOAA's 150 year history of US landfalling hurricanes shows a weak trend of decrease over time. US landfalling hurricanes are only a very small percentage of global landfalling hur...