Storm World Hurricanes Politics & the Battle Over Global Warming

PRAISE FOR STORM WORLD

 

"Mooney chose to walk a minefield in attempting to assess a controversial and quickly evolving field in climate research. He not only succeeded in producing a fair and accurate description of the science, but produced a fascinating read as well."--Climatologist Michael Mann of RealClimate.org "Storm World is a gripping story about the controversy and strong personalities surrounding hurricanes and the issue of global warming, where scientists and politicians--and their often clashing agendas--collide."--Rick Anthes, President, American Meteorological Society and President, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research "Storm World is of unique importance to all with environmental interests, especially those who find themselves conflicted on one of the worlds most important issues: the significance of global warming, its potential impact on the environment, and in particular on the frequency and strength of destructive hurricanes."--Dr. Robert Simpson, former director of the National Hurricane Center, and Dr. Joanne Simpson, former President of the American Meteorological Society and recipient of a Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award.  PRAISE FOR THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE 

 

"Nothing short of a landmark in contemporary political reporting."—Salon.com "A well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists . . . Thankfully, Mooney is both a wonk and a clear writer."—Scientific American

"Mooney serves his readers as both an empiricist who gathers data and an analyst who puts it into context. The result is an important book, whose author succeeds admirably in both his roles." Cleveland Plain Dealer

"[B]rilliantly and compellingly explains the complex relationships among global warming, climate modeling, government science, and hurricane forecasting." Library Journal

"In Storm World, Mooney catches real science in the act and, in so doing, weaves a story as intriguing as it is important." Thomas Hayden, Los Angeles Times

"Mooney provides a fine overview of the long, intertwined history of hurricane prediction, climate science and the politicization of the debate over global warming.... To boil this down to a debate between theorists and empiricists is to oversimplify, of course, and Mooney does justice to the debate in all its complexity, painting vivid portraits of scientists at work and in conflict." Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

"Mooney has written a well-researched, nuanced book that suffers from poor organization and a lack of pizazz....But it's hard to go too wrong with hurricanes and the people who love to fight over them." New York Times

One of the leading science journalists and commentators working today, Chris Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming. In the wake of Katrina, Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: "Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at high wind speeds."

Mooney — a native of New Orleans — has written a fascinating and urgently compelling book that calls into question the great inconvenient truth of our day: Are we responsible for making hurricanes even bigger monsters than they already are?

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and one the leading young environmental journalists and bloggers working today, immerses readers in the world of those who study hurricanes. What was once an arcane branch of meteorology (itself an arcane science) has become embroiled in one of the politicized and hotly contested debates in American science: whether or not the recent hurricane disasters—culminating in Katrina—are connected to global warming. Mooney follows the lives and careers of the two leading scientists who stand, bitterly opposed, on either side of the issue. One believes global warming has nothing to do with hurricane ferocity or frequency; the other believes as fervently that it does; both have staked their reputations on their respective positions. Mooney shows these two men in action as they debate the issue across the country and are followed by the media. He also uses them as a way of showing how Hurricane Studies have evolved, and how government, the media, Big Business, and politics, have affected the ways we study and interpret weather patterns. Hurricanes are natural disasters, capable of inflicting almost unimaginable destruction. The culture that has grown up around predicting, charting, and even defining them is very much man-made.

Combining lively portraits of the leading figures, vivid science journalism, and the very latest reportage from weather front (the last section of the book will cover the 2006 hurricane season), Mooney—a native of New Orleans—has written what will surely be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Chris Mooney is the Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of The Republican War on Science. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Contents

Prologue: 6229 Memphis Street     1

Introduction: “The Party Line”   5

Part I

Warming and Storming

 1 • Chimneys and Whirlpools                15

 2 • Of Heat Engines . . .         31

 3 • . . . and Computer Models               44

 4 • “Lay That Matrix Down”                59 5 • From Hypercanes to Hurricane Andrew 80 Part II

Boiling Over

Interlude: Among the Forecasters  103

 6 • The Luck of Florida          109

 7 • Frictional Divergence        123

 8 • Meet the Press 137

 9 • “The #$%^& Hit the Fan”               155

 10 • Resistance       169

 11 • “Consensus”   180

Part III

Storm World

12 • Preseason Warm-Ups      205

13 • Where Are the Storms?   224

14 • Hurricane Climatology    245

Conclusion: Home Again                260

 

Acknowledgments     277

Appendix I: The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale; Note on Units of Measurement              281

Appendix II: Cyclone Typology       285

Appendix III: Early Hurricane-Climate Speculations        287

Appendix IV: Consensus Statements by Participants

In the World Meteorological Organizations 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, San Jose, Costa Rica, November 2006   293

Notes   295

Bibliography and Recommended Reading                371

List of Interviews        377

Index   383

Interview with Chris Mooney, author of Storm World

Q: Storm World examines the political and scientific controversy surrounding claims that global warming will increase, or has already increased, hurricane frequency or intensity. Why do you think hurricanes in particular have become such a hot button for the global warming issue?

A: Without a doubt, the reason is the weather; or, to be more precise, the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the Atlantic basin. First came the four storms hitting Florida in 2004 — including the terrifying monster that was Ivan — then came Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005, a record year for hurricane destruction. Each of these three Category 5 storms ultimately caused over $10 billion in damage to the United States. Katrina caused an estimated $81 billion in damage and killed fifteen-hundred people.

And even as all this was happening, new scientific research began to suggest that hurricanes have dramatically intensified due to global warming. Suddenly everything came together and the media piled on as well, helping to transform the image of a cyclonic storm into a new icon of global warming.

Q: You report that in late 2006, some research was starting to suggest that even as the climate affects hurricanes, hurricanes might also be affecting the climate. Why is this a significant change in scientific thinking about hurricanes, and what does it mean to the hurricane-global warming debate?

A: As I describe toward the end of the book, previous hurricane specialists, including William Gray of Colorado State University, had essentially said, “Look, if hurricanes didn’t occur, regular tropical thunderstorms and disturbances could fulfill the same basic role in the climate system.” But now some scientists, including Kerry Emanuel of MIT, are seeking to overturn that argument. These researchers think hurricanes play an essential and irreplaceable role in the climate system by, in essence, exporting heat out of the tropics — a task they perform either by stirring up the oceans and helping to drive warm water toward the poles or by transporting heat out of those oceans and up into the atmosphere.

It stands to reason that if hurricanes are moving enough heat around in this way, any significant change to hurricanes could have a corresponding effect on the climate. For example, stronger hurricanes could help cool down the tropics and warm the higher latitudes. And here’s the kicker: This could imply that if the planet continues to warm, hurricanes might go into overdrive to help cool things down. That’s more than a little scary.

I want to emphasize that these ideas are at the cutting edge right now, and they haven’t necessarily won widespread acceptance. I expect that ongoing scientific research over the next five to ten years will provide much more illumination about the possible role that hurricanes play in the larger climate system.

Q: Storm World includes fascinating profiles of the scientists at the heart of the debate who, in some cases, unleashed personal attacks as the media focused more and more attention on the issue. Was it challenging to separate the personalities from the science as you interviewed these experts for the book?

A: Definitely. For example, the scientist of whom I’m probably most critical, William Gray, is also the one with whom I spent the most time researching the book. I followed Gray around the country and watched him give talks to huge crowds at hurricane conferences. I really enjoyed hanging out with him and hearing his stories about the heroic early days of storm-flying hurricane research. It’s not by accident that Gray trained many of today’s top hurricane researchers. He has a larger-than-life personality — one scientist described him to me as the “Howard Stern of meteorology." He really draws you in. When it came to writing the book, I had to separate out my very positive impression of Gray as a person from my quite critical view of his stance on global warming: Gray rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are driving a trend of rising global temperatures. So on the one hand, I tried to convey what a compelling character Gray is and to give a sense of his considerable past achievements; on the other, I refuse to accept his position on climate change. I summarize the tension between those two elements with a quotation from Arthur C. Clarke: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

Q: At the heart of this controversy is the claim that a warmer planet will be one in which hurricanes are more intense. Some scientists say that the hurricane changes are already happening; others say they won’t happen for a long time, if at all. If scientists can’t come to a consensus on this, how can policy makers and citizens do so?

A: Well, that gets to a chief conclusion of the book. Just because scientists don’t know everything doesn’t mean they don’t know anything. Just because there’s scientific uncertainty, it doesn’t mean we can’t take reasonable actions now, based upon the best available knowledge, to protect ourselves, rather than simply waiting around for scientists to sort everything out.

From a policy perspective, I would argue that we know enough about how hurricanes work — and, in particular, about their reliance on ocean warmth for a power source — to be justifiably concerned that they will intensify significantly due to global warming (assuming they haven’t already). This, in turn, ought to lead us to take precautionary measures now to get ready for a world in which hurricanes might be more deadly.

In many cases, such precautionary measures make good sense anyway: Whether or not global warming creates stronger hurricanes, we’re always going to have hurricanes, and we’re extremely vulnerable to them in the United States due to the massive movement of persons and property to coastal regions; this is what some scientists have memorably called our “lemming like march to the sea.” So the smartest policy would be to deal with our coastal problem immediately — focusing on things such as insurance policies, evacuation routes, and building codes — as we continue to improve our ability to forecast hurricane paths and intensities. For cities like New Orleans, we’re also going to need to build up stronger defenses—levees, seawalls, and so on. But the point is that we can get started on all of this now, with or without global warming. And then, if scientists conclude that storms are going to be 5 or 10 or 25 percent stronger, we can add to our protections accordingly.

Q: Your family hails from New Orleans. Was it difficult to balance your emotions about Katrina’s devastation of that city with the need for journalistic objectivity as you wrote Storm World?

A: Yes, especially at first. Following the shock of Katrina, I — along with many others who were concerned about global warming — quickly seized upon hurricanes as a new symbol of climate change. At first I didn’t pay much attention to the serious scientific debate that was brewing over whether hurricanes had, indeed, intensified in a measurable and provable way.

But as I began researching the book and learned a great deal more about hurricanes, I saw that the science was very complex, and that where leading scientists disagreed, I had no business taking sides. So the book evolved into a narrative account of what happens when scientists fall into conflict even as politics, the media, and the weather itself keep adding fuel to the fire.

My previous book, The Republican War on Science, delivered a strong and even polemical argument. Storm World does something different—it tells a story about high-stakes science in a political context, centering on the careers and personalities of the key scientists involved. It’s a type of story we’re seeing more and more of nowadays, as science itself becomes increasingly relevant to decision making, and thus increasingly drawn into politics.

Q: Storm World focuses on the U.S. politics of hurricanes and global warming. Where does the rest of the world stand on this?

A: The community of scientists is global, and many other nations besides the United States — Australia, Japan, and Madagascar, to name just a few examples — regularly experience hurricanes. The debate in the United States thus reverberates widely, and, some of the top scientists involved in that debate originally hail from other nations, such as Australia and New Zealand.

A summary statement about the relationship between hurricanes and global warming released by the World Meteorological Organization in late 2006 (and reprinted at the end of my book) was composed after leading hurricane specialists from around the world met in Costa Rica to go over the latest research. You can read it here. The statement shows that, just as scientists in the United States do, global scientists acknowledge that a debate continues over precisely how much hurricanes have already changed as a result of ongoing global warming.

Despite the uncertainties, however, there’s also much in the World Meteorological Organization’s statement to be worried about. For instance, there’s a general expectation that global warming will cause hurricanes to intensify (and to dump more rainfall) over the coming decades, even if it has not measurably affected them yet. And there’s an acknowledgment of the obvious point that if global warming triggers a rise in sea level—one of the most certain outcomes of climate change — then destructive hurricane storm surges will penetrate farther inland.

Q: When it comes to global warming, individual citizens often feel at the mercy of governments for solutions. Besides the commonly touted step of driving a hybrid car, is there really anything an individual can do to combat global warming?

A: That’s a tough one. Personally, I believe that we all need to make changes in our lives. But we should also realize that governments, rather than individuals, must take the biggest steps to stave off global warming.

So, for example, because I fly a lot I buy credits from TerraPass to offset the carbon dioxide emissions caused by my airline travel. I want my personal life to reflect my values. When I go on the road to talk about Storm World, I’ll know that I'm doing my part.

However, from the standpoint of individual citizens, perhaps the most effective thing we can do is write to our legislators and lobby our government to take action on global warming — before it’s too late.

Copyright © 2007 Harcourt
Questions written by Deborah Halverson