[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by suneel112

That lesson is global warming. It is not more days at the beach. It is flooding in Indiana (during the summer), Killer Hurricanes, Forest Fires, drought, famine, etc...

There was an interesting article on Yahoo! Weather the other day I was reading ... I copied the parts I found interesting - there's more there about global warming, how a hurricane forms, etc. in the actual article

Brace yourselves: Scientists say 65 million Americans living on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts should expect weather like this for another 30 years. Maybe more.... It might be a generation before hurricane weather slips back into a quiet phase, he and other experts say.

"The hurricane threat is much greater than it was in the 1970s through early 1990s," said federal meteorologist Stan Goldenberg, who flew around Hurricane Ivan in research aircraft as it approached Mobile, Ala. "It could last another 10 to 40 years."

Goldenberg and other experts believe the current hurricane surge is part of an obvious storm cycle that probably has been waxing and waning for hundreds of years.

Roughly from 1970-94, Atlantic hurricane activity in the United States was relatively mild. Sure, there were monster hurricanes like Andrew in 1992 — its 177 mph winds killed 55 people in the U.S. and Caribbean and caused $26.5 billion in damage. Every year a big storm whips up — it's just that most fizzle before veering into a city.

Overall, the 25-year "quiet" period generated about half as many destructive storms as the previous stormy phase dating back to the 1920s, and about half as many as today's stormy phase appears likely to produce. Since 1995, environmental conditions have shifted and the Atlantic has been spawning more strong storms. ... Last month, Gray tweaked his gloomy 2004 forecast downward, predicting 13 named storms rather than 14. He expected seven storms to blow up into hurricanes, three with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater. ... Why is the storm cycle intensifying now? Scientists aren't certain what causes the decades-long shifts in the ocean-atmosphere interplay. ...

When the Pacific Ocean cools during the La Nina climate phenomenon, the Atlantic warms up, and more hurricanes are the result. Over the Atlantic, wind shear that knocks down rising storms tend to slacken, while humid westerly winds from Africa's bulge grow stronger. ... Most scientists agree that global warming plays little or no role in the number of storms in the current hurricane cycle. ... so far, climate change is too uncertain and today's hurricane patterns are too complex to draw a connection.

"I don't think the warming now is anywhere near enough to account for the increase in hurricanes that we're seeing," said Robert Gall of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "To me, this is just a natural variation in the frequency of hurricanes."

From: Forcasters: More hurricanes may be on way

Not to say global warming isn't a problem, just that it has very little (if nothing) to do with the hurricane surge this year.