Why do the public seem to believe everything that the media prints? The case regarding global warming is quite shocking. Moreso to believe that our schools are turning out hundreds of thousands of youngsters who allegedly achieved high grades in their science exams yet don't actually know what a scientific theory is.

A scientific theory is something that can proven, or disproven beyond a given degree of doubt.

Here's a typical definition:

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)

And this simply explains what the 'global warming' problem is. Where is the yardstick by which we can can measure 'how much warming is being done by whom'? Worse still, how about simply measuring the degree of warming and not even apportioning blame?

Simple ideas such as sea-level rising, and Antarctic ice breaking off are simply too crude to measure effectively. In truth, the Antarctic ice shelf is THICKENING in the middle (although calving off at the sides). Sea-level is reported as falling in certain places -- as well as rising in others. However, these things make great media items, and the public get all excited, and blame everything onto human driven global warming.

What about the recent spate of hurricanes?

What about it? Hurricane activity is highly cyclic. So given a busy hurricane session, another session is more likely. One can in fact postulate a theory here that hurricane activity is closely modelled by a markov process , and in fact this works pretty well -- it doesn't need assumptions or vague notions about global warming to make its predictions.

Two recent papers in Nature and Science try to connect global warming with incresed hurricane activity , but on close inspection, the analyses are flawed. The datasets biassed (due to early 1960s-70s data collection), and certain of their summary results contain implausible inferences. If you look closely, you will see that they actually claim that Category 3 hurricanes have DECREASED over the period, (whilst 4 & 5 have increased).

So what is going on ? Weather appears to be hotter, more disturbed, and we are certainly chucking out vast quantities of gunk into our atmosphere. Scientists do not rule out a direct connection, rather they seek to tie the two together in a sensible way, so that we may make and take sensible decisions regarding our behaviour. So shouldn't we cut down JUST IN CASE? Why modify behaviour that we don't know is causing a problem? We might as well all wear zebra-t-shirts -- that might reduce the problem too, and we havn't tried that either.

Closing thought: Our emissions may be slowing the rate of global warming. We have made the heroic assumption that the connection between our activity and 'some warming' is a positive, linear one. It is more likely to be highly non-linear, and even vary. For instance, a severe warming of the Atlantic, could cause the gulf-stream to change dramatically. This could severely cool the UK. ie warming in place A --> cooling in place B. This is a sharp reminder that we need a testable theory -- simply taking blind action otherwise could have unpredictable results.

The papers to read :
a) Kerry Emanuel, 4 August 2005: Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature, 436, 686-688.

b) P.J. Webster, G.J. Holland, J. Currie and P. Chang, 16 September 2005: Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment. Science, 309, 1844-1846.

Then read
http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/2005/oct2005/