The prognostications are starting to roll in for the upcoming hurricane season, which officially begins June 1 (although really, and as we saw last year, the start and end dates are a bit arbitrary). So far, there's not a lot of optimism. According to reporting by the St. Petersburg Times: "Sea surface temperatures are above average, La Nina has returned and the Atlantic Basin remains in an 'up' cycle for storms." An El Nino in the Pacific tends to suppress hurricanes in the Atlantic, but with La Nina it's the opposite. Anyway, it's still early--but it doesn't sound like there's much to be particularly hopeful about....
P.S.: Kevin is blogging about a recent paper on the 2005 season; I read it and I don't see how it relates directly to previous work on global warming and hurricanes. So I commented to that effect. You can check it out.
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Chris, I see a problem with Kevin's post in that it addresses hurricane damage and how it can be mitigated, but not the overall issue of anthropogenic global warming. The problem is one of inference: if one were not careful, one might assume that possible effects of AGW can be mitigated by coastal zoning. There are really two issues. One involves how to avoid hurricane damage and the other involves detecting signs of AGW in hurricane phenomenology. I commented to that effect on his blog.
This summer could very well prove to be the empiricist's experiment! Not just hurricanes, but Arctic meltdown and subsequent methane clathrate release. Make that the worst nightmare, but more powerful evidence that the neo-classical economist's subterfuge of a continually expanding economy stands as the greatest intellectual error of human history.
Many good folks are knowledgable and focused on peak oil, but almost unaware of the magnitude of climate change. As far as I can see, climate change has trumpted all else. We fix that, or we fix nothing.