My piece just ran today, here's an excerpt:
When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should lead to a stance of cautious, well-informed concern. Further research -- or, perhaps, more mega-hurricanes -- may seal the issue. But meanwhile, given how much we have at stake, we should already be moving to prepare and protect ourselves -- even as we remain fully open to new evidence.
You can read the whole piece here.
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Can you elaborate on the last sentence of the piece? What should we do "to prepare and protect ourselves"?
There's a long list. It includes: better building codes. Better evacuation planning. Rethinking of insurance policies for some areas. Better investment in hurricane research to improve forecasts--especially intensity forecasts.
All of this should help make us less vulnerable. But my big thing is conducting risk assessments for all coastal areas subject to hurricane damage, and including in the risk assessment study scenarios in which climate change potentially makes storms worse or more destructive--so that we know all the worst cases in terms of what could happen.
Then comes the hard part--do we invest, in some places, in massive Dutch style engineering projects to prevent these worst case scenarios? That requires $$$. And if we can't even pull it off for New Orleans, I'd say forget about happening elsewhere. But I really wish we were still capable of achieving big things of this sort in this country.
You'll notice that nowhere do I say "cut greenhouse gas emissions." I support doing so, but I try not to bring the subject up when it comes to preparing for hurricanes because the way to prepare for hurricanes is, well, to *prepare* for hurricanes.
You're essentially arguing for the precautionary principle. There may or may not be a trend toward stronger hurricanes and that trend may or may not be driven by human-induced climate change. Since there is non-trivial probability that climate change is causing more intense hurricanes, and will continue to in the future, the prudent decision would be to incorporate the possibility in coastal planning (and in decisions about climate / emissions policy).
The nudge-nudge wink-wink aspect of your increase in category 5s argument (i.e. we can't prove it is due to climate change... but it sure smells like it) seems to have made a fair number of scientists uncomfortable, and I think for good reason. Taken another way, through the lens of the precautionary principle, it might be more acceptable to the scientific community. Maybe framing goes both ways?
Simon,
I was always arguing for precaution, even if I didn't use the specific phrase "precautionary principle" because I don't know exactly what it means. I disagree about nudging and winking: I am stating the facts, the records, with all the requisite caveats, and saying they are grounds for worry.