Posted 9/04/2010 11:55:00 AM by Douglas

I've long held the belief that TV weather's only job is to scare old people, but this article pretty much confirms it:

In May, before the current Atlantic hurricane season began, forecasts were for Armageddon. This year’s hurricane season could be “very active” (Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) or “very very active” (CNN) or “a hell of a year” with “quite high” numbers of intense storms (William Gray, head of the hurricane prediction center at Colorado State University).

What has actually happened so far? A below-average season of two hurricanes, neither one intense.

What’s going on here? Wasn’t global warming supposed to spawn ultra-monster hurricanes? That’s what Al Gore started claiming five years ago. Similar assertions have been heard from other quarters, too.

Well, duh. But the breakdown pretty much sums up what I've been thinking all along.

• The media loves predictions of deadly hurricanes
• The media loves hurricanes, period
• Predictions are worthless
• Predictions get attention anyway
• The sillier the prediction, the better
• Hurricanes have been awful long before artificial global warming
• Hurricanes don’t show any pattern clearly linked to greenhouse gases
• But you should still worry

Always, never forget to panic.