Summary

One of the leading science journalists and commentators working today, Chris Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming. In the wake of Katrina, Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: "Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at high wind speeds."Mooney a native of New Orleans has written a fascinating and urgently compelling book that calls into question the great inconvenient truth of our day: Are we responsible for making hurricanes even bigger monsters than they already are?

Author Biography

CHRIS MOONEY is the Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of The Republican War on Science. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Prologue: 6229 Memphis Street	p. 1
Introduction: “The Party Line”	p. 5
Warming and Storming
• Chimneys and Whirlpools	p. 15
• Of Heat Engines . . .	p. 31
• . . . and Computer Models	p. 44
• “Lay That Matrix Down”	p. 59
• From Hypercanes to Hurricane Andrew
Boiling Over Interlude: Among the Forecasters	p. 103
• The Luck of Florida	p. 109
• Frictional Divergence	p. 123
• Meet the Press	p. 137
• “The #$%^& Hit the Fan”	p. 155
• Resistance	p. 169
• “Consensus”	p. 180
Storm World
• Preseason Warm-Ups	p. 205
• Where Are the Storms?	p. 224
• Hurricane Climatology	p. 245
Conclusion: Home Again	p. 260
Acknowledgments	p. 277
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale; Note on Units of Measurement	p. 281
Cyclone Typology	p. 285
Early Hurricane-Climate Speculations	p. 287
Consensus Statements by Participants in the World Meteorological Organization’s 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, San Jose, Costa Rica, November 2006	p. 293
Notes	p. 295
Bibliography and Recommended Reading	p. 371
List of Interviews	p. 377
Index	p. 383
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

The Party LineThe worst Atlantic hurricane season on record still hadnt ended when the American Geophysical Union held its fall meeting in San Francisco in December 2005. Twelve thousand scientists packed themselves into the Moscone Center, the citys space-age mall of a conference facility, for lectures on topics such as the massive 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the tsunami that it generated, and data beamed from NASAs Mars rovers and the Cassini spacecraft. Many of the presentations were being given on the centers upper levels, and security guards had to police the towering escalators just to prevent overcrowding.MIT hurricane theorist Kerry Emanuel arrived on this scene riding a swell of fame that few researchers ever experience. A short man with striking blue-green eyes and a slightly surprised smile, Emanuel had just seen his latest work featured in a Time magazine cover story and would soon find it rated (along with the work of several colleagues) the top science story of the year by Discover. He was averaging five to ten media calls per week. Later, he would be named one of the hundred Most Influential People of 2006, once again by Time. At the American Geophysical Union meeting, Emanuel had been slated to speak following another of Times most influential: NASAs James Hansen, the nations best-known climate scientist and the man sometimes dubbed the father of global warming. The science presented at the average American Geophysical Union meeting features a heavy helping of catastrophe. Tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamisthe proceedings offer a subject roster that Hollywood disaster-movie directors would appreciate. But that December, the cause of destruction at the front of everyones mind was the strongest and deadliest storm on Earth, a meteorological monstrosity capable of churning out as much power as all the worlds electricity generators combined: the tropical cyclone, typhoon, or, as we call it in the United States, the hurricane. Katrina had wiped out New Orleans just a few months earlier.On the day of Emanuels talkTuesday, December 6Hurricane Epsilon whirled on in the North Atlantic some 600 miles southwest of the Azores. The aimless cyclone had already executed a full loop, completely reversing its original westward trajectory, and now began a southwest turn. Epsilon wasnt a particularly strong stormits maximum sustained winds peaked at around 85 miles per hourand it never seriously threatened land. But it was stubborn. Moreover, Epsilon had the distinction of being only the sixth hurricane ever recorded as occurring in the Atlantic during the month of December, as well as the twenty-seventh storm of a seemingly never-ending seasonso never-ending, in fact, that forecasters had resorted to Greek letters after pre-assigned storm nameslike Katrina, Rita, Wilmaran out.At the National Hurricane Center in Miamia steel-reinforced concrete bunker of a building on the campus of Florida International University that w

Excerpted from Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming by Chris Mooney
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