I'm sure Al Gore will find some way to spin the spectacular lack of serious tropical storms this year into more proof of human caused climate damage.  He is probably just waiting for the right moment.

Back during my undergraduate studies I was required to take a few classes in economics, which provided me with a detailed examination of how Thomas Malthus provided economics with its nickname "the dismal science."  Malthus was wrong, and I didn't have to be an economist or mathematician to know that his theory, published in 1798 didn't work out as planned.  

When Paul Erlich published The Population Bomb in 1968 he produced essentially the same theory as Malthus, albeit updated and with some fancy new formulas by which he asserted that in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people would starve to death.  Erlich was also wrong.  Malthus' predictions can be excused, at least in part.  He had no way of predicting that changes in agriculture would be so massive as to prevent the famines he believed would occur.  Erlich, on the other hand, had no such problem.  It was shown by Keith Greiner in 1994 that Erlich's use of the financial compound interest formula resulted in wild predictions that could not occur on schedule.  

Likewise, Karl Marx made predictions regarding the future of politics and economics that did not pan out.  One didn't need to be either a political scientist or economist to understand the basic flaw in his reasoning; he ignored basic human nature, or to see his ability to reinterpret history to suit his particular views when necessary.  There are many other people who have made predictions of this sort over the years.  August  Comte, and Oswald Spengler, to name two famous social prophets, and now Al Gore, who has been predicting, for some time, that catastrophic events, will occur if his instructions aren't followed.  And like many people, he has the magic bullet, the only solution, and if he isn't allowed to have his way, then everyone will suffer.  

When dealing with people of this sort one must be very careful.  They may be harmless, Jeanne Dixon types, only interested in making a buck and a name for themselves, or they may be something more sinister.  Dixon, achieved her  initial fame based on an alleged prediction of the assassination of John Kennedy, but this "success" was overshadowed by her failed predictions that World War III would start in 1958, and that that the USSR would land the first man on the moon.  At least she never attempted to run for office, or asserted that she had the answers to all the world's problems.   Al Gore appears to be a member of the second class.  It has been alleged that he believes it his destiny to become President of the United States, which is, perhaps born out by his apparent intent to run for that office again.  In persuing this destiny, it appears that he is willing to say just about anything if he thinks it will get him into the White House.  After all, he was the guy who invented the Internet, wasn't he?  The problem with people who are willing to do anything for political reasons is that they cannot be trusted, especially in the things they say in order to get elected.  One cannot trust that Al Gore really believes that the world will become unbearably hot in 10 years because he might just as easily say that the world will freeze, or that Lenin is running things in present day Russia, if he thought it would serve him as well, or better.    

Which brings me to my central point.  At this time last year we were completing the worst year in recorded history for Atlantic tropical storms. There were 21 names listed in 2005 for tropical storms and hurricanes.  All 21 were used up and the National Hurricane Center resorted to the Greek Alphabet using six letters, after which there was also an officially unnamed sub-tropical storm in October making a total of 28 Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 2005 season.  Mr. Gore was one of those folks who took this as an irrefutable sign of catastrophic global warming, whereupon he gleefully prepared for an even worse year in 2006.  Unfortunately, for Mr. Gore, and fortunately for the people of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, 2006 was a dud as far as storms were concerned.  In 2005 Katrina came through in late August.  In 2006, by October 25 we haven't even reached the letter "J."  The last named storm, Isaac, was out in the middle of the Atlantic on October 2nd, where it stayed and eventually died.  Of course there are other storms in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but they haven't been severe enough to make serious headlines, even though the Pacific recently reached the name "Paul".  I'm sure Al Gore will still find some way to spin the spectacular lack of serious tropical storms this year into more proof of human caused climate damage.  He is probably just waiting for the right moment.  In the alternative, he might be waiting for another banner year of serious damage in 2007, hoping to cash in on it during the 2008 elections.  Gore has his followers, just as Malthus, Erlich, and Rachel Carson had theirs.  It didn't make them right.  It just makes them famous as pundits of doom and disaster, which didn't happen, at least not yet.

What 2006 probably tells us is something that the environmental lobby would rather ignore; that there is a lot more to climate science, and to predicting the weather than we know today, and that jumping to conclusions is a sure way to look silly to anyone who has the brains to see beyond the hype and headlines.  Propaganda can be a great way to make yourself look smart if you are right, but you can fall flat on your face just as easily.  That's why Mr. Gore should leave science up to the professionals, who will be willing to admit that they don't know everything, and that they may be making predictions based on incomplete information.  But if you are Albert Gore, Jr., the man who invented the Internet, and the greatest expert on environmental science the world has ever seen, it might not be so easy to admit that you don't know everything, or that you may have been mistaken.  Perhaps that's why John Kerry waffles so much.  It might be easier to be for something before you were against it before you were for it again, than to simply stick to one position, right or wrong until the true facts are known.  But then not everyone is as smart or as well educated as Al Gore.