As Predictably As the Sun Rising in the East...

[This posting has additional information added at bottom and has been bumped to the top.]

...Typhoon Haiyam is blamed on global warming.

This claim is simply not supported by the science. 

Here is the worldwide tropical cyclone energy index from Dr. Ryan Maue. It goes back to the start of worldwide satellite surveillance. The neither the current value nor trend indicates tropical cyclones are getting worse. 

Not convinced? I'll let Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. take it from here. 

The United States is experiencing, by far, the longest interval since a major hurricane has come ashore. These records go back 200 years. 

Suffice to say: There is zero scientific evidence, either in the U.S. or elsewhere, that hurricanes or major hurricanes are getting worse. This is yet another example of Big Climate, with the media's collusion, continuing to promulgate an increasingly dubious hypothesis.


Additional information added at 4:50pm Wednesday:

It is positively ghoulish to trade on the horror in the Philippines to advance a political agenda. That is what the "Typhone Haiyam was caused by global warming" people are doing. If the above is not enough to convince you there is no science to support that contention, I have added some below.

In December, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the people that won the Nobel Prize along with Al Gore) published its report on weather extremes.

I, and other meteorologists, are frequently critical of the IPCC because it -- too often -- interjects politics and preferred outcomes into what should be a scientific document. However, if hurricanes/typhoons have gotten worse, they would be the first to say so. Instead, they say the opposite.

If you are having trouble reading it, it says, "Observed" (meaning now and the last 40 years) there is no observed trend, in which they have any confidence, in either number or intensity of hurricanes.

They go on to "project" that hurricane numbers will decrease or stay the same and that wind speeds may increase but not in all oceans.

I have read every word -- twice! -- and there is nothing in it to say that hurricanes, at present, are stronger and/or more frequent. You can upload the report and read it for yourself here.

The people who are using the suffering of the Philippine people to gain donations or try to influence political policies should be ashamed of themselves.