Hurricanes and Climate Change | WBUR and NPR

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 11:00 AM EDT

Hurricanes and Climate Change

By host Tom Ashbrook:

We’re in the height of hurricane season now, August to October, and that’s not news to Jamaica or Mexico’s Yucatan, where Hurricane Dean has been tearing up the coast in recent days.

Mexico got lucky with Dean. It was the third most powerful hurricane to make landfall since 1850. The damage could have been worse.

Around the planet, many now assume we are in a global warming surge that is pumping up more and more monstrous storms. Interestingly, scientists are in a raging debate on just that point.

This hour On Point: Science debates global warming and monster hurricanes.

Guests:

Chris Mooney, author of “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming”

Peter Webster, professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center

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