Yes. It helps if you know how to read the dice. http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...discussing-extreme-weather-events/#more-17093
If the power of hurricanes is increasing why is there no increasing trend in the number of Category 3+ Atlantic hurricanes in the last 80+ years (graph here)? It goes up, it goes down... no indication that more lower category hurricanes are becoming stronger ones.... Unless this "expert" was only looking at 1970-2005 which showed about the same increase as 1930-1960...
An activist blog like the one in the OP is hardly likely to look objectively at such things http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/07/truth-about-realclimateorg.html
Because simply counting the number of hurricanes doesn't tell you if the hurricanes themselves are getting stronger. And they are:
Sure it does. If tropical storms are getting stronger then there should be a greater number of hurricanes. If hurricanes are getting stronger then there should be a greater number of major cat3+ hurricanes, but there aren't. I will grant that your chart shows a very slight increase in peaks in the 15-year average, but that can probably be explained by the lack of good records of all smaller tropical storms in the pre-satellite era. Fifty years ago a number of tropical storms that formed and dissipated at sea may have gone completely unnoticed, with only the larger storms that got closer to land being counted more completely. This would explain why overall storms have gone up slightly in the modern era but the number of major hurricanes have not. I would also like to point out note that your chart doesn't include 2013 when ACE only came in at 36, dropping the average even further, and even taking into account incomplete records making up the older years the Record ACE year is still 1933.
...heat is energy, as the planet and more importantly the oceans warm that extra energy will result in more powerful extreme weather events, it can do nothing else...statistical data only serves to quantify what must be happening...
No, because a strong hurricane sucks up that heat in the surface waters and sends it into the stratosphere. The cooler waters left behind are much less likely to form a tropical storm, and the bigger the hurricane the larger the affected region. Which is why most climate models predict that the intensity of hurricanes will increase, but the frequency will decrease. Just as predicted: intensity has increased, frequency has not. NOAA hasn't posted 2013 yet, so it's not on the graph. Given the huge amount of noise in the data, any particular number isn't surprising.
