Guessing at Pre-Sat Hurricane Numbers

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=18652E04-E7F2-99DF-3824FFAA3F933FDB&chanID=sa007

The above article is from a news story that made the rounds a couple of days ago is headlined "Climate Change Linked to Doubling of Atlantic Hurricanes". The story goes on to talk about the link between global warming and Atlantic sea temperatures (which is based on two peer-reviewed studies of actual temperature data.

It all sounded very interesting and legitimate, but then I read this:

But Holland and Webster assumed that measurements taken before aircraft and satellites made storms easier to spot could have missed as many as five hurricanes per year. "Including these errors in our analysis changes the magnitude of the trend but leaves all the substantial conclusions unaffected," they say.

Uhh... sure it leaves the conclusions unaffected -- because you chose a number that wouldn't affect them! Hello!

I have to give SciAm credit for including criticism, but most of the HUNDREDS of articles I saw posted on news sites about this were making outrageous claims about this study that even the scientists who published it weren't claiming. Just look at some of these headlines:

"Global Warming Causing More Atlantic Hurricanes, Study Finds"

"Tropical storms doubled due to global warming, study says"

"Hurricane Frequency, Climate Change Linked"

Argh. It's bad enough trying to convince people global warming is real and that we should do something about it. But my goodness, why don't we just fax these studies right to Rush Limbaugh's desk with the weaknesses underlined, for pete's sake?