More on global warming and hurricanes...

Most of the hurricane experts dispute the connection between global warming and increased hurricane activity.

Claims in the media that global warming is making hurricanes worse are running into a gale of their own from scientists who specialize in studying the tropical storms.

"I'm quite sure that in 15 to 20 years, everyone will look back and see what a phony issue this was," William M. Gray, head of Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project, said. "Most of my colleagues, who have given their careers to study this, are skeptical as hell."

Nonetheless, the theory that global warming is increasing the intensity and frequency of hurricanes is drawing increasing attention, especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other well-publicized storms making landfall in the U.S.

In August, for example, the media focused on a study published in the August issue of the journal Nature, which concluded the duration and strength of hurricanes have increased by about 50 percent in the past 30 years. The author of the study linked the increase to rising ocean temperatures and global warming.

Before the study's release, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told MSNBC, "Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions."

But James J. O'Brien, director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University, and numerous other hurricane experts dispute the theory that global warming primes and intensifies hurricanes. These scientists say that if global warming has any effect on hurricanes, it would be small. They also attribute swings in hurricane activity to natural, 25- to 40-year cycles.