JSC received little Rita Damage

Johnson Space center received little damage during Hurricane Rita. All employees have leave until Tuesday.Here is the NASA link to RITA images.

Global Warming debate

I really laugh at some of the press and their "stuck on stupid" responses to the recent hurricanes and the global warming debate. I really think they should take some science courses or enlist some scientist types to report on science news. I googled for William Grey at Colorado State to get his forecasting for the current hurricane season. He has been studying the climate and its cycles for 40 years. I tend to believe the experts than the "celebrities" and leftist greenies that claim hurricanes are the cause of global warming. Dr. Gray said that if we were experiencing global warming then the activity of all Hurricane/Cyclone areas would show increased activity. No such activity is occurring. We are in a cycle of 25 - 50 years of an upswing in storms. Here is an except from his report:

The 1995-2005 Upswing in Atlantic Hurricanes and Global Warming
Many individuals have queried whether the unprecedented landfall of four destructive hurricanes in a seven-week period during August-September 2004 and the landfall of two more major hurricanes in the early part of the 2005 season is related in any way to human-induced climate changes. There is no evidence that this is the case. If global warming were the cause of the increase in United States hurricane landfalls in 2004 and 2005 and the overall increase in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity of the past eleven years (1995-2005), one would expect to see an increase in tropical cyclone activity in the other storm basins as well (i.e., West Pacific, East Pacific, Indian Ocean, etc.). This has not occurred. When tropical cyclones worldwide are summed, there has actually been a slight decrease since 1995. In addition, it has been well-documented that the measured global warming during the 25-year period of 1970-1994 was accompanied by a downturn in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity over what was experienced during the 1930s through the 1960s.


We attribute the heightened Atlantic major hurricane activity between 1995-2005 to be a consequence of the multidecadal fluctuations in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) as we have been discussing in our Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts for several years. Major hurricane activity in the Atlantic has been shown to undergo marked multidecadal fluctuations that are directly related to North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies. When the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation is running strong, the central Atlantic equatorial trough (ITCZ) becomes stronger. The stronger the Atlantic equatorial trough becomes, the more favorable are conditions for the development of major hurricanes in the central Atlantic. Since 1995, the THC has been flowing more strongly, and there has been a concomitant increase in major hurricanes in the tropical Atlantic.

Rita Closes Johnson Space Center

The Johnson Space Center closed yesterday due to Hurricane Rita coming to shore. ISS operations have been transferred to Moscow Space Center. A team of NASA techs are on hand there. NASA's link to RITA here.