In it author Elizabeth Harrington reminds us that the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 (otherwise unnamed) was by several measures much worse, and that before human endeavor had released much carbon dioxide. In 1900, on the same Texas coast, the Galveston storm killed more people, had higher sustained winds, and a higher storm surge, she reports.
COTTonLINE believes humans don't understand enough about climate and weather to make claims about causation. One thing is certain, climates changed in times past when humans were insufficiently numerous or industrialized to have had an impact.
What is unclear is whether present levels of human activity are sufficient to affect something as ponderously enormous as global weather. Our gut hunch is that it's unlikely, but we plainly label that a guess.
We further guess that minor variations in solar activity, sunspots and the like, are a more likely cause of climatic variation. This because so much (some would say "all") of the world's weather is driven by solar radiation. Comparing solar impact to human impact is like comparing the Grand Canyon to a single raindrop.
