  The near universal references to the above paper by most of the major US
media outlets and blogs since Katrina and Rita made US landfall requires a
response from a few of us who study hurricanes. Having been involved with
hurricane research and forecasting for nearly 50 years, I feel I have an
obligation to offer comments on this paper's findings which, in my view, are
not valid.
  This paper concludes that global tropical cyclone net power dissipation (or
friction times wind) taken to be proportional to the sum of each cyclone's
individual 6-hour track period maximum wind speed (Vmax^3) has undergone large
(more than doubled) increases over the last 30 years. The author associates
these frictional energy dissipation increases with rising mean sea surface
temperatures (SSTs) and implies that these SST increases may, in part, be
related to human activity. If true, this is a very important finding that has
great relevance as regards to the globe's future climate and future hurricane
destruction. But, the author's apparent "blockbuster" results and his
interpretation of his calculations are not realistic.
