More Storms, or Just Better Reporting?

Yet another global warming scare report has been issued claiming that Atlantic tropical storms have doubled in the last 100 years:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say.

The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

Ah, but what else has happened in the last 100 years? Were the forecasters in the 20's and 30's able to see all the storms out there, or did that have to wait until satellites and other weather observation tools were invented? Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center calls this report "sloppy science":

Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, said the study is inconsistent in its use of data.

The work, he said, is "sloppy science that neglects the fact that better monitoring by satellites allows us to observe storms and hurricanes that were simply missed earlier. The doubling in the number of storms and hurricanes in 100 years that they found in their paper is just an artifact of technology, not climate change."

I know it's politically correct, but it's amazing just how quick these reports are to ignore everything but human induced warming.