Is man-made global warming producing more powerful hurricanes like Katrina and Rita? Well not according to an article by Dr. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis. Hurricane strength, he notes, is largely driven by differences between ocean and air temperatures, so that even if global warming modestly increased ocean temperatures in the coming years, this would have little impact since there will be virtually no increase in air temperature near the equator where hurricanes form. Since the National Hurricane Center further asserts that hurricane cycles are caused by natural ocean circulation patterns that produced a lull from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, and an increase over the last decade, it seems this alarm is simply a Category 5 of hype.