The World Wildlife Fund, for example, says global warming is putting "hurricanes on steroids," but that's only true if they're referring to one of the side-effects of long-term steroid use - impotency.

Unfortunately, NOAA is helping fuel the scare campaign through its annual forecasts and its reports of storm and heat "records" -- records the agency knows it has no way to verify.

The count of tropical storms, for example, would have increased dramatically even if actual storm activity had not increased, because our ability to monitor weather is constantly improving.

The Quick Scatterometer, a satellite that measures the ocean's surface winds, was launched just eight years ago. It produces more than double the daily measurements of its predecessor, launched just three years earlier, which itself had increased by more than 100 times the amount of ocean wind information reported from ships.

Increased resources and technological advancement across the board - from that used in satellites to Hurricane Hunter aircraft - means we are identifying storm systems we wouldn't have known about in the past.

Hurricane Karen is a good case in point. NHC estimates that Karen reached a maximum speed of 65 knots per hour (or 74.9 miles per hour) - only about 1.2 mph above tropical storm status. No direct measurement of the storm's wind speed was taken. Instead, an estimate was made based on satellite imagery and data from Hurricane Hunter aircraft using state-of-the-art Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) technology taken six hours after Karen started losing strength. The Hurricane Hunter aircraft had only been equipped with the SFMR this summer.

Even if NHC's extrapolation of the data is correct - and 1.2 mph leaves little room for error - it's unlikely that Karen would have been classified as a hurricane in years past.

NHC's Feltgen ducked a specific question on this, but indirectly conceded that it was possible.

"Technology such as satellites and the SFMR has allowed forecasters to detect... several tropical cyclones that might have otherwise gone undetected in the past," Feltgen said. "In addition, the technology also permits a more accurate measurement of the storm intensity."

NOAA doesn't mention its changing criteria for naming storms, nor the vast differences in data quality over time, when it issues annual hurricane season forecasts. Yet it continues to portray these forecasts and subsequent storm reports in a historical context, as if what it is saying is meaningful.

It holds no meaning in science, but may in political science.

If NOAA continues to dabble in politics, Americans should afford it all the respect it does to politicians...

...very little.