When the whole global warming discussion started a few years ago, I'll admit I didn't pay close attention to it.  Then one night, I was watching TV and a certain east coast politician was on some talk show.  He was describing how global warming was responsible for the increase in hurricane activity and strength.  He went on to say how it was all caused my man and that if we didn’t do something about it, we would see far worse catastrophes in the future.  This of course was a little scary, so I decided I’d better start paying attention.  Not being one to take anything at face value, I decided to do some research regarding his statement about hurricane activity, just to see how bad the trend really is.  So, I went to the National Hurricane Center’s web site where I found data on North American hurricanes going back for 150 years.  I put the data into a simple excel spreadsheet and plotted the hurricane activity for each decade going back 150 years.  I actually made several plots.  I made plots for each category of storm and then also a plot that grouped all major storms (cats 1, 2 and 3).  What I found was amazing!  There has been no discernable increase in hurricane activity or strength in recent years, as that politician had claimed.  In fact, things have been about average.