Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation

Since Katrina,we have been hearing all about how this is the fault of Bush and the failure to embrace the Kyoto Protocols. This is all being caused by Global Warming, or so the extreme leftists would want you to believe. I find it rather disgusting, that the likes of Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Fat Mikey Moore are trying to use this to prop up the Kyoto Protocol, which is more about economics than climate. Moore claims all this is becuse the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter. The only thing getting hotter, is the the air coming out of his blowhard's mouth. As for the Euroweenies that are claiming this nonsense, they are not even close to cutting their CO2 emissions. The fact of the matter is, they are way behind the US in this area. As for the so called cause and effect, vis-a-vis stronger huricanes, again this is not factual. James K. Glassman explains in his commentary.

'My daughter, her husband and their little baby managed to get out of the city ahead of the flood on Sunday, driving 14 hours into Texas with the few belongings they could stuff into their car. They have no idea what has become of their house and their possessions, not to mention their friends, their pets, their jobs, their way of life.

Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive. Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.

That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.

Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.

Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.

But that doesn't stop an enviro-predator like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from writing on the Huffingtonpost website: "Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children'

Nothing like some facts to get us through the bullshit the likes of RFK, Jr. spew out. Seems he and the left are not only on the blame Bush and those evil republicans for global warming, but he and they are still on that Blood for Oil kick. As for the charts mentioned, there are some Category 3, 4 and 5 storms that may not be listed. During the veryearly days of hurricane record keeping, storms that never came near land to be observed, would not be recorded. There are many, many factors invovled in the strengthing of hurricanes, not only warmer waters.

'The Kyoto advocates point to warmer ocean temperatures, but they ought to read their own favorite newspaper, The New York Times, which reported yesterday:

"Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught 'is very much natural,' said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.'"

An article on TCS quoted Gray last year as saying that, while some groups and individuals say that hurricane activity lately "may be in some way related to the effects of increased man-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide,…there is no reasonable scientific way that such an interpretation…can be made."

Indeed, there is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying anyway. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: "Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased."

Yes, decreased.'

Of course the environmental wackos do not care about facts, all they care about is their leftist agenda. Kyoto does very little to reduce emissions, given the fact that China and India, along with other Third World nations, get a free pass. Any one that has bothered to read the treaty can see that. Be ready to hear more and more of this drivel in the coming days. - Sailor