Global Warming Promises More Katrinas

Ross Gelspan, in the Boston
Globe, argues
that not only Katrina but all the weird weather we’ve been experiencing,
are by-products of global warming, and he’s not a crackpot…

THE HURRICANE
that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the
National
Weather
Service.
Its
real name
is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause
was global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and
cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United
Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri
River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global
warming.

In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain
and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years,
the explanation was global warming.

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees
and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain
in one day — killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million
others — the villain was global warming.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours,
more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Well, duh! When an organism gets
an infection, it runs a fever to fight back. Something tells the Dowbrigade
that Katrina is
not going to be the last killer hurricane of this star-crossed season.  What
really surprized meteorologists is how quickly Katrina ramped up from
a nasty cat 1 to a killer cat 5 within hours after hitting the super-heated
Gulf waters. The water in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t getting any
cooler; it’s temp is 90 degrees and rising, and any storm which wanders
into this hot box over the remaining six weeks of hurricane season is
going to experience the same super-charging. We predict that hurricane
measuring scheme is going to need a couple of new categories. Meanwhile,
insurance
company executives must be shitting bricks trying to figure out how to
protect their assets…..

Amidst all this destruction and human misery, it is nice to see some people getting what they asked for. All the party animals who ignored the authorities and decided to “ride it out” and party hearty, including some idiots who actually headed to the area from elsewhere for the “experience,” are waking up today to the reality of being trapped in an unescapable hell of 100 degree heat, no electricity, no water, dirty, wet cloths, rank, chemical-laden, undrinkable water everywhere, dead bodies floating by, disease rampant. Hard to keep the party going under those circumstances, but its no coincidence that the first places to be looted were liquor and drug stores.

from the Boston Globe