Katrina Fuels Global Warming Storm

Like any politically influential group, the environmental lobby is grabbing onto Katrina's coattails and wailing about global warming. Interestingly, even some of those jabbering about it admit Katrina wasn't caused by global warming. (After quoting European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich's warnings about global warming, which Reuters portrays as connected to Katrina, they write, "She said it was wrong to say Katrina was caused by global warming widely blamed on emissions from cars, power plants and factories." So, why write an article entitled, "Katrina fuels global warming storm"? And why do the latest round of articles on the subject have titles like "Katrina's real name: global warming"? Needless to say, the Reuters article races past this discrepancy as quickly as they can to get back to the theme of the day.) Not that political environmentalists want to confuse their cause with facts or science, but

Dr. Landsea concluded: "If you look at the raw hurricane data itself, there is no global warming signal. What we see instead is a strong cycling of activity. There are periods of 25 to 40 years where it's very busy and then periods of 25 to 40 years where it's fairly quiet.

"The last 10 years have certainly been busy but it is our suggestion that what we are seeing now we have seen before in the period from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, which was extremely active with Atlantic hurricanes. If you look at the raw data it doesn't show the last 10 years to be out of the ordinary."

And you have to love the leader of the Australian Greens party, Bob Brown, who blames Katrina on Bush's refusal to join Kyoto. "It demonstrates the massive economic, as well as environmental and social penalties, of George Bush's policies." Forgive me, but is Mr. Brown saying that if Bush had signed onto Kyoto in 2001, global warming would have so quickly changed by in 2005 that Katrina would never have happened? Like I said, they are not going to let little things like science and facts get in the way of a political cause.