| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
The Perfect Storm And The Imperfect Explanation
“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was
nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real
name is global warming.” --- Ross Gelbspan, author of “The
Heat Is On,” in a column for the Boston Globe.
Even as we struggle to comprehend the scope of the disaster
that has befallen New Orleans, some global warming
fundamentalists have come out to proclaim the “real” cause of
the hurricane with the same unalterable certainty held by
Islamic suicide bombers who believe they are going to paradise
for killing infidels. Here’s a fact for Mr. Gelbspan: It is utterly
impossible to state with certainty that Hurricane Katrina was a
result of global warming.
Don’t worry, though, this isn’t going to be a diatribe against
global warming. There are plenty of good scientific reasons to
believe that it is happening to some degree or other. If we fill
up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, it only makes sense
to think there would be some sort of a greenhouse effect as
occurs, for instance, in a simple greenhouse.
But the planet, with its immense atmosphere and oceans,
and its mountains, deserts and forests, is a far more complex
thing to get a handle on than a simple greenhouse . As rational
as the big picture concept of global warming may be, there is a
nearly infinite number of complex and unknowable variables
that make the prediction of specific consequences a very
difficult thing. Even more difficult is retroactively assigning
blame for recent individual weather events on global warming
and this is where the world of the reasonable should part ways
with the radical Mr. Gelbspan.
Besides Katrina, Gelbspan has come up with a slew of recent
weather occurrences that he insists with fundamentalist
certitude could only be attributable to global warming:
One hundred-mile-an-hour plus winds in Scandinavia that
shut down nuclear power plants; the worst drought on record
that triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal; the 37 inches of
rain that Bombay got in one day, killing one thousand and
affecting 20 million; a severe drought in the Midwest that
dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on
record; a heat wave in Arizona that kept temperatures even
hotter than normal, killing more than 20 people in a week; two
feet of snow in Los Angeles, he said (though in reality, it was 60
miles away at an altitude of 4,000 feet, nowhere near L.A.
proper).
In Gelbspan’s mind none of these events could possibly have
been due to the normal vicissitudes of weather, the variability
of which always includes extremes, but rather, they had to be
the ravages of global warming. Should we unequivocally
believe that? When I give my weather almanac even a cursory
thumbing through, I am struck by the wild and wacky extremes
that make for such entertaining reading for us geeky weather
buffs. And those extremes didn’t suddenly start in the 1980s
when global warming theory began to come into vogue
(replacing, by the way, the previous vogue that was predicting
the onset of a new ice age).
Continuing in his column, Gelbspan eventually got down to
cases: “In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest
electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was
elected president--and subsequently took suggestions from the
industry for his climate and energy policies.” He’s not exactly
saying that Bush caused Hurricane Katrina, but others out
there who are a little wackier are saying it, or blaming it on
Republicans in general.
Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance. He more or less
blamed Mississippi’s Republican Governor Haley Barbour for
the Katrina-induced devastation of that state: “Now we are all
learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel
dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged.”
That statement is only slightly less crazy than if Pat Robertson
were to say that Katrina was sent by God to destroy New
Orleans because of its blatant hedonism.
Even Cindy Sheehan desperately got in on the act as she saw
her time in the spotlight fading fast in the wake of wall-to-wall
Katrina coverage. She declared in her inimitable style that
Bush was “heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his
environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.” If
you thought Bush Derangement Syndrome was in its advanced
stages in those afflicted by it, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
What we’re supposed to believe is that if only enviro-
friendly Democrats were running things, something would be
done to stop global warming, and poof, no more weather
extremes like Katrina. Funny thing is, the rise of the much
maligned SUV to become America’s favorite gas-guzzling
vehicle occurred during the go-go years of the Clinton/Gore
administration. Apparently, not enough of the voters who
supported that ticket read Gore’s scarifying environmental
opus “Earth In The Balance,” or if they did, it wasn’t scarifying
enough to convince them to be better stewards of the planet.
Sure, they were recycling newspapers and aluminum cans
like there was no tomorrow because it was easy and didn’t
require any major lifestyle changes. But take a pass on
luxurious land yachts just because they only got 12 miles to the
gallon? Perish the thought.
And then there’s the Kyoto Protocol that’s always thrown up
as the planet’s salvation from global warming. There’s another
funny thing. In 1997, during that same Clinton/Gore
administration, when copies of “Earth In The Balance” were
being snatched up by oh-so-progressive recycling and SUV-
driving soccer moms, Kyoto was voted down by the U.S. Senate
by a starkly unanimous vote of 95-0. Not one single Democrat
voted for it. Why? Because China, the world’s second largest
emitter of greenhouse gases, and India, another country of a
billion people with a burgeoning economy, were completely
exempted.
As for what to do to save the planet, Gelbspan has a pretty
Draconian prescription: “To allow the climate to stabilize
requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent.
That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest
commercial enterprises in history.”
Seventy percent? What does Gelbspan want us to do, go
back to the Bronze Age? If we reduce our use of fossil fuels by
70 percent anytime soon without alternative fuels to take their
place, we can kiss the global economy, not to mention
modernity, goodbye. We can’t just replace it all with
windmills, solar panels and ethanol. Environmentalists are
opposed to nuclear power, and fusion, the great hope of the
future, is decades or longer away. So what does he expect us to
do?
But who knows if the planet even needs saving? You can
believe the worst case global warming predictions if you want
to, which are all based on computer models projecting events
years and decades into the future. But most of us are skeptical
of a weather forecast two or more days out, and for good reason.
Whatever the facts about global warming turn out to be,
mankind will adapt just as he always has. And when the day
comes that a significant breakthrough occurs in some
alternative energy source, forget about Gelbspan’s rhetoric
about “the largest commercial enterprises in history.” The
bogeymen of big coal and big oil won’t be able to stop progress
any more than the bogeymen of, say, big rail were able to stop
the trucking or the airline industries.
“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was
nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real
name is global warming.” --- Ross Gelbspan, author of “The
Heat Is On,” in a column for the Boston Globe.
Even as we struggle to comprehend the scope of the disaster
that has befallen New Orleans, some global warming
fundamentalists have come out to proclaim the “real” cause of
the hurricane with the same unalterable certainty held by
Islamic suicide bombers who believe they are going to paradise
for killing infidels. Here’s a fact for Mr. Gelbspan: It is utterly
impossible to state with certainty that Hurricane Katrina was a
result of global warming.
Don’t worry, though, this isn’t going to be a diatribe against
global warming. There are plenty of good scientific reasons to
believe that it is happening to some degree or other. If we fill
up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, it only makes sense
to think there would be some sort of a greenhouse effect as
occurs, for instance, in a simple greenhouse.
But the planet, with its immense atmosphere and oceans,
and its mountains, deserts and forests, is a far more complex
thing to get a handle on than a simple greenhouse . As rational
as the big picture concept of global warming may be, there is a
nearly infinite number of complex and unknowable variables
that make the prediction of specific consequences a very
difficult thing. Even more difficult is retroactively assigning
blame for recent individual weather events on global warming
and this is where the world of the reasonable should part ways
with the radical Mr. Gelbspan.
Besides Katrina, Gelbspan has come up with a slew of recent
weather occurrences that he insists with fundamentalist
certitude could only be attributable to global warming:
One hundred-mile-an-hour plus winds in Scandinavia that
shut down nuclear power plants; the worst drought on record
that triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal; the 37 inches of
rain that Bombay got in one day, killing one thousand and
affecting 20 million; a severe drought in the Midwest that
dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on
record; a heat wave in Arizona that kept temperatures even
hotter than normal, killing more than 20 people in a week; two
feet of snow in Los Angeles, he said (though in reality, it was 60
miles away at an altitude of 4,000 feet, nowhere near L.A.
proper).
In Gelbspan’s mind none of these events could possibly have
been due to the normal vicissitudes of weather, the variability
of which always includes extremes, but rather, they had to be
the ravages of global warming. Should we unequivocally
believe that? When I give my weather almanac even a cursory
thumbing through, I am struck by the wild and wacky extremes
that make for such entertaining reading for us geeky weather
buffs. And those extremes didn’t suddenly start in the 1980s
when global warming theory began to come into vogue
(replacing, by the way, the previous vogue that was predicting
the onset of a new ice age).
Continuing in his column, Gelbspan eventually got down to
cases: “In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest
electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was
elected president--and subsequently took suggestions from the
industry for his climate and energy policies.” He’s not exactly
saying that Bush caused Hurricane Katrina, but others out
there who are a little wackier are saying it, or blaming it on
Republicans in general.
Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance. He more or less
blamed Mississippi’s Republican Governor Haley Barbour for
the Katrina-induced devastation of that state: “Now we are all
learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel
dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged.”
That statement is only slightly less crazy than if Pat Robertson
were to say that Katrina was sent by God to destroy New
Orleans because of its blatant hedonism.
Even Cindy Sheehan desperately got in on the act as she saw
her time in the spotlight fading fast in the wake of wall-to-wall
Katrina coverage. She declared in her inimitable style that
Bush was “heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his
environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.” If
you thought Bush Derangement Syndrome was in its advanced
stages in those afflicted by it, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
What we’re supposed to believe is that if only enviro-
friendly Democrats were running things, something would be
done to stop global warming, and poof, no more weather
extremes like Katrina. Funny thing is, the rise of the much
maligned SUV to become America’s favorite gas-guzzling
vehicle occurred during the go-go years of the Clinton/Gore
administration. Apparently, not enough of the voters who
supported that ticket read Gore’s scarifying environmental
opus “Earth In The Balance,” or if they did, it wasn’t scarifying
enough to convince them to be better stewards of the planet.
Sure, they were recycling newspapers and aluminum cans
like there was no tomorrow because it was easy and didn’t
require any major lifestyle changes. But take a pass on
luxurious land yachts just because they only got 12 miles to the
gallon? Perish the thought.
And then there’s the Kyoto Protocol that’s always thrown up
as the planet’s salvation from global warming. There’s another
funny thing. In 1997, during that same Clinton/Gore
administration, when copies of “Earth In The Balance” were
being snatched up by oh-so-progressive recycling and SUV-
driving soccer moms, Kyoto was voted down by the U.S. Senate
by a starkly unanimous vote of 95-0. Not one single Democrat
voted for it. Why? Because China, the world’s second largest
emitter of greenhouse gases, and India, another country of a
billion people with a burgeoning economy, were completely
exempted.
As for what to do to save the planet, Gelbspan has a pretty
Draconian prescription: “To allow the climate to stabilize
requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent.
That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest
commercial enterprises in history.”
Seventy percent? What does Gelbspan want us to do, go
back to the Bronze Age? If we reduce our use of fossil fuels by
70 percent anytime soon without alternative fuels to take their
place, we can kiss the global economy, not to mention
modernity, goodbye. We can’t just replace it all with
windmills, solar panels and ethanol. Environmentalists are
opposed to nuclear power, and fusion, the great hope of the
future, is decades or longer away. So what does he expect us to
do?
But who knows if the planet even needs saving? You can
believe the worst case global warming predictions if you want
to, which are all based on computer models projecting events
years and decades into the future. But most of us are skeptical
of a weather forecast two or more days out, and for good reason.
Whatever the facts about global warming turn out to be,
mankind will adapt just as he always has. And when the day
comes that a significant breakthrough occurs in some
alternative energy source, forget about Gelbspan’s rhetoric
about “the largest commercial enterprises in history.” The
bogeymen of big coal and big oil won’t be able to stop progress
any more than the bogeymen of, say, big rail were able to stop
the trucking or the airline industries.