Disasters bring nuts to full bloom

Lacking scientific backing doesn't seem to prevent many commentators from seizing on untestable, religious or paraphysical reasons for this past year's devastating natural events

Two devastating natural disasters in eight months have been too much to bear for a large number of commentators, who have managed to find both solace and heartfelt smugness in the indubitable righteousness that the Asian tsunami and the New Orleans hurricane were performed for them. Katrina was ``the fist of God,'' or maybe ``the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence,'' or, no, it was ``payback of this racist, white supremacist American culture''. The tsunami was equally clearly and unequivocally created by ``the Wall Street bankers desperately looking for other ways to control our world'' or to punish Phuket's ``fornicators and corrupt people''. Or maybe it was global warming.

Forget about how hurricanes are formed, with warm water, moist air and converging equatorial winds. Forget how tsunamis result from the splash of a falling mountain or surge of an underground earthquake. That's science stuff. It doesn't apply. Now stuff happens because of God, the gods or The Cause.

These days, unlike in the previous five billion years, hurricanes and killers waves are living phenomena, and there is nothing natural about them. They have a purpose, and that purpose, put simply, is to punish people. They also are human made.

Of course, the unhinged and semi-professional ranters have emerged to bask in their allotted 15 minutes, but how is one to tell, say, a conspiracy nutcase, as they call them down there in Australia, from a temporarily unreputable analyst, when both are spewing nonsense?

Conspiracy theorist Joe Vialls _ literally, that is what he did after he retired from England to Perth in 1992, theorise conspiracies, until he supposedly died six weeks ago, but they would say that, wouldn't they? _ knew ``they'' carried out the tsunami crime. Clearly, ``the tsunami was man-made, [and] we are unquestionably looking at the biggest single war crime in global history''.

So what do we make of the respected and frequently cited news agency AFP, which fairly headlined one of its reports on the day of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in Louisiana, ``Scientists say global warming pumping up power of Atlantic storms.''

In 600 words of baldly stated faith backed by tripe and mush, the agency quoted a total of one scientist willing to opine on the agency's controversial claim. This is what the single scientist actually quoted in the story said:

``[Atlantic] cyclones have been increasing in numbers since 1995, but one can't say with certainty that there is a link to global warming,'' says Patrick Galois with the French weather service Meteo-France.

Global warming got a lot of face time after Hurricane Katrina, sometimes from credible sources, this newspaper included. Elsewhere, however, Robert F. Kennedy Jr baldly wrote: ``The science is clear ... that the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.''

While the bodies in New Orleans were still warm, the German environment minister and former Maoist gang member Jurgen Trittin, out on the anti-American election campaign trail, explained that it was all because of President George W. Bush, certainly not the ``many Americans [who] have long been unwilling to follow the presidents errant environmental policy''.

If the United States had only signed the Kyoto Treaty, this wouldn't have happened.

Mr Trittin forgot to mention the recent earthquakes and last year's tornado in his native Bavaria. Presumably those are natural disasters, unlike the US hurricanes. At least he didn't blame Halliburton.

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth in Britain said of Katrina: ``Yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions.'' And the startling Naomi Oreskes, a history professor at the University of California, used up her 15 minutes with an article and a radio interview where she said the tsunami ``highlights the need to take action on global warming'' _ the tsunami!

Science is clear, as Mr Kennedy says, but until today in the opposite direction, which is presumably the reason none of the contented commentators is, or cites, a scientist. There is no increase, either in hurricanes or their destructive force. As the National Hurricane Centre in the US has reported over 155 years, the annual number of hurricanes has been constant during this short time span, and the number of huge, destructive storms like Katrina has actually fallen over the past several decades.

The lack of scientific backing may account for the huge number of commentators who prefer untestable, religious or paraphysical reasons for why natural disasters happen.

Physorg.com, an extremist environmental website, and the Rupert Murdoch news chain in Australia both loved a story, also from AFP in Paris _ where there may be something in the water we should be told about _ which said: ``Twice in eight months, nature has given man a brutal lesson about the cost of disrespect.''

The humans dunnit. How stunningly obvious. If they hadn't been there, they wouldn't have been killed. Let us give more respect to Mother Gaia or she will, well, kill us.

Throw another virgin on the volcano to appease the Earth goddess. Nervy people don't just believe this, but pretend it is scientific. They call it ``Gaia Theory: Science of the Living Earth''.

But the majority of nutcases _ Australian is such a beautiful language _ are beatifically if sacrilegiously content that the singular God of the great religions has finally come around to their side of seeing things.

After all, in 1998 leading American nutter Pat Robertson explained that hurricanes would flatten communities that offended God. And around the world his word (Robertson's, not God's) has proved true for some.

The Christian Montana News Association, which runs five radio stations and a website under the single slogan, ``Your source for the GOOD NEWS!'' printed the GOOD NEWS that: ``Many believe this is just the first of strong judgments coming upon America for its disobedience.''

Evangelical Americans like these specifically blamed the US support for the Israeli disengagement from the West Bank, ``endangering the land and people of Israel''.

``Is it a coincidence,'' a preacher asks, presumably rhetorically, ``that the early formation of this storm occurred about the same time as ... pictures on your television screen of Israeli soldiers were dragging Jewish settlers from their homes?''

Doofusness knows no religious bounds. Tony Muhammad of the Nation of Islam said ``Katrina is a sister [black woman] avenging racism in America. Al-Qaeda chatrooms dubbed her ``Private Katrina'' for the attack that helps to bring down America.

Compare the alleged professor Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan of the alleged Saudi Arabian Al-Imam University on the tsunami: ``The fact that it happened at this particular time [Christmas] is a sign from Allah.'' Phuket, after all, is where ``people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion''.

Still it couldn't be any worse than him or her studying law and diplomacy under ``Professor'' W. Scott Thompson, formerly of Tufts University, respected with a column in the Los Angeles Times to say it probably was no mistake the tsunami hit hard at two civil war zones, in Aceh and Sri Lanka.

Robin Harger doesn't influence young minds directly. He is ``a retired UN official with 15 years experience in Southeast Asia'' according to Egypt's well-read Al Ahram Weekly which respected his views by printing them. He noted that the US hatched a plot ``to `pay back' nations which had refused to back its latest venture in Iraq'' by refusing to notify them the tsunami was on the way. That would include Thailand, which supported America with troops.

The leftist Nation magazine (no relation to any newspaper with a similar name) explained over the weekend that Katrina was caused by Big Oil. ``How convenient for the oil industry that Hurricane Katrina hit just before the traditional Labour Day-weekend hike in gas prices.'' How could we have been so blind?

No wait, this just in, and happily the best for last at that, ultimately crazy, and unpleasant to boot: Homosexuals did it. Repent America has discovered God destroyed New Orleans because the city planned to hold a gay festival this holiday weekend. Michael Marcavage is sorry, but, well, ``New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin.''

Mr. Dawson is a very long time Thai resident, originally from America. He is generally conservative and well reasoned. I do not know him but he was a frequent poster on soc.culture.thai before that news group devolved into a sex story, why your Thai wife is rotten, flame site.

Remind the pundits and anyone else you want to that "For Every Action, There Is An Equal And Opposite Reaction." Countries can't go bombing the earth without the reverberations showing up somewhere. Underground bomb testing sends shock waves deep into the liquid core of the earth. 500 pound bombs that rattled Iraq sent shock waves deep into the earth's core.

Mother Earth's paybacks are earthquakes, tsunamis, red tide, changes in ocean temperatures, and the like.

It's time that people stop trying to play the 'victim' and stop trying to place blame for everything that happens to them. Each person is responsible for his own responses and reactions.

We are not victims of our choices. We are choosers of our choices. A lot of people in the USofA need to "get over it" and "grow up."

3 posted on 09/04/2005 8:14:07 PM PDT by HighlyOpinionated (Pray for the families of those impacted by hurricane Katrina. And pray for Shalom in Israel.)

In 1967, another hurricane named Katrina threatened Los Angeles, which hasn't had a hurricane since a category 1 storm blasted through in 1939. However, the Katrina of 1967 turned east and smashed into San Filipe, Mexico.

It seems that everyone will invoke their god to explain the horrific power of nature. What was it that Abe Lincoln said? Something about two opposing sides praying to God and believing that their side was the the one favored by Him? This seems to be along that same line with the attendant variations on the theme. The enviros have their earth-goddess-bitch-mother (Ok. The femi-enviros.) spanking man for dissing her and giving her gas. The islamo-facists will take any disaster as a sign of allah's will. Christians seem to forget one of the rules about not knowing the mind of God then spout off about knowing the mind of God. Well, to paraphrase Abe's observation, they all can't be right.

Underground bomb testing sends shock waves deep into the liquid core of the earth. 500 pound bombs that rattled Iraq sent shock waves deep into the earth's core.

Yeah right, that's why there were so many horrific natural disasters during the 50s and 60s when they were testing atomic weapons. /sarcasm

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