Not Our America?

If the images of skyscrapers collapsed in heaps of ash were the end of one story—the United States safe on its isolated continent from the turmoil of the world—then the picture of the sodden Superdome with its peeling roof marks the beginning of the next story, the one that will dominate our politics in the coming decades of this century: America befuddled about how to cope with a planet suddenly turned unstable and unpredictable.

Just tell the relative that we all watched the flood victims, hoping they would soon be helped. But the Governor kept out the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the National Guard, and the Feds. So the help they needed never came. Also, ask your relative why we never have these relief problems in other States.

But a month before Katrina hit, MIT hurricane specialist Kerry Emmanuel published a landmark paper in the British science magazine Nature showing that tropical storms were now lasting half again as long and spinning winds 50 percent more powerful than just a few decades before. The only plausible cause: the ever-warmer tropical seas on which these storms thrive. Katrina, a Category 1 storm when it crossed Florida, roared to full life in the abnormally hot water of the Gulf of Mexico.

This line of thinking makes no sense. If hurricane activity has anything to do with "global warming," then why is it that hurricanes were less frequent and less severe in every decade from the 1960s to the 1990s than they had been in the 1950s? Were atmospheric pollutant levels lower in, say, 1985 than they were in 1955?

. . . Haley Barbour, who in an earlier incarnation as a GOP power broker and energy lobbyist helped persuade President Bush to renege on his promise to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

The Bush administration refused to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant because it's not a pollutant. It is, in fact, part of the normal respiratory process for human beings, the animal kingdom, and for plants. Having CO₂ classified as a pollutant was nothing more than a key element of the radical, totalitarian environmentalist agenda -- which wants to turn some guy breathing in his sleep into an environmental threat no different than a factory smokestack.

"Got this from a lefty relative. I need ammo for future rebuttals."

You don't need rebuttals. Instead your relative (and for your sake I hope he is not blood) is in need of a prescription drug coverage plan, and soon. This planet has experienced hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes and more since the beginning of recorded history. If the criteria for the coming of Domesday is measured by the peeling roof of the Superdome, we are all in serious trouble. Said relative needs to get a grip on reality.

If hurricane activity has anything to do with "global warming," then why is it that hurricanes were less frequent and less severe in every decade from the 1960s to the 1990s than they had been in the 1950s? Were atmospheric pollutant levels lower in, say, 1985 than they were in 1955?

All of the good questions.

I also heard a hurricane expert say there is no increase in global cyclone activities. There is only a temporary increase in Atlantic cyclones (hurricanes), but cyclones originating in other places have not increased at all.

Does the global warming only affects the Atlantic area?

In other words, there might be a global cycle that increases cyclone activity on one area and decreases cyclone activity in another area.

Soon after Katrina made landfall I made the observation that the biggest factor in the increased destruction from these hurricanes in the last couple of years has been the fact that these recent hurricanes have made landfall in more heavily populated areas than they used to. While Katrina will go down as the most destructive hurricane in the history of the U.S., it's also worth noting that a place like the Outer Banks of North Carolina -- which usually gets hit by hurricanes with such boring regularity that it barely even makes the news -- has been strangely quiet for the last few years.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.