Posted on 09/22/2005 7:23:53 PM PDT by Crackingham
A leading British scientist said on Friday the growing ferocity of hurricanes hitting the United States was very probably caused by global warming and criticised what he termed U.S. climate loonies over the issue. Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution which advises the government, made what the Independent newspaper said was a thinly disguised attack on the stance of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration.
"The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming," Lawton told the newspaper in an interview.
"If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation," said Lawton.
Less than a month after Hurricane Katrina devastated large areas of the U.S. Gulf coast, a new hurricane called Rita was roaring through the Gulf of Mexico towards the centre of the U.S. oil industry.
Climate change policies sharply divide Bush from many other world leaders who have signed up for caps on emissions of greenhouse gases under the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations from a first round of caps to 2012. In July this year, Bush launched a six-nation plan to combat climate change with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea focused on a shift to cleaner energy technology. Unlike Kyoto, it stops short of setting caps on emissions.
Asked what conclusion the Bush administration should draw from two powerful hurricanes hitting the United States in quick succession, Lawton said:
"If what looks like is going to be a horrible mess causes the extreme sceptics about climate change in the U.S. to reconsider their opinion, that would be an extremely valuable outcome.
"There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."
Lawton said hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea.
"Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun," he said.
"It's a fair conclusion to draw that global warming, caused to a substantial extent by people, is driving increased sea surface temperatures and increasing the violence of hurricanes."
How does he know? Prior to the 1950's, we didn't even name storms and because of the lack of sophisticated satelites, hurricane hunter aircraft, and recording bouys, we lacked the ability to track and measure storms until they made landfall and even then, the records and blogs were unreliable by today's standards.
They want us to live in caves.
Dubious. But there was a report from a German research center that indicated there has been increased solar activity over the years. Now that would make the Earth warm.
(exerpt)
Now climatologists say frenzied hurricane seasons will be a fact of life for the next 10 to 20 years, part of a lengthy cycle of stormy eras followed by calmer ones.
The engine driving these cycles is called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO. Scientists say it has triggered drought in the western United States while spawning hurricanes in the Atlantic.
At a time when some are theorizing that global warming may be the reason for more intense hurricane seasons, climatologists say the AMO is the real culprit.
Thanks for the link. I have been looking for it.
I can be a volcano God Where dim virgins at?
I believe I see the Globaal warming porthole in full operation
The total is now 11. The point, as you know, is that the trend has been lower for decades and hasnt come close to WWII-era levels. And no one argues that global warming was an issue back then. Their argument simply does not hold water (no pun intended).
"There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."
So what? Then your country and the whole world can go by the Kyoto accords without the US holding your hand?
Commit economic suicide. Who's stopping ya?
Losers....
Gotta build 300 nuke plants, ponto!
So let us sign Kyoto protocol while China continues to dump it's waste in their rivers and streams!!
That will solve everything Mr. Brown teeth!!
Hurricanes are caused by all the jet fuel spewed into the atmosphere by scientists (and politicians) flying to environmental conferences.
Except they know exactly what they're doing. It reminds me of Kim Jong 'Mentally" Il's strategy of keeping the home folks emotionally stirred-up over a looming phony American invasion of NK. Global Warming pours millions into liberal fund-raising coffers and is a neat technique for stampeding the stupid into supporting very bad socialist legislation.
Pseudo science crap.
| However, this brings up an interesting twist: Assume that for some strange reason, greenhouse gasses actually reduced hurricane strength. Would the same people be arguing that we should increase emissions to help save the gulf coast from hurricanes? |
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