Imagethief

This September might have a different feel. The mood will most likely be lots of hand wringing about the oil prices, Iraqi constitutions & the Sunni, aviation price shocks etc. mOre n1pp1e write ups please, even if Imagethief needs puts a PR spin to it... Sept is turning out to be a real morbid month.
:-(

Speaking of PR Hell, on top of all of America's other problems with its image internationally, it looks like the current admisistration is directly responsible for the Hurricane that devestated the gulf coast. Just ask the Germans!

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372179,00.html

Now, I'm no fan of the current administration or its policies, but last I checked, big nasty hurricanes were ravaging coastlines long before there were Humans, much less Americans, maliciously altering the environment.

I am sure American environmentalists wil be saying the same thing.

Two things come to my mind: The relationship between hurricanes and global warming is statistical. No individual storm can be blamed on global warming, or certainly on changes so recent that they can be ascribed to the actions of one administration (and it pains me to defend the Bush administration, so I'll attack them in a moment).

But the underlying science suggesting that a rise in average global temperatures would lead to more extreme weather conditions (including hurricanes) seems sound, as does the link between greenhouse gasses and, well, rising average global temperaturs.

So, while the current administration can't be blamed for a situation 100 years in the making, it might credibly be blamed for dismissing the entire idea of global warming as acceptance of that idea is hostile to its patrons in the energy industry, thus preventing us seeking any useful resolution to a problem that is genuine and growing.

How much ice has to melt, how bad does drought in Europe have to get, how big does a hurricane have to be before we begin to ask ourselves what the further consequences of our dependence upon fossil fuels might be? The US is world's largest consumer, by far. If we're not guilty by action, we might well be guilty by inaction.

Of course, the Germans are also automobile infatuated and all too happy to sell us gas-hogging Mercedes M-Classes, Volkswagen Tuaregs and BMW 7-series cars, so they should either refuse to sell automobiles to America, or shut up.

Will, you mention above that "The relationship between hurricanes and global warming is statistical."

Funny things about statistics, they don't always live up to assumptions.

The link below is to a chart put out by the National Weather Service, which, I think we can agree, it not a partisan organization.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

According to these figures, the numbers of Category 3, 4 & 5 hurricanes have been in steady decline since the 1950's.

Is the United States contributing to the destruction of the environment? Probably so. Is their statistical evidence that US environmental policy has lead to an increase in severe hurricanes? Evidently not.

If there is blame to be heaped on the Bush administration for this tragedy, it would be better placed on his cutting of New Orleans flood control funding by 44% since 2001 (gotta pay for those wars) and for turning much of the city's surrounding wetlands (each 2 miles of which reduce a flood surge by half a foot) over to developers.

Good call. I found a separate data set on incidence of all named storms in the Atlantic Basic from 1945 to 1996 and it is broadly stable with a slight declining trend.

The data I was looking at was here if anyone wants to look:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/meteorology/storms-faq/part1/

I put it into Excel to see the trends. A bit voodoo (criteria may have changed, etc.), but nothing to contradict Dave.

Thanks for keeping me honest on the stats!