By Ross Gelbspan
Published: Wednesday, August 31, 2005BOSTON — The hurricane that struck Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
The US hasn’t had a major hurricane since 2005, the longest such period in history.
When the year began with a 2-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.
This year, global warming was the reason it didn’t snow in Los Angeles.
When winds of 124 miles an hour shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and Britain, the driver was global warming.
They never used to have wind in those places
When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.
The floods on the Missouri last year were also caused by global warming
In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.
The recovery since then was also due to global warming
When a lethal heat wave in Arizona killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.
Hot in Arizona? Unheard of.
And when the Indian city of Mumbai received 37 inches of rain in one day – killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others – the villain was global warming.
Rain in India during the monsoons? Unheard of
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more intense downpours, more frequent heat waves, and more severe storms.
More humidity causes it to rain less.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off southern Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
The 1900 hurricane which wiped out Galveston never found the missing heat.
The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.
The consequences of stupidity are indeed heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
The global Accumulated Cyclone Energy index is the lowest on record.
The reason is simple: 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.
We should destroy civilization in order to make incredibly stupid people like the author feel better for a few minutes.