Climate Science

While I admit relief that many in the major media finally shed their blinders in the Katrina aftermath, one element of the story is still under-reported.

Hurricanes, very simply put, are caused by air masses passing over heated bodies of water. Since the science of studying these storms was in its infancy, it's been a given that when ocean temperature increases, both hurricane frequency and intensity likewise increase.

Climate science, or climatology, is not a matter of reading tea leaves these days. It's not a belief system, rather it's the result of decades of research, analysis of voluminous data, and hypothesis put to the test of the scientific method, greatly aided in recent years by computer modeling of the many factors which go into creating the climate of this planet.

Based on all this, the vast majority of climatologists have been convinced for some time that Global Warming is a fact, not science fiction or conjecture. But in this country their warnings have been effectively shouted down. Click here for the typically shady mess from the point of view of a real climatologist.

There's no way burning millions of barrels of oil every day can harm the atmosphere, can it? (Insert Dubya smirking here.)

The sad fact is that the efforts on behalf of business profit are winning out over the bare-bones welfare of the rest of us. Average Joe thinks that Global Warming is hokum, at best a remote possibility that doesn't affect him or his family. Besides, who cares if it gets a little warmer? He sees no connection between Katrina and decades of pollution and the hole in that ozone thing, no connection between a warming ocean and New Orleans under water.

Average Joe still hasn't caught on that he's in far more danger from Mother Nature and those who mess with her than from a terrorist in a cave on the other side of the world.

How many Katrinas will it take before the blinders are blown away?