Exploiting Katrina

The Ancient Chinese believed that natural disasters have an impact on political life. Seeing the devastation caused by Katrina, it’s not hard to imagine how. But we are now seeing the proliferation of the opposite view. Many have truly reached record levels of ignorance in blaming a natural disaster on the political actions of one man, or a few men. They are the new obscurantists, armed with “science” as their new religion. It’s a “science” for which they can produce no evidence. To their minds, a divinised Nature is upset, and it will require nothing short of the sacrificial slaying of western industrial economies in order to pacify it. These folks are numerous, a large number of them have university degrees, they vote, and they would love to be in charge of us all.

See James Glassman on the absurdity of blaming Katrina on Kyoto.

Indeed, there is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying anyway. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: “Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.”

Yes, decreased.

Not only has the intensity of hurricanes fallen, but, as George H. Taylor, the state climatologist of Oregon has pointed out, so has the frequency of hailstorms in the U.S. (see Changnon and Changnon) and cyclones throughout the world (Gulev, et al.).

But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit.

Related:
Bobby Kennedy Jr. suffers from the same distorting disease. Bobby is not reading the NYT any more, and if he is, he’s not getting it.

Mark in Mexico has an excellent inventory of much of the political silliness assigning blame for the Hurricane.

Cross posted from Civitatensis