Hurricane!

It has been reported that Gore is putting in solar panels at his mansion and other such greening has been going on, but let’s be honest–Gore has been making this argument for more than 20 years (Barnett says he’s been making it for 6 years. If you count Earth in the Balance as well as previous presentations he’s made, you’ll find it is much more than 6). If he’s known about global warming and the harm to the environment from CO2 and from greenhouse gases, one has to wonder why he didn’t put more effort into greening his own life sooner.

Example 2: Hurricane Isabel hit Anne Arundel County, downtown Annapolis was flooded. Large portions of the county were flooded. Some of the properties sustained so much flood damage that they had to be destroyed and get rebuilt. Who paid for it? The insurance companies and the owners. When you go to buy some of those properties, the insurance rates will be very high.

In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. One month later, approximately 2.5 million Houston area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This event marked the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States.

Pretty darn incredible. I remember our 11 days without power after Hurricane Wilma in 2005, 15 years is beyond my imagination. One good question remains from the above article- If her neighbors and the code inspectors never knew about the violations or her lack of electricity, where was this woman getting her power via the extension cords?

Like all the scam websites that went up after 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, these bins put things in perspective for me. I’m as interested as the next guy in getting rich, but if I don’t honestly believe my work is making the world a better place, then it’s not worth doing.

AP is boasting about how global warming and El Niño made for the warmest January ever last month.

I don’t believe the world is spiraling towards a cataclysmic end in the next hundred years as Al Gore would believe. I think the Doomsday Vault (a vault that contains every seed to every plant known to man), while a good idea, is just another element adding to the hysteria that is “global warming”. I am not a meteorologist or a climate expert, but after reviewing many of the editorials and television specials produced by the opposing sides of the debate, I am under the firm belief that the Earth is an ever changing ecosystem and that many scientists are basing their “findings” on the short-term rather than the long-term.

Weird weather here lately in general. I guess it's an El Nino year. I am not looking forward to hurricane season this year, although we were very lucky and stayed home during Hurricane Charley and the other 4 that passed through here (with the exception of Wilma). It is really a scary thing this weather pattern. If anyone still thinks there's no such thing as global warming, go out to the bookstore and buy Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth and just look at the photos of places all over the globe comparing the coastlines and geographical areas from 20, 30 or 40 years ago and now. The difference is eye opening.

The Wall Street Journal reports that new research into melting glaciers and the Antarctic ice cap came to late to make it into the IPCC report. According to the Journal (subscrition required):

2. It takes 10 trees to process the CO2 that a human being produces, if you haven’t planted a tree you’re using some other person’s trees. So go plant a tree.

As of this writing I'm propably about 9 days from the final actions that will make the purchase of the new home final. Although there is allot of work that will be needed, I hope it will go smoothly and quickly. This will replace the home I lost through 2005's tragic hurricane season. It's been almost a year and a half, yet the rebuilding proccess is still going on for most folks, including us here. Once the sale is final it will be a free and clear title I own and will have plenty of space to 'set up shop'.