Hurricane!

The countries that find solutions to climate change first stand to make the most money.

That to me is the most damaging myth. The reason I believe that is that while we are ignoring global warming other countries are recognizing the problems, coming up with solutions and making the money.

MIT reports on coal power and its impact on climate change.

MIT also reports that neither China nor India, two countries which are agressively pushing new coal-fired powered plants, are likely to take any actions without the United States moving to curtain carbon emissions first. Eventually, carbon capture from coal burning will be crucial for both China and India if climate change is to be addressed.

From a list of climate change misconceptions, number 3.

Misconception 3 Global warming is linked to ozone depletion: This is only tangentally true. While they are both caused by pollution, they are caused by different types of pollution. Ozone depletion is mainly caused by CFC production and other reactive chemicals, whereas global warming is caused by heat trapping gasses such as CO2 and CH4 (carbon dioxide and methane for the chemically challenged).

A look at fundamentalism and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Recall that, following the Christmas tsunami of 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Jewish and Christian clerics rushed forward to blame those events on abortion, gays, secularism — all of modernism.

It's easy to find reasons to ignore global warming.

Listening to some program about how global warming doesn’t exist. I’m not sure whether I care really - surely it can’t be wise to continue the way we are going using everything up, whether we are making the world warmer or not? So glad that I have Tim to talk to - I just bumbled my way through a sentence that was meant to mean “just because the climate is always changing doesn’t mean we aren’t having an effect”. Hm, not sure that makes much more sense written down. I don’t seem to be overly coherent tonight.

Scientists have reach concensus, but the press still presents both sides of the Global Warming debate.

Of course the argument regarding “global warming” is settled. So what is the National Geographic doing printing information which could lead some of the eco-religious faithful away from the flock? Perhaps they have not yet gotten Al Gore’s memo to cease further discussion of reasons other than human industrial activity to account for global warming.

A look at an new study on hurricanes and heat.

The big problem with much of the discussions about trends in hurricane activity is that the databases that everyone is working from are known to have significant inhomogeneities due to changes in observing practice and technology over the years. So it's not surprising that a new re-analysis (Kossin et al, published yesterday) has been generating significant interest and controversy among the hurricane research community (see e.g. Prometheus or Chris Mooney). However, rather than this study being taken for what it is - a preliminary and useful attempt to make homogeneous a part of the data (1983 to 2005) - it is unfortunately being treated as if it was the definitive last word.

A few more trips to New Orleans, and maybe the 2005 hurricane season will come to an end.

President Bush is planning a swing through the Gulf Coast hurricane disaster zone Thursday, his 12th visit since the 2005 hurricanes devastated the region.