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H. Katrina & global warming
The hurricane that struck Louisiana on the 29th Aug. '05 was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. How cute!
Its real name is global warming.
When storms shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was 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.
When the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received heavy rains - killing 1,000 
people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others - the villain was global warming.
When a lethal heat wave in Arizona killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was... you got it... global warming.
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures (30oC) in the Gulf of Mexico.
Even when such a hurrican hits the country responsible for most pollution on our dear planet, the rich (major polluters) were able to flee to safety and the poor (mostly African Americans) were left behind since they can't afford a car and therefore had to squeeze inside some stadium and hope to survive.
At least the rich have their villas and yards destroyed!!! But those hit hardest are as always the poor!
Unfortunately, very 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 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.
Come on people, wake up!
In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.
In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when the most 'disliked' man in the world, President George W. Bush, was elected president - and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies. Their stupid climate policies have impacts around the world - they kill people around the world. How democratic is that?? The most hated man in the world is the president of the most powerful nation on this planet. (a little sidenote for those patriotic Americans out there: Don't be too proud of that fact - many people around the world have/had to pay a heavy price for your position in the world and sooner or later your policies will hit you back! To a certain extend the same can be said about European countries regarding the crap they do in Africa. Anyway...)
As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.
Against this background, the ignorance of the American public (not just them - but especially them!) about global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.
When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.
For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.
Today, with the science having become even more robust - and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico - the press bears a share of the guilt together with the oil and coal indusries and last but not least the consumers themself for the destruction caused by the changing climate.
And the game has only begun, there is way more to come!!
"When ignorance reigns life is lo$t!" - RATM
~peace~
PS: The news are flooded with reports from the US coast, while there are hundreds of thousands starving to death right now in Niger and neighbouring countries due to the famine caused by a drought period and the following inaction by rich nations around the globe despite UN alerts. The media doesn't seem to focus on that anymore, since apparently much more 'important' news has to be covered.
