[mobglob-discuss] Fw: [trans-action] Re: Hurricanes and Climate Change - was Gasoline prices soar

[Paul Browning]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Eric Doherty 
To: trans-action at googlegroups.com 
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 10:55 AM
Subject: [trans-action] Re: Hurricanes and Climate Change - was Gasoline prices soar


The Boston Globe August 30, 2005 

Katrina's real name 

By Ross Gelbspan 

The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming. 

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming. 

When 124-mile-an-hour winds 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. 

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason 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 a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming. 

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others -- the villain was 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 in the Gulf of Mexico.The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying. 

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. 

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 President George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies. 

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 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 for our self-induced destruction with the oil and coal industries. 

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last winter -- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston. 
The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global warming. 

Ross Gelbspan is author of ''The Heat Is On" and ''Boiling Point." 




http://www.physorg.com/news5550.html 
Hurricanes growing fiercer with global warming 
August 01, 2005 


Hurricanes have grown significantly more powerful and destructive over the last three decades due in part to global warming, says an MIT professor who warns that this trend could continue. 

"My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in [hurricanes'] destructive potential, and--taking into account an increasing coastal population--a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the 21st century," reports Kerry Emanuel in a paper appearing in the July 31 online edition of the journal Nature. 

Emanuel is a professor of meteorology in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. 

Theories and computer simulations of climate indicate that warming should generate an increase in storm intensity. In other words, they should hit harder, produce higher winds and last longer. 

To explore that premise, Emanuel analyzed records of tropical cyclones--commonly called hurricanes or typhoons--since the middle of the 20th century. He found that the amount of energy released in these events in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. Both the duration of the cyclones and the largest wind speeds they produce have increased by about 50 percent over the past 50 years. 

He further reports that these increases in storm intensity are mirrored by increases in the average temperature at the surface of the tropical oceans, suggesting that this warming--some of which can be ascribed to global warming--is responsible for the greater power of the cyclones. 

According to Jay Fein, director of the National Science Foundation's climate dynamics program, which funded the research, Emanuel's work "has resulted in an important measure of the potential impact of hurricanes on social, economic and ecological systems. It's an innovative application of a theoretical concept, and has produced a new analysis of hurricanes' strength and destructive potential." 

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 



Tom Keats wrote: 
David Pritchard wrote:
  Analysts say Hurricane Katrina's aftermath resulting in an "evolving
energy crisis" sending oil, gasoline costs soaring

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050831.wgas0831/BNStory/National/

but, U.S. to release oil reserves:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050831.woilreserve0831/BNStory/Business/
    
I'm assuming those reserves will be put to U.S. domestic use.

So, @ 700 million barrels in reserve divided by 7.75 million barrels consumed by the U.S.
daily, that works out to about 3 months' worth.  I suppose international oil politics might
become interesting after that (as if they aren't already.)

Anyhow, if GHG emissions contribute to global warming, thereby affecting the Gulf Stream
and engendering more frequent and violent tropical storms & hurricanes, it would appear
some chickens are coming home to roost.

cheers,
	Tom

  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/mobglob-discuss/attachments/20050901/808c6fbf/attachment.html>