Katarina and global warming!

I have ranted about how global warming has a serious role to play in some of the recent natural disasters (all the way from Katarina to the very severe monsoons in the sub-continent) and if you look at how much more severe and frequent weather events are becoming the world over, and link that witht the predictions of global warming (gw), clearly it would not be fair to meet out the treatment that was given to Trittin, the German environmental minister for his statements. I am very glad that he was brave enough to make his point and that the New Yorker has backed him up.

I don't even see how the statements are insensitive. He did not blame the poor people who are suffering and are indeed the people who are paying for years of bad energy policies and an irresponsible approach to the Kyoto protocol. He is simply blaming an administration that has even acknowledged its incompetence in dealing with Katarina and has an ambiguous and contradictory stance on global warming (all the way fron "don't believe in gw" (no puns here!) to the Kyoto protocol being "unsuitable")... and rightly so.

Environmentalists have been screaming themselves hoarse for a while and have gotten a reputation for being doomsday soothsayers. Now when doomsday strikes and world weather patterns are increasingly going the way the predictions of global warming are, they are made to look "insensitive" if they merely point out that they had warned before. But then all those warnings only showed world maps with Bangladesh drowned... not New Orleans!!!

You might also be interested in reading this article about the ruining of the wetlands in Mississippi. Horrid!