Thursday, September 01, 2005
MANY IDIOTS NAMED
Spiegel Online’s Claus Christian Malzahn has had enough of his country’s sickening anti-Americanism:
Apparently the Americans had it coming: “The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina—in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures—can visit on his country.” Who wrote this? None other than Jürgen Trittin, Germany’s minister of the environment.
At a moment when the dead on the Gulf Coast are still being counted, the German minister of the environment could think of nothing better to do than—in an essay published Tuesday in the center-left daily Frankfurter Rundschau—to blame the US itself for the catastrophe. The piece is 493 words long, and not a single one of them is wasted to express any sort of sympathy for the victims of the storm. The worst of it is that Trittin isn’t alone with his cold, malicious tenor. The coverage from much of the German media tends in the same direction: If Bush had only listened to Uncle Trittin and signed the Kyoto Protocol, then this never would have happened.
Bullshit.
Trittin, of course, wasn’t alone in connecting Katrina to Kyoto. Here’s Gerard Baker in the Times:
Sir David King, Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser, weighed in, saying global warming was increasing the risk from hurricanes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, self-designated leader of the American environmentalist cause, said the US was reaping the failure to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol. And, of course, Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a US soldier who leads the antiwar campaign and any other left-wing cause that wants her, noted President Bush was “heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused”.
Best of all, though, was the contribution of Jon Snow, enthroned as the objective voice of British media at Channel 4 News, who chortled: “How ironic that the world’s No 1 polluter is now reaping the ‘rewards’ that so many have warned would flow.”
The only fitting response to that statement is a moment’s silence to reflect on the mendacity and inhumanity of it. But the problem with these claims is that, delivered ex cathedra to credulous audiences, they quickly become received wisdom, so we must take a moment to incinerate them.
There’s no evidence, in fact, of any increase in either the frequency or the intensity of hurricanes since Man has been polluting the atmosphere. The US National Hurricane Centre says that an average of 19 hurricanes hit the US landmass each decade in the second half of the 19th century. In the second half of the 20th century, the average was 14. In the first half of this decade, the US is precisely on course to meet the stable average frequency of the most serious hurricanes (Category 3, 4, and 5) of the past 100 years.
The religious aspect of the Green movement is never more obvious than in its assumption of cause for natural occurences. Gaia, she is vengeful! We must sacrifice our economies to her, lest she smite us!
UPDATE. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Hurricane Katrina’s fury has reignited the scientific debate over whether global warming might be making hurricanes more ferocious.
The scientific debate?
UPDATE II. Margok ingSton:
for soe reason AMericans name there tornados. This one was named Catrina. which is American for Global warming.
UPDATE III. Don Arthur has lots of useful donation and information links, particularly for Australian readers.