Boston Globe: Katrina's Real Name

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Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:57:57 -0700

Katrina's Real Name: Global Warming By Boston Globe

 

 

 

Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe

 

 

 

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. "

 

© 2005 Boston Globe

 

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