In a Sense, we Are All Climatologists

A few days ago on this site I wrote that when some disaster strikes, some ass writes to his local paper and says, "In a sense we are all guilty."

Well, the terrible hurricane has struck Mississippi and Louisiana and the message has struck again. Only this time, it is coated with junk science. This time the ass or one just like him, is saying, "Why, if only we had signed the Kyoto Treaty, this might not have happened" (and since we didn't, we are all responsible for the terrible storm).

Nothing is more seductive than junk science. We should remember two things, though. One is that there have been very bad storms in the Gulf Coast long before there was much man-made thermal activity in the world. A climatological scientist on TV said today there is no known connection between "global warming" and the recent storm.

The second thing to remember is that a correlation between warm water and the strength of storms is very slight. The same climatologist said there was a ten per cent correlation. That means the strength of storms is ninety per cent related to other factors.

Another scientist said that if global warming resulted in melting glaciers, that would cool water, not warm it. I don't know about that.

But what I do know is that there no one surer of these things than newspaper writers. But climatologists? Well, that is another matter.

Maybe, "In a sense we are all climatologists ."

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