Okay, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, here are some views from conservative media. Please continue to keep in mind that September is Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month.

CLANG! And In This Corner…

From the same Fox News article referenced yesterday, writer Steven Milloy says, “While hurricane Katrina was very bad weather, that is a long way from casually linking her with human activity. Global warmers may dispute that, but they’ll need more than naked assertions and junk science to make a case.” Maybe someone should have mentioned the above Emanuel/MIT study (from yesterday’s blog article) to Fox?

Time Magazine comes out on the environmentally conservative side in an excerpt from this article:

‘One thing’s for sure: hurricanes were around a long, long time before human beings began chopping down rainforests and fouling the atmosphere. To get such a tempest going, you don’t need much more than ocean temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit; a cool, wet atmosphere above and a warm, wet one near the surface; and a preexisting weather disturbance with a bit of spin to it far enough from the equator (at least 300 miles) so that the rotation of the Earth amplifies the rotation of the storm. The more intense the storm becomes, the more the temperature of its core climbs, accelerating the spin, exacerbating the storm, and leading to the meteorological violence we call a hurricane. And violent it can be: The heat released in an average hurricane can equal the electricity produced by the U.S. in a single year.’

Makes sense.

A Sept., 2004 article from CNS News.com (I’m afraid to think of who sponsors CNS News.) says According to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization, “Reliable data … since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.”

An article by James Turanto, Myths of Hurricane Katrina, mentions—no wait…spits and seethes—with “A measure of the anti-Bush Left’s derangement is that it blames [President Bush] for bad weather.” (Yeah, Jim. Liberals are scrambling for their HAARP Project references as we speak, just so we can blame the President for the weather.) Nonetheless, open-minded blogger that I am, I continued reading. Most of what I read struck me as the ranting of a madman, until I got to “The American people seem to be taking a fair-minded view of all this. An ABC News poll…found that 55% of Americans didn’t blame the President for Katrina’s devastation.” As an adie, Democrats are also American. Or did I miss another memo?

Lastly, we have James K. Glassman, author of Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation. Once one gets past the ‘disgusting’ reference in the headline, he actually makes some good points, in fact supporting one of my own, above…

‘Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.’ (Also as an aside: ‘Enviro-predator’ in relation to JFK, Jr.? That sort of pomposity, arrogance, and unprofessionalism makes me hate myself for agreeing with Republicans which, believe it or not, I often do. Where’s crazy-eyed, screaming, Presidential Candidate-on-steroids Howard Dean when you need him?)

Bottom Line

Eloquently stated by the conservative Die Welt, ‘…despite the terrible images broadcast, we should not get hysterical about the environmental implications of the hurricane or start screaming for change. After all, it says, “hurricanes are a natural phenomenon. They occurred long before humans could be affected by them. Whether the frequency and intensity of these storms has truly increased in recent years has not yet been proven with statistics.” Whether humans have aversely affected the Earth’s climate or not, the paper says, one thing is clear “we have modern technology to thank that Katrina was not able to do more damage.” Indeed, thanks to early warning systems, the people of New Orleans were evacuated before the storm hit. “One hundred years ago, a tropical storm as strong as Katrina would likely have caused many deaths, because it would have hit people unawares.” Now, says the paper, we should be grateful technology allows us to save so many lives.’