Is it politics of climate or to climate the politics?

The end of November is the end of Hurricane season, there have been a few interesting articles commenting the Hurricane season of 2007. For instance, this Beaumont Enterprise article by Ryan Meyers entitled "2007 hurricane season deemed 'near normal'." Because in essence

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30, included 14 named storms, five hurricanes and two major hurricanes. The Hurricane Center describes an average season as 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

But this Miami Herald article by Martin Merzer takes issue on Hurricane predictions as "Hurricane prediction miss the mark!" While this Orlando Sentinel "Other Views" article by Thomas V. DiBacco under the title of "You can't change the weather" gave some historical perspective on the topic:

The hurricane season officially comes to an end in the next few days, and I'm sure all Floridians are breathing a great sigh of relief about this season's modest storm and damage results. But Floridians, and East Coast residents of the United States in general, should not be pleased about the existing machinery of hurricane forecasting and dissemination to the public. The reason is that the major responsibility for this critical job is left to the federal government, which, unfortunately and not surprisingly, is a bureaucratic mess.

It wasn't always that way. A hurricane-warning division under the Weather Bureau was established by President William McKinley in 1898. And it got along just fine for decades until the government worked its magic hand in administrative specialization.

Today the National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service's Tropical Prediction Center, which is responsible for tracking tropical storms. But then the National Hurricane Center has its own specialized unit, the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (formerly the Tropical Satellite Analysis and Forecast unit), which is responsible for forecasts on the high seas. Then all this is under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is under the Department of Commerce.

As one who has just retired from NOAA and worked at NOAA since it was first established by President Richard Nixon, I can not disagree with the characterization of "bureaucratic mess."

But the most hilarious one that really tells like it is is the article in Washington Times this morning by Wesley Pruden that starts with:

All the wiseheads keep telling us that Climate is headed south, but Weather keeps getting in the way.

Global warming is scheduled to kill us all before next Christmas, but since Christmas is going the way of the hula hoop to avoid offending Osama bin Laden, the ACLU and assorted grinches, we might yet muddle on.

The United Nations sponsored a session for wiseheads the other day in Valencia, where they dined in expensive Spanish restaurants, basked in luxury hotels and took the waters on a government dime, obligated only to listen to each other talk about the coming death in the afternoon for those who don't die first of bird flu, AIDS, staph infections and other plagues that were supposed to dispose of us by now.

Then he reports:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarized the session's finding in a mere 25 pages of the frenzied language of panic. Everyone will feel its effects, the director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change said. But global warming will hit the poorest countries hardest, just as the end of the world will hurt women and minorities most. Failing to recognize the urgency of this message would be nothing less than criminally responsible.

Some of the delegates conceded that it's only nice to be sensitive to certain national concerns, mostly those of the little countries that yearn to tie Gulliver down to their size. Some are worried about oceans, others about glaciers. The environmentalists worry that the exaggerations might be toned down. They're insistent that the U.N. say "with certainty" that global warming is real and caused by man. The Americans tried to tone down the horror-movie exaggeration of the threat of hurricanes over the next century.

Now here's what's wrong with the hurricane season of 2007:

Hurricanes, in fact, have been a big disappointment this year. There haven't been any to speak of. No Katrina, no Andrew, no Audrey, no Camille, not even a stray Felix or Feliciana that anybody remembers. This was the hurricane year the global-warming industry was counting on. And then, zilch.

Yes, indeed, many people would expect that a Katrina type to hit a major America city yearly, but 2006 and especially 2007 are just totally out of control. "Control" is the key word! How else can they demonstrate the mighty power of the U.N. ?! But fortunately for the future of mankind, neither U.N./I.P.C.C. nor Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. and his "leading scientists"cheering squad can have any control over the mother nature! Pruden appropriately retraced Michael Crichton:

Short on science, the faithful are long on politics. Politics, says Michael Crichton, the novelist and inventor of Jurassic Park who made cloning popular, leads to belief and science leads to facts. Or ought to. He recalled in a speech to the National Press Club two years ago how quickly politics can intimidate science.

"In the first Earth Day in 1970," he said, "Kenneth Watt [of the University of California-Davis], said: 'If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.' International Wildlife warned 'a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war' as a threat to mankind. Science Digest declared that the world 'must prepare for the next ice age.' The Christian Science Monitor noted that armadillos had moved out of Nebraska because it was too cold, glaciers had begun to advance, and growing seasons had shortened around the world."

Now we're up to our hips in alligators and global-warming fanatics. We can't predict a hurricane next week, but Al Gore can predict doom 40 years from next Christmas, and a lot of people take him seriously.

Here finally come to a point that caused me to wonder: Are there really "a lot" of people take Algore seriously? Who are these people? Pruden mentioned one:

Maybe even George W. Bush, who entertained him yesterday at the White House. George W. is looking desperately for a legacy, and Al has one to sell.

Ah! Geroge W., who had a worthy legacy for 6 years then through it all away last year, why would Algore care?

Now looking forward to 2008, if "experts" predict another "normal" year the I'll be very nervous!