[Mb-civic] Katrina's real name - Ross Gelbspan - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Katrina's real name

By Ross Gelbspan  |  August 30, 2005

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.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name/
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