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The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was devastating by anyone's account. According to the National Weather Service, a record-breaking 31 named storms formed during the season. Fifteen of those storms developed into hurricanes, two of which-Katrina and Rita-wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. The 2006 season, however, has not nearly lived up to its hype. Despite the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's projection of a season of above average hurricane frequency and intensity, thus far only nine named storms have formed with five of them developing into hurricanes. Only one hurricane managed to make landfall, Category 1 Hurricane Ernesto. If you believe former Vice President Al Gore and his friends in the media, the devastating effects of Katrina should have be seen as a fierce warning of an impending global crisis brought on by man-made global warming. "Katrina was sort of the 9/11 of global warming," Georgia Tech Prof. Judith Curry told The Washington Post. "It was a lot more real and immediate. It had more of a real socioeconomic impact in the way the melting of glaciers doesn't." In addition to fiercer, more devastating hurricanes, environmental alarmists claim we'll soon face many other calamities due to global warming, such as uncontrollable malaria and West Nile Virus outbreaks, ferocious heat waves and a global food crop shortage. Gore even produced a movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," about the so-called crisis that drew surprisingly large crowds for an environmental documentary. Gore and his supporters hope to use this cause célèbre to revive the failed presidential candidate's career. Hungry for a cause, liberal activists and politicians have jumped on the global warming train. Not to be outdone by politicians and environmental wackos, plaintiffs' attorneys are using the global warming mantra to pad their pocketbooks too. "I couldn't stand by when my entire cultural history was destroyed by an event that could become more frequent because of global warming," veteran asbestos plaintiffs' attorney F. Gerald Maples told Business Week Online of Katrina. "To me, Katrina was a clear result of irresponsible behavior by the carbon-emissions corporate economy." Maples recruited Katrina victims and filed a class action on their behalf in federal court in Gulfport, Miss., against dozens of companies with deep pockets. While Maples may be able to talk a sympathetic jury into pinning the blame for Katrina on oil companies, there is hardly a scientific consensus supporting his theory. "I think a lot of what we've seen in the last 10 or 11 years is not that dissimilar from what we experienced in the '30s, '40s and '50s, which was an active time for hurricanes," said Barry Keim, state climatologist and University professor. "During the '70s, '80s and early '90s, we didn't get that many. We were lulled into thinking that we just didn't get that many, and the reality is we just do." Unfortunately, the media tend to resemble Chicken Little more than actual journalists when it comes to predictions of environmental peril. "There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production-with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth," Newsweek proclaimed. While Newsweek seemingly paints a bleak picture of our near future, the quote is not about global warming. It is in fact a bleak warning given to the public in 1975 of another impending climate-related disaster, global cooling. It should be of no surprise that the media have weighed in heavily on the side of global-warming alarmists. For example, in 2006 CBS News' "60 Minutes" produced a segment on the North Pole alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap due to global warming. The report failed to include any dissenting views and ignored claims by many scientists that the Arctic was in fact warmer 80 years ago. CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming and equated global warming skeptics with "Holocaust deniers." Despite the one-sided media barrage, much of the American public remains unconvinced of man-made global warming crisis. According to a recent Pew Research Center Poll, the nearly half of Americans either believe global warming is from natural factors or not occurring at all. Most Americans are also unwilling to blame recent severe weather on global warming, according to an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. As this quiet hurricane season seems to prove, the sky is not falling, at least not anytime soon. Climatologists are still actively debating the mere existence of man-made global warming. It is time for the media to stop being the lapdog of alarmists and profiteers and help the public engage in real debate.
----- Contact Jason Dore' at jdore@lsureveille.com
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