If we make it to Friday, we Floridians have survived another Hurricane Season. We may not survive the skyrocketing premiums on our homeowners’ insurance policies, but at least this Hurricane Season didn’t huff and puff and blow our houses down. Granted, we may soon be forced out of our homes by property tax hikes that not even a financial “Edmund Hillary” could scale, but at least our houses weren’t leveled this year by some steamrolling storm from the tropics.
Although this Hurricane Season was an uncloudy one here in the Sunshine State, it was a different story out in the stormy Atlantic. According to the National Hurricane Center, there were fourteen named storms this year, four more than in an average year. Also, there was the unprecedented phenomenon of two category five storms making landfall in the same season.
Of course, we’re told that the explanation for this year’s hyperactive Hurricane Season is global warming. Global warming is the scapegoat of modern-day science. It is being blamed for everything from melting ice caps to the lightening fast greens at the Augusta National Golf Course—home of the PGA Tour’s annual Masters Golf Tournament. Also contributed to the scourge of global warming by modern-day scientists are calamities as diverse as the decimation of Costa Rica’s frog population and the increased number of stray cats in America.
Interestingly, there is one mysterious and inexplicable weather condition that is not being attributed to global warming. It is this Hurricane Season’s usually strong wind shears. Wind shears are high winds blowing in different directions and at different altitudes that tear tropical waves and tropical storms apart. It is the unusually strong wind shears of the past few months that scientists say we Floridians should thank for this year’s tranquil Hurricane Season.
According to Chris Landsea, science officer at the National Hurricane Center, “we may never know” why winds in the upper atmosphere were unusually strong during this year’s Hurricane Season. How about global warming, Chris? Isn’t climate change modern science’s pat answer to every inexplicable weather condition? If global warming is to be faulted for increased hurricane activity, why isn’t it credited for the uncommonly strong wind shears that tear hurricanes apart?
Needless to say, crediting climate change for this Hurricane Season’s unusual wind shears would cast global warming in a different light. Rather than a bogeyman imposing upon our world impending disaster, global warming would actually be credited for protecting us from natural disaster. Such a hypothesis is completely out of the question for today’s scientists, those lab coat-clad men and women who have sold their souls to the myth of global warming and dedicated themselves to scaring us all into driving a hybrid Hugo that runs on corn syrup.
Have you ever read a story about the positive effects of global warming? Objectively speaking, any environmental change has both positive and negative effects. For instance, satellite photos show that our planet is actually greener now that it has warmed a bit. Furthermore, the growing season has lengthened and food production has increased. But don’t look for these facts to be printed in the New York Times. Instead, expect the Times to run headlines warning us about being turned into little cinders if America’s roadways are not soon filled with automobiles fueled by wood chips and switch grass.
According to Al Gore, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the greatest threat to the earth today is automobile exhaust. Forget about terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Forget about epidemics and pandemics. Forget about Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Abinamajab. What’s going to do us all in is granny and her gas-guzzling Impala. Well, I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, global warming is sheer nonsense.
Don Walton
