The Emperor Nero of our times, George "This is a big storm" Bush, and others in denial are still trying to claim hurricanes Katrina and Rita had nothing to do with and at who is to blame.
The catastrophe on the gulf coast is as man-made as the catastrophe in Furthermore, the same people and their policies are responsible for both, and the connecting link is oil.
A principle aim of the Bush-Blair war on Iraq was to secure and control diminishing oil reserves in the
For this, well over 100,000 innocent Iragis have died and hundreds of thousands are injured, maimed, traumatised, without homes or jobs, their lives and their country in ruins. 2000 US and 96 UK soldiers have also been killed. The latest costing of this barbaric, imperial adventure $400bn
The oil booty from Iraq's conquest was intended to further feed America's ecocidal, gas-guzzling economy. With only 4 per cent of the world's population, the USA gobbles up a quarter of the 80m barrels consumed daily.
Instead, it an already ravaged planet is wreaking a terrible revenge. And, tragically, the innocent poor, disadvantaged and mainly black of America are now paying the price for their leaders economic and political folly.
The Emperor Nero of our times, George "This is a big storm" Bush, and others in denial are still trying to claim hurricanes Katrina and Rita had nothing to do with climate change. They maintain they are only the result of normal cycles. However, all scientific evidence points to the contrary.
Global warming, resulting from green house gas emissions, of which CO2 from burning fossil fuels, especially oil, is the main culprit that has raised overall world temperature bv b degrees.
One result is warmer sea surface temperatures. These are known to increase storm turbulence, making hurricanes more frequent and ferocious.
This is happening, for instance throughout the Caribbean an o Pacific. Unusually fierce storms are currently raging in the Bay of Bengal, where 800 people are missing and 200,000 displaced. Typhoons are also hitting Thailand, Vietnam and China.
Changes have been most dramatic the HOW stricken Gulf of Mexico. Here sea temperatures are now reported to be 2-3 degrees above the average. Consequently, have doubled in force over the last thirty years.
Hurricane Katrina has been described as the biggest disaster in US hisclaiming over 1000 lives and creating a million retugees. Clean-up, reconstruction and rehabilitation
al c estimated at $200bn.
As these and other weather extremes increase they can lead to knock-on effects, eventually spiralling out of control. Scientists estimate an average global temperature rise of only 2 degrees could spark off such a process. In fact, new evidence of knock-on effects already occurring is published in several recent scientific warming has turned vast areas into water an absorber of heat.
This causes even more ice to melt, resulting in a spiralling cycle of melting and heating. It is thought this sequence may have already reached a tipping point' beyond which sea levels begin to rise rapidly and irreversibly. Two further phenomena are indicative of dangerous spiralling effects. One is the huge forest fires which have raged in many areas of the world recently, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming. The very large amounts of 20 times stronger than CO?.