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August 31, 2005
0.0062°C
Amidst the continuing bad news in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, leave it to a Kennedy to blame the devastation on an eeeeeeeevil Republican, and throw in a dose of bad science, too.
Over at Captain's Quarters, Daffyd has Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., by the throat and administers a much-needed thrashing.
RFK jr huffed into the Huffington Post a hit piece on Gov. Barbour ... but psssst, really on President Bush. Bobby jr. ... began with an escalating recitation of startling facts about Barbour -- such as the eerie coincidence that, as the chairman of the RNC, he gave George Bush advice -- all designed to prove that Barbour had more impact urging Bush not to flog the dead Kyoto Protocol horse than Christie Todd Whitman did on the other side.
That startling revelation out of the way, Bobbie descends into the sort of overheated rhetoric about global warming ("globaloney" to its pals) that he cultivated through long years at the National Resources Defense Council -- which is to environmentalism what NARAL is to abortion.
Daffyd quotes Kennedy, who makes one of the most idiotic accusations I may have ever read, attributing a hurricane to the actions of one moral reprobate, i.e., a Republican.
"Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
"Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which [Mississippi Gov. Haley] Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction [hm...] has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."
Yeah, that's right, Hurricane Katrina is the logical result of the American people's reliance on fossil fuels -- in the absence of developement of domestic energy resources, like drilling in ANWR, building more refineries, and opening more nuclear power plants.
And, in a related detour, how 'bout Kennedy's cirrhotic uncle's opposition to wind-farm development in Massachusetts, because the windmills are ugly?
Where was I? Right. Daffyd then takes a look at what difference the Kyoto Protocols would have had on global warming -- and Hurrican Katrina -- had Gov. Barbour not whispered eeeeevil thoughts in the president's ear. He also notes how Kennedy says God himself punished one state because its citizens had a Republican governor, and how He spared the citizens of another state because they were blessed with a Democratic chief executive.
Skipping lightly over question of how Lawyer Bob learned so much about "destructive addictions," he tossed off a final bon mot to the effect that God Almighty redirected Hurricane Katrina away from Louisiana (Democratic governor) towards Mississippi (Republican) in order to punish Haley Barbour for writing a memo.
... Let's suppose that as of March 2001, the U.S. had signed aboard the Protocols ... and further, that the staggering reduction in carbon production occurred instantly, before the ink was even dry (rather than the more likely scenario, where it would take several years even to begin to pass the legislation necessary to cripple energy usage in the United States).
How might the climate be different?
According to Reason Magazine, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that if we do nothing, the rise in temperature over the next hundred years would average (among the various estimates) about 3.0°C. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocols would reduce expected warming over the next century down to a mere 2.86°C; that is, Kyoto gives us a reduction in anticipated temperature increase of 0.14°C over 100 years.
Daffyd then quotes from Reason Magazine's analysis, which posits that Kyoto would require Americans to cut energy consumption by 30 percent, with a resulting hit on our economy. Reason says, "Climatologists estimate that implementing the Kyoto Protocol would, by 2100, avoid only 0.14 degrees C of temperature rise. That means projected man-made greenhouse warming that might have been 3 degrees C by 2100 would instead be 2.86 degrees C."
And what kind of a gain would we see after paying such a huge price?
Daffyd does the math.
Okay, that gives us something to work with. 0.14°C divided by 100 gives us an expected reduction of 0.0014°C per year. Thus, from March 2001 to March 2005, we could have seen a reduction in warming of as much as 0.0056°C. But wait, there is more: in the five months from March 2005 to August 2005, there would have been an additional 0.0006°C, which brings the grand total to 0.0062°C if we had implemented that furshlugginer treaty (we're assuming the globalistas' predictions are correct).
So what K. is saying is that the extra 0.0062°C (or 0.01° Fahrenheit, if that's your bag) spelled the difference between a pacific Atlantic ocean and a Force 5 hurricane that killed scores and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, flooding vast stretches of three states and stranding hundreds of thousands. And all for the want of a ten-penny nail!
So, according to Kennedy, Republicans made Hurricane Katrina, but God steered it away from Democrats, and none of this would have happened if we'd lowered the temperature 0.0062 degrees celsius.
To quote the boss from Office Space, "Yeaaaaaahh."
Posted by Mike Lief at August 31, 2005 09:49 AM