severe weather

Hurricane Gustav diverts attention from GOP gathering in St. Paul

Well, I am in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and there’s plenty of questions as to what’s going to happen here for the Republican National Convention as the nation braces for Hurricane Gustav. The latest news from officials is that tomorrow’s convention program “will only include required proceedings.” After that, no one really knows. “At some point between […]

As the storm moves toward the Gulf Coast, Bush and McCain ponder skipping the event

The Republican National Convention is still going to kick off tomorrow, despite previous talk about delaying it because of Hurricane Gustav. It’s currently a Category 3 storm, but folks in the area fear it might gain force before hitting land sometime on Monday. While the RNC won’t be delayed, the hurricane is altering plans for […]

Will Gustav be the next Katrina?

On August 23, 2005, a tropical depression formed 175 miles southeast of Nassau. By the next day, it had grown into tropical storm Katrina and was intensifying rapidly. Early in the evening on August 25, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near North Miami Beach. Even though it was only a Category 1 storm, with sustained wind […]

Rove on hurricanes in August: ‘The Republicans can’t seem to get a break’

I reprint this post from TPM election central (a must-read blog for political junkies): Priorities, priorities. Check out this Karl Rove quote buried in a Fox News article about the threat Hurricane Gustav poses to the GOP’s convention plans: “The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it […]

Natural disasters, evacuated oil rigs might cause a PR disaster for the GOP

According to the Washington Post, Republican officials are considering delaying their convention in St. Paul because of Tropical Storm Gustav, which might hit the Gulf Coast as a full-force hurricane next week. If it does reach land during their convention, it would hit a sore spot for Republicans, whose current representative in the White House […]

Major hurricane tracks to New Orleans on eve of Republican Convention?

That subhead is lifted from Drudge. Needless to say, he left out ” … and on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, where both Bush and McCain were AWOL” (see TP’s “As Katrina hit, McCain celebrated 69th birthday with Bush“). Track the storm with the National Hurricane Center here. Best hurricane blog here. Readers of […]

NOAA says July 08 was fifth warmest on record

I know we’re supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don’t believe in the scientific method. For those who do however, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports in its “Climate of 2008 July in Historical Perspective”: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea […]

Science: Extreme rains supercharged by warming

Science has just published, “Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes” ($ub. req’d). It concludes: Here, we use satellite observations and model simulations to examine the response of tropical precipitation events to naturally driven changes in surface temperature and atmospheric moisture content.These observations reveal a distinct link between rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy […]

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach doesn’t understand basic climate science

Repeat after me, Joel: "Global warming makes the weather more extreme." If even the Bush administration accepts that basic fact of climate science, shouldn't you?

I used to like Achenbach's cutesy science pieces, but his knowledge of climate science is about one or two decades old, as evidenced by his major story in The Washington Post, "Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not." It is a typically uninformed journalistic "backlash" piece whereby a reporter creates a straw man and then sets it on fire.

Achenbach is trying to seem reasonable by complaining that the next time we get a big hurricane, "some expert will tell us that this storm might be a harbinger of global warming." Uhh, I hate to break this to you Joel, but global warming doesn't need a "harbinger." It has been here for decades.

In that sense, your article is not a harbinger of global warming denial, since deniers have been pushing back against the "global warming causes extreme weather" story for years, browbeating the media into downplaying the connection. You really should read your fellow journalist Ross Gelbspan's long discussion of this in his great 2004 book, Boiling Point. Achenbach writes: