"The hurricane that struck Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming." Ross Gelbspan, The Boston Globe, August 31, 2005
"By neglecting environmental
protection, America's president shuts his eyes to the economic and
human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflect on his
country and the world's economy." Jurgen Tritten, Germany's environmental minister, in an op-ed in the Frankfurter Rundschau (as quoted by columnist James K. Glassman on the blog Tech Central Station).
However, on August 30, 2005 The New York Times carried the following politically incorrect article :
Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say
Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.
But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.
...
Global warming may eventually intensify hurricanes somewhat, though different climate models disagree.
In an article this month in the journal Nature, Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote that global warming might have already had some effect. The total power dissipated by tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic and North Pacific increased 70 to 80 percent in the last 30 years, he wrote.
But even that seemingly large jump is not what has been pushing the hurricanes of the last two years, Dr. Emanuel said, adding, "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing."
Perhaps, then a little caution is in order before we throw the American economy into a tailspin. As even blame-everything-on-global-warming columnist Gelbspan comments:
... To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history [the oil and coal industries].
This is an amazing admission, which Mr. Gelbspan apparently does not recognize, against his own argument that global warming must be reversed because it threatens life-as-we-know-it on planet Earth. Most rational people are aware, even if Mr. Gelbspan is not, that a reduction of oil and coal use by 70 percent would send the economy into a depression-- also ending life-as-we-know-it on planet Earth.
I guess that's OK with Mr. Gelbspan because at least the depression would be colored green.
Buying a cat bond sounds a bit like becnimog a name for Lloyds. I think the differences are that a name committed to a particular syndicate that then wrote a portfolio of insurance policies and a name had unlimited liability if there were losses. A few years ago a number of syndicates at Lloyds got wiped out, leading to lawsuits, I think filed in the US, alleging that there had been inadequate disclosure. I remember reading, with what I guess must be schadenfreude which seems to be too satisfying to feel guilty about that some of the names had gotten the impression that they just got nice checks without any downside. One young woman remarked that she should have warned her parents when she noticed that all the people she knew who went to work for Lloyds were well born, well connected, and stupid. I think that Justice Breyer had to recuse himself from Lloyds cases when he was on the First Circuit because he had been a name in quite a few syndicates. Elmer
Posted by: Bintang | June 12, 2012 at 12:12 PM