All too predictably, the horrific disaster caused by hurricane Katrina is being blamed on our old friend global warming. The British government’s chief scientist Sir David King -- the one who said global warming was a bigger threat than terrorism -- leapt instantaneously on the bandwagon. The Independent reported :

'"The increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming," Professor King told Channel 4 News yesterday. "We have known since 1987 the intensity of hurricanes is related to surface sea temperature and we know that, over the last 15 to 20 years, surface sea temperatures in these regions have increased by half a degree centigrade. So it is easy to conclude that the increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming."

Well no, it’s not easy if your mind is not turned by propaganda and you have any knowledge of the facts. As the Independent also reported, various climate experts think Sir David is talking balderdash:

‘Professor Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also claimed, less than a month ago, that ocean surfaces had become warmer, which doubled the destructive potential of tropical storms in the past 30 years. But he said that Monday's storm "is part of a natural" cycle of powerful Atlantic storms that have struck since 1995. He told The Independent: "I don't think you can put this down to global warming."Other scientists point out that the 150-year record of Atlantic storms show there is ample precedent for hurricanes of Katrina's power. They say it is part of a natural upswing that has taken place since the mid-90s...

‘William Gray, a Colorado State University meteorologist who is considered one of the fathers of modern tropical cyclone science, said worldwide weather records were too inadequate for a thorough examination of trends. He told The Los Angeles Times: "The people who have a bias in favour of the argument that humans are making the globe warmer will push any data that suggests humans are making hurricanes worse, but it just isn't so ... These are natural cycles."

It’s worth also recapping on a scandal that I wrote about on January 17 this year, when an expert on hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, Chris Landsea, resigned from the International Panel on Climate Change after what he said was a gross misrepresentation of scientific evidence to claim falsely that global warming was producing more hurricane activity.

In an open letter to his colleagues, Landsea said that shortly after he had drafted the hurricanes chapter for the IPCC's fourth assessment report's Observations chapter, the Observations lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, told a press conference organised by scientists at Harvard that global warming would spur the occurrence of more hurricane activity. But Landsea knew that this was the precise opposite of what the scientific evidence had suggested. He wrote:

'I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

'Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

'It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.'

When Landsea expressed his concerns, he said, the IPCC simply brushed them aside. So Landsea left the IPCC, saying:

'I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound'.

Now the appalling tragedy in the southern states is being repellently exploited to serve that very same scientifically unsound preconceived agenda -- not to mention bashing Bush into the bargain. The toxic sewage released by Katrina is not confined to the floodwaters.