WEATHER & WILDLIFE

Debate on Global Warming Reaches Hurricane Strength

As the hurricane season heats up, so has the debate about the extent to which the severity of recent hurricanes is due to to global warming.

Advocates howl that warmer ocean temperatures, which encourage the atmosphere to bestir itself, are due to an increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases, while opponents bluster that the increase has not been proved to be due to human activity and may just be a seasonal variation.

Advocates whip their arms into a whirlwind to point out melting glaciers and drowning polar bears, while the other spins the story with historical records that shows cyclonic swings in the earth’s temperature millennia before smokestacks outdid volcanoes in the production of heat-trapping gases and SUV’s rolled over its widely asphalted surface.

While we tend to agree with the advocates of human participation in the extent of the whirligigs, we can be certain of only one thing. The closer the hurricane season gets, the more the typhoon of talk will whirl our way.

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