I’m sure everybody’s sick of reading about it by now, but if not, TIME has a cover story on whether global warming is responsible for the recent hurricane damage.
After going on and on about how mixed and controversial and ambiguous the science is, it concludes:
In Washington successive administrations have ignored greenhouse warnings, piling up environmental debt the way we have been piling up fiscal debt. The problem is, when it comes to the atmosphere, there’s no such thing as creative accounting. If we don’t bring our climate ledgers back into balance, the climate will surely do it for us.
This is certainly a valid perspective, but it seems basically unconnected to what came before it. Global warming may do many bad things over the long haul, but raising average hurricane wind speeds from 100mph to 105mph doesn’t really seem like one that’s well-suited for the kind of rabble-rousing everyone is trying to use it for.
