Bush takes heat on global warming
By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005
As politicians and commentators around the world took in pictures of the
devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, many seized the opportunity to blame
the fierce storm, at least in part, on the Bush administration's environmental
policy.
The United States is one of the few nations that have not signed the
Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit global warming by reducing the levels of
industrial emissions that most scientists now believe promote climate change.
"Katrina Should Be a Lesson to the U.S. on Global Warming," read a
headline on the Web site of the German magazine Der Spiegel.
"The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by
insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy,"
wrote Jürgen Tritten, Germany's environment minister and a Green Party member.
"The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human
costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes
like Katrina," Tritten charged.
In fact, while it is impossible to link Katrina specifically to warming,
scientists said, most now concur that global warming does tend to increase the
intensity of hurricanes, if not their frequency.
"There is new research that shows there may well be an increase in the
destructive power of hurricanes because of global warming," said Wayne Elliott,
a meteorologist with the British weather service
But the experts add that it is scientifically unfair to blame any one
hurricane on the warming trend.
"We would expect hurricanes on average should be getting more intense
because of global warming, but it's hard to make the connection in any one
event, like Katrina," said Jay Gulledge, senior research fellow at the Pew
Institute for Climate Change.
The United States has experienced Category 5 hurricanes like Katrina
before the warming of the last decades, he pointed out. Also, hurricanes tend
to wax and wane in 30-year cycles and that trend is now on the upswing.
But the connection between global warming and Katrina was made
prominently in many media outlets in European countries, all of which have
signed the Kyoto accord and in which Bush administration environmental policies
are widely unpopular.
In Italy, the Lega Ambiente, a powerful national environment lobby,
called Katrina "a dramatic event on par with Sept. 11," referring to the
terrorist attacks of 2001, and demanded change from the U.S. government.
"It is time that President Bush undertakes a radical review of the proper
position on climate change and the consequences of the energy policy of the
United States," said Roberto Della Seta, the group's national president.
An editorial in the left-wing newspaper l'Unita, titled "Bush Between
Kyoto and Katrina," mockingly labeled Katrina a "natural" disaster. "The Bush
administration will continue to deny the existence of global warming or that it
is caused in the first place by the reducible fuel consumption of the 'American
Way of Life,"' the paper said.
The strength of a hurricane is connected to sea surface temperature,
which is slowly rising with global temperatures. In the last century, global
temperatures have risen more than .7 degrees centigrade and sea temperatures
about .6 degrees and the pace of change is accelerating, according to the
European Environment Agency.
In fact, scientists had predicted a rough hurricane season because sea
surface temperatures were so hot at the beginning of the summer, Elliott said.
Hurricanes need a sea surface temperature of at least 27 degree centigrade, or
80 degrees Fahrenheit, to start. The surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico,
where Hurricane Katrina gained much of its force, was 31 degrees.
Global warming has also led to a sea level rise, which exacerbates
flooding like that in New Orleans, he added.
In parts of the world where U.S. environmental policy is regarded as
morally irresponsible, the possibility of a connection was the talk of the day.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a frequent critic of the Bush
administration, wagged a finger: Noting that the United States had not signed
the Kyoto treaty, he said that global warming was behind the ferocity of recent
hurricanes, according to The Associated Press in Caracas, and blamed
"capitalist consumerism" that he said was championed by Americans.
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