KATRINA WAS NOT FROM GLOBAL WARMING!

Why is it that when something happens with the weather that is perceived to be out of normal, that people immediately start blaming global warming?

Katrina was supposedly so powerful because global warming made the Gulf of Mexico warm (or, so people, like Robert Kennedy, Jr, are out there declaring).

Oh really?

Weather patterns change. Period.

Sometimes, they're cyclical, where you'll have years of one type of weather, and then it changes. But, with cyclical patterns, you'll eventually come back to the experience the same type of weather as before the change.

And sometimes, weather patterns change semi-permanently. Did you know that the Sahara Desert was once much wetter than today? I'm sure that those greedy ultra right-wingers are responsible for that sandbox drying up 5000 years ago, right???

I've said this before: The Earth has it's own agenda, and I believe that we only play a small part in changing it.

Still think that it's global warming that made Katrina so strong? Look at this table:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastint.shtml

It shows the strongest hurricanes at the top, and lists the years. Now, Katrina is going to come in third, I believe, once it's added to the table. Yes, it's strong, but no, it's not the strongest ever recorded. What made all of the storms in the 1800's and early 1900's so strong, if we didn't have "global warming" back then? What makes Katrina the result of global warming, but these other storms just random events?

Look at this chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

It's measurement of data taken from ice core samples, and shows the amount of trapped CO2 in the ice (green) and dust in the ice (red) over time. The average temperature of the Earth is also approximated in blue. This shows that global warming (and subsequent cooling) is very much cyclical, and that for the past 25,000 years, we've been on the warming side of the trend.

The Earth will enter another cool period soon (within the next 10,000 years as interpolated from this chart). But it would have entered that with or without us. My point is that you cannot look at data that exists today and say that it's proof of the effects of global warming without considering that same data 150,000 years ago during the last warming cycle. Anyone have the Gulf of Mexico temperature data sheet for that time? I didn't think so.

UPDATE: I posted this a couple weeks ago, but bumped the date up because I basically just read the same thing today on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/
09/23/hurricane.cycle/index.html