CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Charleston church group recently heard a slide lecture on billion-dollar weather damage and mass human suffering caused by global warming, worsened by air pollution. The grim show came from the Climate Reality Project headed by former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his warnings.
The lecture is apt today as Hurricane Sandy, the "Frankenstorm," ravages the populous East Coast. Hurricanes, caused by ocean heat, have become stronger, deadlier, more costly. Sandy spans nearly 2,000 miles across its cloud swirl, almost the distance from Charleston to California.
More Frankenstorms and other weather horrors can be expected, the Gore group says. It warns:
* Tornados have become worse menaces, obliterating some cities such as Joplin, Mo.
* Floods and mudslides from monster rains ravage Third World cities. Mississippi Valley floods also have become more destructive.
* Droughts are turning some agriculture regions into worthless desert, bankrupting farmers and elevating food prices.
* Wildfires have consumed vast sections of western forest and suburban neighborhoods.
* Tropical diseases and parasites keep moving northward.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Charleston church group recently heard a slide lecture on billion-dollar weather damage and mass human suffering caused by global warming, worsened by air pollution. The grim show came from the Climate Reality Project headed by former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his warnings.
The lecture is apt today as Hurricane Sandy, the "Frankenstorm," ravages the populous East Coast. Hurricanes, caused by ocean heat, have become stronger, deadlier, more costly. Sandy spans nearly 2,000 miles across its cloud swirl, almost the distance from Charleston to California.
More Frankenstorms and other weather horrors can be expected, the Gore group says. It warns:
* Tornados have become worse menaces, obliterating some cities such as Joplin, Mo.
* Floods and mudslides from monster rains ravage Third World cities. Mississippi Valley floods also have become more destructive.
* Droughts are turning some agriculture regions into worthless desert, bankrupting farmers and elevating food prices.
* Wildfires have consumed vast sections of western forest and suburban neighborhoods.
* Tropical diseases and parasites keep moving northward.
* Record-breaking heat waves kill thousands of people around the world.
Much of this mayhem stems from the fact that warmer air holds more moisture, causing more violent storms. Oddly, cloudburst rains in one sector can mean drought in another. Only a slight temperature increase can produce "weather on steroids," one expert dubbed it. Ph.D. meteorologist Jeff Masters said:
"Look at heat waves, drought and flooding events. They all tend to get increased when you have this extra energy in the atmosphere. I call it being on steroids for the atmosphere."
Gore himself says "dirty weather" stems from "dirty air." He adds: "Ferocious storms and deadly heat waves are occurring with alarming frequency all over the world. We are living with the reality of the climate crisis every day."
His associate, Maggie Fox, adds: "Fossil fuel companies and their allies will go to great lengths to deny the fact that climate change is happening now. But we have one powerful response: reality."
Insurers suffer growing losses. A giant reinsurance firm, Munich Re, warned: "Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America." Travelers issued a brochure saying U.S. thunderstorms caused $25 billion damage last year.
West Virginia politicians and coal moguls won't acknowledge that air pollution from fossil fuels creates a "greenhouse" layer in the sky that traps heat on Earth's surface and causes "weather on steroids." But snowballing evidence indicates that this global heat-up is inflicting terrible losses on humanity. The current Frankenstorm is one further warning to consider.
Plenty of other climate-deniers exist. In his acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Mitt Romney drew laughs when he sneered: "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet." We wonder if those delegates still are snickering today.
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