![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
short post
Nov. 17th, 2007 10:06 pmThe death toll in Bangladesh is rising, horrifically: according to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7099497.stm there are so far known to have been over 2000 people killed by Cyclone Sidr. The count is expected to rise.
The responsibility is of course not entirely that of people who, for reasons of personal gain, have denied the science connected to global warming: higher global temperatures were not the direct cause of Cyclone Sidr. However, increased frequency and severity of hurricanes/cyclones is certainly a global-warming effect; even though this particular hurricane cannot be attributed to global warming, it is part of a pattern that is.
(This may seem hairsplitting. By way of analogy: if you drop dead of a heart attack, this may not be directly because of your smoking habit. But your smoking habit will have contributed to the other possible causes of your heart attack.)
But enough of the responsibility is attributable to the global-warming deniers and greenhouse-gas-contributors that perhaps they ought to be reminded of this fact.
Oh, yes, but no one's going to do that -- remind them of the fact, I mean -- because it'd be so very awfully rude, don't ya know?
At a personal level, I do not know whether my e-pal Sylvia Mortoza, originally Maltese but now Bangladeshi through marriage, has survived or not. My e-mails have not yet had replies -- there might of course be a million reasons for this, not least that she's got more important things on her hands than checking e-mail, or that checking e-mail is tricksy if there's no electricity. I am hoping. hoping, hoping that she and her family -- including her wonderfully beautiful granddaughters -- are fine. I am not really frightfully in the mood to hear the apologias of our pro-neocon, pro-"balance" media right now.
The responsibility is of course not entirely that of people who, for reasons of personal gain, have denied the science connected to global warming: higher global temperatures were not the direct cause of Cyclone Sidr. However, increased frequency and severity of hurricanes/cyclones is certainly a global-warming effect; even though this particular hurricane cannot be attributed to global warming, it is part of a pattern that is.
(This may seem hairsplitting. By way of analogy: if you drop dead of a heart attack, this may not be directly because of your smoking habit. But your smoking habit will have contributed to the other possible causes of your heart attack.)
But enough of the responsibility is attributable to the global-warming deniers and greenhouse-gas-contributors that perhaps they ought to be reminded of this fact.
Oh, yes, but no one's going to do that -- remind them of the fact, I mean -- because it'd be so very awfully rude, don't ya know?
At a personal level, I do not know whether my e-pal Sylvia Mortoza, originally Maltese but now Bangladeshi through marriage, has survived or not. My e-mails have not yet had replies -- there might of course be a million reasons for this, not least that she's got more important things on her hands than checking e-mail, or that checking e-mail is tricksy if there's no electricity. I am hoping. hoping, hoping that she and her family -- including her wonderfully beautiful granddaughters -- are fine. I am not really frightfully in the mood to hear the apologias of our pro-neocon, pro-"balance" media right now.
