John McCain blamed the hurricanes and “violent weather changes” on Global Warming in recent debates:
Jan 24 debate:
I am in favor of cap-and-trade. And Joe Lieberman and I, one of my favorite Democrats and I, have proposed that it’s, and we did the same thing with acid rain. They’re doing it in Europe now, although not very well.
... But climate change, in my view, is real. It can affect states like Florida dramatically because I think it has to do with violent weather changes, as well.
But I am confident, I am confident American technology can — and the embrace of green technologies, many of the things that Rudy just talked about, and nuclear power being one of them — we can reduce these greenhouse gas emissions.
And suppose that we are wrong and there’s no such thing as climate change and we hand our kids a cleaner world.
Jan 30 debate:
I applaud the governor’s efforts [Schwarzenegger] and that of other states in this region and other states across America to try to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.
Now, suppose that the governor and I are wrong, and there’s no such thing as climate change. And we adopt these green technologies, of which America and the innovative skills we have and the entrepreneurship and the free market which is embodied by Senator Lieberman’s and mine cap-and-trade proposal is enacted, and there’s no such thing as climate change. Then all we’ve done is give our kids a cleaner world.
Perhaps a cleaner world, surely a world with with a declining economy under central control and progressively less able to invent and produce the technologies to deal with environmental problems. And relatively, we will be capping and cutting down western economies just as the ever more polluting Chinese and Indian economies overtake the West with some nasty political ramifications. No amount of centrally directed or “free market” advance can do anything about the increasing output of the Sun which is seen to be warming up the other planets right along with ours.If there be too much heat or an ice age in our future then it is to humanity’s benefit for technology to continue to develop unhindered and for the world to get richer as fast as possible to be able to afford the changes that will have to be made to survive these things. Putting hobbles on its legs will defeat that and drastically slow innovation and our ability to pay for what maybe necessary in the future. Nuclear energy in the long term is certainly necessary both for slowing the production of carbon emissions (barking up a very wrong tree) and for developing humanity’s ability to deal with any sort of massive climate change In the shorter term we should be taking all the oil we can get out of ANWR and off our coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico and mining that clean coal that Bill Clinton sequestered for his own enrichment to reduce the costs of developing those new technologies. Shutting down the economy will NOT do anything to fight Global Warming but will promote the economic supremacy of China which will increase pollution in the world exponentially.
Now suppose we are wrong about the ETs already being here and preparing to conquer Earth...
Global Warming will have no effect whatsoever on hurricanes. That is per the GW models, speaking for themselves. Most GW will show up in the Arctic/Subarctic, and it is showing up there. This is in fact an Ice Age we are in, and it has been Ice Age since the dawn of recorded history. It’s not as deep in Ice Age as it has been and probably will be, but it’s Ice Age.
There, that sounds much better.