Hurricanes, Global Warming, and Gas Prices

I am numb at the thought of New Orleans right now. I don't really want to see the devastation and desperation or think about it. It's so bad.

Is global warming playing a role in the wave of new and improved hurricanes we're seeing these last two years? I almost guarantee you that your answer will be strong either way... and that you don't know what you're talking about, either way. People will either strongly deny that there is such a thing as global warming or strongly affirm that there is. But since the scientists debate whether global warming is a factor in the hurricanes--and they know the data and equations--there's no way you or I can speak with authority on the matter.

Your position on global warming has become a matter of religion in many American religious circles. It is becoming part of American cultural Christianity among certain conservatives in particular. While I personally don't agree with Wittgenstein on religion totally, on subjects like this one he is right that many, many people form their religious beliefs without any view to truth. In other words, you couldn't change someone's mind no matter how much evidence you offered them one way or another. As such, I throw it into the hopper I call "yet another example people can use to argue that religion makes people stupid."

So I don't know if global warming is having any influence on the current hurricane patterns. I guess it has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that humans are part of the global environmental equation--that the conditions of the atmosphere cannot be explained fully on the basis of natural variation. But that's a pretty broad and general conclusion at this point. It's far from showing we're responsible for a global warming trend or that consequently warmer waters in the Atlantic Ocean are responsible for more violent hurricanes with longer durations.

So what's my point, other than that religions of all types have a tendency to make people stupid. My point is much broader and side-steps questions of global warming

If
1. Burning gas certainly doesn't help the environment and pollution clearly creates at least a much more unpleasant environment. Go to someplace where they don't have any emission standards and are heavily industrialized. Mexico City comes to mind.

2. We're going to run out of fuel one day anyway.

3. Our oil dependency is money in the pockets of that part of the world where our greatest enemies live and our gas bill supports terrorists financially one way or another.

Logical conclusion: We should be working to wean ourselves off oil dependency and toward alternative technologies.

Now here I have to wonder who would object to anything in this line of reasoning. I can only think of two groups: 1) those who profit financially by the consumption of oil and 2) those who are willfully or unwillfully stupid for one reason or another.