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Of course, it's a great deal more complicated than either Ross Gelbspan or Wesley's website make out.  You can't lay the blame for Katrina unequivocally at the door of global warming any more than you can deny that humans are affecting the atmosphere in a way that is likely to have serious, irreversible consequences for our descendants.  Oversimplification leads to polarisation leads to stagnation in the debate of the kind americans find in the evo/cre controversy and brits find over animal rights.  Climate change is far more important an issue in practical terms than either of these two.
For a measured, well referenced (written by working climate scientists themselves) counterpoint to the website Wesley mentions, see www.realclimate.org


Josh Phillips
Science Communication Officer
Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester
Manchester M3 4FP
0161 6060117
www.msim.org.uk



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Informal Science Education Network
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Creel, Wesley
> Sent: 31 August 2005 20:02
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: possible fodder for an exhibit on global warming
> 
> 
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of 
> Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and 
> related institutions.
> **************************************************************
> ***************
> 
> Good Afternoon Amanda,
> Before I became a museum administrator (it was a Faustian bargain that
> included wearing a necktie every day to work)......., I used to be a
> curator of anthropology (archaeology) at a university museum (I didn't
> wear a necktie every day work)....so, I have more than a passing
> interest in our present "interglacial warm period" that we are now
> living in, and the concept of "global warming."  Yes, it would be
> interesting to do an exhibit on "global warming".....I would recommend
> that we include in that exhibit the concept of "global cooling" (we
> could say that it's a yin-yang thing) and look to historical,
> archaeological, and paleo-environmental data to provide the conceptual
> underpinnings for this exhibit, including material culture, and faunal
> and floral remains from last glacial period.
> Please see the following website for some more information on this
> interesting topic
> http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
> Have Fun This and Best Wishes!
> Wesley
> 
> Wesley S. Creel
> Administrator of Programs
> Pink Palace Family of Museums
> 3050 Central Avenue
> Memphis, TN 38111
> U.S.A.
> www.memphismuseums.org
> Office telephone 901.320.6370
>  
> 
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Informal Science Education Network
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Amanda Chesworth
> Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 1:09 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: possible fodder for an exhibit on global warming
> 
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
> **************************************************************
> **********
> *****
> 
> Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe
> Katrina's Real Name
> by Ross Gelbspan
>   The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed 
> Katrina by
> the
> National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
> When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause
> was
> global warming.
> 
> When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in 
> Scandinavia and
> cut
> power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United
> Kingdom,
> the driver was global warming.
> 
> When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the
> Missouri
> River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was
> global
> warming.
> 
> In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain
> and
> Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years,
> the
> explanation was global warming.
> 
> When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees
> and
> killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was 
> global warming.
> 
> And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain
> in
> one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million
> others -- the villain was global warming.
> 
> As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense
> downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.
> 
> Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that 
> glanced off
> south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the
> relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
> 
> The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.
> 
> Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of
> Hurricane
> Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of
> dollars
> to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
> 
> The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires
> humanity to
> cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens
> the
> survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.
> 
> In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal
> industry
> had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public
> dissenters
> on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 
> million since
> 1998
> on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.
> 
> In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral 
> victory yet
> when President George W. Bush was elected president -- and 
> subsequently
> took
> suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.
> 
> As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers 
> fear we have
> already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.
> 
> Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about
> global
> warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.
> 
> When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming,
> it
> has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects
> and
> not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies,
> plant
> and animal life, public health, and weather.
> 
> For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to 
> accord the
> same
> weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the
> findings
> of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than 2,000
> scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.
> 
> Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the
> impacts as
> visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of 
> Mexico -- the
> press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with
> the
> oil and coal industries.
> 
> As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last
> winter -- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the 
> beginning
> of
> 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of 
> people in New
> England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.
> 
> The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name 
> is global
> warming.
> 
> Ross Gelbspan is author of ''The Heat Is On" and ''Boiling Point."

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