First, a brief hurricane update.
I suppose it's slightly ironic that, twelve hours before I might possibly drown from a hurricane, I'm posting an article on fire. Such are the whims and vagaries of outrageous fortune.
Yesterday, I said something in an email that only a Floridian would say:
The good news is that it's supposed to still be a tropical storm when it gets here, or a weak Category 1 hurricane. Hopefully.
Only in Florida would someone say it'll hopefully be a Category 1 hurricane.
When I posted on Isaac last Wednesday, it was barreling directly for us. Over the next few days, it moved slightly to the west, as far as Key West, then it turned slightly northward which drew it back our direction. So it looks like we'll get clobbered pretty good.
The good news is that it's picked up a real head of steam over the last few days and is now scheduled to hit us tonight, rather than tomorrow morning as originally forecast. More speed = less time over the water = less time to pick up energy.
For what it's worth, this is the fifth hurricane I've gone through in the six years I've been here. Four in the first two months, now Isaac. We also got lashed a good one a few years ago with Tropical Storm Fey.
As for the video, I don't think you'll learn anything particularly new ("governments are stupid"?), but it's nice to see the subject neatly laid out. As you know, along with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and unscheduled solar eclipses, the recent spate of large wildfires has also been attributed to global warming.
What makes this video exceptional — coming from a left-wing, AGW-loving organization like NPR — is that the expert actually says the following in real, live English words for all to hear:
Even without climate change in the mix, this is probably not coming back as the forests and woodlands that they were before.
That's right, even without global warming, the expert still acknowledges that shortsighted government agencies might have played some small, tiny part in this travesty.
I presume he lost his job the following day.
