As Hurricane Katrina rages through the Gulf Coast, the usual top scientists and assorted experts are in a rush to blame global warming:

Warm ocean temperatures are a key ingredient for monster hurricanes, prompting some scientists to believe that global warming is exacerbating our storm troubles

By JEFFREY KLUGER

Posted Monday, Aug. 29, 2005
The people of New Orleans are surely not thinking about wind vortices, the coriolis effect or the dampness of the troposphere as they hunker down during hurricane Katrina this morning. They’re mostly thinking about the savage rains and 140 mph winds that have driven them from their homes. But it’s that meteorological arcana that’s made such a mess of the bayou, and to hear a lot of people tell it, we have only ourselves—and our global-warming ways—to blame.

It's all so predictable.

Almost scientific (from a political perspective that is).

The experts agree. And we know who is responsible, don't we?

It's all Bush's fault!

First he went after Iraqi cities . . .

UPDATE (06:45 p.m.): The global warming/blame-Bush meme is not limited to leftist blogs or Time magazine. It's already major enough for Fox News, where I just saw Brit Hume discussing it with Fred Barnes.

Sooner or later, you'd think people would get tired of it.

FWIW, I don't like the timing.

UPDATE (08/31/05): James K. Glassman exposes the opportunistic demagoguery which would blame this tragedy on "Global Warming":

....the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.

Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.

Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade.

I've been looking at television footage of looters, and while it's always horrible to see exploitation of tragedy for personal gain, people like Robert Kennedy Jr. ought to know better than to make comments like this:

"Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."