By now you’ve probably heard about the lunatic comments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Cindy Sheehan of the environmental movement, who blamed Hurricane Katrina on President Bush and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for not buying into the global warming hype, and not signing up for the thoroughly-discredited Kyoto Treaty.

RFK is not alone in his delusions. In Europe the president is being castigated for not falling in line with all those Old World socialists eager to use the alleged warming of the world climate to create a new world order organized along the lines laid down by Karl Marx.

Their cynicism and political opportunism has drawn the scorn of the widely-acclaimed British social anthropologist Benny Peiser, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society whose research focuses on the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution.

Here’s what he just wrote about the attacks on President Bush by the global warming fanatics:

“Notwithstanding continuing rescue and support efforts, the calamity has triggered a rather opportunistic and cynical reaction by opponents of the current U.S. Administration. In an eerie development that echoes the political exploitation of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster last December, environmental campaigners, Green journalists and European officials are blaming (once again) the U.S. and its people for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Instead of supporting the rescue efforts, demagogues are using the human tragedy in a futile attempt to score points. At a time of utter desolation and misfortune, propagandists in high office and parts of the media are abandoning America and its victims for purely political goals.”

What he said next should endear him to every American: “Europeans in particular, who have been rescued and liberated from themselves by the U.S. no less than three times in the course of the 20th century, should feel ashamed for kicking a friend and ally when he is down. Let me re-assure our American friends and colleagues that this pitiless mind-set of environmental activists is not representative for the vast majority of Europeans who are following the heartbreaking events with great concern and empathy.”

Nobody could have said it better. I hope Germany’s environmental minister Jürgen Trittin was listening. He blames George Bush for hurricane Katrina despite the fact that that statistics don’t show a particularly increase in the frequency of hurricanes in the U.S. in the last decades.

According to Herr Trittin, President Bush has neglected environmental protection and shut his eyes “to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflict on his country and the world’s economy.”

He and his Econut pals should listen to Professor Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who told Britain’s The Independent: “I don’t think you can put this down to global warming.”

Dr. William Gray, a Colorado State University meteorologist, considered one of the fathers of modern tropical cyclone science, says worldwide weather records were too inadequate for a thorough examination of trends. “The people who have a bias in favor of the argument that humans are making the globe warmer will push any data that suggests humans are making hurricanes worse, but it just isn’t so. These are natural cycles,” he told the New York Times.

In a 2001 paper in Science, by Stanley Goldenberg of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), it was explained that the Atlantic goes through decades-long stretches where it creates extra hurricanes while there are equally long lulls where the number of hurricanes is low.

Over recent decades we have been in a lull period. According to Professor John Molinari, of Albany’s State University of New York: “We were way below normal levels for hurricanes in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.” Now he says it appears that Goldenberg and his colleagues were right, and that the east coast of the United States is in a period of increased hurricane activity that could last 20 years or more.”

And George Bush has nothing to do with that. It’s all Mother Nature’s fault.

©2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561