 No Act Of God In case you missed it, on Monday, a massive tornado - likely an EF-5 on the enhanced Fujita scale - ripped a 15-to-20 mile long path, up to two miles wide, through suburban Oklahoma with sustained winds at or near 200 mph. Already, this tornado is being classified as one of the worst in history.
As a staff filled with those who've lived many years in the Midwest, the damage in Oklahoma is worse than anything we can ever remember seeing. We have friends in Oklahoma, and Paul has a longstanding relationship with the award-winning weekly newspaper the Oklahoma Gazette. For many of our Nebraska readers, there are also still many longstanding ties to Oklahoma, the longtime collegiate rivals of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
In short, this disaster is personal for us.
So it's with a great deal of anger that we read about the recent comments of imbeciles like Minnesota state Senator Glenn Gruenhagen, or Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, and his asinine opinion piece in the Washington Post on Sunday. Frankly, we don't have much time today for people like writer Andrew Leonard either, who before the body count in Oklahoma even reached above 25, was already waving the gutless white flag of surrender and delay on climate change.
Most scientists - and indeed most people in the world - agree that climate change is real. Whether man caused climate change, or has simply increased its rate of acceleration matters very little to the potential 100 million people, worldwide, likely to be killed by climate change related disasters in the next 17 years.
There are those who will point out that climate change has not been definitively linked to tornados - and we won't argue with that. However... |
