Johnny Rook's Climaticide Chronicles

After killing 23 people in deforested Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Gustav is closing in on Jamaica, with the Cayman Islands next up. Although still several days away from the coasts of the U.S. and Mexico, authorities in those areas are already taking precautions. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency and put National Guard Troops on standby while New Orleans is preparing for evacuation in the hopes that, should Gustav (which could reach level-3 hurricane status) strike the area, the catastrophic consequences that followed Katrina’s assault on the city 3 years ago can be avoided.

It is projected that Hurricane Gustav could make landfall on the Gulf Coast Monday evening during the opening events of the Republican party’s National Convention in Minneapolis. Ironically, given Gustav’s approach and the recent news out of the Arctic, National Review online has just announced:

As promised, the Republican platform subcommittee on energy took up the global-warming section of the 2008 draft about an hour ago. Long story short: It’s now a very different document. I’ll have more after I’ve had a chance to talk to some of the participants in the debate. To give you an idea of how drastically the document changed, consider the first amendment the subcommittee took up, which passed:

The section was titled, “Global Warming and Environmental Protection.” Now it’s just, “Environmental Protection[empahsis addes–JR].

Looks like the Repug denialists just barely got their heads under the sand in time.