Your Tax Dollars at Work

You knew this was coming. The report of the Bush Administration's U.S. Climate Change Science Program says that global warming is to blame for the floods in Iowa:

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- The chances for extreme weather in the U.S. such as the record rainfall and flooding in Iowa this month are increasing as worldwide temperatures rise, a government agency that researches climate change said.
North America may get more abnormally hot days and nights, heavier downpours and deadlier storms from global warming, today's report from the Bush administration's U.S. Climate Change Science Program said. Elevated temperatures in recent decades already have led to more intense rainstorms in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, said Thomas Karl, co-chairman of the report.
``The probability of heavy downpours is increasing, which leads to events like what we're seeing in the Midwest,'' said Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an interview.
The Iowa disaster helped drive corn prices to a record high. Flood damage may exceed $2.7 billion, according to economics professors Mark Burton at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Michael Hicks at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
``We think that climate change is really a driver, not only in tropical storms but in other precipitation events,'' Eberhard Faust, head of climate risk analysis for Munich Re, the world's second-biggest re-insurer, said in an interview before the report. ``We can anticipate that many of these processes will get even worse, even stronger.''

Sometimes when I listen to clowns like these discuss global warming and its causes and effects, I feel like I am watching a pro wrestling match. The only difference is that none of the wrestlers actually believe they are really fighting.

Update: I received an email from Michael Hicks, whose research on the cost of floods is cited in the article. He pointed out to me that he has never made any connection between global warming and floods. I agree that he has been inaccurately associated with the global warming crowd.