No headline

A new year. A new month. What to write? Where to begin? Prometheus to Frankenstein? Marx to Sustainable Development? Conformism, to political correctness? Some finishing touch first.

It is good that Princeton University, et al, corrected their error. A mistake which should not have been made to begin with. The “peer” review was faulty. The journal editor should have caught the error before publication. All add up to a sense of amateurism, at best. Then, to dismiss with “be that as is may” is to excuse incompetence.

Jack DeBaun failed to name the author of the statement or the magazine in which the claim was made that global warming (?) was the cause of increasing hurricane damage. In Sept. 21, 2017, Jackie Snow made the statement for Hakai magazine. The gist of the article was that insurance companies and the federal government were having more difficulty paying for rising property damage claims. Of course the dollar values are rising. More people have been moving to those areas susceptible to hurricanes. More people mean more buildings. More buildings mean more targets for damage. Inflation has increased their values. The historical records show that the number of hurricanes has held fairly steady and that there have been many more powerful storms than those seen this century.

Discretion is advised. There are a number of warnings about spam and virus risks with shortened URLs, such as the site mentioned by Jack.

JEREMY CONLIN

Cocolalla