Where's McCain? Where's Bush? Where's Palin? Here's Ike!

Like we said a few days ago, when they wanted to avoid the St Paul HateFest, McCain, Bush and Palin couldn't be pried away from the Gulf Coast, where the campaign for a third Bush term miraculously became a campaign to save the world from Gustav. Last night's NY Times has a big story about thousands of people fleeing the Texas Gulf area to escape a bigger and meaner Ike... but  there's not a mention of McCain, not a mention of Palin and the only mention of Bush is how he's authorizing $10 million for Haiti.

Today the Times paints an even more dismal picture: "Hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of Houston and neighboring cities on Thursday as Hurricane Ike continued on a collision course with the central coastline of Texas" but McCain is... elsewhere.

If you fell for the Republican ploy and thought because they could use Gustav as part of their campaign, they would also care about other natural disasters, you haven't been paying attention. Greenpeace, however, has been. They point to studies showing the link between global warming and more and worse hurricanes.

Higher than average Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures are currently fueling Hurricane Ike’s increasing size and power and potentially large storm surge damage. Higher temperatures are part of a long-term trend that new scientific studies warn is intensifying the effects of major Atlantic storms like Ike.

One of those studies, published last week in the journal Nature, found that warming seas are providing more energy to Atlantic Ocean hurricanes like Hurricane Ike, increasing their size and the strength of their winds. Prior studies have shown that warming is producing increased rainfall, severe flooding and storm surge during big storms.

“The huge costs of extreme weather and flooding from global warming far outweigh any hypothetical benefits from offshore drilling,” said Kert Davies, Greenpeace Research Director. 
“Hurricane Ike shows the vulnerability caused by our oil addiction. If Congress is really interested in helping Americans, it will free us from our reliance on oil by increasing automobile fuel efficiency and investing in clean energy sources like wind and solar.”

Even as global warming intensifies large storms like Hurricane Ike, it is also driving sea level rise, making coastal communities and infrastructure like oil rigs and refineries more vulnerable to storm surge. Today’s storm surge predictions for Hurricane Ike will put major oil refineries and chemical plants at risk.