An Inconvenient Statistic

Lamest hurricane season in almost a decade.

Via Drudge:

Barring a last-second surprise from the tropics, the season will end Thursday with nine named storms, and only five of those hurricanes. This year is the first season since 1997 that only one storm nudged its way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Apparently Mother Nature decided to postpone her little Armageddon until maybe next year. Might be the year after. She's going through The Change, so who's to say when it'll happen. Anderson Cooper will have to wait a bit for another career-invigorating cataclysmic event.

But that's not what they said was it? Katrina and her cohorts of 2005 were supposed to be the harbingers of a growing global trend in more frequent and severe storms. The devastation of that year was just a precursor of what the human race was in for. Al Gore even made a movie about it.

.... So where is it? Where'd it go? Why did The Prophecy not come true?

Maybe it was Saharan dust. Maybe high pressure near Bermuda. Maybe El Nino. Point is, we don't know for sure. Was this quiet season just a fluke? Possibly. Will we see a repeat of 2005 in the next decade? Probably. Point is, we don't know for sure.

We do know one thing, however. And that is that we don't know shit. File that under "Things We Know We Don't Know." We can't predict what next year's hurricane season will be like...

What makes us think we can say with any certainty what the global climate will be like in 50 years?

Dixie Chicks Fight Global Warming

.... But not the way you'd hope.

A third of the way through their 50-city, 2006 Accidents and Accusations concert tour, the group has announced that it will partner with Conservation International (CI) to offset the carbon footprint associated with the tour.

Now, a carbon footprint is defined as: a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

Seeing as how humans produce CO2 just by exhaling, I had hoped that this announcement meant that they'd not only be cancelling their tour in exchange for early retirement, but would also be shutting the eff up for the remainder of their existence.

Oh well. Maybe they'll at least refrain from using their celebrity as a political soapbox and just stick to Dueling Banjos.

And maybe the bitch above me will listen to something other than "Leaving on a Jet-Plane" and "Gold Digger" in a continuous loop for hours and hours on end while tossing bowling pins on the floor as she gracefully tap dances her 738 pound frame across the hardwood floor in some designer concrete clogs.

.... Right.