On the heels of Katrina comes Rita, bearing down the Gulf Coast again and heading toward Texas. Ironically, thousands of Katrina survivors are now sheltered in South East Texas!

There are also massive storms along the South Pacific.

Can global warming be blamed? Some suggest yes, others suggest that they (the storms) seem more menacing because of the population growth along coastal areas.

My guess is that it is a combination of both global warming and population increases. The more people, the more resources used. The more resources used, the greater chance of unnatural weather patterns due to the greenhouse effect.

That's been my lame tutorial for today.

I think it's just natural weather cycles myself; the media love making a big deal of stuff like this, it boosts TV ratings and sells newspapers. There's always been hurricanes around that area and there always will be; they've had incidents equally as bad as this and worse a hundred years ago. I think it's just another example that shows us, no matter how far we advance technology, nature will always comes out on top in the end.

Also if the levvies hadn't broken in New Orleans it would just have been another wooden house flattening hurricane; very upsetting for the people living there of course, and still a tragedy, but not nearly so terrible as it is now. I guess it's a price you pay for living in such a place where these things can happen? Hopefully they'll rebuild their dams with modern techniques to avoid them breaking again in the future.

On a positive side, if there is such a thing with this, the first hurricane has shown the people what can happen so the receivers of the second one can take better precautions, with less loss of life.

Actually, it's believed that the intensity of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico has increased because of global warming increasing the water's surface temperature.

Believed by some people perhaps, but not by me. Didn't some people say that global warming was actually starting to drop, or did I dream that?

They've talked about this on American TV too.

And yes Maljonic, I do think you've only dreampt about a decrease in global warming.

There's also a theory that hurricane-related weather cycles happen about once every ten years, and could have something to do with sunspot activity. Meaning there's a greater chance of this happening at these times, but that they don't always happen.

Fiddlesticks I say!

Hey, aren't you two married?

Better change the subject to something more neutral---as long as it's NOT the weather..

That's all right, nothing wrong with a healthy debate.