I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the discussion among the group that pulls together names for seasonal hurricanes--still no "black" hurricane names, by the way--when they picked "Alberto". Were they admiring "Crazy Al", or more likely, poking fun at him?

Carbon emissions are still measured in parts per million, and not very many at that. Instead of spending incredible amounts of money to reduce already diminishing carbon emissions (except in the developing world, including perpetual coal mine fires in China), if we're really at a tipping point, among the prudent, good government acts we could take including having the government buy back land from all coastal property owners up to a certain point above sea level and prohibiting development in at risk areas so that we can adapt to the crisis until it can be studied and solved without bankrupting the industrial or the developing world. Repeating "Crazy Al's" mantra, "See, see, another hurricane--I told you!" solves nothing except dramatizing the inability of government to address the undesired outcome of global warming.

Of course, the Hollywood elite supports "Crazy Al" --that is, unless their expensive beachfront property was condemned. They would probably support a "cut and run" strategy that still offered them dibs on the "new" beachfront property--wherever that may be.

The Dutch built dikes to hold back the sea instead of living with flooding. They did not tell farmers and villagers to stop farming and trading. There are endless examples of man's ability to adapt to nature. Unless we start to hear policy proposals that deal with adaptation to global warming, all we're hearing is more hot air.