On the eve of Hurricane season 2006, the U.S. Climate Emergency Council demanded the resignations of top officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Hurricane Center in a press conference today in Silver Spring, Maryland.

NOAA director Conrad Lautenbacher and Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center, are in direct violation of their agency’s missions to warn Americans about “dangerous weather” and “improve our understanding and stewardship of the environment,” and should resign immediately, said Mike Tidwell, director of the council.

He said they are “actively covering up the strong and growing scientific evidence linking more powerful hurricanes to global warming,” and as a result, “NOAA is placing tens of millions of coastal Americans at risk of the kind of catastrophic impacts created in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina killed 1,500 people, displaced two million others, and inflicted $200 billion in damages.”

In the past ten months alone, four major scientific studies, all published in peer-reviewed journals, have established a firm link between stronger hurricanes and ocean temperatures so warm they cannot be explained by “natural” patterns.

A July 2005 study in the journal Nature, published by noted climate scientist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examined data from thousands of hurricanes worldwide over the past 50 years. He found that average hurricane wind speeds had doubled during that period and that the storms were lasting 60 percent longer. Significantly, Emanuel found that the growing intensity of hurricanes corresponded closely with rising sea surface temperatures worldwide.

“I see a large global warming signal in hurricanes,” Emanuel said.

A second study in September 2005 strongly reinforced these findings. A prestigious team of scientists writing in the journal Science revealed that hurricanes of the strongest magnitude – those in the Category 4 and 5 range – had dramatically increased in frequency in recent decades, including a 64 percent increase in storms in the Atlantic Basin. The increase correlated strongly with observed increases in sea surface temperatures.

Study co-author Dr. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech University told the Associated Press that the study team was confident that the increase in sea surface temperatures was associated with global warming. Hurricanes glean most of their energy from warm water.

These two studies and two others of slightly different scope published in 2006 have dramatically altered majority opinion within the scientific community concerning the connection between global warming and hurricanes.

Despite this new data, and the strong hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, the directors of both NOAA and the National Hurricane Center continue to categorically deny any meaningful connection between climate change and stronger hurricanes, Mayfield said.

“In comments to the media and in testimony before Congress, these directors insistently attribute the recent increase in hurricane intensity to ‘natural variability’ without offering any credible data to support their assertions,” he said. “Meanwhile, in a move widely reported in the popular press, NOAA has, since September 2005, implemented an internal policy restricting the ability of its dissenting climate scientists to speak to reporters.”

Lautenbacher, a retired Navy Vice Admiral, was appointed by President George Bush in 2001 to head NOAA and its $4 billion budget. Since then, Lautenbacher has criticized international efforts to address climate change, including the Kyoto Protocol. On August 30, 2005, immediately after Katrina struck and after publication of the landmark MIT study, Lautenbacher told an audience in Missouri, “We have no direct link between the number of (hurricanes) and intensity versus global temperature rise.” He made similar comments in testimony to Congress soon after Katrina.

In November, under Lautenbacher’s watch, NOAA’s official magazine published a story stating that the record 2005 hurricane season was part of “naturally occurring multi-decadal climate variability.” The article completely omitted any reference to the Emanuel or Curry studies or the climate modeling of its own NOAA scientists predicting more intense storms due to global warming.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New Republic all ran stories in 2006 reporting complaints from inside and outside of the agency that dissenting NOAA climate scientists were being intimidated from talking to the press and some had had papers withheld from publication.

The mission statement of the National Hurricane Center is explicit: “To save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of hazardous tropical weather, and by increasing understanding of these hazards.”

Despite this declared commitment to the nation and despite the enormous public safety stakes that ride on the NHC’s proclamations, Max Mayfield has consistently denied the global warming link without offering any scientific data to explain the observed rise in recent hurricane intensity. Mayfield rightfully explains that, in terms of overall frequency, Atlantic hurricanes tend to occur in multi-decadal active and inactive phases, and that we are presently in an active phase. But in comments to Congress and journalists, he regularly denies any climate change connection to the rising intensity of storms and the rising worldwide frequency of the biggest storms, as studies now document.

In September 2005, when CBS’s “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer asked Mayfield if hurricanes had “something to do with global warming,” he replied unequivocally, “Bob, hurricanes, and especially major hurricanes, are cyclical.”

Also troubling is the tact that the websites of both the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service repeatedly feature the work of hurricane meteorologist William Gray, a widely discredited denier of the very phenomenon of human-induced global warming. Right after Katrina, speaking on a separate website partly funded by ExxonMobil, Gray blatantly declared that only grossly ignorant people could believe global warming and hurricanes are connected.

“In 15 or 20 years, we’re going to look back on this and see how grossly exaggerated it all was,” he said. “The humans are not that powerful.”

Despite such comments that fall dramatically outside the mainstream of climate science, and despite the fact that Gray is only a meteorologist, not an atmospheric scientist, a search of his name on the National Hurricane Center website yields at least 104 hits. Worse, many regional websites of the National Weather Service have direct links – under the topic of hurricanes – to Gray’s own website, where he debunks any notion of a connection between climate change and more intense storms.

“The stakes are very, very high for the American people,” Mayfield said. “Two-thirds of the population of New Orleans has still not returned home and nearly one thousand people are still missing from that storm.”

Of the six most powerful hurricanes to strike the United States in the last 150 years, three of them occurred in just 52 days during 2005: Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

And while it’s impossible to definitively connect any one weather event to global warming, it’s clear from the new scientific data that Katrina-like storms will afflict U.S. coastlines with greater frequency in the future unless our nation immediately commits to a program to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But this critical step will not happen as long as the nation’s premiere scientific agencies continue to ignore the science and deny coastal Americans the appropriate warnings and information that could save their lives and property.

“For this reason, Conrad Lautenbacher and Max Mayfield must resign immediately from their positions,” Mayfield said. “They must be replaced with appropriate leaders who resist the energy politics of the White House and insist on truth telling throughout these agencies. And no U.S. taxpayer-funded website, meanwhile, should have any links to the flawed and dishonest climate information carried on the website of discredited meteorologist William Gray.”

For more information, visit the Web site for KatrinaNoMore.Org.

Also of interest: Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson’s story on global warming and Louisiana wetlands from Jan. 2, 2004.

We have been asked by another Alabama blogger to comment on the proposed Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriages that will be on the ballot next Tuesday, June 6.

Jeff Vreeland with the Politics in Alabama blog says he plans to have more to say about it in the next few days. We had not necessarily planned to get into this issue, since we figure it is a done deal anyway. But the invite is too interesting to avoid.

But before we comment on anything, some research is necessary. This ain’t like talk radio y’all where we feel comfortable saying the first thing that pops into our heads.

So the first thing we had to do before posting was to search around and find the language of the amendment. The best we can tell from online research anyway, no news organization in Alabama has actually published the language yet. There have been stories and even editorials about it, along with stories about public opinion surveys on the issue.

Thanks to the friendly folks at the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, however, we had the language in hand within minutes. When you go to the polls next Tuesday, this is what Amendment One will say:

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, to provide that no marriage license shall be issued in Alabama to parties of the same sex and that the state shall not recognize a marriage of parties of the same sex that occurred as a result of the law of any other jurisdiction. (Proposed by Act 2005-35)

For clarification purposes, the Christian Coalition Web site indicates a “Yes” vote supposedly “protects traditional marriage” and a “No” vote “Does not protect traditional marriage.” But of course that radical, right-wing group of homophobic nutjobs is FOR the amendment.

This is important, since sources tell us that preachers all over Alabama are recommending a “yes” vote, since “the language is confusing.”

Then a look at the public opinion polls seems useful.

According to the University of Auburn University’s E-Commons site, a survey they conducted found that 54 percent of Alabamians strongly support an amendment. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans support it, while Democrats “are more equally divided,” according to poll director Jim Seroka.

This differs markedly from the national surveys. According to a Pew Research Center survey, only the slimmest of majorities, 51 percent of Americans, continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage.

According to some newspaper stories in the state, the amendment might be just as bad for the rights of traditional married couples as it is for gay couples. Opponents of the amendment contend the measure may affect health insurance benefits for children, inheritances, domestic violence protections and property transactions.

An attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center said the amendment would not strengthen Alabama law or protect traditional marriage, and that the amendment is just a political ploy to turn out conservative, Christian voters.

“The Christian Coalition wants to get their people out to vote,” said Rhonda Brownstein, the SPLC’s legal director.

The Alabama Legislature passed the bill setting up the amendment vote in the 2005 regular session. Democrats in the Legislature won in a move to add the measure to the primary ballot, while Republicans wanted it on the general election ballot in November.

Allison Neal, a law fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said his organization opposes the amendment as legal overkill.

“It is overkill. It divides people into categories,” he said. “This is not just about marriage. It is about domestic partnerships, common-law unions, access to health and retirement benefits, and benefits for children.”

Howard Bayless, chairman of the board of the gay rights group Equality Alabama, hopes people in Alabama will be more understanding than the Christian Coalition and vote against the amendment.

Gay neighbors have difficulty visiting sick partners in the hospital, for example, and this bill would only make that more difficult.

Former Gov. Don Siegelman, who is also on the ballot next Tuesday as the one of the Democratic Party’s nominees for governor, took a strong stand in favor of the gay marriage ban amendment on Alabama’s “For the Record” show last night.

When asked where he stands on the amendment, he quickly said “I’m for it” almost before the question was out of the moderator’s mouth. He justified this position by saying it was based on “nature.”

But we suspect if he had actually done some research, he would learn that scientists have conducted study after study showing that nature, not nurture, is behind the fact that some people are born gay. In other words, no gay teacher or parent can turn a person into favoring one sex over the other in bed. It’s in the genes. There’s no escaping it, and this is NOT a matter of opinion.

Lucy Baxley took a different tack when asked the question on the show the night before. She would not reveal how she will vote on the amendment, since she said her vote is a private matter. But she did say her position is that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

We have no doubt Judge Roy Moore and Gov. Bob Riley will come out for it, and Riley’s latest television commercials allude to it, along with his “right to life” position on abortion and arresting all the illegal immigrants and deporting them.

So, now that we have some information, here is our position.

We will vote against the amendment banning gay marriage, because we think it is just another dumbass reactionary use of the electoral process to push a right-wing agenda and discriminate against Americans who are not white, heterosexual, married and live in the suburbs and drive everywhere they go.

Marriage should be a private matter between consenting adults – not an issue for the state. As a simple matter of civil rights, citizens of this country should not be discriminated against because of their race, gender, political party affiliation or sexual orientation.

This amendment codifies discrimination into the state Constitution, which should be scrapped and rewritten in any event. The problem with rewriting it now is this: Do you trust the idiots in power in Montgomery at this juncture to do the rewriting? We don’t.

But at least we should be able to vote down state sanctioned discrimination every chance we get at the election polls.

We therefore urge a “No” vote on Amendment One.

I’m not much of a country music fan, but if there is a country band I would support and like to interview, it would be The Dixie Chicks. They are not backing down from their comments critical of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. You can listen to some of their new album “Taking The Long Way” here, including the cut “Not Ready to Make Nice.”