LOS ANGELES -- Beneath the endlessly horrific details surrounding the hurricane that swamped parts of New Orleans and the southeast United States lurks a monster question. Just how angry -- really -- is Mother Nature over the irreverent, careless way we humans and our energy-hungry machines have been manhandling our precious, precariously balanced planet?
The way this question is put may seem anthropomorphically fanciful, but the issue of worldwide warming has been on the global table top long enough to know that it's high time we did something about it. Most people understand that many scientists believe the issue to be nothing less than dire.
It is also a fact that many eminent scientific seers directly connect the worldwide warming phenomenon with certain kinds of bad weather news -- to wit, the apparently growing severity of "natural" catastrophes.
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