On the eve of the 2006 hurricane season, scores of concerned citizens from across the nation joined Hurricane Katrina survivors today to denounce the Bush Administration

For immediate release From the U.S. Climate Emergency Council Contact: Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838 Or Ted Glick 973-460-1458, www.climateemergency.org Hurricanes and Global Warming: Katrina Survivors and Activists Condemn NOAA Cover-Up, Call for Lautenbacher and Mayfield to Resign SILVER SPRING, Md (5/31/06) – On the eve of the 2006 hurricane season, scores of concerned citizens from across the nation joined Hurricane Katrina survivors today to denounce the Bush Administration’s cover-up of the growing scientific link between monstrous hurricanes and human-induced global warming. By ignoring or suppressing new and vital climate data, both NOAA director Conrad Lautenbacher and Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center (a subset of NOAA), should resign immediately, protesters said. “At the start of this new storm season, and in memory of the 1500 people who died from Katrina, we demand that the Bush Administration finally admit the scientific truth: global warming means bigger, meaner hurricanes for America,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, speaking outside the NOAA national headquarters in Silver Spring, MD with other demonstrators. Tidwell was joined by leaders of groups ranging from the Hip Hop Caucus to Physicians for Social Responsibility to the Sierra Student Coalition. Despite a flurry of peer-reviewed scientific studies linking planetary warming to increasingly powerful hurricanes, leaders at NOAA and the NHC continue to claim – with no supporting data — that the recent hurricane devastation is part of a “natural cycle.” Protesters condemned these responses as an abdication of government responsibility when millions of Americans are increasingly vulnerable to violent storms in a warmer world. “I survived Hurricane Katrina as a New Orleans resident, but no one can continue to survive in any U.S. coastal city as long as global warming continues to birth massive storms and the agencies meant to warn us – NOAA and the National Hurricane Center – pretend global warming is not happening for purely political reasons,” said Casey DeMoss Roberts, former chair of the New Orleans Group of the Sierra Club. “I’ve evacuated New Orleans for good now because climate change just makes it too dangerous to live there, and that’s sad.” Just since August 2005, no fewer than four major scientific studies, published in peer-reviewed journals, have shown that increasingly warmer sea-surface temperatures worldwide are bolstering the frequency, power, and lifespan of major hurricanes. Yet there is no mention of these studies at the National Hurricane Center web site despite the agency’s official mission “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.” And NHC director Max Mayfield denied any substantive connection between global warming and hurricanes before a US Senate panel last fall. Meanwhile at NOAA, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other media have documented the ongoing campaign to cover up global warming data. Under the directorship of Bush’s friend and political appointee, Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., NOAA climate scientists are being intimidated from talking to the press and their papers are being withheld from publication. These actions at NOAA and the NHC are part of an obvious political campaign orchestrated by the White House to avoid the serious cuts in fossil fuel use scientists say are needed to fight global warming. But by ignoring the science and denying the warming on behalf of Exxon Mobil, the Bush Administration is condemning millions more Americans to the suffering and loss seen throughout the Gulf Coast in 2005. After a record four major hurricanes hit Florida in 2004, the 2005 hurricane season was even more devastating. Of the six most powerful hurricanes ever to hit America in the past 150 years, three occurred within 52 days in 2005. These were Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. The result from Katrina alone was 1,500 dead, two million Americans displaced, and at least $200 billion in damages. PROTEST SPONSORED BY: The U.S. Climate Emergency Network, a newly launched nonprofit dedicated to rigorous grassroots action in the fight to stop global warming and promote a clean-energy economy. Learn more at www.climateemergency.org.