We've built on coastal areas knowing full well that hurricanes will strike. In fact, more and more of the population have moved to coastal locations for its beauty and pristine qualities. Insurance companies charge a costly surcharge on coastal properties because they know that hurricanes do strike and often with vicious intensity. This is nothing new. If you want to live or build or drive along scenic routes carved out or formed by nature, then we all take the risk that nature will take back what belongs to her.

In former times we blamed nature's wrath. Now, because of irresponsible journalists, we call it global warming.

Remember the Midwest floods of 1993, which inundated towns, and transportation routes along 500 miles of the Mississippi and Missouri river systems? Get used to it.

Remember the great flood of 1927? It had nothing to with global warming. Scientists suggest that "unusually heavy precipitation beginning in the year leading up to the flood [of 1993] was the result of excess cloud condensation nuclei from the earth-circling ash cloud generated by the massive eruption (the second largest of the 20th century) of the Philippines volcano Mount Pinatubo in 1991." 

And if you want to live in a flood-prone area, you should get used to this happening, and understand the total amount in damages is usually commiserate with population.

Do you like being stranded at work? Climate change will bring more 24-hour rainstorms such as the one that slammed Chicago and its suburbs in July 1996, causing huge travel delays on metro highways and railroads and damaging streets and bridges.

Again, the Begley spin machine does a great job of rinsing out a complex problem into something that can be summed up in a green-washed sentence. I expect nothing less from an alarmist reporter, but saying that we'll be getting more 24-hour rainstorms (which, again, have been going on for as long as record keeping has occurred) which will leave us stranded is too much for even the most gullible to swallow.