. . . and opportunists

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Environmental activists shamelessly try to exploit last week's earthquake-tsunami catastrophe in hopes of advancing their global-warming and antidevelopment agendas.

Two days after the tragedy, the executive director of Greenpeace U.K. told British newspaper the Independent, "No one can ignore the relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree."

Friends of the Earth Director Tony Juniper told the same British newspaper, "Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions." A spokesperson for the Indonesian arm of Friends of the Earth told Agence France Presse, "We can expect in the coming years similar events happening as a result of global warming and therefore help and prevention are the responsibility of the Northern countries as well."

Exploitation of tragedy is a sport played not only by environmentalists. Insurer Munich Re used the event to renew its call to fight global warming, which the insurance industry has recently begun blaming for natural disasters. Concerned about large payouts for natural disaster claims, insurance companies are very eager to establish global warming as contributing to those disasters, so they can sue deep-pocket businesses supposedly responsible for that global warming.

Efforts to invoke supposed global warming as the culprit for this week's death and destruction are patently absurd as the multiple tsunamis were not a "weather event" in the slightest. The tsunamis were caused by an earthquake, which, by the way, is a real, not a "so-called," natural disaster.

Earthquakes aren't caused by the weather or greenhouse gas emissions; they're caused by tectonics -- that is naturally moving geological faults. While tectonics may cause climate changes, the reverse is not true.

Despite the fictional tsunami that hit New York in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," there is no realistic climate change scenario that could cause a tsunami-spawning earthquake.

While tsunamis may also, on occasion, be caused by the breaking of polar ice into chunks -- the natural process of iceberg creation known as "calving" -- such tsunamis tend to be harmless localized events.

Environmentalists are also looking to blame economic development for the devastation wreaked by the tsunamis in hopes of slowing progress in the Third World.

"A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in future, experts said," reported Reuters this week. "Coasts are under threat in many countries," said Greenpeace's Brad Smith to Reuters. "Development of roads, shrimp farms, ribbon development along coasts and tourism are eroding natural defenses in Asia."