The latest alarmist complaint about hurricanes is that the science has become politicized. NBC reports that “Despite the strong information they put out, meteorologists say they have faced unprecedented skepticism and vitriol. Some blame political tension ahead of the election, while others point to climate denial and the spread of misinformation on social media.” Some of which genuinely is berserk. But the ritual follow-the-science tone of “the strong information they put out”, when far too many weatherpersons and journalists keep injecting unfounded opinions about climate change into their reporting, helps underline that if you don’t want science to be politicized, it’s a good idea not to politicize science with, oh, say, a headline like “Hurricanes test limits of Trump’s war on experts”. Not least because the emergency response has been feeble despite, or perhaps to some degree because of, all that conventional wisdom dressed as expertise.
Paul Homewood, using an acronym for cow poop we ourselves would shovel from the barn of public debate, points to the claims that Hurricane Helene’s rainfall and floods were “once in 1,000 years” events and then brings in, of all weird things, historical evidence. For instance that Helene actually brought less than 20 inches of rain in all but a few places, and these totals accumulated over three days, whereas a storm in 1916 dropped 22 inches on Asheville, NC in just 24 hours, “still a record for the whole of the US.” As for another storm that “brought 1,000-year rains to communities on the opposite side of the state” from Helene’s landfall less than two weeks earlier:
“This refers to the small rainstorm which dumped 10 inches of rain on a short length of coast around Southport, NC on 17th September…. But again, ten inches in a day along the coast of the Carolinas is pretty much par for the course, when a tropical storm passes by. The 24-hour record for South Carolina, for instance, stands at 14.8 inches during Hurricane Floyd in 1999”.
Bottom line: the people complaining about misinformation are, in many cases, precisely the same people who are spreading it. For instance Politico “fact-checked” Florida governor Ron de Santis on the question of hurricanes by saying:
“It’s likely that the number of major tropical cyclones – category 3, 4 and 5 storms – have increased over the last four decades, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change write in 2023.”
Alas, it is not true either that it’s likely they had done so or that the IPCC had said it was. As they were shamed into conceding, updating the piece without directly addressing the error, the IPCC’s actual words were:
“It is likely that the global proportion of major (Category 3-5) tropical cyclone occurrence has increased over the last four decades”.
Proportion is not number. Nor are they very sure. Nor would a minor fluctuation in the ratio of 1-2 storms to 3-5 be evidence of anything except natural variability. So who’s peddling misinformation driven by an agenda?
Nevertheless, Scientific American, which used to be a publication devoted to science, is now unsurprisingly all-in on boo hiss down with right-wing conspiracies:
“Attacks on the agency [the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency] are the result of ‘a broader distrust in government,’ [some cybersecurity executive you never heard of, Roberta] Kaplan says, fueled by a ‘steady stream of disinformation over the years.’ Those claims play into concerns about government overreach, a common right-wing bugbear. What’s more, misinformation studies from recent years indicate that American conservatives may be more susceptible to falsehoods than liberals. They are also more likely to be suspended from social media websites for sharing more low-quality news.”
As if it did not use to be the left that distrusted government, often in extravagantly paranoid terms, like the one about how Richard Nixon was going to cancel the 1972 election and herd black Americans into concentration camps, or the Vietnam War being an imperialist plot, or multinational corporations taking over the world.
Now let’s be clear here. In today’s polarized climate there are some seriously nutty people attached to almost any cause, possibly more than in the past or maybe social media just turns them loose without even the trouble of typing a letter using the black-and-red ribbon, buying a stamp and walking to the mailbox, and climate skepticism is no exception. For FEMA (that’s Federal Emergency Management Agency for you non-connoisseurs of the US government’s alphabet soup) workers to face any sort of threats, let alone credible ones, is disgraceful even if you disagree with some of the agency’s policies, actions or mandate and financing. And here at CDN we do spend more time than seems reasonable trying to dissuade people from weaving conspiracy theories around climate alarmism, including rubbish about the state deliberately causing storms, or responding to trolls who insist that if we use terms like “conspiracy theory” we’re part of one.
Our general view on conspiracy theories is that they’re paranoid. When you look at the difficulties most people have doing the job or performing the task they’re allowed to be doing, up to and including emergency management or “Prime Minister of Canada”, the idea that a sinister cabal is somehow controlling everything behind the scenes and hiding all the evidence appears to us laughable. But also tragic, because it diverts attention from the real source of our problems which is plans announced openly by misguided zealots not plots by the Prieuré de Sion, the Elders of Zion or the WEF (which, we note, holds conferences and publishes books about its secret plans). But there are plenty of conspiracy theories out there on the other side including the massive and angrily repeated claim that climate skepticism is an oil company plot not a legitimate difference of opinion.
Which brings us back to hurricanes. The Economist's “The Climate Issue” newsletter praised Kamala Harris for visiting “the congregation of a large church in Greenville, North Carolina” to praise the “heroes” of disaster relief. Then it added:
“But Ms Harris also warned her audience against people ‘spreading disinformation’ in order to ‘play politics’ in the aftermath of both Hurricane Helene and, more recently, Hurricane Milton, which sent tornados and huge amounts of rainfall barrelling into Florida last week. This was an obvious dig at Donald Trump, who has spent much of his recent time on the campaign trail making false claims about the government’s response to the storms.”
But of course an obvious dig at Donald Trump isn’t playing politics. Or rather, it’s playing it the right way so it’s fair game. Thus the piece adds:
“It is the type of game being played that matters. Natural disasters are inherently political, because politics dictates how well communities can cope with them. Those driven by man-made climate change are more political still.”
And there you have misinformation dressed as information. These hurricanes are not “driven by man-made climate change”. As the piece had earlier mentioned Hurricane Helene was “the deadliest American storm in almost 20 years.” Not ever. In 20 years. As in such storms are far from unprecedented.
If you look at Atlantic hurricane season records, going back over 150 years, and recognizing that detection and reporting have become more rigorous, there’s no sign of the incidence of major hurricanes or hurricanes overall becoming more frequent or more violent. And when The Economist insists that they are becoming “more destructive” and that “Billion-dollar disasters are becoming ever more common” they’re playing the misinformation game and it’s not OK. Including because Accumulated Cyclone Energy is not rising; according to Wikipedia by that measure the “Top 10 Atlantic hurricane seasons” were, in increasing order of intensity, 1998, 1961, 1950, 2017, 2004, 1995 and, drum roll please as we watch the present fail to sweep the top four spots, 1926, 1893, 2005 and 1933. Storms aren’t becoming more destructive, they’re just hitting more valuable things. Yet The Economist intones “Hurricanes use warm ocean water as fuel. Hotter oceans mean stronger storms.”
Yeah? So just how hot were the oceans in 1893? And are you agreeing that the 1930s were hotter than any decade since? Because otherwise this kind of chatter, like Inside Climate News crowing that “After Helene and Milton, scientists warn that human-caused disruption of the climate system will result in even more destructive hurricanes” or the New York Times insisting FEMA was ready but wasn’t due to staff burnout and funding shortfalls before droning “The relentless string of disasters, which are becoming more frequent and severe because of climate change, is just one challenge”, tends to make people distrust experts and their self-appointed defenders.
Man-made global warming is the largest, and most successful disinformation campaign of all time. For any successful disinformation campaign you have to falsely accuse those accurately stating it is disinformation that they are the ones spreading falsehoods.
As I've said before, the Economist talks reasonable sense on just about every other subject, but when climate comes up they go gaga. In the las edition they were on about climate refugees abandoning Florida for more northern states - at a time when Florida has been steadily gaining citizens for many years.
Yes, I had a subscription to the economist since the 90s when I got tired of the Entertainment Tonight quality of Time, Newsweek etc.
But I cancelled a few years back and made sure they knew it was specifically due to the climate nonsense.
Well,I strongly disagree with John, like many other successful and well educated people I see a clear Conspiracy behind the Climate Fraud. The same players who finance and support it, Soros,Gates Trudeau and many others could not do the things they do- Private Jets,Superyachts,huge international conferences etc ., without knowing that they were guilty of Hypocrisy at the very least,unless they were idiots ,and they patently aren’t.