The damp squib of Hurricane Irene makes fools of America’s sensationalist news media and climate doomsayers. With 300,000 people evacuated New York’s red-faced Mayor Bloomberg is set to blame Barack Obama.
The US President had warned that America’s east coast was in for a “long 72 hours” as he led his government’s disaster command center in Washington. But Hurricane Irene was officially downgraded to a mere tropical storm at 3pm EST on Saturday (August 28, 2011) as Mayor Bloomberg called off the emergency. No tsunami. No Armageddon.
Obama’s Storm in a Teacup
To put Irene into proper meteorological perspective we can use for our metric the world’s most popular science blog,
WUWT. The prize-winning website called it right on Friday noting Hurricane Irene was “not packing much of a ‘punch’” and “rapidly weakening” right at the time the MSM started to blow hardest.
One commenter on the site, ‘Ralph’ quipped, “970 mb [millibars]?? In the UK that is a winter storm. Lowest I have seen over the UK was 953 mb.” Tougher folk, these Brits.
For better context, Irene was the proverbial storm in a teacup compared to what hit the Northeastern USA during the 1938 hurricane season (an era before Al Gore ‘invented’ man-made global warming). ‘Hurricane Four,’ better known as the
Great New England Hurricane struck central Long Island on September 21, 1938 killing between 682 and 800 people and causing damage in excess of $41 billion in today’s money.
Updated below with comments by Piers Corbyn
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With Old Age Comes Wisdom
In Atlantic City, N.J. a manager of a local senior citizens’ home reported that all 80 residents were unimpressed by the shrill words of TV anchors as the path of the storm tracked the continental shelf northwards. It seems those who survived 1938’s monster catastrophe knew better.
Typifying the agenda of the frenzied media panic is the New York Times attributing yet another weather event to man-made global warming. With its story, ‘Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate’ the NYT asks “ are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?“
The NYT then trots out the familiar tired old lament that, “The ocean has been getting warmer for decades, and most climate scientists say it is because greenhouse gases are trapping extra heat.”
Nerve center for the greenhouse gas baggers, Obama’s Crisis Center, was strictly adhering to Al Gore’s fabled ‘precautionary principle' which tells us: if in doubt spread panic and spend, spend, spend those tax dollars.
Not letting Irene’s potential catastrophe go to waste the MSM kept in lock step with the D.C. directives all the way.
But the clue that this ‘crisis’ was not all it seemed was the the sight of smiling Chris Lawrence, reporting for CNN, who in the midst of the storm, was standing at the end of the pier at Chesapeake Bay.
‘Racists’ to Blame, says Al Gore
Rumored to have chosen Irene as a theme for an upcoming climate speech Gore was no doubt dismayed as events unfolded leaving skeptics left claiming the high moral ground.
Veteran weatherman, John Coleman already gave the worldwide web his sage advice that Irene would fizzle out before it got to New York. He reports, “The news Producers were upset; I was ruining their crisis coverage.”
Al Gore recently labeled skeptics as “racist” for mocking his pet theory according to ‘Gore: Global warming skeptics are this generation’s racists’. But the MSM are not in the habit of listening to Coleman and WUWT anyway.
Retired weatherman’s Coleman’s latest ‘crime’ was to have tweeted his ‘racism’ online, “When the Director of FEMA told people to ignore the category of the storm and prepare for the worst, that was stupid.”
Fewer and Weaker Hurricanes Despite Media Doomsaying
The mainstream media muddied the waters over hurricanes ever since the issue of hurricanes and global warming splashed on to front pages in the summer of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi.
At the time MIT’s Emanuel published a paper in Nature saying hurricane destruction has increased since the mid-1970s because of global warming. In 2010 the Association Press were still touting it would only get worse. But over the years hurricane intensity has measurably been down.
Nonetheless, politically influential cranks like Bill McKibben still say, “Hurricane Irene’s dangerous power can be traced to global warming.” Nut jobs like McKibben pay no heed to actual data. According to NOAA the US landfall figures for the last 50 years show 76 events, while the previous 50 years shows 97 events.
But after the debacle of Irene and only 44 percent of Americans still believing the global warming hype, will our doomsaying politicians and media risk crying wolf over hurricanes again?
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YES THEY ARE WARMIST LIARS but the best answer to their claim that it was caused by CO2 is:- "Oh yeah well how come it was predicted IN DETAIL 7 weeks ahead using SOLAR ACTIVITY!:-
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews11No12.pdf
On the hype issue, Ease down a notch! Don't confuse hype about storm strength with lies about its cause. 'My storm of 1938 was bigger than yours' actually proves little. Of course the US admin etc will overstate and lie for CO2 etc purposes but hype apart it was a CAT3 Hurricane at its peak and DEADLY - 27 people were killed - not a non event for them or their families.
The minimum pressure at its deepest was 942mb*. THAT is deep. What it became is well so what - all hurricanes fade and then die.
*See http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2011/index.html
The Great New England Hurricane of Sept 21 1938 was undoubtedly more powerful - especially when it hit land - but you have to be careful about comparing people killed to measure strength because in the present era they would be evacuated.
I daresay some media were hyping it up for later stages but no forecasts actually said it would be anything other than a CAT1 or Tropical Storm when it would get near New York and indeed as I watched on CNN it stayed a CAT1 for longer than they had expected (from a forecast of a few hours before I presume) then it became a TS.
There are plenty of horrendous pics and vids of Irene and the consequent flooding is very severe - see New York State and Vermont!
They key problem in some states - especially New York - was that the standard Meteorologists and US admin overestimated onshore winds because the track in the end was more to the East - IN LINE WITH OUR 'END GAME' warnings. We explain this in our WAnews15:
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews11No15.pdf
See this to get our full long range Tropical storms forecast for US / Atlantic Region in September and the whole season to November.
Also see our offer to US authorities to provide them with better ongoing forecasts this year and beyond!
Their response to our offer is THE TEST which will clarify if they put reducing misery (including unnecessary evacuations) and saving lives before their self-serving CO2 warmist cult ideology.
On with the fight, thanks, Piers