Such is the case with the New York Times, which needed two writers, Christopher Flavelle and Jonathan Weisman, to cobble together an incoherent piece mocking Floridians for not listening to them and electing Democrats to fight climate change. “Florida Leaders Rejected Major Climate Laws,” the headline reads. “Now They’re Seeking Storm Aid.”
Flavelle and Weisman claim that Florida’s Republican leaders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, “don’t want to discuss the underlying problem that is making hurricanes more powerful and destructive.” They also claim that rising sea levels and warmer temperatures made Hurricane Ian worse and that Republicans are to blame for not supporting the Democratic Party’s climate change bill. (You know, the one they pretended at the time was about reducing inflation.)
In reality, hurricanes are not becoming “more powerful and destructive.” There is no evidence for that claim. According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, “there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts.” NOAA’s page on global warming and hurricanes has an “overview of current research results.” In summary, it concludes that there is “no compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.”
That’s enough to drop the mic already. But on top of that, as Michael Shellenberger notes, these hurricanes are causing more damage because more people are living in and developing these areas. “Once you adjust for rising wealth, there is no trend of increasing damage,” Shellenberger writes.
Is Hurricane Ian itself more dangerous as a direct result of climate change, as Flavelle and Weisman claim? No, there is no evidence of this. Acting NOAA Director Jamie Rhome specifically warned against tying climate change to any one natural disaster on CNN with Don Lemon, who was pathetically begging him to say otherwise. But Rhome insisted on sticking with the actual science. “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” Rhome said.
Those darn science deniers at President Joe Biden’s NOAA strike again.
Liberal activists (including the ones masquerading as journalists) preach about “following the science,” and yet they now claim to know more about hurricanes than NOAA. (Check Rhome’s credentials for yourself and ask how Flavelle and Weisman think they know more about hurricanes than he does.) They have been reduced to simply pointing at every natural disaster and crying climate change, then demanding everyone support whatever liberal boondoggle conveniently conforms to all of their prejudices on the topic.
Climate change fearmongering has nothing to do with science, as the New York Times helpfully and unwittingly illustrated here. It is all about partisan politics, which is why the New York Times and others couldn’t wait to attack Florida for not submitting immediately to their destructive climate agenda.
Continue Reading at The Washington Examiner.