Global Warming Meme Powers Hurricane Coverage

The Daily Bell

Global warming likely driver for intense hurricanes, scientists say ... President Barack Obama says he's confident that state and federal governments have done all they can to prepare for the superstorm barreling up the East Coast ... As America's financial and political capitals braced for what the National Weather Service has called a storm of historic proportions, the subject that politicians here dare not mention has suddenly been pushed to the forefront of public attention by the massive power of nature. Both U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney suspended their campaigns Monday. Obama was at the White House where he was briefed on storm preparations. He said there is a potential for fatalities as the storm hits the coast. – Vancouver Sun

Dominant Social Theme: Definitely global warming!

Free-Market Analysis: This Vancouver Sun article is typical of some of the coverage of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York City and environs yesterday.

It is written by William Marsden, author of Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change (Knopf). We looked up the book on Amazon, and here's a description:

This eloquent, rage-inciting polemic about the global failure to deal with climate change will appeal to readers of Tim Flannery, George Monbiot and Bill McKibben – and anyone concerned with the economic and environmental future of our planet ... In Fools Rule, Marsden illustrates how inefficient and short-sighted political negotiations have become despite mounting scientific evidence that immediate action is essential to curb the effects of climate change.

At the slightest sign of environmental catastrophe the doomsters show up and begin to write articles. Hurricane Sandy brought forth dozens of articles in the mainstream press speculating that the hurricane was a global warming event.

Marsden's article is especially good because it has all the hallmarks of a fear-based promotion. These are what we call dominant social themes, archetypes created by a power elite to frighten the middle classes into giving up power and wealth to specially created globalist solutions.

The Marsden article is typical of a controlled mainstream media provocation. The blurb about Marsden doesn't mention that his book is a polemic. The article itself poses as a kind of analytical evaluation when it is no such thing.

The headline is misleading, as well. "Global warming likely driver for intense hurricanes, scientists say ... " This is a strange headline, indeed. It implies a majority consensus of scientists believe that Hurricane Sandy was the result of global warming – now referred to as climate change.

But, in fact, the article can simply be read as statement that "some" scientists believe global warming is driving such storms. The implication, though is that a majority of scientists believe it. Here's some more from the article:

No scientist will ever say that one single weather event can be traced to climate change, a topic the presidential hopefuls have rarely raised in this campaign. But in the wake of last year's Hurricane Irene, which caused about $15 billion dollars U.S. in damage from South Carolina to Vermont, and given the steady rise in ocean temperatures as well as air temperatures, to simply dismiss Hurricane Sandy as a freak occurrence would be folly, Prof. Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate Systems Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, said.

In an interview, he said that with higher sea-surface temperatures, which are caused by man-made global warming, "when storms develop, when they do hit the coast they are going to be bigger and I think that's a fair statement that most people could sign onto."

He said he believes Hurricane Sandy "is going to be a catastrophe for New York and New Jersey."

His statements are buttressed by a new peer-reviewed study recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that concludes that higher surface temperature create large storm surges in cyclone activity.

"The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923," the authors state. "In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years."

In other words, global warming is causing more intense storms, Bradley said.

But, of course, there is no consensus on climate change. For every "convinced" scientist, there is a skeptical one. You'd never know that from articles like this, however. Here's an excerpt from a 2010 article posted at Climate Depot:

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims ... More than 1,000 dissenting scientists (updates previous 700 scientist report) from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore.

This new 2010 321-page Climate Depot Special Report − updated from the 2007 groundbreaking U.S. Senate Report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming "consensus" − features the skeptical voices of over 1,000 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC.

This updated 2010 report includes a dramatic increase of over 300 additional (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the last update in March 2009. This report's release coincides with the 2010 UN global warming summit in being held in Cancun.

The more than 300 additional scientists added to this report since March 2009 (21 months ago), represents an average of nearly four skeptical scientists a week speaking out publicly. The well over 1,000 dissenting scientists are almost 20 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The publication of this paper and others at the end of the decade made it most difficult for the elites behind thismeme to continue to insist on global warming as an established fact. In fact, thanks to the Internet, the debunking of global warming has been so thorough that even the rejiggered nomenclature – "climate change" – is rarely mentioned.

All of these memes are aimed at increasing globalist control and creating a pretext for legislative change and subsequent laws that expand government's reach over food, water and energy – the building blocks of human existence.

What's been encouraging about the past decade is the difficulty the elites are having in promoting these themes. Global warming, Peak Oil, even the war on terror itself have all come under fire as 'Net-based information educates people and debunks falsities.

Nonetheless, the propaganda rolls on. Questionable statistics, extreme opinions and falsified facts mark a number of elite memes. The mainstream media jumbles them together to create an appearance of consensus where none exists.

This article ends with the following statement: "Bradley said that some scientists believe that this high-pressure front from the north is a result of global warming, but he added that this is not proven."

Conclusion: This statement, of course, casts into doubt the rest of the article. No doubt they were hoping you wouldn't read that far.

Prof. Pielke Jr.: It's been 'more than 7 years since' Cat 3 or larger made landfall, 'longest such span in over a century'

'To call Sandy a harbinger of a 'new normal,' in which unprecedented weather events cause unprecedented destruction, would be wrong...Connecting energy policy & disasters makes little scientific sense....No evidence of increasing extreme river floods. Historic tornado damage decreased since 1950...drought in U.S. central plains has decreased in recent decades'

Thursday, November 01, 2012

By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

[The below article was written by Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. and appeared in the October 31, 2012 of the Wall Street Journal. Selected excerpts are reprinted below.]

Roger Pielke Jr.: Hurricanes and Human Choice - Wall Street Journal - October 31, 2012

'Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought.' Connecting energy policy and disasters makes little scientific sense.'

By ROGER PIELKE JR.

Selected Excerpts: (For full article go to WSJ - Subscription required - Also see Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.'s website here & full free version here.)

But to call Sandy a harbinger of a "new normal," in which unprecedented weather events cause unprecedented destruction, would be wrong. This historic storm should remind us that planet Earth is a dangerous place, where extreme events are commonplace and disasters are to be expected. In the proper context, Sandy is less an example of how bad things can get than a reminder that they could be much worse.

[...]

While it's hardly mentioned in the media, the U.S. is currently in an extended and intense hurricane "drought." The last Category 3 or stronger storm to make landfall was Wilma in 2005. The more than seven years since then is the longest such span in over a century.

Flood damage has decreased as a proportion of the economy since reliable records were first kept by the National Weather Service in the 1930s, and there is no evidence of increasing extreme river floods. Historic tornado damage (adjusted for changing levels of development) has decreased since 1950, paralleling a dramatic reduction in casualties. Although the tragic impacts of tornadoes in 2011 (including 553 confirmed deaths) were comparable only to those of 1953 and 1964, such tornado impacts were far more common in the first half of the 20th century.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that drought in America's central plains has decreased in recent decades. And even when extensive drought occurs, we fare better. For example, the widespread 2012 drought was about 10% as costly to the U.S. economy as the multiyear 1988-89 drought, indicating greater resiliency of American agriculture.

There is therefore reason to believe we are living in an extended period of relatively good fortune with respect to disasters. A recurrence of the 1908 San Francisco earthquake today, for example, could cause more than $300 billion in damage and thousands of lives, according to a study I co-published in 2009.

[...]

Another danger: Public discussion of disasters risks being taken over by the climate lobby and its allies, who exploit every extreme event to argue for action on energy policy. In New York this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared: "I think at this point it is undeniable but that we have a higher frequency of these extreme weather situations and we're going to have to deal with it." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke similarly.

Humans do affect the climate system, and it is indeed important to take action on energy policy—but to connect energy policy and disasters makes little scientific or policy sense. There are no signs that human-caused climate change has increased the toll of recent disasters, as even the most recent extreme-event report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds. And even under the assumptions of the IPCC, changes to energy policies wouldn't have a discernible impact on future disasters for the better part of a century or more.

The only strategies that will help us effectively prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past: strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy.

Mr. Pielke is a professor of environmental studies and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.

(For full article go to WSJ - Subscription required -- Also see Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.'s website here.