Hurricane Ian hit south Florida on Wednesday as a category 4, with 155 mph sustained winds, causing devastating damage throughout the state, billions of dollars of damage, many lives lost, and the usual suspects have all stood up and announced that this was the indisputable result of climate change.
MSNBC anchor Joy Reid said Wednesday – the day hurricane Ian hit, “our earth is getting warmer and there’s just no doubt, I think, left that it[climate change] is feeding these beasts.” CNN’s Bill Weir, proclaimed, “This is exactly what climate scientists have been warning about for a long time and now we get to see it up close.”
CNN’s Don Lemon tried to get National Hurricane Center Acting Director Jamie Rohme, to blame the intensity of Hurricane Ian on climate change, when he asked, "What effect has climate change had on this phenomenon that is happening now, because it seems these storms are intensifying that's the question?" Rohme responded, "I don't think you can link climate change to any one event." Lemon then dismissed the expert by saying, "Okay, well listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying something is causing them to intensify." Lemon arrogantly believes that his personal experiences trump actual science.
Congresswoman Val Demings (D-FL) said we need to "acknowledge climate change and take it extremely seriously." Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) suggested that Democrat climate policies would prevent hurricanes like Ian in the future when she said, hurricane Ian is “why we've got to win this midterm. We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That's why we got to win this[election] as that hurricane bears down on Florida.” Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Christ said, “one factor in all of this[hurricanes] is climate change. These storms are getting bigger, they’re getting stronger, and they’re affecting that many more lives as a result of it.”
We are continually being told that natural disasters like these are the definitive result of climate change. But a hurricane is a weather event. It is not climate. We are reminded of the difference between the two all the time during the winter. Whenever a blizzard hits the Northeast, or an arctic blast cripples the Midwest, or Texas is devastated by record colds, we are told that those events are “weather, not climate”, and a weather event is not a reflection on climate change.
In 2019, a polar vortex hit the Midwest United States dropping temperatures to record lows of minus 60 degrees in some areas. When President Donald Trump tweeted, “In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded… People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Warming?” The NOAA climate Twitter account, immediately shot back with, “Winter storms don’t prove that global warming isn’t happening.”
So, when anybody has the temerity to ask the obvious question, ‘if there is global warming, why are we experiencing record cold temperatures in the winter?’ They are immediately chastised and embarrassed. ‘Weather is different than climate, you idiot. How can you be so stupid to confuse the two?’ One of the reasons why people confuse the two is because the same people who tell us that weather and climate are two different things in the winter, conflate the two in the summer. Every record high temperature anywhere on the planet in the summer is touted as proof that climate change is real, and if everyone doesn’t go out and buy electric cars, solar panels and windmills, we will all die in five years.
Ironically, after chastising climate skeptics for trying to use extreme winter storms to disprove climate change, climate activists turn right around and try to use them to prove climate change. Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer argued that blizzards are proof planet is warming when he said, climate change will cause "shorter snow season, less snow overall, but the occasional knockout punch[blizzards]." But I thought we couldn’t use a weather event, especially a winter weather event, as evidence in the climate change debate.
These people need to make up their minds; is a weather event, evidence of the existence of climate change or is it not? But they will never make up their minds because in order for them to prove their narrative, they must continually change the rules of the game. To climate activists, weather is not climate in the winter, but weather is climate in the summer. One of the reasons why I am skeptical of climate change is precisely because of this type of illogical logic that the climate activists are continually spewing. If you want people to believe your theories than be consistent, be honest and don’t use hyperbole. But sadly, the climate change activists continually violate all three.
On Wednesday, MSNBC Reporter Ali Velshi said, “People say there have been hurricanes for millennia, well that is true but sometimes we get ones that are so much more damaging and so much more intense.” Instead of simply eyeballing it, and deciding in the heat of emotion whether we are getting more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, why don’t we look at the actual facts, the actual numbers? Here are statistics of hurricanes over the last 172 years that have hit the mainland United States – directly from the NOAA – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
From 1851 to 1900, there were 97 hurricanes that made landfall in the United States and 27 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5).
From 1901 to 1950, there were 95 hurricanes that made landfall in the United States and 34 major hurricanes, a decrease of 2 hurricanes and an increase of 7 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5).
From 1951 to 2000, there were 72 hurricanes that made landfall in the United States and 28 major hurricanes, a dramatic decrease of 23 hurricanes and a decrease of 6 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5).
There were substantially more hurricanes and roughly the same number of major hurricanes that hit the United States in the last half of the 19th century when our use of fossil fuels was the lowest than in the last half of the 20th century when our use of fossil fuels was the highest. How could that be? If burning fossil fuels makes the planet warmer, and warming the planet causes more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, then why were there more hurricanes when we were burning less fossil fuels? Why? Can any climate activist explain this? Has anyone even tried? Has anyone even looked at the numbers?
From 2001 to 2022, there have been 40 hurricanes and 14 major hurricanes that have hit mainland United States. If we project those numbers over the first half of the 21st century, we are on pace to have 91 hurricanes and 32 major hurricanes during that time frame which is an increase of 19 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes from the last half of the 20th century. But that increase would only get us back to hurricane levels we were at 100-150 years ago at the start of the industrial revolution when our use of fossil fuels was at its lowest. We are on pace to have fewer hurricanes and fewer major hurricanes in the first half of the 21st century than we had in the first half of the 20th century, when our use of fossil fuels was substantially less.
The numbers are clear. There has not been an increase in the number of hurricanes and the intensity of hurricanes for the 172 years spanning from 1851 to 2022 – from the beginning of the industrial revolution until now. But what is so hard to understand is that these hurricane statistics have been sitting out there in plain sight at NOAA, and no one who has argued that climate change causes an increase in hurricane activity cared to look at them to verify their assertions. The climate change proponents went solely on emotion. A scary, deadly hurricane hit and their emotional reaction to that event was the only proof they needed to link the two – Climate change is bad; hurricanes are bad; so, they must be connected. This is one of the reasons why there are so many climate change skeptics. If you continually lie to people, people will stop believing what you say. And the climate activists have been dishonest and hyperbolic from the beginning.
In 1989, Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, predicted that "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000."
In his 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claimed that due to climate change humanity had only 10 years left before the world would reach a point of no return. And then in 2009, in a speech at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Gore said, “there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."
In 2008, James Hansen, the scientist who first warned the UN of global warming said, we were on a “dangerous level” of greenhouse gases, and “we’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path… this is our last chance.” He then went on to say that the polar ice caps would be ice free in the summer months in 5-10 years, which is no later than 2018.
And in 2018, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously predicted, “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
All these predictions have been or are about to be proven false. There is just an aura of dishonesty that hangs over the climate change industry. In 2011, the proponents of climate change cleverly changed the name from “global warming” to “climate change” when they saw that the temperatures were not always rising as they predicted. They disguised their theory with the term “climate change” and not the original “global warming” so they could play both sides – when the Earth’s temperature increases, its global warming, but when the Earth’s temperature decreases, its climate change. And that is another reason why people are skeptical of “climate change” because when you manipulate the language like that people realize that they too are being manipulated.
Climate scientists declare that there is a consensus in the scientific community that humans are causing climate change, but truth is never discovered through consensus. There was a consensus in the scientific community that Covid-19 did not come from a lab; there was a consensus in the intelligence community that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. And these consensuses have been proven wrong. But climate activists use so-called “scientific consensus” to shut down dissent. Skepticism is not allowed. Everyone must toe the line. Anybody who questions the climate science is immediately silenced on social media or mocked and ridiculed into submission. They are trying to win the debate through the mob mentality or the herd instinct.
People who deal in the truth welcome debate, embrace questions and respect skepticism. Those who are lying want to shut down debate, outlaw questions, vilify skeptics. And the climate activists want no debate, no questions. That’s why they always claim, “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”. The proponents of 2+2=4 are not inconsistent; they don’t need to lie; they don’t need to exaggerate, and they welcome debate because they know they are living in the truth. So, climate change proponents if you want people to believe you, then stop acting like liars – stop deceiving, stop manipulating language, stop strong-arming people. You are destroying the one thing that everyone who wants to be believed needs the most, their credibility.
To be clear, I’m not claiming that global warming does not exist, I am simply saying that until questions like the ones I have posed in this article are answered logically and factually, and the climate activists start being consistent and honest, and are open to debate, I will always doubt, I will always question, I will always be skeptical. In short, I will act like a scientist, because the climate scientists surely are not.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.