I really do think there is a lot of “group-think”, not unlike what happened with 9/11, going on. Multiple departments of the government, and entities tied closely with the government (including major media) do their best to predict this “super-storm” in the middle of “global-warming” that had everyone implying the overheated oceans would let the CAT4 hurricane in North Caroline.
The Global Warming community has been at it for some time now, even saying to President Bush that this threat was worse than “terrorism” according to this The Burning Platform article:
A secret report by the US defense chiefs warned President Bush that Global Warming was such a great threat that it would destroy the United States and major European cities. They told the President that cities would sink beneath rising seas and Britain would be plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. They warned that mega-droughts, famine, and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document warned that the planet would fall into anarchy and the nuclear threat would rise as countries then sought to defend themselves in the face of declining food, water, and energy supplies.
OK then. Fast forward a few decades and you now have a whole generation of climate specialists trying to predict the path and the strength of this hurricane, and they blew it! Dr. Tim Ball in this article explains:
With Florence, they got almost everything wrong. The computer model predictions of the path and strength were wrong even in such a short distance and in 48 hours; a period for which they claim a high level of accuracy. They claimed the hurricane path was very unusual because it was further north than usual. No, it wasn’t. I was in Bermuda in the early 1960s when we were forced to evacuate because of a hurricane moving in.
OK, so they got some history wrong, but wait, there is more!
… the NOAA forecast ignored … major mechanisms. One was the presence of colder water as Florence moved north. The fuel source for a hurricane is the latent heat of evaporation carried up and released as sensible heat after condensation. Estimates are that a moderate hurricane, like Florence, evaporates 2 billion gallons of water an hour. This is why, when the system moves over land it dissipates very quickly. Another was the three-dimensional dynamics of a system that stretches from the surface to the Tropopause. That very distinct boundary is twice as high over the Equator (approximate average, 18 km) as it is over the Poles (approximate average, 8 km). This means the system gets flattened out as it moves north, which explains why Florence became much wider. As it widens the wind speed diminishes … Very simply, the speed of rotation is determined by the radius of the mass from the axis of rotation. The combination of the energy in the system and the reduced speed of rotation served to alter the path the system takes. The Coriolis Effect is changed, which is partly why they got the direction wrong in such a short distance.
Yes, again there is MORE!
Unseen in all this, is the role insurance companies played in this history of this exploitation.
Say it isn’t so .. but wait .. never mind, you get the picture:
… with the misinformation and unadulterated exploitation of hurricane Florence by alarmists and the media. Attempts to present the hurricane as abnormal and link it to climate change were naked and almost desperate. It reached a nadir when the Washington Post wrote,
“Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans’ role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks. It is hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change. But there is no reasonable doubt that humans are priming the Earth’s systems to produce disasters.“
Oh no!
OK, let’s back up here. On Wednesday the 12th, the “experts” had Florence at a CAT4 and entering SC/NC with that strength, and other reports indicated that there were 80 foot waves in the open ocean with this global warming produced super-storm. However, things started unraveling pretty quickly:
By Wednesday evening they already downgraded Florence from a Category 4 to a Category 2, and it came ashore barely as a Category 1. In fact, it was amusing to see how long they continued to report it with wind speeds of 75 mph because if it was 74 mph, it was no longer a hurricane. NOAA control the wind speed determinations with their estimates from one or two flights above the hurricane from which, using models they estimate surface speed. We know these are consistently higher than reality, but a higher speed allows for a higher hurricane category and greater media attention.
Can you believe it? Fake news to keep the media abuzz with the “abnormal” nature of this event. But, how abnormal is this really?
The list of North Carolina hurricanes where Florence hit prior to 1900 yields a list of 139 tropical cyclones/hurricanes. In fact, North Carolina was hit by 7 storms during 1893 ALONE!!!!! … The worst hurricane season on record still remains 1893 before “Global Warming”. The 1893 Atlantic hurricane season had 12 tropical storms of which 10 became hurricanes. Then of the 10 hurricanes, FIVE became major hurricanes. Two of those storms kill over 2,000 people each. The 1893 season remains the most deadly storm season in American history.
OK, that was just one year .. but wait, there’s more!
The second season on the list was the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season, where there were 4 Atlantic hurricanes that were active on the same day. The hurricane season is at its peak in August to October. Records before 1851 are really spotty. We do know that the Spanish Treasure Fleet of 11 ships were sunk in a hurricane during 1715, which is believed to be a category 4+.
See the trend. Neither do I.
Back to the REAL factors that can be seen in the destructive nature of hurricanes (remember, even the French in 1782 LEFT the Caribbean during hurricane season to assist the Americans at Yorktown, as they did not want their fleet battered by this seasonal beast):
Over time more and more people moved into the hurricane-prone region and suffered the consequences. All of the more severe consequences resulted from the enabling and false sense of security created by government and insurance companies. For example, two of the greatest loss of lives involved Galveston, Texas and New Orleans. In 1900, an estimated 12,000 people drowned in Galveston because an earthen dam failed. Authorities dramatically downplayed the loss of lives for political and economic reasons. In 2005, hurricane Katrina came ashore at New Orleans, and 1833 people died, most from the flooding. They were behind a dike that the US Army Corps of Engineers sought to fortify but were blocked by environmental groups. Katrina, like Florence, was hyped and even today Wikipedia still says,
“Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005.”
In fact, Katrina was barely Category 3 when it came ashore…
Wikipedia also contains fake news!
Also, about insurance companies:
Perhaps the most egregious distortion created by the insurance industry was the claim that hurricanes were increasing in intensity. It turned out the data they used was the increasing cost of claims. Of course, this was almost all due to the increasing gouging for materials and labor before and after the event.
Fake, fake, … fake, fake, fake
The bottom line is that:
[Global Warming] is the biggest fake news story of all created and perpetuated by the bureaucrats who are the deep state. A single small moderate and normal hurricane named Florence demonstrated the level of deceptions across the social and political spectrum. We need to ask how much longer can people who consistently get their forecasts wrong, retain credibility and keep their jobs?
-SF1