The Washington Post, apparently written and edited by the descendants of Henny Penny, is advising us to “start planning for the fact that climate change is” going to cause natural disasters to become more destructive.

“The Environmental Protection Agency published a 150-page document this past week with a straightforward message for coping with the fallout from natural disasters across the country,” the Post reported over the weekend. “The language, included in guidance on how to address the debris left in the wake of floods, hurricanes and wildfires.”

Apparently we are to be not only supposed to be frightened by the report, we should also exasperated because it “is at odds with the rhetoric of the EPA’s own leader, Andrew Wheeler.”

But then being “at odds” with previous predictions of human-caused weather catastrophes means being in accord with reality.

Think of the headlines we’ve read through the years: Why Global Warming Can Mean Harsher Winter Weather (2009), Extreme Events Increase With Global Warming (2011), Extreme Weather Expected To Worsen With Climate Change (2011), Extreme Weather Tied To Climate Change (2012), Hurricanes Likely To Get Stronger & More Frequent (2013), Cllmate Change To Spawn More Hurricanes (2013), and Climate Change Causing Extreme Weather (2015).

We’ve been hearing and reading these warnings for decades. Yet our disasters are no more frequent nor more harsh than past weather calamities.

Global major hurricane frequency has been trending downward since 1980, while cyclone energy is roughly the same as it was in 1972. North Atlantic hurricane intensity is lower than it was in the mid-1920s, early 1930s, early and mid-1950s, and early 1960s. It has also been higher at several different points in every decade beginning in the 1980s.

Neither are tornadoes threatening us more than they have in the past. The number of storms goes up some years, then down in others, which makes a bar chart look like the uneven points of a big-city skyline. But, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association data, there were fewer in 2014 than in 1954. We have been at a low point for even the most violent tornadoes, F3+, in recent years. The period 2012-2014 has been calmer than all but nine years since 1954.

But what else should be expected except another round of alarmism? According to guest essayist Eric Worrall at Watts Up With That, “since defective climate science projections produced by federal agencies still stand uncorrected, the EPA continues to use those defective climate science projections to create a cascade of defective recommendations.”

It’s reasonable to ask why, in the absence of any evidence to support decades of fearmongering, does the alarmist community continue to predict, and apparently hope for, doom? Does it think that it one day its forecasts will pan out?

If that sounds a lot like the end-of-the-world cults that always have to go back and rework their equations after missing their doomsday prophecies, there’s good reason for it. Both groups have a lot in common with each other.

Issues & Insights is a new site formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. We’re just getting started, and we’ll be adding new features as time permits. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis, because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide.

Be sure to tell all your friends! And if you’d like to make a contribution to support our effort, feel free to click the Tip Jar over on the right.

We Could Use Your Help Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists from the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to use our decades of experience to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we think our approach to commentary is sorely lacking both in today’s mainstream media and on the internet. You can help us keep our mission going. If you like what you see, feel free to visit our Donations Page by clicking here. And be sure to tell your friends! You can also subscribe to I&I: It's free!

Share this...





Reddit

Linkedin

email