Over at the NY Times, Excitable Nicholas Kristoff is rather vexed by Harvey and ‘climate change’
We don’t deny Harvey, so why do we deny climate change?
Imagine that after the 9/11 attacks, the conversation had been limited to the tragedy in Lower Manhattan, the heroism of rescuers and the high heels of the visiting first lady — without addressing the risks of future terrorism.
Can I point out that this is exactly what Democrats and Progressives around the world actually did? Minimize and even eradicate the threat from radical Islam in the name of diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism and stuff. Oh, and the idiots talking about Melania’s heels? Democrats.
That’s how we have viewed Hurricane Harvey in Houston, as a gripping human drama but without adequate discussion of how climate change increases risks of such cataclysms. We can’t have an intelligent conversation about Harvey without also discussing climate change.
Hey, I’m all for a discussion on climate change. Because it is happening. That’s not the debate. The debate is on causation. But, as you would expect, Excitable Nick goes down the typical Warmist holes, he does blame this specifically on man-caused climate change, blah blah blah, same old same old, while ignoring the meteorological aspects of what made it so bad, namely, two strong blocking high pressure systems.
There’s little point in continuing, you know what Nick is doing. Let’s ask scientist Cliff Mass
Dozens of mainstream media outlets ran stories over the last week attributing the very strong storm and its historic rainfall to climate change, but University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass put the brakes on those theories in a new blog post.
“Most of the stories were not based on data or any kind of quantitative analysis, but a hand-waving argument that a warming earth will put more water vapor into the atmosphere and thus precipitation will increase,†he wrote. “[T]he results are clear: human-induced global warming played an inconsequential role in this disaster.â€
He explained: “The proximate cause of the disaster is clear: the extreme rainfall was the result of a hurricane/tropical storm that pulled in huge amounts of water vapor off the Gulf of Mexico (and beyond), and which came into the Texas coast and then stalled for days. All tropical storms/hurricanes bring large amounts of rain during landfall. What was different here was the stalling and sitting over the same region for days.â€
And, let’s consider
One hurricane proves climate change is a threat that will kill us all, but a 12-year gap since the last major one hit the US means nothing. https://t.co/gth0oN3Z6G
— Razor (@hale_razor) September 2, 2017
It’s kinda like how an 18+ year period of insignificant warming means nothing, but, the same period of warming is everything….oh, wait, like snow, cold, etc, that 12 year period will soon be made into having been caused by you refusing to set your air conditioning to 85.
