The Climate-Change Ambulance Chasers

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and climate hysterics can never resist an opportunity to use a natural disaster to flog their anti-technology, anti-humanity hobbyhorse (OK, so I’m no Oscar Hammerstein).

With the supposedly biggest storm in historical times about to hit one of the most populated regions of the nation, comes, now, the completely predictable (indeed it would be a shock if it didn’t happen) press release from the laughably named “Institute for Public Accuracy”:

McKibben, the founder of 350.org, said today: “Meteorologists have called this ‘the biggest storm ever to hit the U.S. mainland,’ which is a reminder of how odd our weather has been in this hottest year in American history.…[S]cientists are connecting the dots between increasingly extreme weather and global warming. Yet for most of this year’s presidential election, the words ‘climate change’ have gone unmentioned.”

Joe Romm: “We also know that as we warm the oceans, we end up with more water vapor in the atmosphere — 4 percent more than was in the atmosphere just a few decades ago. That is why another basic prediction of climate science has been more intense deluges and floods.

“A new study finds, ‘we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large [storm] surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years.’”

It has a similarity to whining from other noted climate loons, but Anthony Watts makes short work of it in response to similar foolishness from the similarly misnamed “Forecast the Facts”:

“Hurricane Hazel produced the largest swath of hurricane force winds this century over Virginia and North Carolina. As active as the 1954 hurricane season was for North Carolinians, it was followed by an equally active 1955 hurricane season, when three more storms struck the state. However, none of those could match the fury of the historic Hurricane Hazel.”

Sound familiar? Just watch and read the news reports warning of the storm surge from Sandy, and you’ll see its just a repeat performance of lunar timing coincidence. Here’s one from NBC: “Full moon could make Sandy’s impact worse.”

…Hazel had the same storm surge lunar magnifier, but the MSM is treating it as if this is something new and unique and there’s no mention of Hurricane Hazel in the NBC story.The only way to deal with propagandic pinheads such as this is to counter with real facts, and then whenever his propaganda appears, put those facts right back into the venue wherever it appears through comments, emails, and letters. Clear headed people will understand, but you’ll never reach the science muggles that believe and push this sort of stuff while throwing facts to the wind.

…By extension, Johnson and Glick’s claims are essentially that this Category 1 storm with 75MPH winds is somehow unique to American history, the result of “tampering” with “nature with oil, coal, and gas pollution.” And it hasn’t even made landfall yet. I don’t have to call BS on their idiotic claims, because the facts do it for me.

…This scatterplot graph (by Steve Goddard) shows the relation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and landfalling US Hurricanes.

There is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 and major hurricanes striking the US.

But irony-challenged groups like “Institute for Public Accuracy” and “Forecast the Facts” are never ones to allow reality to intrude on their destructive economic agendas. They remain the Left’s version of Jerry Falwell, who blame the wrath of the storms on humankind’s sins. Just in time for Halloween, they remain ever at the fore to scare us out of our modern lifestyles.

Meanwhile, if it hadn’t already been laid low by the disclosure a few months ago by Keith Briffa of the data that went into his larch thermometry, the good researcher from the Climate Research Unit, perhaps repenting of his own climate sins, seems to have dealt a final death blow to the poor, beleaguered Michael Mann’s hockey stick. What’s worse for the warm mongers, he and his co-author resurrected the Medieval Warm Period. As the indispensable Anthony Watts notes:

Look at graph 5c, and you’ll see 20th century warmth matches peaks either side of the year 1000, and that for the TRW chronology 20th century warmth is less than the spike around 1750. This puts 20th century (up to 2006 actually) warmth in the category of just another blip. There’s no obvious hockey stick, and the MWP returns, though approximately equal to 20th century warmth rather than being warmer.

…I have to wonder if this is some sort of attempt to “come clean” on the issue. Mann must be furious at the timing. There’s no hint of a hockey stick, and no need to splice on the instrumental surface temperature record or play “hide the decline” tricks with this data.

The timing referred to here is Professor Mann’s filing of a defamation law suit last Monday against National Review, Mark Steyn, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Yours Truly, though I am not at liberty to comment further, on advice of counsel. But readers are of course free to speculate on the implications of this for any trial, should it actually occur.

Between this and the aforementioned climate ambulance chasers, one might almost say that this is a perfect storm for them all.