The Morning Briefing: Hurricane Michael, Michelle Obama, and Much, Much More

Thank God it’s Friday…

…and pray for the victims of Hurricane Michael.

The first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in Florida’s Panhandle since 1851, Hurricane Michael is the third most-powerful hurricane to hit the mainland United States. Top winds reached 155 miles per hour, roughly 375,000 people were warned to evacuate, and roughly 1 million customers in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina were without power at one point, CBS News reported.

At least six people have been confirmed dead, including an 11-year-old girl who was killed when a carport blew through the roof of her home.

Nearly 6,700 people took refuge in 54 Florida shelters, and 47 people were helped out of hard-hit areas around the Florida coastline. Resources are ready — there are 2 million ready-to-eat meals, 1 million gallons of water, and 400,000 10-pount bags of ice ready for distribution.

Michael hit North and South Carolina as a tropical storm with heavy downpours.

In the midst of this disaster, The Guardian runs this headline:

Victims of Hurricane Michael voted for climate deniers | John Abraham

The article’s description: “Elections have consequences. Denying science has consequences. And we are reaping what we sow.”

People are dying, and The Guardian is blaming political opponents of climate change legislation. John Abraham declared his absolute certainty that human beings are responsible for this storm:

We know that climate change is making these storms stronger. The storms feed off of warm ocean waters, and those waters are much warmer now because of climate change. I have written about the science in more detail here and here. But basically, Michael strengthened because it passed over really warm waters. Waters that were hotter because of human-caused warming.

Interestingly, climate alarmists are quick to blame natural disasters on the economic engine of progress that has enabled unprecedented prosperity for people across the globe, but they hesitate to mention the many failed predictions based on their models. Sea levels have not been rising as predicted — thanks to “thirsty continents.” September 26, 2018 came and went, and the Maldives are not under water.

In reality, we do not know exactly how much the burning of fossil fuels has impacted the global climate. That’s why predictions fail — climate is not an exact science. Yet activists continue to insist that we know, with 100 percent certainty — that human beings are 100 percent responsible for the alterations in global climate. It is possible that fossil fuels are causing climate change, but earth has been warmer than it is today, and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has also been higher.

Most importantly, when climate change celebrity Bill Nye argued that hurricanes are getting worse because “the more heat energy in the atmosphere strengthens the storms,” a real meteorologist shot him down, calling out his “fake science.”

“Bill Nye confuses the oceans with the atmosphere,” Ph.D. meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted. “Hurricanes form over the ocean.”

Maue later explained to Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur that “hurricanes are not a result of climate change.” In fact, the meteorologist quipped, “If you believe climate change causes hurricanes, then you’re an idiot.”

While warmer oceans provide more energy, Maue cited a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) discussing the purported link between hurricanes and climate change. NOAA concluded that “it is premature to conclude that human activities — and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming — have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”

Sadly, our knowledge of these storms is also far from complete. We simply don’t have enough historical benchmarks to suggest that man-made climate change — if it were quantifiable — is responsible for worsening storms.

It is critical to have the best historical analysis or baseline/benchmark of global hurricanes, typhoons & cyclones in order to detect a climate change caused signal BEFORE attributing that to human caused (CO2) warming.

Very little if any research funding goes to that effort

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) October 1, 2018

Naturally, Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bill Nelson (embattled-Fla.) have already claimed Hurricane Michael is connected to climate change. Expect the Left to push this message — after all, they’re the ones who want more power in the name of preventing the end of the world.

Hurricane Michael is a devastating natural disaster. Even if man-made climate change made it slightly worse (and this involves leaps of logic well beyond any claims for which we have concrete scientific evidence), disasters like this have happened since time immemorial. By all means, let us help the victims by donating to charities and rushing to help those in need. Let us prepare for the next storm.

But don’t peddle the false narrative that if only you had political power, all this devastation would be avoided, and that we need to fundamentally alter Western Civilization to preserve the world. Hogwash.

Michelle Obama tells Clinton and Holder to pump the brakes.

In recent days, Hillary Clinton denounced the idea of being civil with Republicans and former Attorney General Eric Holder disagreed with former First Lady Michelle Obama. “Michelle always says, you know, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. When they go low, we kick them,” the former attorney general said. “That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

He later claimed he *wasn’t* advocating violence, but he didn’t walk back the remarks.

Ok, stop the fake outrage. I’m obviously not advocating violence. (In fact, when I was AG violent crime in the US was historically low.) I’m saying Republicans are undermining our democracy and Democrats need to be tough, proud and stand up for the values we believe in – the end.

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 11, 2018

Michelle Obama rightly upbraided these other Democrats in an interview on NBC’s “Today.”

“Fear is not … a proper motivator,” Obama said, Fox News reported. “Hope wins out, and if you think about how you want your kids to be raised, how you want them to think about life and their opportunities, do you want them afraid of their neighbors? Do you want them angry? Do you want them vengeful?”

“Which motto do you want them to live by? And I have to think about that as a mother,” she added.

With incivility in politics seeming to reach a fever pitch, Michelle Obama’s words are helpful. But let’s not forget that her husband helped fan the flames of liberal resentment, unleashing social experiments that still plague America today.

If Democrats hope to win in November, they need to show that they’re following Michelle Obama rather than the rising chorus of voices egging on protests and harassment of Republicans.

Photo of the day.

The Christopher Columbus statue is shown at Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, Sunday Aug. 27, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

On October 12, 1492, a Genoese sailor named Christopher Columbus landed on a Caribbean island he named San Salvador. By an irony of history, Columbus had the wrong measurement for the size of the earth — scientists at the time had roughly calculated the circumference of the globe but he wrongly disagreed with them — so he thought it possible to reach the East Indies by sailing west. Contrary to the anti-Western propaganda being pushed today, he was not a horrific monster and the native Americans were not perfectly innocent.

His discovery of America deserves to be celebrated, because it fundamentally altered world history, and in so many ways for the better. This video is helpful.