Friday, September 3, 2010

Hurricane Humility


By Alan Caruba

Who among us can remember back, oh so long ago, when Hurricane Earl was a Category 4, just one degree shy of the Katrina’s astonishing destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast States of Mississippi and Alabama?

Those of us on the East Coast were assured that Earl would smash into North Carolina’s the barrier islands, dash up toward Newark, New Jersey, and then onward to Nantucket and pretty much anywhere else Earl wanted to go. The predictions were ominous.

I live in New Jersey and it is late afternoon on Friday as this is being written. Not a drop of rain in sight. No doubt some will arrive later tonight, but Earl has veered out into the Atlantic and is just barely holding on to a Category 1 status.

How many hours did Fox News, the Weather Channel, and all the others devote to sensational satellite pictures of the Mighty Earl until, over the hours, it became apparent that those intrepid reporters waiting for it to come ashore were reduced to interviewing disgruntled surfers unhappy that they could not commit suicide in Earl’s surging waves?

This is what I keep telling people over and over again. The weather is the perfect definition of chaos. It will do what it wants to do and not what the geniuses sweating over “computer models” say it will do.

We humans in our suburbs and great cities are like tiny insects in its path. People that keep telling you that humans are altering the climate are lying to you.

That’s why we have to ask ourselves, if the meteorologists cannot predict what a Category 4 hurricane will do with more than a wisp of certainty, why should anyone listen to those charlatans who insist they know what the weather will be in five, ten, twenty or fifty years?

I’m not talking about legitimate climatologists who study trends over centuries, but the one’s that insist on transforming the economy and society out of their conceit that they know that “global warming” is coming and it’s going to be bad.

It’s not coming; the Earth has been cooling for the past decade. It is a perfectly natural and well-known cycle. It could stick around a few years. Or it could mutate into the next Ice Age.

Today my local daily newspaper had an editorial about global warming and why the skeptics are wrong. That is a level of denial and flat-out ignorance that defies reality.

The reality is that the most sophisticated weather forecasting computer models, along with weather satellites, did not know with any certainty what Hurricane Earl was going to do or go. It largely spared the East Coast and piddled off into the Atlantic. News at eleven.

I am glad the radio and television meteorologists tried to warn us and I am glad that the hurricane turned out to be far less destructive than anticipated, but I know they had no more idea than I what would occur.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

6 comments:

TonyfromOz said...

Alan,
Perfect, just perfect.
Just one short phrase:

That’s why we have to ask ourselves, if the meteorologists cannot predict what a Category 4 hurricane will do with more than a wisp of certainty, why should anyone listen to those charlatans who insist they know what the weather will be in five, ten, twenty or fifty years?

If they can't predict the weather for the next 6 to 12 hours and come even close, how do they expect to gain traction telling us what the weather will be in 5 to 20 years time.

The old crock of the difference between weather and climate may apply, but now even that's an excuse these charlatans always fall back to.

Notice how if the Hurricane makes landfall and causes untold chaos, it's 'Climate Change', and when it veers off out to sea, and causes no problems, it's the 'Weather'.

What do these people take us for?

Tony.

LarryOldtimer said...

Wishful thinking on the part of the main stream media, which thrives on disasters, and a fair number of climate scientists.

Still, Joe Bastardi (Accuweather) is sticking with his forecast that this hurricane season will be a severe one, so the media folk and climate scientists might see their dreams of weather caused disaster come true. Bastardi has been quite accurate the last couple of years regarding 6 month to a couple of years ahead weather forecasts, for the US and Europe.

It will all be blamed by the media and climate scientists on "climate change" if this hurricane season turns out to be a severe one, of course.

TexasFred said...

FOX has regular Newgasms...

The other day it was the guy at The Discovery Channel...

One day it's this, next day it's that, and they try so hard to make a story out of anything, and it's NOT just FOX...

The other day when that fire happened on the oil platform in the Gulf, one of the crew is a cousin to my kids on their mothers side.

One of my daughters Tweeted that they were so relieved to know that Brandon was OK... NO ONE in the news had ANY names at that point, so, she gets contacted by the NYT and AP, they wanted to interview HER as a *human interest* piece, a *family members view*...

She declined after a bit of Dad advice...

Alan Caruba said...

Thank you, Gentlemen.

By way of an update, it NEVER rained at all in New Jersey, but since that is not news, it was probably not reported.

TV's essential problem when it comes to news is that it is a visual medium and without pictures it tends to get a tad boring...hence the constantly dueling politicians, lawyers, etc.

cliff said...

Life on this Earth Just Changed
The North Atlantic Current is Gone
http://island-adv.com/2010/08/life-on-this-earth-just-changed/

Alan I was not surprised that this happened. With this current dieing weather will change all over. We will know very soon if Obama damaged the planet.

Alan Caruba said...

@ Cliff:
Interesting theory about the ocean currents. I don't know how accurate it is, but it could explain why a Catagory 4 hurricane lost power so swiftly insofar as they usually gain power from warm oceans.

BTW, the blog cited tends to re-post my writings.