Weather, Not Climate

28 November 2011

Walter Russell Mead

Those Via Meadia readers old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina can no doubt remember the many moralizing predictions of smug and condescending green climate hacktivists that followed: global warming was going to mean more hurricanes and bigger ones.  Our coasts were toast; it was baked in the cake.  The rising sea level combined with the inexorably rising number of major hurricanes were going to knock the climate skeptics out of the park.

Well, no.  Andrew Revkin has called attention to this post from Roger Pielke’s blog which shows that as of today it has been 2,226 days since the last major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) hit the US mainland.  Unless a big hurricane hits this winter, it means we are on track to break a 100 year record for the longest gap between major hurricanes hitting the coast.  (The last Big Calm was between 1900 and 1906.)

For those of you who are confused, let me remind you: the only meteorological phenomena that count are the ones that confirm the climate alarmist case.  It doesn’t matter what it is — drought, flood, blizzard, heat wave — if it can be made to support fear about the climate, it matters and it needs to be thoroughly analyzed and widely publicized.

Meteorological phenomena that, to the unsophisticated, might appear to undermine the case that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don’t immediately pass a stringent carbon treaty, are meaningless and should be ignored.

 A spate of hurricanes is climate; an absence of big storms is weather.

The absence of any major hurricanes for six years is a meaningless phenomenon; should a couple of big ones hit in any given year, then every editorial page in the country will fill with hand wringing, dire warning and I told you so.

And remember, the science is settled.  Anybody who asks how many of the climate change models predicted this absence of major hurricane events in the US six years ago is a vicious climate denier, is funded by the oil companies, and should be dealt with by the usual methods.

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Sophie:

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD is the Editor-at-Large of The American Interest magasine, Progressive, a Yale University Professor, is recognised as one of the leading authorities on American foreign policy, writes for several journals, magazines and newspapers such as Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, is a registered Democrat, and is a Barack Obama voter and supporter.

Mead is my favourite Progressive writer and I feature him often on this blog.  He is not only a brilliant, erudite, and honest man, he is truly "fair and balanced" and takes on all sides with equal ferociousness...when such is required.