When something this awful happens, something that affects the lives of millions of your fellow Americans, decent people step back for a moment. It's a moment that demands reverence and silence to consider what we've just seen and then the practical questions. People are suffering.
How are they suffering? They don't have power. They don't have communications. How many homes were destroyed? You ask questions like that, and you try to assess what this means and the human cost of it. The one thing you don't do is immediately jump forward to score some sort of cheap and sleazy political point from it. That used to be obvious. But for the past several years it's been clear it's no longer obvious, at least to one political party. You saw this happen after the forest fires in California two years ago.
It happened after tornadoes killed people in Midwest last year, and it's happening again now. Immediately on cable television on the floor of the legislative bodies across this country, self-described experts are demanding that you accept responsibility for whatever natural disaster has just occurred. It's your fault, including for Hurricane Ian. You did this because you didn't support giving Joe Biden trillions of dollars to fight climate change. So, you caused it. Watch.
CNN TONIGHT: Decades ago, it used to be one or two a season, it would happen. Now, with climate change and these extreme warm waters, it's almost you know, it's happening all the time.
MSNBC REPORTS: This storm, in a way, is kind of bad news for the people that are still trying to deny climate change as a factor.
‘THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE,’ MSNBC: Florida Republicans deny climate change as a monster storm barrels towards the coast.
‘THE LEAD,’ CNN: This will be a first-time test for how you adapt to these new stronger storms on a warmer planet as a result of climate change.
CHRIS HAYES, "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES," MSNBC: The threat exacerbated, of course, by climate change.
ALI VELSHI, MSNBC: Charleston, like Miami, gets water that comes up on a good sunny day. That's climate change because water levels are rising.
JOY REID, "THE REID OUT," MSNBC: Our Earth is getting warmer and there is just no doubt, I think, left that it is feeding these beasts.
Imagine taking a science lecture from someone as stupid as Stephanie Ruhle or Ali Velshi. So, on that level, it's ridiculous and it's also, as we just suggested, unseemly and anti-human. Of course. People are dying, so wait just a moment before putting forward your demands for more political power
But it's also factually untrue. So, you just heard one hare hat say "it used to be one or two hurricanes a season it would happen. Now it's happening all the time" and you hear this all the time, and it's a way of terrifying you into handing politicians more power over your life, but the fact is, it's a lie. It's not even remotely true. I mean, it's not a close call.
There has been, as a factual matter, no increase in hurricane frequency in the continental United States from 1900 to 2020. So that's 120 years. It's been recorded. We have the data. They're on your screen right now. In fact, as Michael Shellenberger has pointed out, someone is actually looked at the numbers, the number of landfalling hurricanes has dropped slightly over the past century. Why? We're not sure, but we can probably guess it has nothing to do with climate or your SUV. We do know that in that same period, deaths of human beings from natural disasters such as hurricanes have dropped a lot by about 90% and the death toll is forecast to drop even more as people respond to the changing environment. That's what people do.
Government scientists at the NOAA, even the professional alarmists at the IPCC, predict that hurricanes will become 25% less frequent throughout the 21st century. Oh, and that makes sense because the current Atlantic hurricane season is the slowest one in a quarter-century. So, none of that is to downplay or minimize in any way the savagery of Hurricane Ian or the sadness of what it's done to your fellow Americans. It's horrible, but it does raise the question, how exactly are you responsible for it?
Well, of course, you're not in any sense. You're not liable for that. You didn't do that. You're a normal person. You're grieving for the people who were just killed. You're not trying to score political points on their deaths. But Don Lemon steps into the breach, the breach between fact and rhetoric with a brand-new theory. Don Lemon claims that stories may not have become more frequent, but they definitely become more "intense."
DON LEMON: The science shows what the science shows. It's undeniable what is happening, but listen, let's talk about the storm surge. Really, what I was trying to explain, this is just the phenomenon of the intensifying storms over the years, what it is. Not trying to say, it's one that, you know, one particular storm, we could gauge something, but listen, you get an idea. You've been doing this for a while. I've been covering this for, you know, since I've been in the business for 20 years, have lived in the Gulf Coast. You see the intensity of the storms increasing and that's the science definitely shows that.
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So the intensity of the storms is increased and notice how, like all TV presenters, the claim has never proven. They will show you how it's true. They just assert it. They become more intense. So, how does Don Lemon know that? Because of a longitudinal study, he's done? Well yeah, in a way he "lived in the Gulf Coast" so he knows the storms are getting more intense because he's been in this business a long time. Well, is it true? It's worth assessing it since you hear it constantly and there's a political reason they're telling you that. Is it true? Are the storms getting more intense and if so, how much more intense are they getting? Well, we did our level best as a news show to get to the bottom of that.
According to the latest models from the NOAA, the worst-case scenario is that hurricanes get 5% stronger this century. We're 22 years into the century, 78 years to go. So, hurricanes are 25% less common and at most 5% more intense. Do the math. Well, as scientist Roger Pielke put it, "Even under the most extreme scenarios of climate change, future disasters will look a lot like today's."
So, it's not really about science, is it? Because actually there's no science behind these claims. No, it's what everything is in this intensely politicized country. It's another opportunity to punish people who don't vote the right way, to cow them into submission, to seize the moral high ground, to punish your opponents. That's why even as bodies are still being identified, and apparently many have not been in the streets of Florida, "The View," which apparently still on the air, mocks the people of Florida for daring to ask disaster relief money from the federal government. Watch this.
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WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Governor DeSantis says it's all hands on deck to prepare for what's coming and that includes reaching across the aisle for help.
JOY BEHAR: Isn't it socialism when the government helps you?
SUNNY HOSTIN: That's what they say, like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and things like that
JOY BEHAR: ...And the police and I mean, socialism.
Oh, so clever, what an incisive point. This show is totally opposed to censorship or de-platforming or pulling anyone off the air. We're not calling for that in the case of "The View," but it is an objective matter when that show finally does die, a well-deserved death and has gone and forgotten, this will be a slightly better country. That's just true. So, consider what you just saw. A hurricane devastates Florida, kills Americans, and the reaction of the morons on "The View" is to laugh at them, to mock the people who are suffering and while they're doing this, they claim it's really coming from a place of compassion. They're laughing at people who are dying because they're better than you. See how that works? Here's Joy Reid.
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JOY REID: It's a bit ironic now that you might have Floridians having to actually pore over the borders and go north and get out of the state of Florida in the exact same crisis that we've been talking about on a trolling level in that state for a long time and be careful about attacking people who have to move to save their own lives and safety, because you never know when it's your people that have to move, when it's your people who have to migrate, when it's your people who have to get on that road.
So, we throw on a lot of cable news clips on the air and on one level it's like, who cares what the dummies on cable television say, but it's kind of a window into a broader political debate. If you wind up in a country where no one can think clearly, when the most educated Harvard graduates like Joy Reid literally can't think in a logical, linear way, they're incapable of rational thought, then over time, your whole country becomes incapable of rational thought. People just fall out of the habit of thinking like adults, and we're moving toward there. So, these are the very same people, by the way, who cheered as illegal aliens were removed by force from Martha's Vineyard and sent to a military base. They called them trash. They took them out within 48 hours with the Army. But now they're lecturing you about compassion as they gloat over a deadly hurricane.
It's time to stop taking them seriously. Of course, they're not compassionate. They don't care about other people. What they care about is advancing the political power of the party they belong to and if you need more evidence of that, Joy Reid went on to explain that the hurricane, the one we just saw, is not a moment to stop and reflect on the fragility of life. No, it's another reason to keep our border open. Watch.
JOY REID: The reality is that humans, we are literally running from what the climate, from the climate change that we're pretending isn't happening, but we're physically being moved around the Earth because of it.
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ALI VELSHI: It will actually be the single biggest cause of migration. We typically think of migration being caused by conflict and wars and things like that in Syria, it's recorded in Ukraine. That's not going to be what it is. It's actually going to be migration because people can't move. Generally speaking, prosperous people can move first because they can afford to, but eventually, when the grain stops growing or the fields keep flooding, the poor people move, too and we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that that's going to be the major cause of migration around the world and here in America.
Imagine when these people go home at night and look in the mirror. Oh, another day of successfully pretending not to be stupid. Another day of fooling TV viewers into thinking we know what we're talking about, but nobody's fooled. Anyone knows anything, anyone knows any common sense at all or just the powers of observation that most adults have would know that what they're saying is ridiculous. Ian wasn't the first hurricane in Florida. Florida gets hurricanes every year and more Americans have moved to Florida in the past two years than any other state so actually, climate is not forcing people out of Florida. They're somehow moving there. It's one of our hottest states. How does that work exactly? They never answer.
Instead, they tell you the solution to climate change [is] to keep our southern border open. Martha's Vineyard is still off limits, of course, because that's where their donors live. What's so interesting, even as they make the case that the United States deserves to keep its borders open, we deserve the punishment that we receive from mass migration because we cause climate change, that's the argument they're making, this is atonement for a climate sins, these same people never tell China to open its borders, even though China is by far the largest carbon emitter and the largest polluter in conventional terms in the world. But no one's ever in China's face about being an ethno-state, or racist, not letting non-Han Chinese into the country, which they don't.
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They have no moral obligation to let Burkina Faso move to Beijing. Why is that exactly? In fact, leaders of the Democratic Party defended China. They defend China. The same people who tell you that climate change is the most important issue in the world, China, of course, the main driver of climate change, by their definition, carbon emissions. Those same people tell you that China is doing a great job, and we're sinning. Here's our climate czar, the cadaverous John Kerry.
MSNBC QUESTION: My question to you is what can be done about changing their seeming reluctance to participate in affairs of climate control that other nations...
JOHN KERRY: Well, China might, China, interestingly enough, China has a plan. They put a plan in place. We think they could be doing more, but China is going to be building more electric vehicles, will be put on the road over the next year or so in China than in all the rest of the world put together. They are deploying renewable power at a rate that exceeds all other nations. They are the largest manufacturer of renewables in the world and so China is moving.
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So, John Kerry – who really is cadaverous, it felt mean to say that, but actually look at the tape and it's pretty accurate – John Kerry is basically doing an infomercial for the Communist Party of China. This is the climate czar. This is the country that's built more coal plants in the past five years, in any place in the world by far tax and he's not only sniffing their throne. He's defending them on climate grounds. It's not subtle. They're not even trying. They don't care about climate change. They definitely don't care about natural disasters. They just want power, and that's why they suck up to the most powerful guy in the room and that would be Xi, Chairman Xi. It's unbelievable. How deep is their insincerity? Well, last year during hurricane season, Joe Biden leveraged these natural disasters as a way to sell his vaccines. Watch this.
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PRESIDENT BIDEN: God forbid a natural disaster strikes, we have to make sure we're ready to be protected against COVID-19 as well. Let me be clear, if you're in a state where hurricanes often strike like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas, a vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now.
Sure, the lesson the hurricane is in tornadoes and tidal waves and earthquakes is to get the vaccine. Can we just have a natural disaster that we accept as natural? That's what they're called natural disasters, because we didn't cause them. They're products of nature. God's in charge. We're not we're not God.
But you really have to think you're not God in order to admit that, and they think they are God. They think they're in charge of the weather and that's why they just can't give it a break. They just can't let people die, and their deaths be observed for what they are, which is a tragedy that demands reverence, not posturing, none of their stupid political speech. But they can't control themselves, ever.
