Eye of the Storm

Hurricane Ian hit south Florida on Wednesday as a category 4, with 155 mph sustained winds, causing devastating damage throughout the state, billions of dollars of damage, many lives lost, and the usual suspects have all stood up and announced that this was the indisputable result of climate change.

MSNBC anchor Joy Reid said Wednesday – the day hurricane Ian hit, “our earth is getting warmer and there’s just no doubt, I think, left that it[climate change] is feeding these beasts.” CNN’s Bill Weir, proclaimed, “This is exactly what climate scientists have been warning about for a long time and now we get to see it up close.” 

CNN’s Don Lemon tried to get National Hurricane Center Acting Director Jamie Rohme, to blame the intensity of Hurricane Ian on climate change, when he asked, “What effect has climate change had on this phenomenon that is happening now, because it seems these storms are intensifying that’s the question?” Rohme responded, “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event.” Lemon then dismissed the expert by saying, “Okay, well listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying something is causing them to intensify.” Lemon arrogantly believes that his personal experiences trump actual science.

Congresswoman Val Demings (D-FL) said we need to “acknowledge climate change and take it extremely seriously.”  Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) suggested that Democrat climate policies would prevent hurricanes like Ian in the future when she said, hurricane Ian is “why we’ve got to win this midterm. We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why we got to win this[election] as that hurricane bears down on Florida.” Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Christ said, “one factor in all of this[hurricanes] is climate change. These storms are getting bigger, they’re getting stronger, and they’re affecting that many more lives as a result of it.”

We are continually being told that natural disasters like these are the definitive result of climate change. But a hurricane is a weather event. It is not climate. We are reminded of the difference between the two all the time during the winter. Whenever a blizzard hits the Northeast, or an arctic blast cripples the Midwest, or Texas is devastated by record colds, we are told that those events are “weather, not climate”, and a weather event is not a reflection on climate change.