Where Should We Obtain Information?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the power that human beings have on the climate. The Left claimed that the fire on Maui was caused by climate change until more sane people proved that the fire was caused and/or worsened by faulty progressive ideas. Now the Left are claiming that climate changed by humans made Hurricane Idalia much worse than it would have been otherwise.

Chris Enloe at The Blaze gave an example of the blame being passed around, this time by CNN prior to Idalia making landfall on Wednesday morning. CNN anchor Abby Phillip asked CNN reporter Bill Weir, CNN’s chief climate correspondent about how to protect against hurricanes and other natural disasters. The question itself had a flawed foundation of assuming that “warmer water, historically warm water” means “communities now are suddenly in the path of hurricanes where they have not been before.” Instead of correcting Phillip’s assumption, Weir connected “wicked storms” with fossil fuels and climate change. 

“Is there anything that can be done to protect [these communities] going forward?” Phillip asked.

“That’s an amazing question,” Weir responded. “It’s the biggest, sort of trillion-dollar question about how you adapt communities like this to the world that we’re already now living in at the same time trying to mitigate further more wicked storms down the road with more fossil fuel pollution.”

Weir added that the cost of fossil fuel pollution-driven climate change is “becoming bigger with every storm.”

“Science has been warning about this for a very long time. In many ways, it’s been predicted,” he claimed. “It’s the speed that we’re seeing these changes that has taken most folks by surprise.”

Phillip and Weir should have consulted meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue before making their claim about fossil fuels and climate change intensifying storms. Maue corrected Weir a few hours after the discussion took place on CNN. Enloe explained as follows.

The CNN segment was completely misinformed, Maue later pointed out, because there was a major hurricane that hit in the same area as Idalia in the 19^th century – long before widespread usage of fossil fuels.

“Except, the landfall of Idalia is only strongest along coastal area since 1896 Cedar Keys hurricane (125 mph) 125-years ago, well prior to modern fossil fuel usage,” Maue wrote on social media.

Maue, whose doctoral research focused on tropical cyclones, also exposed the reductionist connection that Weir and Phillip made between warm water and a strong cyclone.

“Why didn’t Idalia rapidly intensify during the 3 days it sat over the NW Caribbean? Did someone forget to push a button or turn a knob?” he mocked, explaining the water in the Northwestern Caribbean is “very warm and deep.”

Finally, Maue wondered why hurricanes in the mid-2000s – like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, which formed over comparatively cooler waters – were significantly stronger than Idalia if the accumulation of fossil fuel pollutants is intensifying cyclonic storms through climate change over time.

Apparently, Weir and other reporters, who earn college degrees focused on journalism and writing, should not attempt to explain scientific phenomena. Americans should stop listening to the talking heads on CNN and other alphabet media organizations and go to experts for all kinds of information. It would be helpful if the media started consulting experts and stopped shoving propaganda into us.