Former Obama Adviser Uses Hurricane Harvey To Attack GOP On Climate Change

Energy

From The Daily Caller

Photo of Michael Bastasch

Michael Bastasch

10:48 AM 08/29/2017

Former White House national security adviser Ben Rhodes used the devastation that Hurricane Harvey brought to Texas as an opportunity to attack Republican “denial” of global warming.

Rhodes wondered how the GOP would tell future generations about its position on global warming. Former President Barack Obama made similar statements when giving speeches on global warming.

Rhodes is a regular critic of the Trump administration, and recently became the focus of a congressional investigation into the Obama administration’s improper “unmasking” of Americans caught up in surveillance.

The former adviser is now taking aim at Republicans for opposing Obama-era policies aimed at curbing global warming.

Democrats have often linked individual extreme weather events to manmade global warming, despite warnings from scientists that doing so is problematic.

Harvey made landfall in Texas on Friday night as a Category 4 hurricane, the first to hit U.S. shores since Hurricane Charley in 2004. The storm brought record levels of rainfall to the greater Houston area and thousands have been forced out of their homes.

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Stan on The Brazos
August 29, 2017 7:45 pm

Remember that old tongue in cheek comment that all you needed to know to past your first college physics course was F=ma and you can’t push on a rope. Curious do you think Rhodes understands any of that?

Reply to  Stan on The Brazos
August 29, 2017 9:28 pm

Uhhh, it’s doubtful Ben Rhodes ever took anything resembling a hard science or engineering course at the college/university level, much less any college physics course. He understands politics and communications, in this case disinformation and propaganda.

Ben Rhodes education bio from Wikipedia:
“He attended the Collegiate School, graduating in 1996.[3][4] Rhodes then attended Rice University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 2000 with majors in English and political science. He then moved back to New York, attending New York University and graduating in 2002 with an MFA in creative writing.[5] His brother, David Rhodes, is President of CBS News.”

note: That last sentence in his bio tells you what his real-world political qualifications really are.
Ben Rhodes is of the product of a Liberal education. He is woefully ignorant of hard science, mathematics and statstics, and civil engineering principles. And Rhodes is a unquestionably, demonstrated liar from his White House tenure as Benghazi-video Liar Susan Rice’s Deputy Liar over his Iran deal statements.

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 2:55 am

The creative writing course was invaluable for his future employment in the Obama White House presumably.
Doesn’t East Anglia have a highly-regarded creative writing department? Or has that now been amalgamated with its Climatic Research Unit?

Curious George
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 8:35 am

Obama had a talent for selecting his advisers – in any discipline. Look at John Holdren.

HotScot
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 1:06 pm

joelobryan
“political science”
What is that?
There’s nothing scientific about politics.

RalphB
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 5:14 pm

HotScot asks, “political science” / What is that?
Actually there is political science. It is an offshoot of political of history and certainly among the softer sciences like sociology and climatology in that no controlled experiments can be done, but at least, unlike in the case of (current) climatology, political science studies situations that have occurred more-or-less repeatedly dozens and even thousands of times in recorded history.
It is political ‘science’ rather than political history, because it aims to give accounts not of particular social arrangements at particular times and places but after the manner of a biologist studying social insect communities, to give causal accounts of the survival value of given classes of arrangements under different conditions. Of course the biologist can, for example, perform the experiment of removing the “monarch” insect from the community to see what happens, but the political scientist also can at least look at several hundred cases of a human monarch or dictator being assassinated to discover if the consequences are apparently random or if they tend to fall into a limited number of categories. At least it is a scientific attitude.
Compare Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. Thucydides would see similarities in the character and behavior of numerous leaders and take care to point out, for example, the bad consequences of bad character for the long-term interests of a state. Plato, under the influence of Socrates, attempted to take such lessons into consideration and in his Republic design a regime in which leaders could be guaranteed to be virtuous and subjects obedient. Aristotle wrote at length on ethical issues with a special emphasis on how good character could be developed in small steps, starting with making a habit of simple virtues and graduating to making the more difficult virtues habitual. But he did not think there was a science of virtue. He did think there could be a science of politics.
Aristotle did not finish his Ethics and immediately set to work on his Politics. First he set about collecting and documenting 158 constitutions of various states throughout the Mediterranean basin. He and his students then wrote accounts that connected the political arrangements and subsequent historical events through time for each state. You can still read Aristotle’s one surviving study Constitution of the Athenians, because after being lost for a couple thousand years, a papyrus copy was discovered in 1879 in a very dry Egyptian garbage dump. After the research was done, then he wrote the Politics.
So real political science is political history analyzed with a scientific attitude. It is descriptive and analytical, not prescriptive and ideological. Some real political science is done even to this day, but much of it more closely resembles what Plato was doing: Decide how you would like human beings to behave and design political arrangements to guarantee that they will. To which attitude do you suppose Ben Rhodes subscribes?

Caligula Jones
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 31, 2017 6:48 am

Yes, I don’t want to hear another damn word about the qualifications of any Trump appointee. A writer as a security advisor?
At least Ian Fleming and John Le Carre were actually spies…

Reply to  Stan on The Brazos
August 29, 2017 9:45 pm

Well, I never took a geometry course, because I figured “two parallel lines never intersect” and “A**2 X B**2 = C**2” was all I needed about that.
Didn’t quite work out that way, but at the time it sounded good.

Reply to  James Schrumpf
August 29, 2017 9:47 pm

Sigh. Of course, that should be “A**2 + B**2 = C**2”. Maybe I should stop posting so late…

MarkW
Reply to  Stan on The Brazos
August 30, 2017 6:46 am

Definitely not a Rhodes scholar.

Dave
Reply to  Stan on The Brazos
August 30, 2017 3:05 pm

Stan on the Brazos, you can push on a rope in the Antartic.

August 29, 2017 7:45 pm

Show me another cat4 hurricane with no steering currents that sat on the Gulf Coast for 5 days. If one can be found, what were the rainfall totals?

Reply to  Terry clausen
August 29, 2017 7:50 pm

Show me how an increase in global temperature of less than a degree, if that’s really true, caused the absence of steering currents and all the rain.

David A
Reply to  Steve Case
August 30, 2017 12:12 am

Twas all the Texas windmills stealing the air currents in Texas that caused the storm to stall.
This inane statement is infinitely more logical then blaming SUVs for causing Harvey to hover.

gnomish
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 29, 2017 8:04 pm
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 29, 2017 9:00 pm

Terry,
Try Camille on for size and loss of life and an even larger affected area – from Mississippi through Appalachia and out Virginia.

” You may recall that Camille was a Category 5 hurricane that struck Mississippi and Louisiana. Camille raised one of the largest storm surges ever to batter the Gulf Coast (24 feet) and over 150 lives were lost due to surge and freshwater flooding over southern Mississippi. This storm was one of only three Cat 5s to strike the U.S. during the 20th Century. In and of itself, the tremendous loss along the Gulf Coast qualifies as an outright disaster.
But days after landfall, Camille had a card yet to play. After moving inland on August 17, the storm rapidly weakened and the heavy rains abated. On the 18th, the post-tropical vortex hooked due east across the lower Ohio Valley, as the circulation was picked up by the westerly jet stream. Spotty pockets of 1-3” fell in a broad arc from northern Mississippi to West Virginia.
Late on August 19, the remnant low crossed the Appalachians. The evening’s surface synoptic chart appeared humble; the low had a couple closed isobars, a central pressure of 1007 mb, and the storm was clearly on the move. The Weather Bureau’s overnight forecast for central Virginia called for “showers, with clearing in the morning”.
Then, after sunset, a hellish rainstorm exploded over the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, focusing down to just a pinprick on the map, centered squarely on Nelson County.

But the rain was hyper-concentrated over Nelson County, where an official total of 27 inches was recorded. This is near the foot of the Blue Ridge proper, an imposing rampart exceeding 4,000 feet elevation is spots. And the rain totals may have been even higher, as the following account suggests:
Sheriff Whitehead talked about a farmer who lived beneath the epicenter of the very heaviest rains. ‘He had been feeding cattle and had four or five barrels, 155 gallon drums, on the back of his pickup. The next morning those barrels were nearly full of rain, 31 inches.’ (J. Halverson, Queen of Rains, Weatherwise)It staggers the mind that ALL of this heavy rain fell in the interval between sunset and sunrise. If there was a theoretical maximum amount of rain – given optimum alignment of high moisture, vigorous uplift and sustained intense thunderstorms – nature had collocated all its forces, exactly, to create it.
Nature’s perfect rain-making machine
Such an alignment involved many scales of motion.
Let’s treat the large processes first.
First, there was the remnant vortex, drawing in low-level moisture, converging the air, creating uplift. Contrary to popular belief, the vortex did not stall – it could not have – since it was embedded in the fast-flowing jet stream aloft.
Second, a cold front, oriented west to east, sagged southward through central Virginia. This front, more than any other element, helped to concentrate the rainfall into a long, narrow ribbon cutting across Virginia.
Third, the jet stream’s flow focused the uplift further. Embedded within the flow was a pocket of fast wind, termed a jet streak. Airflow undergoes dynamic adjustments as it traverses a jet streak – and this lead to a small bullseye of vigorous ascent over central Virginia.”
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/08/19/unprecedented-rain-hurricane-camilles-deadly-dlood-in-the-blue-ridge-mountains/?utm_term=.b31f67e1b324

But in this case the Cat 4 (at landfall) footprint was almost entirely in Texas, and the steering winds only moved it a couple hundred miles total while dumping copious rainfall on Harris County, Texas.
Camille happened in 1969, when weather experts (there were no climate scientists then, only geologists who studied paleoclimate records honestly) said the planet was headed toward catastrophic global cooling..

Phil
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 29, 2017 9:59 pm

Hurricane Flora in 1963 first dropped 57 inches on Haiti and then 100.39 inches on Santiago de Cuba.

The storm struck southwestern Haiti near peak intensity, turned to the west, and drifted over Cuba for four days before turning to the northeast. … Flora … made landfall in Sud, Haiti, late on October 3 as a 145 mph … Category 4 hurricane …

Dave
Reply to  Phil
August 30, 2017 3:02 pm

That was a CIA plot to get rid of Castro

tom0mason
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 29, 2017 10:07 pm

@ Terry clausen
Why show YOU anything?
You are obviously too lazy to find out for yourself, so why should anyone spoon feed you. I doubt you have the ability to understand anyway!

Reply to  tom0mason
August 29, 2017 10:23 pm

tom0.
Terry is likely a Millennial. (of the millennial generation)
So it is not his fault he is ignorant. He really was handed a bad education by my generation (an education lacking true critical thinking assignments, as his education almost certainly consisted of liberal trope memes to regurgitate and then call it a classical, enlightened education).
And as Mother Nature and reality kicks the Millenials, one by one, in their proverbial balls, they can do what they do best, that is, blame someone else for their failings.

tom0mason
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 7:24 am

So true.

Tom in Denver
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 30, 2017 7:38 am

Tropical storm Allison Hit Houston in 2001, It took an almost identical path to Harvey and dumped 40″ of rain on houston, that’s 80% of what Harvey dumped and it was only a tropical storm. This kind of storm track is not unprecedented

Reply to  Terry clausen
August 30, 2017 10:18 am

Terry clausen, you show either all the hallmarks of someone that hasn’t bothered to take a simple look in a search engine or a simple tr*ll……

HotScot
Reply to  Terry clausen
August 30, 2017 1:12 pm

Terry clausen
Please demonstrate to me why, in a non linear, chaotic climate system, it shouldn’t happen.

August 29, 2017 7:54 pm

Yeah, because all those extreme weather events before atmospheric CO2 rose past ~320 ppm were all simply natural events. And all those since >320 ppm are anthropogenic.
Those morons on the Left really believe that I suppose. It’s Liberal logic in action and the outcome of a Progressive education that leaves them incapable of seeing the absurdity, or if they do, then their dishonesty as a justified means. Ben Rhodes is likely though both a moron and dishonest as he was the Obama WH’s lead liar in the Iran deal that will give the nuclear weapons and $150 Billion to build the missile tech to deliver them.

August 29, 2017 7:55 pm

I urge the GOP leadership to use this crisis to come up with a ‘must pass’ budget
bill and add the ‘repeal and replace’ as a rider. It only needs ‘one vote!’

August 29, 2017 7:57 pm

The definition of Category 4 was changed slightly in 2012, so that when the NHC rounds windspeed in knots and in MPH to the nearest multiple of 5, the knots and MPH windspeed figures are in the same category. If I am correct here, Harvey made landfall With NHC’s determination of max sustained wind of 130 MPH. By the pre-2012 definition, this is Category 3.

August 29, 2017 8:03 pm

As for Charley of 2004 being said to be the most recent Cat-4 before Harvey to make landfall on the US: As of the first advisory for Katrina (2005) after it’s center had crossed a coastal barrier island of Louisiana, it was a Cat-4, even according to the pre-2012 definition.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
August 29, 2017 8:15 pm

Neoleft changed the Saffir-Simpson scale precisely because there had been no major ‘canes hit for 12 yrs. MSM were reporting water spouts, dust devils and a week without rain.
Has anyone found the windspeed data that shows 130mph at 12ft height, or are they still going with illigitimate speeds at aircraft height?

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 29, 2017 8:57 pm

The change did not affect when a major-qualifying hurricane hit, since that is Cat-3 or stronger. The low end of Cat-3 was not changed. Harvey had a Cat-3-qualifying sustained wind measurement by a surface station at Aransas Pass, as mentioned in Public Advisory #23, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2017/al09/al092017.public.023.shtml?

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 29, 2017 9:01 pm

The standard height is 10 meters not 12 feet, a major hurricane is Category 3 or higher, the low end of the definition of Category 3 was not changed, and Harvey had a Cat-3 qualifying sustained wind by a surface station at Aransas Pass according to its #23 public advisory.

Phil
Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 29, 2017 10:27 pm

Surface winds in hurricanes have been estimated remotely using the Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) from NOAA WP-3D aircraft. The “radar” does not measure doppler shifts. Instead, “(t)he SFMR measures brightness temperatures (Tb) of the ocean surface and atmosphere at six C-band microwave channels …, and an inversion algorithm is used to retrieve wind speed. When viewed at nadir, the apparent sea surface Tb generally increases with surface foam coverage due to wave breaking …” I was going to post a comment about this, but, given the extent of the disaster, I am reserving comment until afterwards. The only comment I am going to make now is that these wind speeds are referred to as “estimates.” I may comment later in more detail. In the meantime, I have found the following published references:
Verification of Remotely Sensed Sea Surface Winds in Hurricanes, Uhlhorn and Black 2003
Improved Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer Tropical Cyclone Surface Winds in Heavy Precipitation, Klotz and Uhlhorn, 2014

I Came I Saw I Left
Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 30, 2017 5:32 am
Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 30, 2017 7:48 am

I Cama I Saw I Left: The original ANPT2 reading was in knots, and that was 96. I saw that when I was able to do a radial search for recent readings. The Saffir Simpson scale has the low end of Cat-3 starting at 96 knots and at 111 MPH, which are a little different from each other. This sounds like the reason why the low end of Cat-4 was redefined by 1 MPH in 2012.

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 30, 2017 10:07 pm

Followup on the definition of the top end of Cat-2 and the bottom end of Cat-3: The top end of Cat-2 is 95 in knots, 110 in MPH. The bottom end of Cat-3 is 96 in knots, 111 in MPH. Wind readings at weather stations used by NOAA are in knots.
When the NHC makes a determination of a hurricane’s strongest 1-minute-average wind 10 meters above the surface anywhere in the storm (the official number), they extrapolate from the measurements that they have, using mathematical relationships that have been found in hurricanes where more measurements are available. They use flight level wind determinations, SSMR when the windiest part of the storm is over water, and buoy and weather station measurements where they are available – generally closer to the surface than 10 meters. They use satellite readings and Dvorak classification from the storm’s appearance, mostly for when the storm is out on the high seas and they aren’t flying in it. And they make their determination or estimate in knots, rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 knots. After that, they convert this figure to MPH and round it to the nearest multiple of 5 MPH. The multiple of 5 knots closest to the borderline between Cat-2 and Cat-3 is 95 knots, which is 109 MPH to the nearest MPH and rounded to 110 MPH. As mentioned, 95 knots and 110 MPH are the top end of Cat-2, one knot or MPH above these is Cat-3.
There is a little difficulty here, which is the 96 knot highest actual sustained wind measured by an anemometer. Converting that to MPH says a hair less than 110.5. And 110 and 111 MPH, when converted to knots and rounded to the nearest knot, are both 96 knots (Cat-3). Meanwhile, when a hurricane’s “official maximum sustained wind” is reported as 110 MPH, its official determination/estimate in knots is 95 knots (Cat-2). Thankfully (at least as far as I know), buoy anemometers are much closer to the surface than 10 meters, so it is reasonably certain that Harvey had a 1-minute-averaged wind higher than 96 knots at/below 10 meters above the surface somewhere in the right side of its eyewall while it was landfalling. That means there is not much reasonable doubt that Harvey made landfall as a Cat-3 according to a wind speed definition that has not changed since, and Cat-3 is a major hurricane.

Sam Pyeatte
August 29, 2017 8:06 pm

Tell Rhodes to go jump in a lake, he’s all wet. The Obama Administration was clueless on climate issues, as they were all politics all the time, and completely void of science.

markl
August 29, 2017 8:07 pm

Trump needs to go from defensive to offensive with CC.

hunter
August 29, 2017 8:09 pm

It is democrats who ran Houston infrastructure into ruin, making the floods impacting the metro area worse and worse.
Ben Rhodes is a cynical traitor who helps Iran and terrorists attack America andvtge West.
Do we really need to hear from this monster about his anti-reality ignorance on the weather as well?

DMA
August 29, 2017 8:11 pm

Do basic facts include:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/new-insights-on-the-physical-nature-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-deduced-from-an-empirical-planetary-temperature-model.pdf
If so, then ignoring the whole greenhouse hypothesis is the correct path to the future Mr Rhodes is worried about.

Richard
August 29, 2017 8:29 pm

Denying basic facts? Maybe. Denying scientific method? That’s the purview of progressives.

Joey
August 29, 2017 8:30 pm

But I thought that Obama had looked after all of this?

C. Paul Pierett
August 29, 2017 8:39 pm

Really, we are in a Solar Minimum and this one had the rain we needed, but no punch. Just bouncing around like a ball on the hard wood floor. Now, the one coming across the Atlantic is unique in that it is by itself absorbing all those little hurricane things that make up a hurricane. Callus? I choose to live on high ground.

Kleinefeldmaus
August 29, 2017 8:53 pm

Tired old has beens.comment image?w=640

afonzarelli
Reply to  Kleinefeldmaus
August 30, 2017 1:06 am

(who’s the guy on the left?)

Mike McMillan
Reply to  afonzarelli
August 30, 2017 7:34 am

Hard to say. It looks photoshopped in.
None of this would have happened if Trump hadn’t pulled us out of the Paris Accord.

ossqss
August 29, 2017 9:15 pm

What basic unmodeled facts does he refer to? Facts are not modeled.

Reply to  ossqss
August 29, 2017 11:49 pm

In the IPCC narrative, dangerous global warming caused by Mann is a fact.

August 29, 2017 9:36 pm

I thought it was since Hurricane Wilma in 2005??

August 29, 2017 9:40 pm

Just for fun, I grabbed a Houston daily file from the GHCN records and plotted the TMAX anomaly. If you’re going to use temperatures, I prefer that one because an increased TMIN makes TAVG go up without anything actually getting any warmer.
As before, I calculated the 30-year baseline monthly averages using the 1981-2010 period and then subtracted those from the monthly averages over the whole period. The data is from 1930 to April this year, and is very good.
As you can see, there isn’t much going on there. Stays pretty flat until the 1998 and then gets a bit bouncy — but if that’s “global warming” I’ll eat my hat.

Reply to  James Schrumpf
August 29, 2017 9:40 pm

Drat, forgot to actually post the graphic…comment image

Reply to  James Schrumpf
August 29, 2017 10:00 pm

James, I tried to reply to your post, but WP and the filters obviously didn’t like some of my vocabulary.

August 29, 2017 9:54 pm

There is only one term that should adequately describe Houston’s temperature record…
UHIE, urban heat island effect.
One should expect a hundred year rise simply from that UHIE physical effect alone. Yet NOAA chooses not to compensate for that by lowering the present readings. It chooses to somehow justify its compensation in lowering the past.
To be fair, the SSTs in the NW Gulf of Mexico have been slightly higher this year, and that can make for more intense rainfall through increased evaporation (advection-convection energy).
But 1 year of slightly higher SST is not climate, and that is where the climate hustlers are living right now. So while they honestly cannot say that AGW didn’t contribute to Harvey, they equally cannot say it did. But from the dishonest hustlers like Mann and Dessler, they only report that they cannot discount that AGW/Climate Change made Harvey worse (i.e. they tell a half-truth to support a deception, telling half-truths was a famous Obama-era trademark still in widespread use because the fake news media won’t call them on it, except maybe Tucker Carlson on FoxNews).

jclarke341
August 29, 2017 10:04 pm

If democrats want to blame republicans for Harvey, perhaps republicans should take credit for the hurricane drought! Since 1851, the US has been hit with 6 major hurricanes per decade on average. We just went almost 12 years without a major hurricane hitting the US, and the 2010s are on pace to have the fewest number of hurricanes (all categories) hitting the US of any decade since records began. So republicans should ask the people if they want far more major hurricanes hitting the US like the democrats, or if they kind of liked the hurricane drought that is part of the new and improved man-made climate, supported by republicans?
The question is nonsense, but it may be time to hoist these peeps on their own petard!

Reply to  jclarke341
August 29, 2017 10:08 pm

It is time to tar and feather those Democrat peeps, put them on a rail, kick them hard in the keister, and laugh them out of public view.

CMS
Reply to  jclarke341
August 30, 2017 10:19 am
Michael S. Kelly
August 29, 2017 10:31 pm

How will the Democrat Party explain to its grandchildren and great grandchildren that they spent $20 trillion they didn’t have, and promised to spend another $80 trillion they hadn’t even borrowed, just in order to get elected? They bought votes with money they had either borrowed, or worse, had committed future generations to borrow. That is all provable, unlike some baseless speculation about lack of preparation for “climate change.”
As Gregory House would say: “Speculation. It makes a “spec” out of “u” and some guy named ‘Lation.'”

Reply to  Michael S. Kelly
August 29, 2017 10:40 pm

Today’s Democrats are pure Socialists by any critical examination of their current Party’s rhetoric and platforms (single payer, welfare, entitlements, soak the rich).
So MIchael, the answer is:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.””
– Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister
Today’s Socialist Democrats are merely gambling that they can get their pot-O’Gold and skedaddle before the money runs out.

t5pod
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
August 30, 2017 7:22 am

joelobryan, Christopher Booker penned a reasonable summary of Thatcher’s role in instigating the necessary machinery required for the hoax:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html
UK’s role in continuing to promote the scamming probably equals Germany’s nowadays… with Oz and USA (pre- Trump) not too far behind.

afonzarelli
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly
August 30, 2017 1:17 am

(never ASSUME because you make an ASS out of U and of ME)…

Dave
Reply to  afonzarelli
August 30, 2017 3:18 pm

Esto solo pretence a los que hablan ingles. A asumir no nos hace un burro de tu y yo.

ren
August 29, 2017 11:27 pm

Let’s see that the pressure pattern is visible even at a height of over twenty kilometers in the stratosphere.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00928/i8vvighgqw6o.png
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00928/1zkuu15g936n.png
The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere is very visible.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_nh.gif

ren
August 29, 2017 11:42 pm

Situation on a regular basis. As you can see low it is still blocked by the jet stream.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_200_nh_f00.png

ren
August 30, 2017 12:17 am

Lightning storms indicate the range of the front.
http://pl.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30

K. Kilty
August 30, 2017 6:07 am

“Rhodes wondered how the GOP would tell future generations about its position on global warming. Former President Barack Obama made similar statements when giving speeches on global warming….”
Suggestion: There was a fork in the road long ago. We chose to take the path that has led today to greater wealth and better lives. The other path led back to the stone age.

Sheri
August 30, 2017 6:30 am

Weather is climate now! We knew all along it was. Thank you news folks for confirming this!

MarkW
August 30, 2017 6:45 am

Where are the concern trolls who always complain about linking global warming and politics?

Tom in Florida
August 30, 2017 6:47 am

Who knew that when President Trump pulled us out of the Paris Scam it would only take a couple of months for the climate to change.

MDN
August 30, 2017 6:53 am

OMG! All of that rain is going to cause the sea level to rise!!!

Max
August 30, 2017 6:57 am

So why is this nitwit the unofficial spokesthing for every anti-Trump statement from the 0bama administration? The jerk wasn’t qualified for ANY position he held, and is a poor creative writing grad. His claim to fame is getting reporters (already predisposed to agree with 0bama) to go along with anything 0bama said. Hardly a major accomplishment, like claiming to get alligators to like eating meat.

Tom Judd
August 30, 2017 7:43 am

AN ODE TO BEN RHODES:
The 30 something National Security Advisor who, almost single handedly, got Iran to give up their Nukes – forever (wink, wink)
Sung to the tune of: ‘Hooked On A Feeling’
With apologies to: Blue Swede
Ooga-chaka Ooga-Ooga
Ooga-chaka Ooga-Ooga
Ooga-chaka Ooga-Ooga
Ooga-chaka Ooga-Ooga
I can’t stop this feeling
Deep inside of me
Baroque Obama just don’t realize
What he does to me
When he holds me
In his arms so tight
He let’s me know
We lost but we’re gonna’ fight
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
Obama’s got bromance for me
His politics sweet as candy
It’s taste stays on my mind
Baroque, you got me thirsty
For another cup of wine
Get my thoughts from you, guy
So I don’t need to be sure
I just stay regurgitating
All your opinions so pure
All the bromance when we’re all alone
Just keep Donald away
Then you can turn me on
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
Obama’s got bromance for me
All the bromance when we’re all alone
Just keep Donald away
Then you can turn me on
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
Obama’s got bromance for me
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
Obama’s got bromance for me
I said I’m hooked on a feeling
And I’m high on believin’
Obama’s got bromance for me

Joel Snider
August 30, 2017 9:12 am

Exploitation. An absolute constant.

TA
August 30, 2017 9:26 am

Ben Rhodes is one of the unmaskers. Congress wants to hear from Ben Rhodes. I wonder if he will “Plead the Fifth”?
The Obama White House was full of liars, their veracity never questioned by the MSM. Just think what Trump could accomplish if he had a fawning News Media promoting eveything he does.

Barbara Skolaut
August 30, 2017 11:37 am

“Ben Rhodes used the devastation that Hurricane Harvey brought to Texas as an opportunity to attack Republican[s]”
In other news, water is wet.

Beta Blocker
August 30, 2017 12:46 pm

The fact is that if steep reductions in America’s carbon emissions are to be achieved as fast as President Obama was advocating while he was President — an 80% reduction by 2050 — it cannot be done any other way but for the federal government to intervene directly in the energy marketplace and to force a steep increase in the price of all carbon fuels.
And even that policy won’t be enough. Direct government control over the production, distribution, and consumption of gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas must eventually be imposed through a mandated carbon fuel rationing scheme.
If Ben Rhodes had been truly concerned about climate change when he was working in the White House for President Obama; and if Ben Rhodes’ actions had been in alignment with his publicly professed beliefs, this is what he should have advised President Obama to do:
— Declare a carbon pollution emergency under authorities previously granted to the President by the Congress to defend the United States from immediate threats to national security.
— Instruct the EPA to write and publish a Clean Air Act Section 108 Endangerment Finding for CO2 using the previously published Section 202 finding as a model. Then use the Section 108 finding as the basis for establishing a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for CO2.
— While acknowledging that CO2 is a well-mixed gas on a worldwide scale, justify the published NAAQS using the argument that it represents America’s commitment to achieving our part of a general worldwide reduction in carbon emissions.
— The act of establishing and then enforcing a NAAQS for CO2 creates a defacto commitment which can be legally established under existing Executive Branch authorities without the need for direct concurrence from Congress.
— Recognizing that even a US Congress controlled by Democrats will never pass a direct tax on carbon, or even a carbon trading scheme, use a series of Executive Orders to establish a system of carbon pollution fines to be administered by the EPA and to be collected by the individual states.
— The EPA’s mandated system of carbon pollution fines will become the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon. All revenues collected will be assigned to the individual state governments which enforce the system of fines.
— Develop a national carbon fuel rationing scheme to be phased in over a decade’s time which gradually imposes ever-more aggressive controls over the production, distribution, and consumption of all carbon fuels.
— Allocate restricted supplies of gasoline, diesel, and natural gas among those sectors of the economy judged by policy makers to be most vulnerable to an ever-shrinking supply of carbon fuel.
Sooner or later, the Democrats will be back in control of the federal government and will have another opportunity to take aggressive action in quickly reducing America’s carbon emissions. What will they do once they are back in power?
If the Democrats start doing those things which actually have to be done to reduce America’s emissions 80% by 2050, then two things will happen.
First, a number of lawsuits will be filed which challenge the federal government’s basic authority to impose carbon fuel rationing on the American people. The outcome of these lawsuits is far from certain. It could go one way or the other. Second, the ongoing public debate concerning the validity of today’s mainstream climate science will go critical mass in a way that it’s never gone before.

Dave
August 30, 2017 3:11 pm

Chicken Little was right the sky did fall in Houston

Martha
August 31, 2017 6:58 am

How about blaming the city of Houston’s planners?
Planned… Disaster in Houston
By Jia Tolentino http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/hurricane-harvey-and-public-and-private-disaster-in-houston
and
https://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/houston-flooding-history/
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
I feel bad that so many are stuck with city of Houston’s bad choices over many decades, but this isn’t new folks, it’s been happening for a long time. That Washington still continues to pay for bad decisions is what keep anything from improving..

Caligula Jones
August 31, 2017 7:03 am

Considering how in the tank for this nonsense most reporters are, its amazing he got away with this (accurate) quote:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/obama-official-says-he-pushed-a-narrative-to-media-to-sell-the-iran-nuclear-deal/2016/05/06/5b90d984-13a1-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?utm_term=.794a4304c173
“the average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”