Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
On September 8, 2017 the L A Times published a story on the approach of Hurricane Irma toward the U.S. with a front page headline which invents a new climate alarmist propaganda category of hurricane the contrived and dreaded ‘Nuclear hurricane’.
This L A Times front page headline clearly demonstrates a purely climate alarmist propaganda reporting agenda and establishes that the paper is devoid of any ability to address or understand scientific data which clearly shows that Hurricane Irma is representative of major hurricane events reflected over the last 125+ years of recorded Atlantic hurricane history.
The Times fails to address scientific data which displays the Hurricane Irma major hurricane occurrence in context with many other Atlantic major hurricane events in U.S. recorded history.
Irma’s death toll while tragic and unfortunate will not place it high among the deadliest hurricanes that have occurred in U.S. history.
While the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is not over there are many prior seasons which are at the top of the list of crating major Atlantic hurricane events.
Additionally the Times ignores and hides from its readers extensive scientific data clearly showing that neither the frequency or magnitude of global Atlantic or Pacific hurricanes is increasing over time as falsely claimed by climate alarmism propagandists.
The Times failed to address the scientific data reality that increasing global CO2 emissions simply show no connection to increasing Atlantic hurricane energy levels.
Nor do increasing global CO2 emissions show any connection to driving the occurrence of US landfalls of Atlantic hurricanes.
The Times ignored the fact that multiple times in the past three and even four Atlantic hurricanes have existed in the same time period so the recent occurrence of three Atlantic hurricanes in the same time period is not unique.
The L A Times has a clearly established track record of climate alarmism propaganda reporting while concealing from its readers extensive scientific data which undermines its flawed alarmists claims.
The occurrence of naturally occurring major Atlantic hurricanes during this years peak hurricane season period appears to have the Times in climate alarmist propaganda overdrive.
There certainly was a moment where the TV talking heads seemed to run out of new and better superlatives.
Hurricapocalypse? Tropical stormageddon?
The amygdala is constantly under attack. These news people are so annoying.
Yeah, they jumped the shark here. Pure alarmist propaganda. Feh.
They’re long past being newspeople and are far into being propagandists.
it’s a nuke-i-cane the worse tropical cyclonapocalyps evah!!!! 🙂
Alligator-nado?
Unprecedented 🙂
An extremacane, a storm never before witnessed on this or any other planet!
Peak hurricane season period
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7lqkvEjQC5Y/SRb9ay-s71I/AAAAAAAAAA8/pL-U_AfnHsM/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/VanGogh-starry_night_ballance1.jpg
+ 100
Isn’t that “Hurricaney Night”? By the artist Micheal Manncaso?
Yes, they missed a lot of facts, nut get an A for creativity.
Lucky it ran out of CO2 or it would have been a WEATHERMAGEDON!!!
You’re expecting too much from severely under-educated journalists.
This, and many other reasons are why I have cancelled my subscription to the LA Times.
It leads with editorial, instantiates with propaganda and concludes with misinformation.
I haven’t seen any unbiased journalism in quite some time. It is all advocacy.
The LA article is a nonsense, even a weak tropical storms ‘releases’ more energy than a largest nuclear explosion, while any hurricane is number of orders of magnitude more potent.
Although Irmas are nature’s way of “rolling a thirteen,” and climate change uses “steroids” to “load the dice,” it is impossible to attribute any one specific Irma to global Irming, stress today’s latest scientists.
But scientists disagree, saying that what scientists fail to mention is that global warming has added up to 5 Nagasakis of energy to today’s anabolically-pimped-out freaknadoes.
Denihilists of the science, meanwhile, raise the pedantic objection that such claims violate fundamental irmodynamics.
Pfft, science and scientists, always using their pedantic arguments to ruin a good fiction story. Why do they always got to invoke pesky unfun things like the Laws of physics?
For an unprecedented and never equaled bad Atlantic hurricane season, check out this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1780_Atlantic_hurricane_season
It featured prominently in American history.
The record doesn’t show three major hurricanes at once, but in the 18th century hurricanes which formed without hitting ships or land would have gone unnoticed. It’s unlikely that none formed in late June, all of July, the first three weeks of August and all of September.
If the ships did encounter a hurricane they probably didn’t survive to tell about it.
True.
Since 2005 had substantial late season activity, it’s easy to wonder if 1780 was like 2005 on steroids.
Mike,
That could well be, but IMO there must some must have formed earlier which didn’t make it into the historical record. And paleo proxy data would be virtually nonexistent in the open ocean, unlike in near shore sediments.
Just how old is that Aesop’s Fables story about crying wolf? The collection dates from several hundred BC, and was probably old then.
The LA Times just doesn’t pay attention to old dead white guys.
Dead white guys are not old. They are dead.
But they were likely old when they died.
Will the LA Times blame this typhoon on Chinese coal plants, or on Trump?
http://shanghaiist.com/2017/09/12/typhoon-talim.php
Probably not….blame Yo Yo’s….
I knew when the hurricane went nuclear, as I had long suspected one would eventually.
But they failed to mention how many Hiroshimas it was equal to.
don’t tell Japanese about ‘nuclear typhoon’
Of Godzirracanes . .
400 000 a day, or an hour or somesuch according to our dear friends over at SkS.
Also, no one has yet told us how many Olympic-sized swimming pools of rain have fallen.
Or how many Mannyhattans would fit in the eye or the whole himmacane!
So Irma is a nuclear hurricane at a 115mph winds. So all other stronger hurricane’s must be meteoric? It’s safe to say a nuclear bomb would not do as much damage. One hurricane has as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs.
Who are these guys writing to?
A hurricane releases every second roughly the energy of an Hiroshima bomb, ie ~12 kilotons of TNT equivalent. That’s 86,400 Hiroshimas per day. So the 10,000 nuclear bombs would need to be thermonuclear. If a hurricane lasts ten days, then that’s a thousand such bombs per day, which means roughly one megaton each.
Now those numbers really put nuclear war into context.
PS.
Does it matter what category the hurricane is? How would the energy in a category 1 hurricane stack up in those terms against a category 5?
The thought also occurs to me that there were three hurricanes in the Atlantic at the same time, and an earthquake in Mexico.
What’s the nuclear bomb equivalent of an earthquake? The mind boggles.
How many nuclear weapons are there in the world? Including N. Korea’s single contribution.
The next big cane could be called a supernova cane.
I was thinking along the same lines but came to supernovacaine for how numbingly idiotic msm has become.
Don’t try to parody global warming activists. They just adopt the most extreme exaggeration you can think of an use it next time.
Greg
Isn’t there copyright laws? So a term conjured up on this site, then used by the media, could provide Anthony with some income? 🙂
An image of the physical paper’s front page would make this stronger.
The LAT is checkout isle journalism at best
best used for LATrine duty.
We are going to have to invent more powerful bombs so that the LA times doesn’t run out of hyperbolic adjectives.
The next storm will need to be THERMO-NUCLEAR!
What comes next? Galactic? Incremental steps don’t seem to be enough. I don’t think we will ever make a bomb as large as the Big Bang.
Cat 1: Nuclear
Cat 2: Thermonuclear
Cat 3: Red giant
Cat 4: Supernova
Cat 5: Big Bang
haha you beat me to it LOL
Plus one, too!
Auto
I can see it now: This Hurricane has the power of 10,000 Big Bangs!!!
Run! Run! Irmageddon is coming to get you!
Yes! it will be arriving two days before the day after tomorrow!
It’s surprising that so few experts (none?) suggested the possibility that Irma would be “punched out” wind-wise before it moved far up Florida. Or that storm surge would be so much lower than predicted ranges in most places.
Stopping or turning around during the ambulance chase is unlikely even for the experts. The can’t let go of it. The same can be said of dogs chasing cars.
i think we had a tropical Irmageddon with Irmapocalyptic Irmastrophic Irmacanes… we got the Irma supercell spawning Irmanadoes beware they are EF7 ones…
that all because of global wIrmarming….
sorry couldn’t resist 🙂
@roger Knights
I find it fairly unsurprising considering the media climate highlighted in the OP – knee jerk idiocy manufactured by knee jerk idiots. The precautionary principle has for so long been abused by climate alarmists that fatigue and complacency in the general population is the inevitable result. I expect that even better informed experts are aware of this on some level. If a small group of people in the room cry ‘fire’ so often that everyone just ends up carrying on as usual, the better informed will need to shout it the loudest of all if any smoke is seen and a reaction genuinely is needed – they have no choice any more. Constantly over-hyped certainty means that the worst case scenario always has to be presented unilaterally in order to be taken seriously. It’s a ‘boy who cried wolf’ game played by the media and a number of activists entirely for their own selfish ends, and will ultimately lead to increased risk for ordinary people as people learn to mistrust any ‘expert’ predictions, even reasonable ones.
Sooner or later the hype will result in big kill in a big way.
The hype as to the intensity and certainty of the coming destruction was off the charts for Irma.
Someone on this website suggested that Irma had weakened so much over Cuba it wouldn’t have as much punch as expected when it hit Florida after crossing the Florida straits.
I heard that on the weather channel. something about the ‘eye’ breaking up a bit or not able to form some kind a new ‘eye’.. What caused Irma to bounce off Cuba and head north to Florida?
Hurricanes lose power over land, so it diminished while on Cuba.
The threat was that it would move up the west or east coast, partially over water, instead of going up the middle of the peninsula.
The Cubans poked it in the eye.
But it lost strength when it hit Naples and then Tampa / St. Petersburg, before it had traveled much up the middle of the peninsula. It was still mostly “raking the coast,” in accordance with experts’ predictions. Why wasn’t it gaining strength from the warm waters of the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico, as predicted?
Here’s my guess: Irma was so big that its immense outer bands, once thrown out of sync with its center by the encounter with Cuba, and/or just by the passage of time, created a drag on the eye by no longer feeding it steadily, leading to Irma’s disruption and diminishing.
And it didnt.
I like Sharkicaneo. 😉
I see a pattern to the L.A.Times message…
Here’s a couple scary editorials from today’s L.A. Times.
—————————–
Harvey and Irma say this is the right time to discuss global warming
As Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida on Friday, Scott Pruitt, who runs the federal EPA, told a television interviewer that the moment was inappropriate for discussing climate change because, well, there were other things to discuss.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-pruitt-harvey-irma-20170911-story.html
Climate deuiers play politics with looming natural disasters
When the intensifying effect of climate change was brought into the news coverage of Hurricane Harvey, some conservatives objected. They said it was horrid that the “liberal media” was politicizing a disaster that had upended so many people’s lives. Now, the same complaints will probably be raised in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-looming-disasters-20170910-story.html
To discuss global warming? The science is settled. End of discussion.
September 2, 2008 — Hurricane Gustav had just made landfall in LA, Hurricane Hanna is hitting Hispaniola before it heads towards the Carolinas, Hurricane Ike is gathering itself in the mid Atlantic before it races into the Gulf and hammers Houston, and Tropical Storm Josephine forms in the eastern Atlantic. That was a day with three big hurricanes on the map at the same time (Ike and Gustav being major hurricanes in their lifetimes), and all three would be impacting the US in a material way.
We all know there are other “unprecedented” situations like this. Climate alarmists can’t help using the term.
As Inigo Montoya would say . . . “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Too bad sharknado is taken.
How about “Sharkicane”?
Or they can adjust the volume control to show 11, to make it even louder…
[Sharkncane” will sound better. “Sharkicane” kind of forces a stutter for everyone in the English speaking world, and Sharkercane” sounds too sweet. .mod]
“… after adjusting for such as estimating number of storms …”
Lol, I stood in it on a tree’s roots to see if it was creaking at all.
Tree held just fine – Lakeland Power went out like a 4 month old trying to down a bottle of jack but my tree’s still up.
Clearly we should change over from the Saffir-Simpson scale to the Hiroshima-bomb scale now, following California’s usual innovative lead into the latest trends.
Yeah, I’d say the L.A. Times agenda is pretty transparent — Keep ’em alarmed, keep ’em entertained by their own alarm, keep us making money as a news outlet.
The job of the LA Times is to deliver eyeballs to advertisers, not news to readers.
Is this the new Democratic “daisy”?
Fake news.
The MSM is losing it.
Yup.,graphic evidence here.
LA TIMES yeah a real nuclear storm alright . Can’t wait for the big shake to finish off the LA Times
propaganda press . There is nothing wrong with going all religious ,it’s just that people aren’t going to pay you to have a mega phone shoved in their ear .
The next economic downturn and the LA END TIMEs will be on them . Good riddance .
When does NK threaten west coast cities instead of Guam?
Left-wing alarmist media have been waiting SO long to roll out this hurricane horror story they’ve just gone way overboard. The Guardian must’ve run 5 articles now (including one by Michael Mann) claiming ‘climate breakdown’ Armageddon is now upon us, every single one of which has been brutally undermined by NOAA admitting ‘there’s zero human influence detected’. It’s like a teenage lad having to wait 12 months before hitting the jackpot with his girlfriend and getting a bit over-excited – and has ended up being about as messy.
http://flhurricane.com/cyclone/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=98005&page=29&fpart=29&vc=1&nt=29
https://youtu.be/0sGt_3dJcJY
On a less flippant note this is a fine piece by Larry Hamlin. Well-sourced evidence everywhere, taking apart the LA Times deceitful narrative one lie at a time. In a court of law this would swing the case Larry’s way with a unanimous verdict. Quite brutal and exactly the antithesis of green climate propaganda.
I actually draw solace from the hysteria and hyperbole that has greeted the recent hurricanes in the media. The hysteria conceals a rising panic about their awareness that fewer and fewer people are being fooled by their rhetoric and more are asking why if “the science is settled” does it continuously need to be propped up with exaggeration misinformation and downright falsehoods
LA Times: Sharknado 6 Imminent… Fin Shepard missing…
Of course they do. 12 years since a major hurricane hit the US.
How many 20 year remember or paid attention to the last one?
They were kids then. Did those kids have a concept of what was happening even if they do remember?
Not likely.
(What’s the average age of those who write for The Times?)
In general, a colder world is a stormier world.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0517/Why-do-planets-farthest-from-sun-have-highest-winds-Team-closes-in-on-answer
“Settled consensus climate science” has not been able to explain away the inconvenient truth that winds on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune move so much more rapidly than on Earth. The outer planets have thick atmospheres, while Mars’ is thin. Yet, generally, the colder the windier.
@ clipe
“(What’s the average age of those who write for The Times?)”
====
Mentally, emotionally, or physically? Then that answer would depend on their identity perspective in either category.
From my perspective I would say:
Mentally … 12 yro
Emotionally … 8 yro
Physically … who knows or cares
Sorry, I meant @ Gunga Din
“Settled consensus climate science”
= We don’t have a clue
There’s the consensus.
The unspoken consensus.
Considering how Irma was used to demand that science deniers be locked up, could they show some humility and board themselves up in a shack for a wee little bit.
Actually they need to go to the wood shed many time over for lying.
No way Jose?
http://flhurricane.com/modelanimator.php?storm=12&year=2017&title=12
The climate people play a long range game. Every weather event is an occasion to rise up assault the populace with propaganda and count that down the road when the political stars align they can give it to us good an hard. Like Mencken says.
Political Science Indeed. BTW, I saw a news reporter actually say that the big story was what COULD have happened. (He was in whichever Florida city was spared Irma’s wrath.) Now that’s a story!
When all’s said and done, Miami was fortunate Irma exhausted itself before it hit. Sensible precautions were taken by the government, and as inconvenient as evacuation was for the people who left, perhaps a thought could be spared for the islands hit by Irma’s full force. British and US Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos etc.
I don’t imagine the LAT will be highlighting either of these points.
In the last figure — four hurricanes with locations were given. This map refers to which year?
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
It’s just a Freudian slip by the LA Times of their desire for Irma to kill 100,000 people like the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. The communist-environmentalist activists view people as pests to be eradicated
all this charting it according to its power as it hit US coast rather misses the point (if not deliberately obscures it)
when it was devastating the virgin Isles, Barbuda, etc -wasn’t that one of the worst hurricanrs, if no the worst in that region? at the top of the scale? A nuclear hurricane?
and it could well have hit E Florida with that same force. Dodged a bullet there… learn from it, don’t explain it away
Can you explain why the max sustained wind at Barbuda was 118 mph while the NHC was claiming 185 mph. Or was it over 200 mph or 225 mph or was it even greater?
On September 8, 2017 the L A Times published a story on the approach of Hurricane Irma toward the U.S. with a front page headline which invents a new climate alarmist propaganda category of hurricane the contrived and dreaded ‘Nuclear hurricane’.
In fairness to the L A Times they didn’t invent the term, that was the mayor of Miami Beach, the L A Times was just quoting him (hint that’s what the ‘ stands for).
eyesonu September 13, 2017 at 11:08 am
Can you explain why the max sustained wind at Barbuda was 118 mph while the NHC was claiming 185 mph. Or was it over 200 mph or 225 mph or was it even greater?
Because the windgauge was destroyed before the minimum pressure was reached, gusts of 155mph were recorded.
The minimum pressure was reached just after 118 mph (actually recorded in kph).
Griff,
Irma was far from the worst hurricane ever to hit the Lesser Antilles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hurricane_of_1780
Also, have you noticed that, instead of setting a new record low for Arctic sea ice extent as you said was a sure thing, 2017 looks as if it will beat 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016.
a weather forum is about to ban me for daring to say irma was HYPED……pointing out nowhere got even half of the lowest predicted storm surge and other saying naples is bracing for a 15 foot wall of water that cant miss them……NO such wall of water existed……the gov scott claiming irma was far more powerful than andrew was 100% HYPE.
I followed the location of the eye wall and checked local wind velocities concurrently and winds never even were very close to those reported in the “news” including the weather channels. Got really tired of the idiots standing out in the rain.
It’s even worse. I think they stole it from the mayor of Miami or some other politician who made this reference a week ago.
First time I have been online since I lost power in the storm.
I weathered the right front quadrant eyeball.
Fortress Nick held strong.
House never shuddered, never lost a shingle.
Except for the 60 Bismarck Palm leaning against my roof…2 broken tiles, getting a little worse each day.
Hard to get any gas or service.
Cell phone but no I termed or anything else.
Power out for 3-4 weeks most likely.
Was incredible! Amazing videos when I can post them
One of my cats weathered the storm outside, she went out to use the bathroom and must have panicked and was out there for the entire Fury of the hurricane. She showed up about 8:30 as the eye wall passed over I mean as the I passed over a little damp but happy to be home. And I found three kittens the day before the storm in my pump house that had just been born so I have a new kitty and three kittens. They were safe and sound in my most interior closet tucked away in the back purring happily while the world was turned to wet splinters around us. Tree damage is horrendously bad. I lost a lot of palm trees fruit trees, Bush’s you name it. Just about everything is shredded. But the house stood fast. So once I get that tree off the roof I should be good. The house was so solid it stopped at two foot wide 60 ft tall Bismarck palm that fell against the corner and stopped and there it sits. Got to go now I found out I have internet when I came over here to Costco. Just want to let everyone know that at least in East Lee County where the Iowa went straight overhead there was some flooding but not in my house I haven’t heard about anybody being hurt or killed, of course I haven’t seen any news. Everything’s a real mess and it’ll be a while before we’re back to normal. I hope everyone else was as lucky. Till I get back online at home I just want to say the panicking was not the right thing to do. I think our leaders failed us. They should have directed A for more orderly and rational process of evacuating people who needed to get out and not evacuating people that did not. I realize that might be easier said than done but advising 20 million people to panic was not the right thing to do.
If you have seen pictures of the devastation in the Virgin Islands where the 185mph winds scoured every leaf off every tree, then uprooted the trees, then blew down most of the houses, destroyed most of the boats, and electrical grid, you might say that a nuclear blast could not have done more physical damage. (Of course, without the radiation).