Energy
Media outlets are already suggesting the thousands of people predicted to leave Puerto Rico over the next year could be America’s first massive wave of “climate refugees.”
Experts say hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans could flee their devastated island in the next 12 months. Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello warned “thousands if not millions” could leave the island without massive federal assistance.
The media was quick to suggest Puerto Ricans could be classified as “climate refugees” in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which left most of the island’s residents without power or clean water.
E&E News reported the potential migrants “might be among the nation’s newest ‘climate refugees,’ a demographic that includes former residents of southernmost Louisiana and the shrinking islands of Alaska’s Bering Strait.”
Bloomberg warned Wednesday a mass migration from Puerto Rico could “offer a preview for Americans of one of the most jarring potential consequences of global warming: the movement of large numbers of people pushed out of their homes by the effects of climate change.”
Even meteorologist Marshall Shepherd asked if Puerto Ricans could be called “climate refugees.” He said he didn’t know the answer, but then wrote a lengthy post opening on the meaning of the word “climate refugee.”
The idea isn’t new. The United Nations has been predicting a huge increase in the number of “climate refugees” do to human emissions of carbon dioxide. These are people forced from their homes by natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods or droughts.
Scientists predict global warming will exacerbate extreme weather events in the coming decades, though there’s little evidence to support claims today’s natural disasters have gotten measurably worse.
The UN Environment Programme predicted there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010, but quietly removed a web page once that prediction didn’t come true. The UN pushed its prediction to 2020.
Bloomberg reported “climate change forced an estimated 1 million people to leave their homes in 2015” in Africa, and that “the World Bank has urged Australia and New Zealand to open their doors to residents forced off small island nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati.”
“Even in Syria, internal migration sparked by a historic drought contributed to the civil war, which has added to the wave of people trying to enter Europe in recent years,” Bloomberg reported.
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If I lived on a tropical island that got hurricanes I would have lots of survival gear hidden away in a shallow underground safe box in my back yard, water, canned and dry food, fuel, a generator…you know, just in case a hurricane hit.
The eco-chondriacs should get on their sailboats and beat it down to the islands and set up all their little windmills and solar arrays because we can’t be having fossil fuel supplies and a nasty new conventional electrical grid built, can we? Maybe a giant tidal generator or two will do the job, guys. Better get on that right away. Time’s a wastin’.
By the way, are the canadian snowbirds climate refugees too ?
Does climate have to change in order for people to become climate change refugees? Obviously not.
Has the intelligence pendulum ever swung this far to the ‘stupid’ side?
Of course the folks forced to leave Puerto Rice are Climate Refugees! They are the victims of The President’s actions in withdrawing from Obama’s Paris Climate Accord. Since they will clearly fare even worse now under this administration it is obvious that they need to seek refugee status in France (or somewhere else in Europe) where they will be given the help they really deserve from people who really know what they are doing.
[are both snark AND sarc. too strong a label here?]
They are WEATHER refugees. The climate of Earth is not hurricaneous. 🙂
Luckily, billionaire businessman Richard Branson has emerged from a wine cellar to find his private Caribbean island “completely and utterly devastated” in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
I’m so glad that Richard is OK and that their ABC was able to cover this wonderful and heartwarming story of good spirits arising from the devastation. /sarc
The climate (the average weather) in PR is very nice, warm and pleasant, no dangerous cold.
I actually know refugees, and I can assure you, the absolute last thought on each of their minds would be: ‘I wish they could change the climate where I was so that I could go right back to the hellhole I came from!’
Before one takes my word for this let one ask just how many refugees has a representative from the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, E&E News, or … Bloomberg, tap danced up to and queried, “Excuse me kind sirs, or ma’ams; are you fleeing the paradise you’ve been living in because human CO2 has made the weather there unbearable?” For some reason I think nary a one.
And, that would be because sentient human beings know precisely why those refugees are fleeing. And the reason would be an embarrassment to quite a few member states of the UN.
Soon we will have millions of climate refugees and not one of them will know that is what they are! Good thing we have uber intelligent leftist who sure know how to take advantage the hardship of poor people for their own political gain! (I tried to make a comment without sarcasm, but the nature of this article doesn’t seem to allow that.)
Can anyone explain why CNN listed Rose Perez, during her interview today, as a Puerto-Rican American? And why the mayor of San Juan, when being interviewed by Anderson Cooper tonight, said that she had “lived in the United States for 12 years”. I have always thought that Puerto Rico is part of the US, and all Puerto Ricans are US citizens.
Yes, they are U.S. citizens and statehood would deprive PR of a lot of U.S. federal cash. And their IRS tax code regulations are different.
PR is an unincorporated territory of the United States, although Puerto Ricans are US citizens, while they live there they can’t vote in presidential elections and have no representation in the Senate or Congress. In order to be able to vote they have to reside in one of the States, so from their perspective they don’t live in the United States when in PR.
The 0.01C Club.
I wonder what the next 0.01C is going to do?
cause Volcanos and Earthquakes they have already started that commentary.
Next steps are to force confession from the malevolent culprits of storms and make them pay. Heinrich Kramer would be proud.
… made exceptionally stupid by the fact that since Rico is surrounded by water and in the equatorial region it’s climate isn’t going to change at all.
Odd how all that drone footage didn’t look all that different than pre storm Puerto Rico.
And here they come…(eyes rolling).
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1C50BF
Whenever local weather doesn’t support the global warming agenda, we hear “weather is not climate”. So, is a hurricane weather or climate? Aren’t these people weather refugees instead of climate refugees?
When I vacation in the south during the long winter months, am I a climate refugee?
Meh. Climate refugees likely spread human existance around the Earth to begin with and many times over since then.
I can’t even read that nonsense without cracking up. Climate refugees? Puerto Ricans are US citizens. They can come here any time they want to, and they do. They sound like they come from either New York or Chicago, depending on where their relatives are located. This is twaddle.
The media, including the one local news station that I actually watch because the weatherman is a good, accurate forecaster, hasn’t mentioned that the US Navy’s Seabees and the Marines have been there for more than a couple of weeks now. There are cargo containers full of supplies sitting on the docks that need to be unloaded and distributed, but he roads, power lines, downed bridges and some flooded areas are the real problem. The Navy has sent USNS Comfort, and medical ship to Puerto Rico.
Calling these people refugees of any kind is as ignorant as you can get.
The USNS Comfort left yesterday, announced by the government two days after Hillary Clinton suggested it.
If someone leaves their home because it has been destroyed and moves to the US permanently I’d call them a refugee.
If believers of AGW want those devastated to be classed as climate refugees then they should also follow their logic and demand that not another penny be spent after any disaster anywhere they believe will be underwater in the future anyway.
Hey hey, ho ho,
Rebuilding in the tidal zone has got to go!
I recently found a marvelous site that can tell you how many apocalypses you have already survived IN YOUR OWN LIFETIME!
http://jkirchartz.com/demos/How_Many_Apocalypses_Have_I_Survived.html
I was watching “West Side Story” the other day. The scene was when the Sharks and their girlfriends were on the roof-top arguing and dancing (“Everything’s right in America”- “If you can fight in America”). Anyway Bernardo’s girlfriend sited hurricanes (along with opportunity) as one of the reasons Puerto Ricans moved to New York. The movie was released in 1961
Canadians wintering in Florida and Arizona are climate refugees, and NOT because of global Warming.