MAGAlomaniacs Are Shocked, SHOCKED To Learn Hurricanes Are Getting More Powerful

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In the 1950s, scientists employed by fossil fuel companies began telling the companies they worked for that burning fossil fuels would lead to higher average temperatures on planet Earth. In 1988, Dr. James Hansen testified to Congress that warmer atmospheric and ocean temperatures would lead to more powerful hurricanes. The science is so simple, even a fourth grader can understand it. Hotter air holds more moisture. More moisture means more rain. Warmer water feeds tropical depressions, helping them intensify more quickly. In fact, the average intensification rate of hurricanes today is nearly 30% greater than it was in the 1980s due to a hotter atmosphere and hotter oceans, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature.

The state of Florida is currently led by a chowderhead named Ron DeSantis, who recently forbade the words “climate change” from being used in any official state government communications. Rabid Ron must think he is a modern day King Canute, sitting on his throne at the edge of the sea and commanding the tides not to rise. The people of Florida are experiencing the brunt of his stupidity this week, as Hurricane Helene sends a wall of water as much as 20 feet high up Florida’s Gulf Coast just as Hurricane Ian did 2 years ago. But no one in authority in Florida will talk about what these more powerful hurricanes are doing to the state and its inhabitants because the governerator can’t abide hearing the truth. How’s that for leadership?

More Powerful Hurricanes Are Inevitable

Helene is causing havoc right now this very minute in Georgia and the Carolinas. Another serial climate denier by the name of JD Vance was forced to cancel two campaign stops in Georgia yesterday. Rather than ponder why the water in the Gulf of Mexico is now about 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32º C), Vance made a play for the evangelical vote by issuing a mealy-mouthed statement on X that said, “Say a prayer for our friends in Florida and Georgia who are bracing for what seems to be a very bad storm.” Helene is a very bad storm in the same way the eruption of Krakatoa was a very bad volcanic event. Someday, people will grow weary of jerks like Vance sending empty thoughts and prayers and demand they start addressing the problem rather than shoving it under the rug… again.

The Trump campaign said that Vance’s events would be rearranged “as soon as possible,” but climate campaigners told The Guardian the Ohio senator had been hit in ironic fashion by the consequences of global heating and its impact on hurricanes. Vance has said he is “skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man” and called efforts by Joe Biden to address it a “green scam.” Not only is the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity the cause of 100% of warming since 1950, scientists say it is also causing hurricanes like Helene to become fiercer and accelerate more quickly. The path of Helene across the Gulf of Mexico has been exceptionally hot this year, with this increased heat made at least 200 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central.

The Dangerous Hypocrisy Of Climate Deniers

Vance’s campaign cancellations expose “the dangerous hypocrisy of climate deniers,” Cassidy DiPaola of the Make Polluters Pay Campaign told The Guardian. “Vance and Trump can run from a storm, but they can’t hide from the reality of the climate crisis they continue to deny.”

Vance attended two fundraising events hosted by oil industry executives in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday. He was at a lunch hosted by Cody Campbell, co-chief executive of Double Eagle Energy Holdings and then a $100,000-a-couple dinner organized by Ray Washburne, chair of the fuel distributor Sunoco. Trump has promised the oil and gas industry a rollback of environmental rules in return for a billion dollars in campaign donations, along with the deletion of “insane” spending on clean energy projects flowing from landmark climate legislation signed by Biden, should he return to the White House.

However, the former president’s campaign has still had to contend with the scorching temperatures, as well as severe storms, that are being spurred by the burning of fossil fuels. In June, 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, required medical attention due to severe heat, while a further 11 people were sent to hospital for heat exhaustion at a separate Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona. “I’m up here sweating like a dog,” Trump complained from the podium during the Las Vegas rally, where temperatures hit 102F (38C). “They don’t think about me. This is hard work.” Typical “poor Donald” spew from a man who never once in his life has ever thought about anyone or anything other than himself.

Hurricanes Disrupt Politics

Political campaigning, much like other activities such as outdoor work and recreation, is being complicated by the climate crisis, according to Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University. “These extreme weather events make it harder to get large groups of people together, particularly outside,” Keenan told The Guardian.

“People aren’t used to standing for hours outside in the sun, and to see people collapsing with heatstroke is an eye-opening experience. We are now seeing smaller, indoor events being held by Donald Trump.

“Campaigns now need infrastructure such as icing, shading, first aid stations, triage for heatstroke, and that isn’t cheap. If there’s flooding, it’s hard for people to get their cars in muddy fields in rural areas, and if it’s hot onstage, it’s harder for candidates who are constantly on the move and need to remain mentally sharp. When storms hit, it can displace people, which makes it more difficult for them to vote, too.”

The future tracking of storms such as Hurricane Helene could be radically different under a new Trump administration, thanks to Project 2025, the manifesto drawn up by America’s lunatic fringe, most of whom are former Trump aides. That plan is calling for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Weather Service, which currently provides free public information on weather events, to be broken up and commercialized. “Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity,” reads the Project 2025 document, which Trump has attempted to distance himself from.

Privatizing the weather service would be a “very bad idea,” Keenan said, because it would risk eliminating important extreme-weather warnings for the public if these weren’t deemed profitable by a private entity. “If you leave it to the private sector, we wouldn’t have the assurances that forecasts were being made in the best interests of the wider public,” he said. Indeed, you would have Trump sitting in a TV studio drawing his own forecasts on weather maps with a Sharpie in order to satisfy a political agenda rather than provide people with accurate forecasts. The National Hurricane Center, which is part of NOAA, is “critical to coordinating evacuations and emergency response,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s just one example of how dangerous, deadly and disastrous Project 2025 would be if Trump were elected and it were implemented.”

Kevin Roberts, the jackass who is president of the Heritage Foundation, which published the Project 2025 policy blueprint, on Wednesday defended the plan and dismissed the overwhelming consensus that humans are warming the planet. He told the New York Times that Hurricane Helene “sounds like weather to me.” This from a person who aspires to be a leading policy adviser to a second Trump presidency. Make of that what you will.

The Takeaway

We have been told explicitly for nearly 40 years that hotter temperatures would lead to more powerful and destructive storms. And yet along comes Hurricane Helene, and political leaders at every level who have staked their political lives on denying the testimony of their own senses are shocked, SHOCKED that such a powerful storm is happening. What to do with people who embrace such willful stupidity? Do we hold their eyelids open the way Stanley Kubrick did in A Clockwork Orange and force them to watch hours of storm-related videos and reams of scientific reports? A better idea would be to vote those bozos out of office so people with actual functioning brains could take their place and lead us into a future based on reality instead of magic incantations and the invocation of mythical authorities.

The wonder is that so many people are comfortable supporting an obvious lie because they believe it will help them personally. The one thing we can say for certain sure is that if we continue burning huge quantities of fossil fuels, human suffering from climate related catastrophes like more powerful hurricanes will increase in direct proportion to the increase in average global temperatures. No amount of political dithering will alter that equation one iota. If you are not part of the solution, you are the problem, Think about that.

Thanks to the tenacity of our CleanTechnica news team, we are pleased to bring our readers never before seen footage of Trump and Vance addressing their adoring fans and holding a reasoned discussion with them about the global implications of a warming planet. There is no extra charge for this service.