Washington Post Attempts To Blame Trump For Harvey, Hits Obama Instead

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post has finally joined in on the “ZOMG, Harvey was made worse by Hotcoldwetdry!” bandwagon. They try and punch Trump and his administration in the face, but, who was president the past eight years?

Houston is paying the price for public officials’ ignorance

PRESIDENT TRUMP assured the nation over the weekend that he is “closely monitoring” the disaster in Texas. “We have an all out effort going, and going well!” he tweeted.

No, the president and his administration do not. Since they entered office, they have tried to enhance the risk of the sort of devastation on display in Texas. Anyone watching Houston who fails to worry about how humans are intensifying natural risks, including storm surges, deluges and flooding, is ignoring the warning signs right in front of them.

We should very much worry about news outlets which use vast amounts of fossil fuels, trees, and energy. Regardless, no matter what Trump has or has not done, he’s only been in officer since the end of January. Obama was there for eight years. Plus time as a Senator. How is this Trump’s fault in any manner? Oh, right, #Resist and #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.

Scientists are habitually cautious about attributing a single weather event to the long-term increase in global temperature that human beings have begun, and they cannot say with reasonable certainty that climate change caused Hurricane Harvey. In fact, they are still sorting out exactly how global warming affects hurricane formation. It seems likely that an increase in North Atlantic hurricanes is linked to climate change, but scientists cannot confidently rule out some other factor.

So, scientists don’t know? They do not want to provide links when they do not have “reasonable certainty”? No worries!

What they can say — and have, emphatically, since this hurricane slammed into Houston — is that “Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming,” as climate scientist Michael E. Mann wrote in the Guardian. The surge of water this storm churned up out of the Gulf of Mexico was half a foot higher than it would have been without the rising sea level, he reckoned. This storm surge not only endangered coastal-zone communities such as Galveston, but local experts report it also blocked water drainage from inland areas that heavy rains have inundated.

In fact, the storm surge was lower than expected for this storm. Thankfully. Sea sea rise has little to do with storm surge, especially since there has been less than a foot over the past 100 years, which is less than normal for a Holocene warm period. We then get more of the typical whines about the Gulf being warmer than normal, more water vapor, but, they forgot to offer scientific proof of anthropogenic causation.

Houston is an example of what happens when public officials ignore experts and refuse to take natural risks seriously. As the country’s fourth-largest city expanded, replacing prairie with impermeable surfaces such as pavement and concrete, the land was rendered less and less capable of absorbing floodwater. Without proper adaptive measures, this made an already flood-prone place more vulnerable. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found last year that those who have overseen Houston’s flooding issues discounted scientists’ warnings as “anti-development.” In the coming months and years, the city may pay a high price for such shortsightedness.

So, the problem is actually poor planning when it comes to things like roads in what is already a flood plain, in an area that is historically hurricane active? Well, what was Obama doing the past 8 years?

Those officials had the fate of only one city in their hands. Mr. Trump has the fate of the whole world.

The fate! #TrumpDerangementSyndrome. Do you know what would be fun? If Trump slapped a fee on the production of newspapers from trees.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Washington Post Attempts To Blame Trump For Harvey, Hits Obama Instead »

CNN: It’s Too Soon For Trump To Go To Texas

Former Obama flack Jen Psaki jumps into the “Trump’s damned if he does damned if he doesn’t debate” as she questions the timing

It’s too soon for Trump to go to Texas

Every helicopter supporting a Trump visit to Texas in response to Hurricane Harvey is a helicopter not picking survivors off rooftops.

As President Donald Trump faces the first crisis of his presidency (one that is not self-inflicted) he fortunately has a chief of staff, John Kelly, who knows how to deal with emergency response, and a well-respected FEMA director in Brock Long leading an agency that has rebuilt itself since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

There will be many decisions ahead about resources and funding at the federal level that will have an actual impact on the recovery of Houston and the other affected communities. These will be far more important than the movements of Air Force One, but the President’s decision to travel to Texas just days after the first wave of the storm hit is, at best, surprising.

Quite frankly, there is so much stupid with this, I could spend the next hour fisking it. Just not worth the time. Suffice to say, had Trump waited till the search and rescue phase was over, as she claims was the Obama doctrine (yeah, could spend lots of time on that one), Trump would be blamed for waiting too long.

Read: CNN: It’s Too Soon For Trump To Go To Texas »

If All You See…

…is a fish made smaller because Someone Else used a hair dryer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Pacific Pundit, with a post on what Antifa has planned for November 4th

Read: If All You See… »

Captain Cook Statue Vandalized In Australia

Don’t think hardcore Progressives are just coming after Confederate statues (and Christopher Columbus, Joan of Arc, Revolutionary War heroes, Washington, Jefferson, even FDR….but not KKK member Robert Byrd stuff). They seem interested in other things around the world

(Daily Mail)  A statue of Captain Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park has been fenced off after it was the target of a vandal who scrawled ‘change the date’ and ‘no pride in genocide’ across the monument.

Cones and tape now surround the monument of Captain Cook, which boasts an inscription saying the British explorer ‘discovered this territory, 1770’.

The fencing off of the statue on Tuesday comes after it was vandalised on Saturday morning.

The messages have been washed off the statue, but cones and tape separate it from the public.

Labour leader Bill Shorten has called for Hyde Park’s Captain Cook statue to be reformed.

Speaking at Hyde Park in Sydney’s centre on Monday, Mr Shorten joined a growing number of activists campaigning for the statue to acknowledge and pay respect to Aboriginal people – the country’s first Australians.

The words ‘change the date’ and ‘no pride in genocide’ were scrawled across the monument in spray paint – political slogans used by people who want the date of Australia Day changed.

Statues of Lachlan Macquarie and Queen Victoria were also defaced with spray paint.

Let’s face it, nothing will make these people happy. Unless it’s a statue to those nice people like Stalin, Mao, and Che.

Meanwhile, in Durham, NC, a Major in the Durham County Sheriff’s office is not a happy camper

A major in the Durham County Sheriff’s Office says county commissioners are setting a dangerous precedent by questioning the felony charges in the toppling of a Confederate statue.

“Should law enforcement determine the severity of charges for persons who destroy or deface monuments based upon the political leanings of county commissioners?” Maj. Paul Martin said in a statement.

“Is it alright (sic) for the left to destroy or deface a monument but not the right?” he continued. “Are statements concerning the severity of criminal charges by county commissioners an effort to obstruct justice since they control the budget for the sheriff as well as raises for the sheriff and all his personnel?”

Several county commissioners are looking for leniency and even having the felony charges dropped against the criminals who tore down a statue in Durham. They control the purse strings for the Sheriff’s office. And the major is entirely correct: is there one standard of Justice for some and not for others? If some white supremacists took down a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., would the same people call for full prosecution? Of course they would. Regardless of the motivations, vandalism is vandalism, as in incitement to riot. We are either a Nation of Law or a Nation of Men.

Read: Captain Cook Statue Vandalized In Australia »

Berkeley Mayor Is So Into Free Speech That He Asks College To Cancel Free Speech Week

The heckler’s veto in action

(San Francisco Chronicle) In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.

“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” said Arreguin, whose city has been the site of several showdowns this year between, on the one hand, the left and its fringe anarchist wing, and on the other, supporters of President Trump who at times have included white nationalists.

“I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem,” Arreguin said. “It’s something we have seen in Oakland and in Berkeley.”

For the most part, the only people present on Sunday were…..Democratic Party voters. There were very few “right wing” protesters, and, really, should they have to worry about major violence and assault from people wearing masks while the police stand idly by and watch crimes occur? Furthermore, if the mayor is so worried about violence, perhaps he should work to protect those engaged in something that is guaranteed by both the federal and California Constitutions.

The mayor wants UC Berkeley to halt plans by a conservative campus group, the Berkeley Patriot, to host right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos during its scheduled Free Speech Week from Sept. 24-27. Berkeley’s right-vs.-left cage matches began with an appearance that Yiannopoulos was to have made in February at a campus hall, an event that was aborted when black-clad anarchists like those who broke up Sunday’s downtown rally stormed into Sproul Plaza, smashed windows and set bonfires.

Have you ever noticed that when a left wing speaker shows up on campus, there are no riots by large groups of right wingers wearing masks, carrying baseball bats, making threats, and so forth? It’s only when someone on the right shows up, because it’s the mayor’s voters who are violent. And he lets his police officers stand down. Every officer should be ashamed.

“I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa.

You have a police force, sir. Why not use them to protect people engaged in their Constitutionally protected Right to Free Speech? Instead of giving in to the violence from the Left that you just admitted to?

“I obviously believe in freedom of speech, but there is a line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety,” the mayor said. “That is where we have to really be very careful — that while protecting people’s free-speech rights, we are not putting our citizens in a potentially dangerous situation and costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the windows of businesses.”

Heckler’s Veto. Due to Democratic Party voter violence and threats.

Perhaps we should rename this the Democrat’s Veto.

Read: Berkeley Mayor Is So Into Free Speech That He Asks College To Cancel Free Speech Week »

Hurricane Harvey Previews Our Stormy Future Or Something

Warmists have been waiting almost twelve years to write their full insane cult talking points regarding major hurricanes. They gave it a shot when Superstorm Sandy came on-shore, they gave it a shot during Hurricane Matthew last year, but, otherwise, there’s been a dearth of landfalling tropical storm systems since 2008, and no major hurricanes since October, 2005. They’re all screaming like a pig in slop. Here’s the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, who fails to mention the vast amounts of fossil fuels and trees used to produce and distribute the WP

Hurricane Harvey previews our stormy future

Pay attention to what happened to Houston. It is rare to be given such a vivid look at our collective future.

Climate change cannot be definitively blamed for Hurricane Harvey, but it likely did make the storm more powerful. Global warming did not conjure the rains that flooded the nation’s fourth-largest city, but it likely did make them more torrential. The spectacle of rescue boats plying the streets of a major metropolis is something we surely will see again. The question is how often.

And this is how they’re doing it now. They’ve used the time between major hurricanes, the longest dry spell on record for the United States, to craft cult-points about “making it worse”. But, did a changing climate make Harvey worse? Worse than what? There were several big, strong hurricanes during periods of cooling, such as Camille in 1969. How about the biggest, the Labor Day 1935 hurricane? Did fossil fuels cause it?

The relationship between climate and weather is undeniable but never specific.

Actually, it is. Climate is simply the long term average of weather. Thanks for playing, Eugene.

Tropical cyclones do not batter Siberia’s arctic coast and heavy snowfalls do not blanket the beaches of Barbados because the climates are different. But no one blizzard or hurricane can be attributed to climate change beyond the shadow of a doubt — which opens anyone who raises the subject at a time like this to the accusation of “politicizing” a disaster.

You’re politicizing a disaster, Eugene, as your own writing in the 3rd paragraph obliterates everything else. But, as you’d expect, Eugene doesn’t give up. Let’s move on from Excitable Eugene, over to the NY Times, where we get articles comparing and contrasting Harvey to Katrina (someone had to go down that rabbit hole), yammering about a 500 year flood, then Excitable David Leonhardt, with

Harvey, The Storm That Humans Helped Cause

(lots of yammering, with a failure to actually offer scientific evidence that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for ‘climate change)

Add up the evidence, and it overwhelmingly suggests that human activity has helped create the ferocity of Harvey. That message may be hard to hear — harder to hear, certainly, than stories of human kindness that is now mitigating the storm’s toll. But it’s the truth.

Beyond Harvey, the potential damage from climate change is terrifying. Disease, famine and flooding of biblical proportions are within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, stories of potential misery have not been enough to stir this country to action. They haven’t led to a Manhattan Project for alternative energy or a national effort to reduce carbon emissions.

He offered no evidence. Just because the climate has changed, just like it has always done, and, more immediately, has done many, many times during the Holocene, doesn’t mean Mankind is to blame. These people are as bad as witches blaming the gods for bad weather.

And there are so many more, such as Eric Holthaus in Politico, yammering about Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like. When we had an almost 12 year dearth of major hurricanes not making landfall on the U.S., and almost no hurricanes since 2008, why is that not “what climate change looks like”?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Hurricane Harvey Previews Our Stormy Future Or Something »

Hey, Let’s Build Statues To Climate Change Heroes Or Something

This one comes to us from north of the border, as Gerry Labelle, 2011 Progressive Conservative candidate for Sudbury writes in

Sudbury letter: Build statues for climate change heroes

While the Ontario Teachers Federation passed a motion to remove the name of Canada’s first prime minister from all public elementary schools in the province, a larger crisis looms that could easily make history either irrelevant or extinct.

OK, so that’s obviously a bit of hyperbole on my part, but it does fit to serve the reason for this article.

There is a looming crisis; it’s called climate change. It is the common enemy that should be uniting us.

Any politician who wants his or her name on a building or statue or any public institution needs to act now. Failing to take positive action would be the greatest failing of any leader. (snip to the end)

To our Canadian leaders, thank you, but you have to do more. If you single-handedly solve the climate change crisis, I will work to get the whole damn planet named after you.

How soon till the Warmists start wanting to replace the statues of all involved with Wrongthink, which now seems to include not just those linked to the Confederacy, but Washington, Jefferson, Joan Of Arc, a Revolutionary War Colonel, and so on, with “climate heroes?”

Read: Hey, Let’s Build Statues To Climate Change Heroes Or Something »

If All You See…

…is a horrible fossil fueled boat that will be needed when the world is flooded from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Right Scoop, with a post on some incredible photos from Harvey.

Read: If All You See… »

ACLU Sues Trump Over Rule Restricting Gender Confused From Serving

This just happened

Over at the ACLU

The new directive bars enlistment by transgender individuals, prohibits coverage for certain critical medical procedures, and bans those currently in the military from serving, with the Secretary of Defense given discretion to determine how to carry out that ban.

Today, we and the ACLU of Maryland filed a lawsuit to challenge President Trump’s cruel policy on behalf of Petty Officer First Class Brock Stone, Staff Sergeant Kate Cole, Senior Airmen John Doe, Technical Sergeant Tommie Parker, Airman First Class Seven Ero George, and Petty Officer First Class Teagan Gilbert.

Our lawsuit argues that the ban violates the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and substantive due process by singling out transgender individuals for unequal and discriminatory treatment.

So, what of the discrimination? Is I noted a few days ago

You can’t join the military if you have a long list of mental disorders, such an eating disorders, sleep walking, antisocial attitudes, ADD, OCD, and so much more, including

Mood disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, psychoses, and other unspecified depressive issues are disqualifying.

Any history of suicidal behavior, that includes discussions, gestures, or the actual attempt is disqualifying. A history of self-mutilation is also disqualifying.

And, technically, being a transvestite is still considered a mental disorder by the US military, regardless of Obama’s order.

Many groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization (they were contemplating changing their view, can’t find where they did) classify Gender Dysphoria as a mental illness. Why should people who are more prone to being suicidal and having major depression (both mental illnesses) be allowed to serve when others who are suicidal, have major depression, bipolar disorder, sleepwalking, ADD, etc, be excluded? Because they are excluded. Will the ACLU sue for them?

The military is not an experiment for social justice bullshit. If the gender confused want sexual reassignment surgery, they can pay for it themselves and do it on their own time, not on the military’s dime and time.

Read: ACLU Sues Trump Over Rule Restricting Gender Confused From Serving »

Surprise: Warmists Are Tying/Linking Hurricane Harvey To ‘Climate Change’

All the usual Climate Ghouls were mostly quiet with their ‘climate change’ yammering prior to Harvey making landfall. Perhaps they decided that it was the wrong time to trot out their talking points, which like the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

But, now that Harvey has made landfall, and is dumping massive amounts of rain, the Cult of Climastrology members in the media and elsewhere are free to go Full Cult

Climate Change Might Make Intense Hurricanes Like Harvey More Common

Hurricane Harvey was the most intense hurricane to make landfall on the U.S. mainland in over a decade.

And because of climate change, hurricanes like Harvey are probably going to become more common.

It’s hard to pin a single weather event — like Harvey — on climate change. But predictive models show it could make future hurricanes stronger. (snip past all the normal talking points)

There might be a bit of good news, though. While stronger hurricanes are likely to become more common, some analysts predict there will also be fewer hurricanes overall.

Yes, Climaidiots Ethan Weston and Caitlin Baldwin went there. Harvey was one of the only hurricanes to make landfall in over a decade. It’s the first major one since October 2005. How is this “more common”? And then we have the “more intense by fewer” prognostication. These people.

(The Blaze) CNN anchor John Berman was talking with Bill Read, the former director of the National Hurricane Center, on Friday when he asked if the intense hurricane that was bearing down on Texas was a result of climate change.

“Is there a why to this? Why there is so much water associated with this storm?” Berman asked. “One thing we heard from scientists over the last 10 years is that climate change does impact the intensity of many of the storms that we see.”

Read responded: “I’m not — I’m probably wouldn’t attribute what we’re looking at here. This is not an uncommon occurrence to see storms grow and intensify rapidly in the western Gulf of Mexico. That’s as long as we’ve been tracking them, that has occurred. The why for the big rain is the stationarity. That fact that the storm is going to come inland and not move…while it has happened in some cases, to have a really big storm come and stall like this is really rare.”

It’s essentially what we call “weather”. Harvey is trapped between multiple high pressure systems with weak steering winds.

There are plenty of others, such as

Could a warming world played a part? Of course! But, that doesn’t mean it’s anthropogenic. Warm periods happen. Meteorologist Paul Gross mentions some of the Warmist talking points about more intense but fewer, before jumping in and saying Harvey had nothing to do with ‘climate change.’

Climatologist Judith Curry takes a look at the models and how they performed, before noting that Harvey is tied at #14 for the highest wind speeds and pressure and that “Anyone blaming Harvey on global warming doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” Furthermore, the warmist talking point about there being more moisture in the air from Hotcoldwetdry is wrong, as Harvey is simply picking up moisture from the Gulf.

Don’t expect the CoC to give up, though. They’ll be talking about it for weeks, and probably on the House and Senate floors.

Read: Surprise: Warmists Are Tying/Linking Hurricane Harvey To ‘Climate Change’ »

Pirate's Cove