LA could do with a wash

 WEEKEND: Hurricane threatens flooding in Southwest...

LA winds up to 80mph!

FORECAST CONE... COMPUTER MODELS...

400k without power in California

 

 

... hurricane-force winds ...

 

The storms won’t be enough to officially end California’s ongoing drought but they have helped.

 

Flood watches, flood warnings, and rain, oh my!

Heat watches, heat warnings, and wind! Oh my!

Climate Scientists Write To UN: There Is No Climate Emergency:

Professor Guus Berkhout
The Hague
guus.berkhout@clintel.org

23 September 2019

Sr. António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York, NY 10017, United States of America.

Ms. Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Executive Secretary,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
UNFCCC Secretariat, UN Campus, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1,
53113 Bonn, Germany

Your Excellencies,

There is no climate emergency.

A global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have the honor to address to Your Excellencies the attached European Climate Declaration, for which the signatories to this letter are the national ambassadors.

The general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose. Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models. Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.

We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.

We ask you to place the Declaration on the agenda of your imminent New York session.

We also invite you to organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020. The meeting will give effect to the sound and ancient principle no less of sound science than of natural justice that both sides should be fully and fairly heard. Audiatur et altera pars!

Please let us know your thoughts about such a joint meeting.

Yours sincerely, ambassadors of the European Climate Declaration,

Professor Guus Berkhout                               The Netherlands
Professor Richard Lindzen                             USA
Professor Reynald Du Berger                         French Canada
Professor Ingemar Nordin                              Sweden
Terry Dunleavy                                               New Zealand
Jim O’Brien                                                     Rep. of Ireland
Viv Forbes                                                       Australia
Professor Alberto Prestininzi                          Italy
Professor Jeffrey Foss                                     English Canada
Professor Benoît Rittaud                                 France
Morten Jødal                                                   Norway
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt                              Germany
Rob Lemeire                                                    Belgium
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley            UK

There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate polities should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.

Policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.

Read full story here…

Indirect deaths from hurricanes from 1963-2012 numbered 1,418 but Maria in Puerto Rico alone caused 2,911?

My mother died of old age related heart failure two days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008:

48 deaths in the state of Louisiana were blamed on Hurricane Gustav. Five were due to falling trees, two due to a tornado and the rest were indirect deaths.

My mother wasn't counted among the 41 indirect deaths in Louisiana, for the main reason that she died in a different state.

But . . .

Hurricane Fatality Reports Leave Out Thousands of Indirect Deaths, According to New Study:

Looking at 59 hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin from 1963 through 2012, the study found that those systems killed a combined 1,803 people directly – by forces like flooding and airborne debris that were caused by the storm itself. But there were also a slew of lingering impacts that proved deadly in those storms, which caused 1,418 "indirect" deaths, according to the findings. ... Nearly half of the indirect deaths attributed to these 59 hurricanes were heart attacks, according to the study's data. Automobile accidents were also a major threat to life, whether the crashes occurred during evacuation or after the storm.

So we're supposed to believe tonight that about 2,911 (2,975-64) Puerto Ricans died indirectly in consequence of one storm (Maria) over the next six months according to the new math of George Washington University and Harvard University when over the course of nearly 50 years' worth of hurricanes indirect deaths for all storms combined came to just 1,418.

Sure we are.

Meanwhile the US east coast floods, but it's sunny and warm in Grand Rapids

Somebody's bad weather means good weather some place else.

One woman killed, another missing as storms deluge eastern U.S.:

"More than 26 million Americans are under a flood watch this morning, as severe weather grips the eastern U.S. for a fourth straight day. Beginning Wednesday, the storm will start to be felt further north, especially in New York. The heavy rain is expected to last through the weekend and possibly into next week. More than a foot of rain has fallen in parts of Maryland and Baltimore County is having its wettest July on record." 

Stupid, ignorant and blind liberal buys home in 100-year flood plain in Troy, NY, blames 100-year old 30-foot river wall (doh!), racism, capitalism, classism and climate change, not herself when she floods

I'm not making this up. She admits it.

Where else but in The Nation, here:

Troy floods. It has since before the Dutch arrived. I didn’t know this when I bought my house. I bought it because the chiming, rippling Poesten Kill canal runs through the backyard; because it has rusty old tin ceilings; and because I wanted to be a member of a vibrant, diverse urban neighborhood that comes together in summer evenings. ... When I realized that the property was in a floodplain, I hesitated and asked around. Friends, real-estate agents, and neighbors assuaged my fears: It’s a 100-year floodplain, they said—and look at the height of those canal embankments! You’ll be fine. ... We weren’t legally required to have flood insurance, and we couldn’t find enough money in the budget for it anyway. So we decided that we would take our chances. ... 

Obama interrupted his vacation yesterday to fundraise for Hillary, but to oversee Louisiana flooding not so much

The Boston Globe didn't even bat an eye.

Tens of thousands of homes are flooded out in Louisiana, but your president has to be a Republican before the news media give a shit

Rod Dreher can only wonder here.

Hey Rod! The media only care when the poor blacks get flooded out. You working and middle class people don't count. And you don't have an advocate in the White House. Brownie is only for the rich (and for the poor only on paper).

Senate Democrats to mount fourth filibuster to block funding of Dept. of Homeland Security before it runs out of money

Here's the lede from Politico:

Late Monday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will force the fourth vote in three weeks on a bill to fund the massive agency that protects Americans from terrorists, floods and incursions across the borders. Senate Democrats will almost certainly block it again.