Over inside the home of the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan on Wednesday, The Washington Post’s lead editorial argued that President Donald Trump “is complicit” in the destruction being caused by hurricanes, including the forecasted pain set to be inflicted in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina by Hurricane Florence.
The reasons that The Post outlined had to do with the President’s deregulatory agenda on the environment and his refusal to further President Obama’s liberal, environmentalist policy aims.
The editorial first laid out the stakes for those in Florence’s path and then, by paragraph three, laid blame at the feet of the President:
Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans’ role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks. It is hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change. But there is no reasonable doubt that humans are priming the Earth’s systems to produce disasters.
Ah, so this is like the opposite of when the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden was worded as if President Obama had done it himself, and not the Navy SEALs (specifically, Rob O’Neill).
The editorial went onto site a May research paper claiming that, to put it simply, climate change was behind the destructive nature of Hurricane Harvey last fall.
It continued to elaborate:
Scientists also warn that climate change may be slowing the wind currents that guide hurricanes, making storms more sluggish and, therefore, apt to linger longer over disaster zones. Tropical cyclone movement has slowed all over the planet. Harvey’s stubborn refusal to leave the Houston area was a decisive factor in its destructiveness. Florence may behave similarly.
And human-caused sea-level rise encourages higher storm surges and fewer natural barriers between water and people.
On this notion being floated in media circles about climate change causing destructive hurricanes to make landfall in the Carolinas, here’s a refresher on some of the more destructive storms, their categories when making landfall in the Carolinas, and their final damage estimates (at the time):
- Category 3 Diana (1984) — $65.5 million damage
- Category 4 Hugo (1989) — $9.7 billion damage
- Category 3 Emily (1993) — $35 million damage
- Category 3 Fran (1996) — $5 billion damage
- Category 2 Bonnie (1998) — $1 billion damage
- Category 2 Floyd (1999) — $6.5 billion damage
- Category 2 Isabel (2003) — $5.5 billion damage
- Category 1 Irene (2011) — $14.2 billion damage
Clearly out to prove their own narrative instead of rely on opposing viewpoints and offer words of warning about the devastation, The Post allowed their Trump Derangement Syndrome to run wild by pinning any impending destruction on the President:
With depressingly ironic timing, the Trump administration announced Tuesday a plan to roll back federal rules on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the main component in natural gas. Drillers and transporters of the fuel were supposed to be more careful about letting it waft into the atmosphere, which is nothing more than rank resource waste that also harms the environment. The Trump administration has now attacked all three pillars of President Barack Obama’s climate-change plan.
The president has cemented the GOP’s legacy as one of reaction and reality denial. Sadly, few in his party appear to care.
