On her eponymous show on Friday afternoon, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell devoted a segment to a global warming alarmist who blamed recent hurricane intensity on global warming and predicted much worse storms in the future. His name is Porter Fox. He's not a credentialed scientist. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction.
Even though there are sometimes as many as four hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. in just one hurricane season, Mitchell hyped that there have been three in the last few weeks as she set up the segment:
MITCHELL: So people from Florida to North Carolina are trying to recover from back to back hurricanes -- think of it -- in less than three weeks. Most climate scientists agree the storms are getting bigger, more powerful. The destruction is getting worse. Earth's warming oceans are not just supercharging storms with stronger winds and heavier rains, but also changing their paths, putting an increasing number of Americans up and down the East Coast at grave risk. With six more weeks left in 2024's hurricane season, scientists are warning that Milton may not be the last big storm that we see.
As Fox the credentialed fiction writer came aboard as a guest, he argued that the number of hurricanes that have formed in recent years is a record from within the past 50 years, but it was not mentioned that, as previously documented by NewsBusters, if one just looks at hurricanes that have made landfall, there have been other periods of frequent hurricanes within the past 150 years. (And prior to the 1970's, the satellite technology did not exist to find all storms that stayed far out in the ocean.)
PORTER FOX: You know, it's interesting that the number of storms predicted remains about the same, but what is not the same is the fact that you're seeing so many more major hurricanes. We had more major hurricanes in the last six years than we did in the 50 years prior. Every decade, a hurricane has an eight percent chance of -- more of it becoming a major hurricane....
And in the future, we're looking at a 20 percent spike in what will likely be what they're calling an ultra-intense category 5 storm and possibly called a category 6 someday soon happening here in the United States -- even bigger and more dangerous than anything that we have seen -- which is hard to imagine after the last three weeks.
The doomsaying duo then spoke of the possibility of more hurricanes depositing strong storm activity further inward. Fox warned:
I mean, officials need to prepare by facing the reality that this amplification of storms is happening, it is not going to pause, and it will grow year over year, decade over decade. These storms of the future are going to last longer. Some of them will move slower, amplifying damage by many times. They will penetrate deep into the United States in the future as far west as New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri. We saw in Helene what happens when a hurricane penetrates 500 miles from the coast into North Carolina.
He concluded by arguing against voting for global warming skeptics:
Those inland regions are not prepared for hurricanes. I don't think they ever thought they were going to have to deal with that, but, as I found for the reporting in this book, that is our future, and that is what FEMA and the federal government really need to prepare for on top of Americans at large need to stop putting politicians in power who do not believe that climate change is real. They do not believe in this amplification of storms. And if they're not going to act, they certainly need to come to the aid of the victims that are really feeling the full brunt of this.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports
October 11, 2024
12:51 p.m. Eastern
ANDREA MITCHELL: So people from Florida to North Carolina are trying to recover from back to back hurricanes -- think of it -- in less than three weeks. Most climate scientists agree the storms are getting bigger, more powerful. The destruction is getting worse. Earth's warming oceans are not just supercharging storms with stronger winds and heavier rains, but also changing their paths, putting an increasing number of Americans up and down the East Coast at grave risk. With six more weeks left in 2024's hurricane season, scientists are warning that Milton may not be the last big storm that we see.
Joining me now is Porter Fox. He's the author of Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them. So, Porter, thank you for being with us today. In your latest book, you explain how climate change is making storms more intense but not more frequent. Why is that?
PORTER FOX, AUTHOR OF CATEGORY FIVE: You know, it's interesting that the number of storms predicted remains about the same, but what is not the same is the fact that you're seeing so many more major hurricanes. We had more major hurricanes in the last six years than we did in the 50 years prior. Every decade, a hurricane has an eight percent chance of -- more of it becoming a major hurricane. And in the future, we're looking at a 20 percent spike in what will likely be what they're calling an ultra-intense category 5 storm and possibly called a category 6 someday soon happening here in the United States -- even bigger and more dangerous than anything that we have seen -- which is hard to imagine after the last three weeks.
MITCHELL: In a new op-ed you wrote for the New York Times that it's not just residents of the southeastern U.S. at risk for these intensifying storms -- the dense urban cities -- cities in the Northeast like D.C. and New York City, Boston -- are increasingly vulnerable also. So we all remember super storm Sandy, of course, a number of years ago which hit our area, but how can officials prepare for what might be to come?
FOX: I mean, officials need to prepare by facing the reality that this amplification of storms is happening, it is not going to pause, and it will grow year over year, decade over decade. These storms of the future are going to last longer. Some of them will move slower, amplifying damage by many times. They will penetrate deep into the United States in the future as far west as New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri. We saw in Helene what happens when a hurricane penetrates 500 miles from the coast into North Carolina. And the damage there was more than at the landfall site in Florida.
Those inland regions are not prepared for hurricanes. I don't think they ever thought they were going to have to deal with that, but, as I found for the reporting in this book, that is our future, and that is what FEMA and the federal government really need to prepare for on top of Americans at large need to stop putting politicians in power who do not believe that climate change is real. They do not believe in this amplification of storms. And if they're not going to act, they certainly need to come to the aid of the victims that are really feeling the full brunt of this.
MITCHELL: Porter Fox, thank you so much. Really, really interesting stuff. We appreciate it.
