Drudge tweets and Popular Science scoffs.
But isn't there something that deserves to be called "The Politics of Hurricane Coverage"? Rush Limbaugh thinks so:
Well, if it's not gonna be that bad, you wouldn't expect the hurricane center to back off of it, because what if at the last moment it strengthens and they're wrong?... Okay, they've already got everybody feverishly pitched.... Look, the long way around telling you that there is politics in everything. There's politics in the weather. There's politics in the forecasting of the weather. There's politics in hurricanes. There's politics in the forecasting of hurricanes, because there are votes.... I am the world's leading expert in dissecting liberals and liberalism, and it's everywhere. They are everywhere. And they are corrupting everything because they are infusing their political agenda into everything....
Posts
115 comments:
I see a lot agree with me that it is the left politicizing everything.
SQUIRREL!
I don't believe people on the ground in Florida will evaluate weather reports based on politics. But there probably is a correlation between self-reliant stay-putters and the ideological spectrum.
Basically the raw data should be broadcast so many can check the data and conclusions. The wind data is taken from planes at higher altitudes and estimated for ground So yes they can be wrong. Because the formula used to estimate could be wrong.
Ever since found out the data gathering for temperature reading were set up to get hot air from AC units on roofs and the number of data collections stations that were not working I think the the raw data can be and has been distorted for political reasons IE Global warming
Predictions and news yesterday were 'sustained' winds of 140 mph; Category 4.
Drudge claimed the ground readings on Nasau Island were not close to 140, and then linked to a buoy off Freeport that was broadcasting live measurements. A category 4 is sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph which Matthew didn't produce.
Drudge was right.
I might have figured that they were being straight if Crooked Hillary hadn't politicized it by claiming that the hurricane was caused by anthropogenic something or another. Probably AGW, since she probably hasn't gotten the memo that the meme has been changed to Climate Changes, since the earth was, apparently, not really warming. The problem is that hurricanes have actually been less numerous and maybe intense over the last decade or so, not more so. But, that counts as climate change too, which is why it is so convenient.
We know that NOAA is heavily invested in Anthropogenic Climate something or another (whatever the latest name for it is). It is the lead federal agency, and makes many millions every year as a result. Plenty of reason to hype anything that can sell the meme a bit better. And, they have shown themselves willing to do whatever it takes - such as recasting past temperature data to show warming when there wasn't any.
Are they lying here? Probably not, but they have given us no reason to believe that they wouldn't.
Of course they're lying. They have to protect their phony-bologna jobs.
We'll know more in a week. Hindsight will clear this up nicely.
oh...my...gawd.
this very forum confirms it...hahahahahaha!
I've been watching storm track all day (...and hoping the storm turns) According to Weather Channel this morning the hurricane hunter aircrews recorded winds in the 80-90mph range on both sides of the eyewall while the rest of the NHC report was reporting winds of 122mph. The on air reporter questioned the difference live on TV, so there was definitely something to it. Draw your own conclusion on conspiracy.
1) Obama Unconstitutionally signs the Paris Climate Accord without sending to the Senate for ratification.
2) MSNBC moron reporter claims from the Rose Garden that the the Paris Climate treaty was designed to prevent Hurricanes like Matthew.
3) Hillary says Trump in unfit to protect against natural disasters; as if she can prevent Hurricanes.
Liberals are now completely unhinged with some sick God complex. They are trying to convince the masses that they can control and shape the weather.
That's just some really evil stuff.
Everybody.
But the left came up with the idea that the personal is political. For them, it is intentional, it is a tactic. The right is fighting a rearguard action that reaches into everything because there is no other choice.
It's not like we have any reason not to believe, is there?
I'd say the Left tends to politicize unpolitical things far more often than the Right does.
The reason for the Left's politicization of everything is simple: As advocates for larger and more intrusive government, progressives need problems to justify more and more government. But not just any type of problem. Progressives really love big ambiguous problems that are vast, complex, and all encompassing and therefore demand vast, complex, all encompassing (i.e. Big Government) solutions.
Climate change is the premier example of a vast and complex problem. The Earth's Climate is an enormously complex system with an insane number of variables that effect it in subtle, difficult to understand ways. For years and years people have tried to model it with varying degrees of success, but ultimately you get the impression that most of the models are about as accurate as a Farmers Almanac. It's difficult to know for sure what exactly could possibly be done to effect the Climate in a direction we'd want it to go. But there is no shortage of proposals and solution, but all of these solutions involve more and more Government.
Of course the most memorable Matthew moment goes to Shepard Smith telling Floridians they were all going to die, along with their kids
What a complete stroke.
Think of how pathetic it is. A large percentage of the population flat out doesn't believe the federal government these days, after 8 years of feckless and duplicitous rule by Obama, even if their lives (maybe) depend on believing. This could truly be a case of crying "wolf" too many times. Why should we believe them? Because they are from the federal govt? Reagan said something about that. This could be the time when it is important, and maybe even imperative, to believe the feds. But, repeatedly yelling "Climate Change" and "Global Warming" in order to, essentially, paper their own pockets, they should understand why so many question them and their projections.
Let me add that this is just another reason that I am perfectly happy to be sitting right now maybe 1,000 from the ocean coast. At a minimum 400-500 miles, but we are in CO right now, almost 2 miles above sea level. What I can't understand is why anyone would live so close to the ocean, and why they would expect the rest of us to bail them out when nature does what she does best.
If we stick (as we should) to the context at hand -- the climate change policy/messaging campaign -- it is the left that started it and which bears the blame for all subsequent politicization.
A little while ago, I had emailed to Professor Althouse this despicable NPR story, in which they attempted to make Matt Drudge out as a lunatic:
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/07/496996886/matt-drudge-suggests-government-may-be-lying-about-hurricane-matthew
It is a completely dishonest story, in which Drudge is misquoted and/or taken out of context in every way imaginable.
Drudge never suggested that the hurricane wasn't real, wasn't dangerous, or wasn't unpredictable. Drudge raised a fair question about how the hurricane was being publicized.
I don't think it conspiracy theory to think NOAA exaggerates.
Gusty Winds said...
Of course the most memorable Matthew moment goes to Shepard Smith telling Floridians they were all going to die, along with their kids
Well... Shepard Smith.
Shepard Smith must own the only copy of the world's ugliest Roger Ailes sex tape. Perhaps of Shep and Roger together. Because how else to explain that Shep has his own show on FNC in the afternoon, instead of reporting the ten o'clock news for a local Fox affiliate in Orlando?
They have discovered that, as with airport security, it is easier to make the people inconveniently jump through hoops than for the politicians to urge moderation and then be blamed.
Every storm since Katrina has been over hyped.
I guess the 800 + Hatian people killed by that storm represent more "drive-by media" bias as well.
"and then linked to a buoy off Freeport"
Wow you people are dumb. I generally refrain from commenting and just gawk but this takes the cake. First of all, the lowest wind speeds are always at ground or sea level. Generally, anemometers are supposed to be at least 10 meters feet off the ground! meanwhile, how anybody could think they could get within sixty miles of even a Cat 1 hurricane and not have a major fucking problem is beyond me.
I'd explain more, but I have a feeling none of you people can explain how a rainbow is formed, so what's the point Please continue your ill informed bubble chamber.
yeah, why should we believe a government that lies to us about why we go to war...
made me cynical fo sho...
I operate under the philosophy that it's better not to believe in conspiracy theories, even when some of them turn out to be true. I mean, that way lies madness, no?
That said, it is really not too far of a stretch to credit the Obama administration with this subterfuge. They have used the IRS to punish their political rivals, subverted the FBI to put a criminal in the White House, and supported rioters to balkanize the races. Where would they draw the line?
Exaggeration of disaster at this point can do nothing but help Hillary. Overstate the need, overstate the response, and Bob's your uncle. The complicit media will happily play that game.
"Every storm since Katrina has been over hyped."
Maybe so, but the price of underhyping can be a little high.
It used to be ignorance was something to hide. It's too easy to proclaim your ignorance these days and be lauded for it.
Data from all recon are pretty freely available. At this site for example.
harrogate said...
I guess the 800 + Hatian people killed by that storm represent more "drive-by media" bias as well.
To fair Haitians die when the tide comes in.
One thing that I do note: The hurricane center consistently put its forecast track just to the west of model consensus, closer to the coast than it turned out to be (but within the margin of error of most forecast models). That I think was erring on the side of caution, which in the long run can bite you in the posterior.
Still, I do see things like B&B customers trapped in St. Augustine, and worried about storm surge (this a couple hours ago, so things have probably resolved themselves by now). The problem with not evacuating is that first responders are compelled to go rescue you in very dangerous conditions. People won't evacuate if things don't seem dire. And the distance between dire and not is a track shift of perhaps 25 miles in this case. That's asking alot for a hurricane model 24-36 hours out.
People who want government cheese politicize things so there is more cheese to eat. The right politicizes some things, but it is the oligarchs and their pet politicians on the left that are the biggest consumers of government cheese.
There you go MadMan... trying to explain public safety responsibilities to the deplorables. To them, everything is a conspiracy of the smart cheating them out of their birther right to be a victim of the elites.
I suspect that the hype from NOAA and The Weather Channel are a case of "erring on the side of caution." I've ridden out a Cat 4 hurricane, and It. Is. No. Pic. Nic. The track would not have had to come much further west to make Matthew pretty catastrophic.
Still, if anyone has been following the Global Warming alarmists for the past two decades (two decades!) it is easy to see why ordinary people might feel the way they do. Global Warming alarmists have been telling us that there is an urgent need to do something (meaning pay higher, and more regressive, taxes and pay higher energy costs!) or terrible things will be inevitable. However common sense has staved off the alarmists for twenty years, and things have actually gotten better. If Matthew actually comes ashore (it hasn't yet, but I wouldn't hang around the seafront anywhere near Charleston, NC) it will have been the first major hurricane to hit the United States in ten years. Ten. Years. Subjectively, summers and winters both are milder. Time for the alarmists to go back to their models.
salixquercusii said: "Wow you people are dumb. I generally refrain from commenting and just gawk but this takes the cake. ...Generally, anemometers are supposed to be at least 10 meters feet off the ground!"
We are so dumb some of us don't know what "meters feet" are.
I stayed at a B&B in St Augustine not too long ago, and finished up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black that Robert Plant had supposedly left behind. It wasn't bad for a blend, to be honest.
To them, everything is a conspiracy of the smart cheating them out of their birther right to be a victim of the elites.
Actually, I don't think you are as smart as you think you are. You are just a bigot who enjoys attempting to belittle people you don't like so you can bathe in that little frisson of superiority it gives you.
If a person who loses his job to illegal immigration or some trade deal that moves manufacturing overseas is not a victim of the elites, I would love to hear you explain what he actually is.
harrogate said...
I guess the 800 + Hatian people killed by that storm represent more "drive-by media" bias as well.
Haitians are living in poverty. This despite the billions of dollars supposedly sent there since the earthquake. The Clinton Foundation has been at the forefront of this and yet the Haitians are still living and dying in abject poverty. How can this be? From the Washington Post Where did the money go?
The Clinton family’s charitable work in Haiti has been a mix of success, disappointment and controversy. As our Washington Post colleagues reported, some Clinton-backed projects didn’t come through, such as a $2 million housing expo for thousands of new housing units. The Government Accountability Office found poor planning and unsustainable outcomes for taxpayer-funded projects through USAID, such as a $170 million power plant and port for the Caracol Industrial Park, which the Clinton Foundation promoted.
Hillary Clinton’s younger brother had connections to a mining project in Haiti, raising suspicions among Haitians about the Clintons’ motives. Luxury hotel projects paid by the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund promised construction jobs — but for Haitians, it represented another disconnect between Clinton-backed efforts and the realities of one of the poorest countries struggling to rebuild after one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the Western Hemisphere.
There’s real frustration among Haitians over failures in progress promised to them, not just by the Clintons but from the international community at large. In 2015, Haitian activists protested outside the Clinton Foundation in New York, claiming the Clintons mismanaged hundreds of millions in taxpayer money through the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission.
Some more from The Huffington Post, The Rolling Stone, and Politico. So yes, let's talk about Haiti, shall we? It seems relevant this election cycle.
Excellent debunking of AGW propaganda here.
FWIW, Fox News has been reporting Matthew as pretty much the second coming of Katrina since Thursday afternoon, and as of right now, is still doing so.
Maybe correct, maybe not, but Fox is dancing the same dance as all the other entertainment channels. I point it out because Fox only gets called out for its standard rightish programming when the winds are calm.
salixquercusii said...but I have a feeling none of you people can explain how a rainbow is formed
A rainbow is formed when one dude blows another dude. Everyone knows that!
hombre, a "meter foot" is a measure of walking distance from a thermometer. As Han Solo said, "It's gonna take me half a parsec to cover the meter feet to that measuring station."
I grew up in Florida, and all incoming hurricanes were overblown by the media. Strictly speaking a tiny number were as bad as predicted, but none were ever worse (maybe Andrews). But think about it. There is no upside to a central-weighted storm prediction. If you did that, 50% of the time it would be worse, and then people who stayed behind would cry foul. Simple local TV economics is another reason for erring on the side of exaggeration.
There's really no reason to impute this behavior to politics - unless you have your own political point to make.
...it will have been the first major hurricane to hit the United States in ten years.
Exactly. There is no evidence severe weather has become more severe or more frequent despite Obama and the lefties claiming it has. It is a lie.
Blogger harrogate said...
I guess the 800 + Hatian people killed by that storm represent more "drive-by media" bias as well.
Hell, Harro, the Clinton Foundation has killed more than that. Just think if all that money was spent on infrastructure and not on Hillary's brothers.?
The Haitians know it.
Why not you ?
It's a hurricane. It's normal. We're overdue for a thermodynamic adjustment. That's normal, too.
Generally, anemometers are supposed to be at least 10 meters feet off the ground
Give salixquercusii a break. It's a typo, and there's only one light bulb in his parents' basement. The dim light makes typing dicey.
MediaMatters put out a reminder to the mediaswine that climate change ought not to be forgotten when putting out warnings and coverage about Matthew. Seriously.
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/06/media-should-not-forget-about-climate-change-coverage-hurricane-matthew/213586
Of course, Matthew could not be covered without deference to the warmists. /sarc
I suspect that the hype from NOAA and The Weather Channel are a case of "erring on the side of caution."
Part of the hype problem is also a positive feedback amplifying dire predictions and click-seeking. But that's generally not a problem at NHC. I don't know how prevalent the error on caution's side mindset is at NHC, but I know they take their mission very seriously.
Who politicized it more? Ask Criminal Hillary, she blamed the hurricane on AGW and bought a massive ad buy on the weather channel this week.
Bob Ellison said...
"hombre, a "meter foot" is ...."
Oh. Yeah. I just forgot for a moment. Silly me.
Even though the one statistic that we have that is solid through all of the technologies of the past, the number of land falling hurricanes to the United States shows no trend, the left has politicized hurricanes. A little push back is called for.
I have always thought that Drudge overdid the hurricane alarmism, probably because he is based in Florida. Matt is the last person I would accuse of being underalarmed about hurricanes. He probably feels he has been played for a chump by the forecasters.
More Deplorable together!
I said, "Who politicized it more? Ask Criminal Hillary, she blamed the hurricane on AGW and bought a massive ad buy on the weather channel this week."
Never let a crisis go to waste!
In point of fact, I do not believe this storm qualifies as having made landfall, yet.
There is most definitely a cost to "erring on the side of caution," namely credibility. Frequent inaccurate dire forecasts lead people to ignore dire forecasts. Just tell the complete, unvarnished truth. People are pretty good at figuring out where their best interests lie.
Amadeus 48 said...
I have always thought that Drudge overdid the hurricane alarmism, probably because he is based in Florida. Matt is the last person I would accuse of being underalarmed about hurricanes. He probably feels he has been played for a chump by the forecasters.
Yeah, I love this point. Nobody who has clicked on Drudge for the past 72 hours has escaped the warnings of this big hurricane. I can't think of any major news outlet that front-pages more storm tracks and satellite images. Drudge has done it for years and years.
Drudge never once suggested that people need not take seriously their storm precautions. He only questioned the continual flogging of climate change memes and the publicized data.
If you look at the Drudge Report now, these are the headlines you'll see on the upper left:
NOAA: WE ARE NOT EXAGGERATING OUR HURRICANE DATA
SHEP SMITH: Your kids will die!
WASH POST: Devastating impact on Florida!
WASH POST: Immediate risk to life!
Over-warning of hurricanes is problem that will likely continue...
And, of course, Hillary's front and center with "BLAME MANKIND"
Funny how much shit Drudge gets by quoting other people accurately.
(btw: I appreciate the commenters here who push back by discussing the data and providing links, opposed to those who shit the thread. Some people really are willing to learn.)
Maybe so, but the price of underhyping can be a little high.
Right. But the price of overhyping is bourne by the individuals. People who have to leave their homes, miss work, pay for a hotel room, close their business. It's too easy for the government to not take that into account, and simply order CODE RED every time.
Some on these boards changed the subject when I mentioned that the Overhyped-by-Liberal-Media-Hurricane actually killed more than 800 Hatians. Suddenly it's all about the Clinton Foundation. It's as these commenters have some sort ot tick-- "Haiti! Say things about Clinton Foundation!"
I mean, do y'all even remember what you yourselves say, five minutes after you say it? My condolences to those that for whatever reason must communicate with these commenters on a daily or regular basis. It cannot be peaches & cream.
Your problem is that you just get too few of these storms, so all of them are surprises.
We on our side of the Pacific get plenty more.
The Philippines gets several storms every year that would create a massive mess in Florida.
Its costly in damage and precautions, but for the most part they are SOP.
A typical (bit heavy) year - look at the storm tracks. Imagine if Florida=Luzon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Pacific_typhoon_season
"The weatherman’s prior information and data yield a probability p = P (rain | data, I) that it will rain tomorrow. Then what probability q will he announce publicly, in his evening TV forecast? This depends on his perceived utility function. We suspect that weather forecasters systematically overstate the probability for bad weather, i.e. announce a value q > p, in the belief that they will incur more criticism from failing to predict a storm that arrives than from predicting one that fails to arrive.
Nevertheless, we would prefer to be told the value p actually indicated by all the data at hand; indeed, if we were sure that we were being told this, we could not reasonably criticize the weatherman for his failures. Is it possible to give the weatherman a utility environment that will induce him always to tell the truth?
Suppose we write the weatherman’s employment contract to stipulate that he will never be fired for making too many wrong predictions; but that, each day, when he announces a probability q of rain, his pay for that day will be B log(2q) if it actually rains the next day, and B log(2[ 1 – q]) if it does not, where B is a base rate that does not matter for our present considerations, as long as it is high enough to make him want the job. Then the weatherman’s expected pay for today, if he announces probability q, is
B[plog(2q) + (1 - p)log(2[1 - q])] = B[log(2) + plog(q) + (1 - p)log(1 - q)].
Taking the first and second derivatives, we find that this is a maximum when q = p."
Jaynes, E. T.. Probability Theory: Principles and Elementary Applications Vol 1 (Kindle Locations 12976-12991). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
As usual, probability theory, properly understood, tells us how to answer this question.
"My condolences to those that for whatever reason must communicate with these commenters on a daily or regular basis. "
Poor Harro. People want to talk about Hillary and Haiti but not the way he/she does.
Awwwww....
The left has been politicizing everything for 50 years, that's the entire message behind "the personal is political" and "By Any Means Necessary". If non-leftists start pushing back is that "politicizing"?
It seems a pretty fair number of people think so. Luckily only 12 Althouse readers (so far) are so controlled by a narrative they don't believe their own side's efforts are political (as when NBC "reporter" Ron Allen claimed Obama's Anti- Global Warming initiatives are "designed to stop " storms like this even though science shows there is not link between these storms and Global Warming.
Hurricanes are the sort of thing that used to make people believe in God and Hell.
Now they make people believe in overregulation of energy use and production.
We are smaller people than those who came before us, in both our worries and our wants.
@harrogate Suddenly it's all about the Clinton Foundation.
I count two posts previous to your own that mention the Clinton Foundation. Over-hype much?
Writ Small said...
There's really no reason to impute this behavior to politics - unless you have your own political point to make.
Is it hard to understand large groups of individuals can have multiple motivations?
"Poor Harro. People want to talk about Hillary and Haiti but not the way he/she does"
So the sheer amount of deaths in Haiti from, you know, the *Hurricane* that is the topic of this thread, shows that it's a pretty big scary hurricane and hardly "overhyped." None of this has to do with how I or anyone else, for that matter, "wants" to talk about Haiti or Clinton or the Clinton Foundation.
Either the Hurricane has been "overhyped" for "political reasons" or it hasn't, yes? Pointing to the Dead left in the Hurricane's wake is not political spin, but simply an offer of some facts.
Heh. And to think the very first comment on this thread is *you* saying "the left politiciz[es] everything." The Irony really is magnificent.
"I count two posts previous to your own that mention the Clinton Foundation. Over-hype much?"
Chuck: That's 2 people who saw the word "Haiti" and forgot the topic of the thread entirely. 2 human beings, for that matter, who regularly talk about how smart they are, how wonderful and historically-grounded their insights.
You know, 2 isn't an especially small number in a thread of this size. Especially if you only start counting after the word "Haiti" appeared.
buwaya said, "Your problem is that you just get too few of these storms, so all of them are surprises." Yes. Paul Snively gets into the math right after that.
Don't throw math at the mob. Throw numbers! They work much better.
I'm a Floridian, and I've been through hurricanes before, including a direct hit from Wilma in '05 when it was about a Category 2, with winds I estimated at about 100 mph. It's serious business; my power was out for six days and the shingles on my roof were shredded by a weaker storm eleven years ago, so I don't think that Matthew was being overhyped. We don't yet really know what the damage along the Florida coast is going to be from storm surge, but so far, it looks like the folks on the east coast of the state got lucky by having the eyewall stay just offshore. Most of them will probably have homes to return to, which probably wouldn't have been the case if the eyewall had come ashore and then scoured its way up the coast. That would have been a worst-case scenario, and it very well could have happened if the storm had jogged only a little to the west. The authorities and the media were doing the right thing when they encouraged people along the coast to evacuate. Better safe than sorry.
I have watched the poor women standing in the rain on the Weather Channel getting sadder and sadder, their pictures of little puddles not measuring up and though they are outfitted in storm gear there are people in the background in street clothes. They so want devastation, excitement, death.
harrogate said...
the *Hurricane* that is the topic of this thread,
Actually the topic is whether or not coverage is politicized, not the hurricane itself. But it seems some people are only here to be arseholes and inexplicably believe this proves them superior to those they hate.
Regarding the Haitian death toll, I heard many food for the poor executives on the radio before and during the storm saying that some of the hardest hit areas were populated by people in shacks and other flimsy buildings... that the money given to rebuild Haiti after the earthquake was not used or not used productively... whereas every time the American East Coast is damaged, New buildings are built to tougher and tougher codes.
Re harrogate -
Its a matter of political rhetoric on all sides.
Yours too, and you too.
The "debate", such as it is, is political and tied into desiderata of government policy.
Side A wants to increase government authority and wants thereby to reduce the public standard of living by raising energy costs.
Side B does not want that.
Side A is directly stating that any given hurricane is an instance of such extreme weather that their policy will mitigate.
Side B says they are nuts.
The only reasonable analysis of "extreme weather" effects, tropical storms say, is statistical over a timeframe of decades. Nobody here, or in US politics, is discussing things on this level, the only reasonable, "scientific" one.
For what its worth, there is zero trend in frequency or intensity in tropical storms as far as anyone can tell. This isn't actually that hard to do, the data is public. You can pull up data on tropical storm frequency and intensity going back to the 1960's. There have always been damaging storms. An instance here or there proves nothing.
Of course, I suspect you are unresponsive to reasonable argument given your track record.
Just putting this out there as a placeholder for an ATTEMPT at reason.
Bruce Hayden said...
Let me add that this is just another reason that I am perfectly happy to be sitting right now maybe 1,000 from the ocean coast. At a minimum 400-500 miles, but we are in CO right now, almost 2 miles above sea level. What I can't understand is why anyone would live so close to the ocean, and why they would expect the rest of us to bail them out when nature does what she does best.
Bruce, I like living in a place where every winter day, I can just go outside, start my car and drive off. I don't have to shovel snow, because we never get any; the last time I saw snow in person was in January of '89. I rarely have to scrape frost off my car's windshield, maybe a couple of times a winter on really cold days. I don't have to wear snow boots, hats or scarves. Most winter days, my "Florida coat" is a flannel shirt. And I can wear shorts year-round, except for the coldest days when I have to break out the jeans. The downside is that it's hot and humid for about six months a year, but we have air conditioning everywhere, so we can deal with it.
but I have a feeling none of you people can explain how a rainbow is formed
It's possible you know, but I doubt it because you're implying it's simple, which it isn't.
It relies on the principle of variations.
I always liked hurricanes. Big trees in the neighborhood that had always been there come down and change the universe.
My current neighborhood can't do that. I came when there were no trees. There are lots of tall trees now but they weren't always there.
The deadliest hurricane in US history was the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. It killed 8,000 people. Dozens of ships were lost.
That was 116 years ago. Therefore, since science tells us that since global warming, aka 'climate change' causes more deadly storms, the climate must be cooling. Or getting less changey.
You can't argue with science!
Harrogate
Have a google earth exploration of Haiti. You can see the border with the Dominican Republic by noticing the color change from the dry brown of Haiti to the rich green of the DR. Know why there are no trees in Haiti but plenty in the DR?
Michael,
How does any of this pertain to whether Matthew was overhyped?
Did it kill all those people or didn't it?
8,000 dead in Galveston in 1900, Harrogate! My God! Whatever we've done to the climate since 1900, we need to do more of it! Science demands it!
Lives are at stake!
harrogate
The airwaves and the internets did not block information on the coming storm from Haiti. Perhaps you are making a bad case for the storm being under hyped but I don't think so.
The storm went directly over New Providence in the Bahamas. The storm went directly over Grand Bahama Island. As far as I know there were no deaths on either.
I am afraid the case you have inadvertently made is that the Haitians did not heed the overhyped warnings. Ditto the warning that if you cut down all your trees for fuel you will be shit out of luck agriculturally.
"How does any of this pertain to whether Matthew was overhyped?"
Because its a better explanation of why n x 10 were killed in 2016 than n under similar circumstances in, say, 1966.
If you cut all your trees you are vulnerable to flash flooding and landslides.
Especially if the place is massively overpopulated for its carrying capacity and there are just massive numbers of very poor people under very poor shelter in the way of floods, storm surge and landslides.
Does anybody have a link to either buoy or weather station data that supports anything close to 100 mph winds, much less CAT 4? I tried finding data and have been unsuccessful so far.
I did go to weather stations near Daytona Beach when the CAT3 eyewall was just offshore and the highest sustained winds were less than 50 mph at every station I pulled up. Gusts reached maxed out in the 60's.
The Weather Channel on Thursday showed the expected wind field as Matthew moved up the FL coast, and it showed 110 mph winds were predicted just east of metro Orlando. What a crock.
Oh and (to use AA's favorite expression) the "liberal media" in the USA wouldn't have even spent what little time on Matthew's devastation of Haiti that it has spent, if the storm had died before getting to our shores.
I hope the storm *does* prove to be far less dangerous on our east coast than what we fear might happen. So does everyone hope that. But it is better to be "overly-hyped" than just all Drudge-y
I mention landslides, because this sort of thing is a well known killer in Philippine typhoons, much of this is the effect of - well, overpopulation and deforestation.
So its very relevant.
Due to their frequency - well, their regularity really - the Philippines is an excellent source of case studies of storm effects and social and engineering mitigations of these. There is no place where storm weather so regularly afflicts such a numerous and dense population.
http://www.ibtimes.com/mudslides-flash-floods-kill-least-53-philippines-1770582
buwaya
The trees are cut for cooking fuel. The other consequences you have made clear. The Google view of the line between the countries is revealing.
Many billions in "aid" are heading to Haiti as we write. Between the TonTon and the "leadership" that will be eaten up pretty quickly. No need to build roads to deliver cooking gas when you can build a hotel or an industrial park for non existent industry.
In point of fact, I do not believe this storm qualifies as having made landfall, yet.
Correct (for the US -- of course it did make landfall in Haiti and Cuba). The western eyewall did brush Canaveral this morning as the storm moved north -- but it didn't cross over. You can say correctly that it hit the US -- but not that it made landfall.
"But it is better to be "overly-hyped" than just all Drudge-y"
Is it better to be overhyped than have to pay (eventually) twice as much in electric rates?
That is one of the real questions here.
It was a small, very intense storm. 30 miles west and it would have been a horror show in the US too. But the media have earned their distrust.
Well since they don't want to talk about the hurricane, how's this? Just blew in...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html
By David A. Fahrenthold October 7 at 4:01 PM
Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone — saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.
The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” on a bus with Access Hollywood written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s upcoming cameo on the soap opera.
Trump's most vile sexist comments yet, caught on a hot mike, lol! Can't wait for the debate.
"I guess the 800 + Hatian people killed by that storm represent more "drive-by media" bias as well."
Considering the current death toll - total - is 289, you're making our point.
Stop being such a chump.
Unknown shows up and drops a turd.
You can't point to Haiti deaths to justify the predictions for the US. Any heavy rains will kill people there due to flooding and mudslides that are so exacerbated by the massive hillside deforestation.
Also Drudge loves to promote bad weather news such as hurricanes. Great graphics and clickbait. In this case, he like almost everyone else in eastern FL saw the farce that the NHC and Weather Channel perpetrated with Matthew.
Does anybody have a link to either buoy or weather station data that supports anything close to 100 mph winds
Data Buoys didn't sample this storm very well. St. Augustine Beach, showed a peak gust of 65ish knots, with two hours with sustained winds around 55 knots. Buoy 41004 should, I think, see strong winds soon, but Matthew is weakening because of dry air wrapping into it, and shear. (The radar shows an eye open to the south now). There weren't observations -- and aren't -- on the always stronger eastern side of the northward-moving storm.
There is a graph from a buoy in the Bahamas on Cliff Mass' blog: Link
"Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone"
Bill Clinton got a blow job in the Oval office from an intern young enough to be his daughter.
Bill Clinton has also had many, many credible accusations of sexual misconduct levied against him, over a period of decades, including forcible rape.
So go fuck yourself, "Unknown."
Not only does Reuters have the death toll at 800+
For Haiti, but it also has some 61,000 people in shelters.
So, it's a big fucking hurricane that happened, notwithstanding all our suddenly very concerned panel on the effects of deforestation. If, happily, it turns out that we were too worried about the damage Matthew would do when it hit us here, that still won't change the fact that it was a big fucking hurricane.
Terrible thing to call your candidate. He was married at the time he said this, hahahahaha, oh too rich! This and telling the dying they can't die until after they go vote for him, niiiiiice.
Clinton was married when he shoved a Cohiba up his intern's pussy, made her lick his asshole, and then came on her blue dress. There's vile, Unknown. Actions -- not words.
Hey Chuck,
It's good to see that you are no longer pretending to be a concerned Republican, not that anyone believed it.
Here in Iowa, we get vastly overhyped tornados and severe thundershowers. I have long suspected that is how the local media drive viewership. That "tragic weather" coincides with the political agenda of the statist AGW crowd is a bonus.
The scientific mystics cannot help conflate logical domains, liberal departures from the scientific domain, and bitterly cling to the prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
Primitive.
BIll isn't running for President, just an FYI.
" notwithstanding all our suddenly very concerned panel on the effects of deforestation."
But there have been a great number of terrible hurricanes, going back to long before man was man and only the dumb crocodiles were around to notice.
This one however is a POLITICAL hurricane. It is being cited as a reason why the US should elect people who will, for the sake of avoiding hurricanes, double electric rates.
I am sure you get the point, but you refuse to properly engage.
Thanks for the links Madison Man. The winds shown at this Cape Canaveral station
are much lower than I would expect for such a powerful storm so close by. Worst case sustained winds in the 50's and gusts in the 70's.
harrogate
Are you asserting that the storm was more powerful over Haiti or that Haitians can't follow the rules or what? What is your stupid fucking point other than your inference that Haitians are too stupid to get out of their own way.
Matthew seems to have been more powerful over Haiti than it is now, but it's too early to tell. None of it has to do with Haitians "being in their own way" or not.
It was big enough to do the damage it did, anyways. Big enough to deserve the "hype," no matter what happens from here.
Surely you're not as obtuse as you're pretending to be, Michael.
Harrogate
So you win. It was a huge storm. In Haiti. Not overhyped in Haiti, just ignored.
It was ignored by the "liberal media," too, and would have been ignored totally, had the storm not moved on over here.
A lot of problems are out there with the media, but this particular criticism of them, at the center of this thread, just doesn't have any sense to it.
Hey, watch out, this is the scary, sexy Unk#55.
Not the whiney Unk#51.
"Big enough to deserve the "hype,"
Yes, certainly. In normal times. Some foreign disaster as always happens, there are always some every month or two. If it bleeds it leads and all that, and the significance of the death toll varies according to the distance from NYC, or for that matter the darkness of the victims and the difficulty of their language. Melanin makes a big difference in column inches, for the NYT and the WaPo as well as their less enlightened colleagues, and I'm convinced Haiti gets a bit of a bump up from, say Indonesia, because they sort of speak French.
If there were some similarly terrible event in Celebes you would hear much less of it.
The "hype" however is about it being used as a justification for some desiderata in US domestic policy in the context of a US election.
harrogate said...
Michael,
How does any of this pertain to whether Matthew was overhyped?
Did it kill all those people or didn't it?
10/7/16, 4:12 PM"
Mathew is a terrible storm. But notice it hit just as hard other countries without that level of death toll. Sadly Haiti is probably the most corrupt and poorest country in the hemisphere. Tin roofs aren't going to withstand that kind of wind and the deforestation that results in the mudslides contributes to the death toll as well.
Incidentally I have yet to meet a Haitian that speaks well of the Clintons. Fortunately for South Florida we really dodged a bullet. Anyone who had seen what happened to South Dade from Hurricane Andrew would never pooh-pooh a major storm. Fortunately despite South Florida being a semi-banana republic the building codes since Andrew have been pretty tough and local infrastructure has been and is currently being hardened against storms. My house was hit both by Katrina and Wilma bullseye and didn't suffer not even a lost roof tile (albeit the landscaping was pretty much ruined). Well designed and built properties do make a difference. All the same this storm could still double back and gain strength and hit me next week so the house stays prepped until we get the all clear.
Unknown you really are the turd in the punchbowl. Trumps macho BS is disqualifying but Hillary's criminal acts aren't disqualifying? And he isn't Bill who is a rapist and not that long ago flew with a convicted pediphile to his private island where he has a bevy of young woman. And he ditched his secret service detail to go on this trip. Could it have been underaged girls so even the SS details couldn't cover that for him? So if Hillary is such a proud feminist why does she stay married to Bill? But with you its all about the distraction. Let's ignore Hillary's criminal conduct, let's ignore the massive criminal conduct of the Obama Administration and it's complete failure and instead look at Trumps which in comparison are not even misdemeanors compared to Clinton's capital felonies.
@Terry, Bill Clinton never spoke about what he did into a hot microphone.
Who is infusing politics into everything?
Althouse.
She can't write a science-related post without giving a political angle.
I have closely followed hurricane development for the last 15 years - and I have to agree with Drudge. I have never seen the surface data match the wind speeds that are reported by the National Hurricane Center (based on the aircraft generated data). The surface data are always significantly lower than the NHC official reports.
The wind speeds the NHC report for a hurricane are the maximum sustained winds at the surface. (As salixq. so condescendingly pointed out, the NHC definition of "at the surface" is actually at a height of 10.1 meters.)
NOAA deploys a number of buoys they use to capture surface data. Madison Man has one link to a similar buoy in the Bahamas that reported a peak gust of 105 MPH. A "peak gust" is obviously higher than the sustained wind. Yet it was still 35 MPH below the NHC reported hurricane strength of 140 MPH at that time.
The current NHC 11:00 PM advisory shows the latest wind speed for Matthew at 105 MPH. In the same advisory they report the actual raw data from NOAA buoy 41008 (located off the Georgia coast). They report sustained winds of 54 MPH with a maximum wind gust of 72 MPH.
The specifications for this buoy are available to the public. The anemometer is at a height of 5 meters - the maximum height for any of the NOAA buoys. Therefore, this raw data should be slightly corrected upwards to match the NHC wind speed definition. I know this is only a single data point, but it is way off. I am sure it is not at the exact location of the point where the aircraft estimated the peak wind. However, considering the areal size of the eyewall, we should get some data where they pass directly over a buoy. In the many years I have collected hurricane data, this mis-match error is persistent and is usually of about this scale.
I didn't sleep at a Holidy Inn Express last night, but I am an actual scientist for my day job. There is a huge discrepancy between the reported hurricane wind speeds by NHC and the "ground truth" provided by buoys and coastal weather stations (when a hurricane is making landfall). I have never seen the NHC attempt to address this issue. Conspiracy or bad science? It's hard to tell the difference when our government is involved.
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