For inexplicable reasons the Democratic Party has in many ways made itself the “Green Party,” and thereby has incurred major electoral losses. Each time it loses as a result of its increasingly green ideology, it has responded by doubling down on its green bet. The underlying miscalculation they have made is a result of the fact that the presidency is decided by electoral votes, not popular votes. Most of the “environmentalists” live in strongly blue states and the red state “environmentalists” are widely scattered in the few large towns, particularly college towns. This was very evident in the 2016 election when Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, with much of her surplus of popular votes coming from California. Hillary Clinton has now confirmed this view by writing that her statement on the loss of coal mining jobs was the single greatest mistake of her campaign.

In 2016 the Party went whole hog for climate alarmism by writing it into their party platform and even promising to end all use of fossil fuels by a date certain. Clinton also hurt her prospects in 2016 as a result of her remarks about the loss of coal mining jobs and her last minute endorsement of Al Gore and his strident climate alarmism. Yes, Clinton probably picked up some “environmentalist” votes, but most of them were in states that she was going to win anyway. And she probably lost votes in the states that Trump most needed to win for an electoral vote majority.

But a very good case can be made that the climate issue played a decisive role in the 2000 presidential election, the 2010 congressional election, as well as in the 2016 presidential election. Somehow the Party overlooked or misinterpreted what happened in 2000 and in 2010.

2000

Most people who remember the 2000 presidential election immediately think of the controversial outcome in Florida, which ultimately decided the election. But it would have had no influence if Al Gore had not lost West Virginia for the Democrats for one of the few times from 1932 to then. The deciding issue appears to have been climate and coal mining. In the end, Gore lost the presidential election by 3 electoral votes. West Virginia had 5 electoral votes that year. But all of them went to Bush primarily because of concerns about Gore’s views on climate and the likely effects of climate alarmism on coal mining, an important source of income in the State. West Virginia voted Republican in only three presidential elections from 1932 until 1996 but has become increasingly Republican in presidential voting since 2000. I believe most of that increase can be attributed to the Democratic Party’s increasing support for climate alarmism. If Gore had not pursued climate alarmism or had not been the nominee I believe that the Democrats would have won in 2000.

2010

The 2010 Congressional Election resulted in the Democratic Party’s loss of a majority in the House of Representatives. It appears that this loss was due to the loss of Democratic seats where Democratic incumbents had voted for the American Energy and Security Act of 2010 (the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill). A number of Democrats who voted for the bill lost their seats in 2010 and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and have not regained it as of 2017. This played an important role in their success or rather lack of it during the remainder of the Obama Presidency in passing legislation to implement the party’s platforms.

Conclusions

From a purely Democratic Party viewpoint, their unequivocal adoption of climate alarmism has been a very bad bet. And this week a number of prominent alarmist climate modelers have finally admitted (see here and here) that the alleged “consensus” has been wrong by exaggerating the global warming that would occur if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, just as many climate realists have long been saying. This leaves the Democratic Party with a greatly reduced basis for their extremist views on climate. So major electoral losses over an issue that has little, or more likely, no effect on anyone.

I even wonder if the modelers withheld their long needed revisions until after the Paris treaty was agreed to, but wanted to avoid the increasing criticism of the differences between their models and actual temperatures.

As readers of this blog know, I believe that the situation is even worse for climate alarmists and thereby for their Democratic Party supporters since carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric levels have been shown to have no significant effects on global temperatures and because higher CO₂ levels are good, not bad. So the Democratic Party has been backing the wrong horse and has paid dearly for it. They are not saving the world; they are pushing bad policy that hurts the Party’s electoral chances as well as the economy, green plants, and poor people.

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September 20, 2017 at 01:02PM

Knowing the the alarmists are on the run – and having lost over a decade of income – I’ve been trying to catch up on a few things that have needed doing – such as (rebuilding) the house. However, I … Continue reading →

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September 20, 2017 at 12:51PM

A few days ago it looked as if the US coast could be hit by two large hurricanes: New England by Jose, and later the Southast by Maria. Global warming activists and the haters of our modern industrial society were salivating.

For example on September 17, the Washington Post presented one model with Maria barreling straight into North Carolina.

After all, imagine all the wonderful media headlines proclaiming “unprecedented destruction and hurricane forces“. It would be a wonderful field day. With such destruction, how could Denier in Chief President Donald Trump possibly be able to dispute that man is the cause? The witch hunt for and purge of deniers could begin in earnest.

Wild 1933 hurricane year

Yet, reality shows us that hurricanes have always been just as violent and occurred just as often in the past, if not more often. For example, Ryan Maue here reminds us of the fury of 1933 season:

In that year, Maue tweeted, saw 15 of 20 storms hitting land “with 6 majors and 2 Cat 5’s“. Imagine if that were to happen today. This type of destruction is precisely what the global warming ambulance chasing media and fake scientists are hoping for today. so it is only natural that some days ago Jose and Maria showed signs those glory days maybe returning – possibly the chance of two hurricanes hitting the US at once!

But now the most recent computer models show that Jose is in its death throes, stuck off the coast of New England, crumbling and no longer posing any serious danger. At Twitter the outstanding wxcharts here shows the latest tracks for Maria and Jose:

A storm that protects us?

At the top of the graphic above we see the remnants of Jose. Ironically hurricane Jose, which alarmists had hoped would smash violently into the Northeast, is turning out to be a possible savior in that it could play a key role in deflecting powerful Maria away from land. Just imagine: A global warming produced hurricanes that protect us!

As the chart above shows, Maria is projected to head out to sea, thus allowing us to be more hopeful. Yet it is still too early call off the alarms. There’s still some chance that Maria could veer off the model projected course and make landfall. Readers living on the East Coast must remain vigilant. Thankfully, most computation see the storm tracking out to sea.

Today at his Daily Update, Joe Bastardi cautions us and points out that Maria still has a considerable window to make landfall around North Carolina. Hurricane forecasts beyond 5 days Harbour tremendous uncertainty.

NOAA also has Maria headed out to sea with its latest cone:

Maria projected to head out to sea. Source: NOAA.

The profiteers of bad news

The media and climate ambulance chasers of course will deny that they are becoming disappointed by the latest tracks, and that people couldn’t be so mean as to wish deadly storms to strike land. But it’s not so. Much of the mainstream media are terrible people who are agenda-driven. They deceive their readers and try to manipulate public perception with fear. They make their livings with bad news. Bad news for them is good news. How often do you ever see them write about good news? How often do we see them present things on their bright side? They’re just nasty people.

But there is some good news out there for the media, climate ambulance chasers and mass destruction fantasists: the hurricane season still has a long way to go, and so they can hope for new hurricanes. It still remains an ideal year for hurricanes.

 

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September 20, 2017 at 12:32PM

By Paul Homewood

 

 

With Hurricane Maria tearing heading towards Puerto Rico, there will be yet more alarmist claims about how climate change is making hurricanes worse.

Maria is the fourth major hurricane in the Atlantic this year, following Harvey, Irma and Jose. But how unusual is this?

Fortunately we don’t have to rely on Al Gore or Jennifer Lawrence. The reality is that it is not unusual at all.

Leading tropical cyclone expert, Chris Landsea of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division has put together a list of Atlantic storms back to 1851.

This is what he has to say:

The Atlantic hurricane database (or HURDAT) extends back to 1851. However, because tropical storms and hurricanes spend much of their lifetime over the open ocean – some never hitting land – many systems were “missed” during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (Vecchi and Knutson 2008). Starting in 1944, systematic aircraft reconnaissance was commenced for monitoring both tropical cyclones and disturbances that had the potential to develop into tropical storms and hurricanes. This did provide much improved monitoring, but still about half of the Atlantic basin was not covered (Sheets 1990). Beginning in 1966, daily satellite imagery became available at the National Hurricane Center, and thus statistics from this time forward are most complete (McAdie et al. 2009).

For hurricanes striking the USA Atlantic and Gulf coasts, one can go back further in time with relatively reliable counts of systems because enough people have lived along coastlines since 1900.

Thus, the following records for the period of reliable data hold for the entire Atlantic basin (from 1966-2016) and for the USA coastline (1900-2016):

 

 

& Landsea et al. (2010) documented a rather large increase in short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes in the last decade, which is likely due to improved monitoring capabilities, that may be influencing the climatological average number of TCs in the Atlantic basin. With the artificial jump in the 2000s in the frequency of short-lived systems, a more realistic estimate of the long-term climatology may be closer to 13 tropical storms and hurricanes per year.
* 1950 is recorded as the busiest season in the whole database for number of Major Hurricanes with 8.
+ 1886 is recorded as the most active hurricane season for the continental USA with 7 landfalling hurricanes.

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The full list is included in the above link.

 

 

It is worth re-emphasising these points:

• Many storms were missed over the open ocean prior to hurricane hunter aircraft in 1944.
• Even then half of the Atlantic basin was not covered.
• Satellite coverage began to improve matters in 1966.
• But even then monitoring has considerably improved since 1966, particularly regarding short lived storms.

 

 

The effect of this improved coverage can be seen in NOAA’s graph of named storms:

 

 

Yet when we look at major hurricanes, we get a totally different picture:

It is still obvious that many storms were, unsurprisingly, not picked up before 1900, and even prior to 1940.

However, since the introduction of hurricane hunters, there has been no increase in the number of major hurricanes. We simply see the dip during the 1970s and 80s, when the AMO was in cold phase.

Contrary to popular myth, the year with most major hurricanes was not 2005, but 1950, when there were eight.

To have four, as we have so far had this year, is not in the slightest unusual. In fact, there have been 27 years on the record, when there has been four or more major hurricanes.

 

 

But are hurricanes getting more powerful?

Well, not according to the ACE index (1), which shows hurricane seasons in the past every bit as strong as the past couple of decades.

The worst year of the lot was 1933.

(1) ACE measures the Accumulated Cyclone Energy – An index that combines the numbers of systems, how long they existed and how intense they became. It is calculated by squaring the maximum sustained surface wind in the system every six hours that the cyclone is a Named Storm and summing it up for the season. It is expressed in 10⁴ kt².

 

All graphs and data are from the Hurricane Research Division:

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September 20, 2017 at 12:03PM