Rush Limbaugh: Hurricanes are a liberal conspiracy for promoting climate change

[hedrick]

I read what Rush actually said. There's lots of conspiracy theory. He implies, but I'm not sure he quite actually says, that the either the forecast or the way it's being presented, is part of a campaign to promote global warming. It's sufficiently rambling that it's hard to pin down an actual false statement. But anyone listening would get the impression that the predictions are being slanted as part of the campaign.

As far as I've been able to tell, the predictions were simply the results of models, and the models did predict a very dangerous situation. We're still a day away from finding out for sure, but all indications of what Irma has done so far is that the models are right, and the results roughly as predicted.

News always hypes stuff that they think will bring in readers and listeners. They hyped Hillary's email just as much anything else. But in this case, the hype looks like it's going to be justified.

So I'd rate his article false.

I'd also rate it ironic. There actually is a conspiracy around global warming, namely one to avoid facing it.

[rogue06]

The way you uncritically swallow this stuff is hilarious. First of all, Irma is not the most powerful storm ever. There have been far stronger storms in the past. The only thing anomalous about Irma is that it formed further to the south than what is typical, but so what?

Several news accounts report that it was the most powerful hurricane ever -- in the Atlantic. The question is, for how long have we been able to make these determinations? I'm old enough to remember how we used aircraft to detect the existence of an incoming hurricane so it seems that this record could only cover hurricanes from recent decades.

[Jedidiah]

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/https://www.newscientist.com/article...lobal-warming/

You failed to notice that I do not argue against "climate change." I strongly disagree with your whitewash of Gore.

[Mountain Man]

And now here's actress Jennifer Lawrence saying that these recent hurricanes are nature's way of punishing the US for electing Donald Trump.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/...-donald-trump/

[seer]

And now here's actress Jennifer Lawrence saying that these recent hurricanes are nature's way of punishing the US for electing Donald Trump.

It just proves that you can be as dumb as a post and still be an actor. Though she did a great job in the movie "Winter Bones."

[hedrick]

And now here's actress Jennifer Lawrence saying that these recent hurricanes are nature's way of punishing the US for electing Donald Trump.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/...-donald-trump/

There are always crazies, including the inevitable blame on gays:

http://www.towleroad.com/2017/09/kev...son-hurricane/

Best just ignore them.

[Mountain Man]

It's been downgraded to a category 3 and will likely weaken even further before it reaches Florida. Liberals everywhere are bitterly disappointed.

[Mountain Man]

If it even reaches Florida... latest forecasts say it could continue West into the Gulf of Mexico.

[Catholicity]

Irma's over cuba right now but there's an unkown as to whether or not it will strenghten up before hitting the florida keys tonight.

[rogue06]

It's been downgraded to a category 3 and will likely weaken even further before it reaches Florida. Liberals everywhere are bitterly disappointed.

It can easily pick up strength after Cuba

[Mountain Man]

It could... or it couldn't. Nobody really knows.

[Leonhard]

Algore

Al Gore is not, did not, does not and will not the end all and be all of anyone who has ever spoken on Anthropogenic Climate Change. He was a popularizer of the concept, it's weird to see conservatives refer to him as if he was the gold standard of anything ever said on the subject. Though I guess it follows the human tendency on wanting to attribute entire movements to various figureheads.

[Leonhard]

Oh my goodness, you're still falling for the "97% consensus" lie

I don't think you can call it a 'lie'. Six different studies have gathered the same result. The definition of an expert being the only thing that varied. The more climate scientists were encompansed by 'expert' the more certain the consensus was. Reaching above 99% in one where it was only climate scientists.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexeps.../#7025a6a23f9f

The article in no way proves his assertion that the 97% figure is a myth. Cites only one study, and not the seven done. In fact he doesn't even criticize the results as such, but just tries to cast doubt the way these results were gathered, yet he doesn't cite a single one of them. He then repeats the myth that the there's been a pause in global temperature rise, and mockingly tries to show that the correlation between CO2 and temperature matches other correlations, by posting some pictures of other graphs going up around the same time.

The article is just an empty propaganda piece. Forbes know which side of the bread they need to butter, and the Fossil industry is their definitely one of the audiences they want to please.

I invite everyone to read this article by a group of scientists doing a review of those papers. Notice the difference in quality between this paper, and the Forbes article, the much more systematic approach the scientists have here. I'll leave you decided which one is more likely to get it right.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10...26/11/4/048002

Besides, science is settled by the facts and not by consensus.

This is false, science is every bit as much a collectivistic and social constructionistic enterprise as any other human enterprise. We gather evidence, and evaluate it together. It has reference to objective hard facts, yes, but what those facts are and how they're evaluated is very much social construction. We being people have to figure out how to reason about evidence, what mistakes we can make and what the correct procedures should be. Its messy, human and organic. No one decides on their own how this is done, it follows best practices. The theories that survive are the ones that are considered the best knowledge we have, which we've skeptically vetted. Otherwise we'd be living in a world of a cranks. The science on anthropogenic climate change is strong, there's really not any debate about whether its going on, why its going on, or even roughly how bad its going to be. The climate scientists are discussing finer aspects of the theories now, not the basic facts of it.

Its the same with evolution, some phyla might be reorganied differently as new evidence comes in. New species are added, new ancestors, new branch points, new clades, but the basic facts of evolution are at this point entirely uncontested except by cranks and fundementalists.

Or to put it differently, we might discover new fine details to the Earth's shape and geometry, but we won't overturn the basic scientific fact that its spherical.

97% of scientists could agree that the earth is flat,

That's a non sequitor. They don't. 99% or more agree that the Earth is getting warmer, and this warming is caused primarily by the increase of CO2 from our burning of fossil fuels causing an increase of the greenhouse effect plus the water-vapor positive feedback cycle. There's nothing to discuss, both of those aspects are basic science we've known since the thirties and even rough models match the heating we get the past four decades.

At this point you basically have to overturn basic physics and quantum mechanics in order to argue persuasively that the Earth wouldn't get hotter from our increase of the Earth's temperature.

As for Darwinian evolution, the next time someone tells you it's "settled science", you'd better check for your wallet, because he's conning you. Even from a strictly scientific perspective, there's good reason to question many of the basic assumptions needed for Darwinian evolution to be true.

https://creation.com/young-universe-evidence

... creation.com ... young-universe-evidence... seriously? You're being sarcastic and joking right?

[KingsGambit]

I freely admit I haven't read any of the posts in this thread.

But the title reminds me of a girl I knew in college. She honestly believed that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had a "hurricane machine" (probably cloud seeding) that created Hurricane Katrina as a pretense to declare martial law in New Orleans. I couldn't stop laughing at her when she told me.

She's now a lawyer and has a lot more money than I do.

[Mountain Man]

². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way."