09-06-2017
For more, follow Dale on Twitter @DaleHurd and at Facebook.com/DaleHurdNews
It would be pretty creepy to feel relieved that a monster hurricane was about to wipe out parts of Florida.
And yet, I guarantee you that some quarters of the climate change crowd are feeling relief over the approach of Irma.
You see, hurricanes have not been cooperating with the climate agenda for more than a decade. It has been almost 12 years since a major hurricane hit the U.S., and 11 years since Al Gore's silly "Inconvenient Truth" predicted a dramatic uptick in killer hurricanes. (A major hurricane is Category 3 or higher, which means sustained winds of 111 to 129 miles an hour on the Saffir-Simpson scale.)
The lack of hurricane activity has been a major "problem" for the climate change industry, valued at north of $1.5 trillion.
The climate is supposed to be running off the rails, and it's not.
The last major hurricane to hit the continental United States was Wilma, which struck Florida on Oct. 24, 2005. (2012's Hurricane Sandy was very destructive, but was not a hurricane when it made landfall in New Jersey.)
It's been embarrassing for the global warming crowd. If hurricanes were scientists with this kind of anti-climate change track record, the Left would investigate them for being in the pay of energy companies.
Take a deeper look at the weather record and it gets even worse for believers in climate doom:
The four strongest North Atlantic hurricanes on record, all nearly as strong as Irma, happened before 1936.
Seven of the 10 deadliest Atlantic hurricanes happened on or before 1930.
28 of the planet's 35 worst tropical cyclones in terms of deaths happened on or before 1942.
Global tropical cyclone activity is at a 45-year low.
Dr. Ryan Maue of WeatherBELL Analytics, who developed the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index to measure the relationship between overall hurricane severity, frequency and global warming, found no significant connection, and concluded that "there obviously is no change in hurricane energy that at all relates to warming, and it is currently near its lowest levels on record."
So, you can't blame Irma on climate change, but that won't stop some from trying.