Hurricane Irene

Post image for Hurricanes in New York — Blame Global Warming?

Google “Hurricane Irene” and “global warming,” and you’ll find 23,000 sites where these two topics are both discussed.

The Huffington Post served up the standard alarmist narrative. Reporter Lynne Peeples quotes NRDC senior scientist Kim Knowlton, who told her: “No one is going to point to Irene and say this is climate change. But we can say that we are seeing the fingerprint of climate change this year.” Huh? Peeples interprets for us:

Knowlton was of course referring to the growing list of extreme weather events that have ravaged the U.S. in 2011 — from tornadoes and flooding, to droughts and heat waves. And now millions of Americans, many of whom have never seen a real tropical storm in their lifetime, are facing a major hurricane.

Note the clever juxtaposition of Knowlton’s two statements. Although the NRDC scientist does not openly — and unscientifically — attribute a particular weather event to global climate change, she encourages readers to do just that.

Hurricanes in New York are certainly not as common as hurricanes in Florida or Louisiana, but if Irene is evidence of global warming, then global warming has menaced the Empire State for centuries, because hurricanes have hit New York since before the industrial revolution. [click to continue…]