Newspapers across the nation recently published a short article by the Associated Press titled “Destructive Hurricanes Are Hitting U.S. More Often, Study Says.” This is a typical example of irresponsible, climate alarmism journalism. Everyone knows that when more people build on hurricane prone coastlines, more people will die and more destruction will occur. It’s a well known fact that big hurricanes routinely produce deadly storm surges of up to 20 feet or more. So why are people surprised when it happens over and over again?
Hurricanes produce the same force and fury as they have for millions of years, and the oceans continue to rise and fall with the Ice Age cycles. So what’s different now? Absolutely nothing. It’s the same old problem, where people ignore history and continue to build and live in harms way. Why? They do that because of inadequate education and negligent government oversight of hurricane prone coasts.
The solution is simple, tell your local school board to teach actual science instead of climate alarmism, and tell your local government to place greater effort on public safety instead of trying to expand the tax base.
Public education, or the lack thereof, is the primary problem. The science community has known for a long time that Ice Age cycles come and go every 100,000 years or so. With each cycle, temperatures rise and fall, and so do ocean levels. It is known that we have not yet reached the high temperatures experienced during the last Interglacial Warming Period. We also know that the oceans were 20-25 feet higher than they are today.
Ergo … disregarding any hypothetical man-made effects … we should expect history to repeat itself — just like the tides repeat their cycles. In other words, we should expect oceans to rise 20 to 25 feet or more, or until the next Ice Age begins.
The AP article is just another alarmist attempt to subliminally blame hypothetical man-made global warming. Highlighting increasing hurricane destruction is like hyping increasing death rates, while avoiding to mention our rapidly increasing populations. The real story is … now get ready for the big reveal … climate change is the cause … but not the problem. Climates change all the time — just like tides change all the time. The problem is when people fail to get out of the way when the tides routinely come in — and when they fail to get out of the way when oceans routinely rise.
All the death and destruction that occurred when Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas was not unexpected. Whenever you live in hurricane-prone coastal regions that are only 20 to 25 feet above sea level, you live in harms way. And until we have better science education and more responsible governments, this will happen again – and again – and again.
John Shewchuk is a certified consulting meteorologist and a resident of the Village of Calumet Grove.