Great Hurricane of 1780 Remains the Worst
Climate Change dramatists have incentivized the media to blare the talking point that human-induced climate change has made Atlantic tropical storms more powerful than they were in the past.
Sediment studies indicate that major hurricanes have been blasting through the Atlantic for centuries, and were especially strong during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climatic Anomaly—a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from c. 950 to c. 1250.
Christopher Columbus recorded two “violent hurricanes” in the years 1494 and 1495, the latter sinking three of his ships anchored in La Isabela harbor (now the Dominican Republic). Major hurricanes were a headache for the Spanish Treasure Fleet, sinking multiple treasure-laden galleons in the years 1622, 1715, 1733 and 1750. I grew up dreaming of finding one of these treasures in the Florida Keys. Mel Fisher beat me to it when he found the Atocha that sank in the Keys in the hurricane of 1622.
By far the deadliest hurricane in history was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which is estimated to have killed 22,000. Wikipedia provides a decent, succinct description:
The Great Hurricane of 1780 was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, as well as the deadliest tropical cyclone in the Western Hemisphere. An estimated 22,000 people died throughout the Lesser Antilles when the storm passed through the islands from October 10 to October 16. Specifics on the hurricane's track and strength are unknown, as the official Atlantic hurricane database only goes back to 1851.
The hurricane struck Barbados likely as a Category 5 hurricane, with at least one estimate of wind gusts as high as 200 mph before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius, and causing thousands of deaths on those islands. Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm caused heavy losses to the British fleet contesting for control of the area, significantly weakening British control over the Atlantic. The hurricane later passed near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola, causing heavy damage near the coastlines. It ultimately turned to the northeast and was last observed on October 20 southeast of Atlantic Canada.
The death toll from the Great Hurricane alone exceeds that of many entire decades of Atlantic hurricanes.
On a technical note: wind strength on Barbados was estimated from damage to solid structures and debris such as straw that was found embedded in tree trunks. Seasoned naval officers also recorded their observations of the storm’s stupendous strength.
Stone warehouses on St. Eustatius destroyed by Great Hurricane of 1780.
Studying history gives us a sense of perspective about the human condition. Understanding the calamities, tragedies, and errors of the past equips us to recognize when people in positions authority are distorting reality in the pursuit of their selfish interests.
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/great-hurricane-of-1780-remains-the
*************************************************************Bureaucrats Afraid Democracy Will Undermine Their Climate Alarmist Agenda
I have frequently written over the last several years that the agenda of the climate-alarm lobby in the Western world is not consistent with the maintenance of democratic forms of government. [emphasis, links added]
Governments maintained by free elections, the free flow of communications, and other democratic institutions are not able to engage in the kinds of long-term central planning exercises required to force a transition from one form of energy and transportation systems to completely different ones.
Why? Once the negative impacts of vastly higher prices for all forms of energy begin to impact the masses, the masses in such democratic societies are going to rebel, first at the ballot box, and if that is not allowed by the elites to work, then by more aggressive means.
This is not a problem for authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government, like those in Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia, where long-term central planning projects invoking government control of the means of production is a long-ingrained way of life. If the people revolt, then the crackdowns are bound to come.
This societal dynamic is a simple reality of life that the pushers of the climate alarmist narrative and forced energy transition in Western societies have been loathe to admit.
But, in recent days, two key figures who have pushed the climate alarm narrative in both the United States and Canada have agreed with my thesis in public remarks.
In so doing, climate alarmists are uttering the quiet part out loud about their real agenda.
Last week, former Obama Secretary of State and Biden climate czar John Kerry made remarks about the “problem” posed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that should make every American’s skin crawl.
Speaking about the inability of the federal government to stamp out what it believes to be misinformation on big social media platforms, Kerry said:
“Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” adding, “I think democracies are, are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing.”
Never mind that the U.S. government has long been the most focused purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in our society. Kerry wants to stop the free flow of information on the Internet.
The most obvious targets are Elon Musk and X, the only big social media platform that does not willingly submit to the government’s demands to censor speech.
Kerry’s desired solution is for Democrats to “win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to, to, implement change.”
The change desired by Kerry, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other prominent Democrats is to obtain enough power in Congress and the presidency to revoke the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, enact the economically ruinous Green New Deal, and do it all before the public has any opportunity to rebel.
Not to be outdone by Kerry, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada, who is a longtime member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, was quoted Monday as saying:
“Our shrinking glaciers, and our warming oceans, are asking us wordlessly but emphatically if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change.”
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the central governments of both Canada and the United States have moved in increasingly authoritarian directions under their current leadership, both of which have used the climate alarmist narrative as justification.
This move was widely predicted once the utility of the COVID-19 pandemic to rationalize government censorship and restrictions of individual liberties began to fade in 2021.
Frustrated by their perceived need to move even faster to restrict freedoms and destroy democratic levers of public response to their actions, these zealots are now discarding their soft talking points in favor of more aggressive messaging.
This new willingness to say the quiet part out loud should truly alarm anyone who values their freedoms.
**********************************************
German Leaders Resign After ‘Green’ Party’s Crushing Election Loss
Things just keep getting worse for the ‘greens’ in Germany. After two terrible performances in recent state elections the Party “crashed out of the state parliament” in the Brandenburg region of Germany (which surrounds Berlin)
Results were so awful, the two current leaders of the German ‘greens’ have jointly stepped down.
The ‘greens’ won a mere four percent of the vote in the region, not even reaching the minimum five percent required to win a parliamentary seat in the State election.
About 70% of their voter base had abandoned them in the last five years.
In Thuringia, the entire traffic light ruling coalition of three parties barely amassed 10 percent of the vote collectively.
The right-leaning AfD (Alternative for Germany) party “keeps rising despite efforts to stop the party” says Nette Nöstlinger at Politico, slightly baffled. The establishment used the nastiest names they could think of, and it didn’t work:
The AfD keeps rising despite efforts to stop the party
Germany’s mainstream leaders have made a concerted effort to stop the rise of the AfD by warning voters of the party’s growing extremism, with some leaders even calling it a Nazi party.
We’ve heard this before:
State-level domestic intelligence authorities have classified the local branches of the party in both Saxony and Thuringia as extremist organizations aiming to undermine German democracy.
The nasty names are backfiring, because no one is listening anymore:
That points to a core problem that won’t be easy for centrist parties to grapple with — a growing mistrust of the centrists and the country’s institutions that has fomented anti-establishment fervor across a large swath of the country.
In other words, even as many centrist leaders and institutions in Germany warn of the AfD’s extremism, many voters have simply stopped listening. In fact, the approach may be backfiring by alienating AfD voters.
When the TV commentators called the AfD “extremist”, the leader in Thuringia said:
“Please stop stigmatizing me … We are the number one people’s party in Thuringia. You don’t want to classify one-third of Thuringian voters as right-wing extremists, do you?”
But of course, the TV commentariat probably did want to do exactly that…
Bullying is brittle. When it fails, it crumbles into anti-matter, because there was nothing but nastiness to fall back on.
Even The Guardian has noticed that the ‘greens’ have a crisis:
In the recent election campaigns, it [The greens] often appeared to be the punchbag for parties across the spectrum.
Accusations were rife that the party was trying to “dictate” the lives of ordinary Germans – from which type of heating system to use, to which car to drive – with the BSW and AfD going so far as to compare the gtreens to the Communist regime of the former German Democratic Republic.
There is hope. Young voters are abandoning the party faster than any other age bracket:
The party has also lost a larger proportion of its younger voters at recent elections than any other party.
In Sunday’s Brandenburg poll, for instance, it saw its support in the 16-to-24 age bracket drop by 24 percentage points, a bigger fall than in any other age range. —
Eugyppius says — Something strange and unexpected is happening to the Greens — “Everyone hates them”.
The Crisis of the Greens and the Future of the Left
I have been thinking a lot about the Greens since their drubbing in the recent German elections. Something strange and unexpected is happening to them – something that even two years ago I wouldn’t have predicted.
They are bleeding support; they are on the defensive and suddenly everybody hates them. In East Germany you could even say that they are in outright collapse.
The party of the future, the party of the youth, the party at the cutting edge of progressivism, is now withering on the vine. And I suspect that this is not just happening in Germany.
It may be happening here faster than it is in other countries, but the Greens are an international phenomenon, and Green politics are in trouble in many places beyond the Federal Republic.
Votes for the ‘greens’ have been stolen from both sides
The collapse in popularity is about the climate, the heat pumps, the cars, the energy prices — but it’s also about immigration and the war. A new leftist force has appeared from nowhere in the last few months, run by a former communist, but wanting to curb immigration:
In some ways, the biggest winner of the night was the populist-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which is led by a former member of East Germany’s communist party.
The BSW finished third in both states, a notable result for a party that only formed several months ago.
The party, which merges traditional right-wing stances on immigration and other social issues, has repeatedly called for an end to German military aid for Ukraine and negotiations with Putin — a view for which there is much sympathy in Germany’s formerly communist East. — Politico
It’s part of the Great Realignment of politics. The new force on the left attacks the Greens for being arrogant and out of touch with the workers:
Is Germany’s rising superstar so far left she’s far right?
Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of “left conservatism” is upending German politics ahead of critical elections in the east.
Listening to Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s hard-left icon, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the greatest threat to democracy is “lifestyle leftists” nursing lattes in reusable cups while shopping for organic kale at a Berlin farmers’ market.
Such well-off, eco-friendly urban bohemians hold what they deem to be “morally impeccable” views about everything from Ukraine to climate change, she says, and then impose those beliefs over regular people with draconian zeal.
Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of “left conservatism” is very tailored to East Germany, but some of it will translate widely. Uncontrolled immigration is a hot button everywhere.
She attacks the influx of asylum seekers as a threat to the welfare state, which, she says, requires a “certain degree of homogeneity to function”.
She attacks the gender-bender transformations as something that benefits the big pharmaceutical companies. All of this will resonate across the political divide.
At one point last year, the leader of the AfD in Thuringia was so impressed with her that he invited her to join the party in a speech.
The pure environmental ‘greens’ are a luxury bubble that no one can afford anymore.
Those days are over.
https://principia-scientific.com/german-leaders-resign-after-green-partys-crushing-election-loss/
**************************************************We have reached the end of the Olympic summer in Paris, comprising of the Olympics and the Paralympics
Though the U.S. finished at the top in the Olympics and in the top three at Paralympics, much of the world’s attention was on the Olympics’ obscene mockery of Christianity in its opening ceremony at Paris.
It also overshadowed some unprecedented events in the city. A few days prior to the games, French authorities fined the country’s second most popular news channel 20,000 euros for challenging the popular narrative about a purported climate crisis.
CNews, a round-the-clock news operation, was charged by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM) with a broadcast’s failing to adequately challenge views skeptical of the global warming scare.
“This is the first time in France and internationally that ARCOM or a regulatory authority has issued a financial sanction for a breach concerning an environmental subject,” said QuotaClimat, an organization that reportedly has complained in the past about the climate reporting of various media.
The case of CNews raises serious concerns about press freedom – a cornerstone of democratic societies — and the public’s access to diverse perspectives on environmental issues. While the regulator argued that the channel failed to provide sufficient context and counterarguments, critics contend that the decision sets a dangerous precedent, effectively requiring media outlets to adhere to a specific ideological position.
The role of journalism in a democracy is not to parrot official viewpoints or consensus opinions but rather to investigate, question and present different perspectives on important issues. By imposing restrictions on how climate issues can be reported, France undermines this crucial function of the media.
This crackdown on climate reporting exemplifies a broader trend of using authorities backed by official powers to curb the expression of views that challenge a government’s preferred narrative, a concerning development for anybody favoring an open society.
The practice has become far too common in academic research as well. Scientists who challenge the crisis narrative are subjected to witch hunts and termination from their professions.
Many climate scientists, influenced heavily by funding sources, are transforming their discipline into something that hardly qualifies as science. While their work has the appearance of scientific research and is conducted by those with scientific credentials, both its methodologies and findings are heavily shaped by the agendas of special interest groups, political figures and international governing bodies.
Researchers and their organizations, in too many cases, have become harvesters of grants rather than seekers of truth. Such scientists are supplicants of governments and wealthy foundations wanting particular findings and willing to pay for them.
Those who champion genuine scientific inquiry must speak out against deliberate efforts by climate alarmists to discredit sceptics, whose questions are manifestations of critical thinking. Inquiry into popular theories should be welcome, not treated as sedition.
From Galileo’s astronomical discoveries to more recent controversies in fields like genetics and nuclear energy, attempts to protect the popular view have often backfired. slowing scientific progress and technological advancement.
In the case of climate change, this is true too. Restrictive energy policies — justified on the basis of addressing a “climate crisis” — already have impeded economic growth and increased prices. Ideologues seek to reverse decades of advancement in clean-coal power generation, oil and gas development and other technologies.
Scientific understanding of Earth’s climate is not furthered by silencing dissent but through rigorous research, peer review and open debate. By allowing a diversity of voices in the media, including those that challenge the so-called “consensus,” opportunities for truth arise.
Isolated intrusions on press freedom are annoying. But actions like that of the French regulator for reporting on a climate story can be replicated by other governments and for other subjects – a certain eventuality without the intervention of honest citizens
For this is the proverbial slippery slope greased by powerful people’s lust for control or money or both. Left alone, only the most ruthless of the politically connected get to say where it ends. Even they can’t say for sure, but history tells us it ends badly.
https://cornwallalliance.org/gag-on-climate-reporting-is-another-french-obscenity/
***************************************All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment