For months now we’ve heard the term “fake news” hurled about. We’ve also heard that “facts are fungible”.
There is a certain amount of truth in both. There is now and has always been fake news, news that is heavily slanted in order to push a certain agenda. There is even the famous story of William Randolph Hearst who replied to a January 1897 cable from correspondent Fredrick Remington which read “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” with “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” History shows were we went from there.
Facts are also often in the eye of the beholder. “The winners write the history books.” How many history books are being re-written as we discover that events were mis-reported, not reported or outright covered up?
Let’s cast all this in terms of the now seemingly discredited “global warming”, which has lately been rebranded as “climate change” because the fetishists who were pushing it got tired of memes like this one.
In a number of threads on the late Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor site a number of very smart folks poked huge holes in the data being used to “prove” global warming. These holes usually revolved around the inaccuracy of the data, which often dated back 100+ years, and was gathered under questionable circumstances using instruments that left more than a little to be desired in the accuracy department.
It also didn’t help their case when it was found that current instruments were apparently being sited in such a way as to…let’s say skew the numbers. It got worse for them when they were caught outright fudging the numbers.
At any rate, eventually the fetishists decided to rebrand their cause as “climate change,” because the covers all the bases. If the climate is getting warmer, “Ermagehrd, it’s Climate Change!” If it’s getting cooler, “Ermagehrd, it’s Climate Change!”
Even though I don’t agree with the hysteria this crowd is trying to gin up (Hey, you gotta justify your funding somehow), I do agree that climate changes. Eventually. I’ll never see it, and I doubt my great-great-great-great grandkids will, but it will change over time. Sea levels will go up, sea levels will go down. Average temp will go up, average temp will go down. So on and so forth. But I don’t think that it’s something we need to lose our minds about.
That’s why this ticks me off.
Hurricane Irma was no doubt a stone bitch. People died and a lot of damage was done. You don’t have to exaggerate in order for people to get it. Watch the freaking news. Look at Barbuda for an example. But if what this data shows is correct, then we are outright being lied to about the seriousness of the storm in the context of what happened in the US. By the time it hit Naples, the data and the evidence on the ground says it was a much less dangerous storm than it had been, perhaps as low as a Category 1 hurricane. As you can see in the short video below, there is a fair of difference between a Category 1 hurricane and a Category 3.
If you watch the videos from Naples, you’ll see a lot of flooding, but you won’t see the level of damage that you should see with a Category 3 hurricane. Don’t trust me, go look on YouTube. I have. Even in the Keys, the damage appears to be mostly from flooding. Wind-related damage isn’t nearly as bad as a Category 4 hit, which they are said to have sustained, would indicate. Well-built structures fail completely in Category 4 hurricanes. How many mobile homes are still standing in some of those pictures?
So, are we being lied to by our government (yet again)? If so, why? Or is it the weather and news industries, desperate to have the storm live up to the hype? If we were lied to, someone should be held responsible. The fact that the storm died down before it hit the US is something we should be rejoicing in, not hiding because if failed to meet the needs of someone’s agenda.
Yes, I am getting very conspiratorially minded these days.