New York floods – facts v myths
FOUR days after hitting Louisiana, Hurricane Ida, downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, brought heavy rain and flash floods to New York and Connecticut. At least nine died.
As is invariably the case these days, the media immediately went into climate porn mode, labelling the event ‘historic’ and ‘a 1,000-year event’, and claiming that it was made much worse by global warming.
In fact floods like these are all too common in the north-eastern US as hurricanes make their way north.
New York City was worst affected this week, with 7in of rain in 24 hours. This is certainly a rare occurrence, but not unprecedented there. Indeed the highest daily rainfall on record in Central Park was 8.28in in 1882. There have been four other previous instances of higher rainfall than during Ida, in 1882, 1903, 1977 and 2007:
Highest Daily Rainfall Each Year at NY Central Park 1869 to 2020
The real problem in New York this time was that drains were poorly maintained, coupled with the failure to issue proper warnings. Most, if not all, of the deaths involved people drowning in basements, which should have been entirely avoidable.
The flooding across the Tristate region of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut was light in comparison to many other storms in previous years. Particularly notorious was Hurricane Diane in 1955. After making landfall in North Carolina, it headed north as a tropical storm to New England, where, according to the US National Weather Service, it created some of the most destructive floods ever seen in the river valleys of eastern Pennsylvania, northwest New Jersey, southeast New York and southern New England. Diane dumped 20 inches of rain in two days, with Connecticut worst affected.
I would thoroughly recommend watching the newsreel from that disaster, which can be seen here.
It is clear that Diane was on a totally different scale from Ida.
It is easy for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to blame climate change to deflect attention from his own failings, but it is inexcusable for the media to join in the conspiracy.
By politicising Ida, they are insulting the memory of all those who suffered and died during Hurricane Diane and all the other weather disasters of the past.
‘Weather disasters on the increase’ – latest fake news from the BBC
You may have seen a story on the BBC a few days ago, titled ‘Climate change: Big increase in weather disasters over the past five decades’ by their environmental correspondent, the absurd Matt McGrath.
He wrote: ‘The number of weather-related disasters to hit the world has increased five-fold over the past 50 years, says the World Meteorological Organisation. Scientists say that climate change, more extreme weather and better reporting are behind the rise in these extreme events.’
The claims are self-evident poppycock, published by the WMO for purely political propaganda purposes. Unsurprisingly the gullible McGrath fell for them hook, line and sinker. If he had bothered to read the report, he would have discovered that the number of disasters has actually declined in the last decade, which rather destroys the argument.
Number of reported disasters – World Meteorological Organisation
But why are there more disasters now than there used to be in the 1970s? Simple: because better reporting systems mean more get spotted and recorded.
The WMO data comes from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which began publishing it in 1998. Until then they largely relied on newspaper reports and the like for recording earlier disasters. As they themselves warned in 2004, earlier data was incomplete, outdated or unusable for a variety of reasons. They stressed:
Each year, as regular as clockwork, these claims get regurgitated. Last year it was the UN, and the year before, the Left-wing think tankInstitute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). And as surely as night follows day, their claims are faithfully trumpeted by the BBC and the rest of the gullible media.
Where did our Mediterranean summers go?
Despite plenty of Met Office/BBC/Guardian hype about a few hot days, this summer proved to be pretty unremarkable in the end.
According to the Met Office’s Central England Temperature series, the long running, high quality dataset, the average mean temperature this summer was 16.3C, meaning that there have been 48 other summers as warm or warmer, including 16 in the 18th century and another ten in the 19th.
Central England Temperature Series – 1659 to 2021
Long ago, we were promised Mediterranean summers every year if we did not end our sinful ways.
I’m still waiting!
Climate Hypocrite of the Week
Luvvie Emma Watson, famous for looking cute alongside Harry Potter, is a well-known climate warrior. Last year she even co-signed a letter to the government begging for more wimmin in decision-making roles at the forthcoming COP26 climate jamboree.
Surely she can’t be the same Emma Watson who was spotted this week flying into Chelsea in a private helicopter?
Who does she think she is? Emma Thompson?
