On Friday afternoon's show of the same name, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell dedicated a segment to a global warming alarmist who blames recent hurricane intensity Due to global warming, more severe storms are predicted to occur in the future. [emphasis, links added]
His name is Porter Fox. He is not a qualified scientist. He holds a BA in political science and an MFA in fiction.
Although sometimes as many as four hurricanes make landfall in the U.S. in a hurricane season, Mitchell set the bar with much fanfare, saying there have been three in the past few weeks:
Mitchell: So, from Florida to North Carolina, people are trying to recover from back-to-back hurricanes in less than three weeks — go figure. Most climate scientists agree The storm grew larger and more powerful. The damage is getting worse. The Earth's warming oceans are not only making storms stronger and wetter, but they are also changing their paths, putting more and more East Coast Americans at serious risk. There are six weeks left in the 2024 hurricane season, and scientists are warning that Milton may not be the last major storm we see.
When Fox, a credentialed fiction writer, came on board as a guest, he argued that the number of hurricanes that had formed in recent years was a record number in the past 50 years, but failed to mention that, as NewsBusters has previously documented, if just look Look at the hurricane making landfall, The past 150 years have also seen periods of frequent hurricanes. (Before the 1970s, satellite technology didn't exist to detect all storms far out to sea.)
Porter Fox: You know, what's interesting is that the number of storms forecast remains pretty much the same, but the difference is you're seeing more major hurricanes. There have been more major hurricanes in the past six years than there were 50 years ago. Every decade, a hurricane has an 8% chance – and an even greater chance of becoming a major hurricane…
In the future, we're anticipating a possible 20% spike in what they call super severe Category 5 storms, and possibly Category 6 storms one day soon in the United States — even bigger and stronger than anything we've ever seen All dangerous – something that would be hard to imagine after the past three weeks.
Then the doomsday duo Talk of more hurricanes could deposit intense storm activity further inward. Fox warned:
What I'm saying is that officials need to be prepared for the reality that the intensification of storms is happening, it's not going to pause, and it's going to get worse year after year, year after year. These future storms will last longer. Some of them will move more slowly, amplifying the damage many times. In the future, they will go deep into the western United States, reaching as far as New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. We saw in Helen what happens when a hurricane comes 500 miles from the coast into North Carolina.
He concluded by objecting to voting for global warming skeptics:
These inland areas are not prepared for hurricanes. I don't think they ever thought they were going to have to deal with this, but, as I found in my reporting in this book, this is our future, and this is what FEMA and the federal government really need to get right Prepare. Americans need to stop putting politicians in power who don’t believe climate change is real. They didn't believe the storm would amplify. If they are not going to take action, they certainly need to help the victims who are really affected.
Read the break and transcript from NewsBusters
