Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
First the facts. Skeptics point to the Accumulated Cyclone Index (graphic A) that measures the global energy of all hurricanes. Lots of variability but NO TREND. Hurricane expert Chris Landsea presents a graph showing no increasing hurricanes, whether strong or weak since 1850 (graphic B).
But climate scientists who are not hurricane experts, will push a narrative that CO2 warming is making hurricanes more intense. But when hurricane storm tracks are followed, hurricanes only sustain intense category 4 or 5 winds for a very short time, and only in limited locations. As exemplified by Hurricane Ian, hurricanes often intensify as they travel northward over cooler surface waters, exhibiting the Temperature Paradox: which is exact opposite of what climate alarmists fearmonger!
Using the National Weather Services’ online model I measured the temperatures throughout Ian’s Storm track (graphic C). When Ian was a category 1 to the west of Jamaica surface waters were 29C. Approaching Cuba it intensified to category 3 even though surface temperatures dropped to 28C. After exiting Cuba, water temperatures fell further to 26.7C. And just before landfall on Florida’s west coast as a category 4, surface water temperatures fell to 25.4C.
A major factor controlling hurricane intensity is the amount of ocean subsurface heat in ocean’s barrier layers that gets supplied to the storm. Greenhouse infrared can only penetrate a few microns into the ocean’s surface before being immediately radiated away. The sun’s energy however, penetrates 20 to100 meter depths. When a layer of freshwater overlays salty subsurface water, the solar heated water cannot convect to the surface. So it is trapped and accumulates.
Where barrier layers are thin Category 1 storms occur as subsurface heat is exhausted and then hurricane suck up cold water that weakens the storm. Where barrier layers are thick, hurricane will intensify to category 4 and 5 (graphic D) In the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River supplies the fresh water, while the Orinoco and Amazon provide the fresh water to form barrier layers that intensify hurricanes in the Caribbean.
Similarly, the Bay of Bengal is known for many intense hurricanes, as the freshwater outflows from the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers generate strong Barrier Layers.
And it was a strong barrier layer and a natural El Nino that intensified Hurricane Otis to category 5 when it hit Acapulco in October 2023. Around the same time, Hurricane Norma made landfall as a Category 1. Hurricane intensification has nothing to do with CO2 climate change.
On Episode #130 of The Climate Realism Show, The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely welcome back Stan Goldenberg, one of the nation’s top hurricane experts, to break down Hurricane Milton. Was this actually and officially a “major” hurricane by the time it made landfall?
After a slow start to the 2024 Hurricane Season, it seems like Mother Nature wants to make up for lost time. First Helene hit the Florida Panhandle and caused a disaster in Appalachia. And this week, Hurricane Milton struck an area of the Florida Gulf Coast that hadn’t be hit with a storm this strong in more than 100 years.
On Episode #130 of The Climate Realism Show, The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely welcome back Stan Goldenberg, one of the nation’s top hurricane experts, to break down Hurricane Milton. Was this actually and officially a “major” hurricane by the time it made landfall?
We will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including Bill Nye saying if you need to vote for Kamala Harris to stop hurricanes, Al Gore exploiting hurricanes for fun and profit, and the seemingly unsinkable notion that humans are able to seed and even steer hurricanes.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET so you can leave your questions and comments for the show in the chat.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) shamefully attempted to cash in on Hurricane Milton as the storm ravaged the Florida coast, spreading false assertions and misinformation to further its aggressive climate change agenda. Presenting a Master Class on deception and sensationalism, the MJS claimed, “the message sent by this year’s hurricane season” is “climate change is here, there are no havens, and it’s deadly and expensive.” If the MJS and author Caitlin Looby had bothered to do research, they’d learn there never was any “climate havens”.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) shamefully attempted to cash in on Hurricane Milton as the storm ravaged the Florida coast, spreading false assertions and misinformation to further its aggressive climate change agenda. Presenting a Master Class on deception and sensationalism, the MJS claimed, “the message sent by this year’s hurricane season” is “climate change is here, there are no havens, and it’s deadly and expensive.” If the MJS and author Caitlin Looby had bothered to do research, they’d learn there never was any “climate havens”.
“The science is straightforward and incontestable,” the MJS claimed. In this regard, the article is true. The science is straightforward and incontestable that hurricane events like Milton are becoming less frequent and severe, that warmer temperatures are saving lives, and that the MJS makes Pinocchio look like a legendary truth-teller.
Some facts regarding Hurricanes might help them,
Tampa is undergoing its longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane strike. The last one occurred in 1921.
Florida recently underwent a 10-year period without a hurricane strike of any size (ending in 2016), which is by far the longest such period in recorded history.
“The message” of Hurricane Milton is that while global warming/climate change is causing a remarkable decrease in hurricane activity, climate change isn’t making all hurricanes disappear. Taking advantage of the fact that a relatively few hurricanes still occur, charlatans like the MJS will peddle misinformation that climate change causes all hurricanes and makes them worse.
Attempting to personalize its climate change alarmism to Wisconsinites, the MJS cited recent wildfires in Canada and the American West, claiming drifting smoke from the distant wildfires killed people in Wisconsin and that climate change caused those wildfires. There is no scientific evidence for this claim and it seems on its face, extremely unlikely that smoke from distant wildfires killed or even sickened anyone in Wisconsin. However, assuming for the sake of argument that people in Wisconsin die from wildfires that occur in far distant places, the science is straightforward and incontestable that wildfires are becoming less frequent and severe as the planet modestly warms. In 1998 NASA satellites began precisely measuring the amount of lands burned by wildfires. According to NASA, the amount of land burned by wildfires declined by 24 percent since 1998. Peer-reviewed studies show the trend has been declining for more than a century. If wildfires burning thousands of miles away – or anywhere else – are truly killing Wisconsinites, we have climate change to thank for saving countless lives as wildfires become less frequent and severe.
Hillary Clinton made news this week by calling on Big Tech to censor and suppress online misinformation. Perhaps Big Tech will be inspired by this call to action and respond by censoring and suppressing the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Don’t count on it. In the meantime, we can all learn the truth about climate change here at Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students.
“To tackle the climate crisis, lower energy costs, and secure energy independence….” (General Preamble)
Kamala “climate light” Harris, as a campaigner, will not say that climate change is an “existential crisis” (much less yell it as the alarmists want). Harris rebuffs the notion that she would ban hydraulic fractionation with natural gas, reversing her previous pronouncements. She also states that electric cars (EVs) will not be mandated for drivers, backing away from a Biden Administration goal. Finally, Harris speaks little about the Green New Deal in general.
She is trying to get elected in the face of energy exceptionalism, which is the opposite of the Green New Deal. But her vagueness allows the major themes of ’24 Democratic Party Platform to be controlling.
The energy/climate narrative in the 91-page document does not include energy in Chapter Three: Lowering Costs. But Chapter 4, “Tackling the Climate Crisis, Lowering Energy Costs, & Securing Energy Independence” (p. 32) starts with climate alarmism and continues with the villains Donald Trump and Big Oil:
Every year, the devastation caused by climate change grows more urgent. Across the country, Americans experience the dire impacts of climate change: Floods and storms wipe more homes off the map. Wildfire smoke spreads thousands of miles, forcing millions to shelter indoors. We’ve had the worst droughts in a thousand years, and the fastest sea-level rise in over a century. Last year was Earth’s hottest on record. Natural disasters and extreme weather have cost America over one trillion dollars in damages in just the last seven years.
… It’s a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil, who still deny what we all see happening right before our eyes…. Now, Trump is set to do Big Oil’s and polluters’ bidding again.
It is all-good-things from the federally directed “energy transition,” which bribes consumers to buy the energies and energy-using appliances and vehicles that they would not naturally purchase. The term forced energy transformation applies, at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.
Now to the platform’s claims about lower energy costs, jobs, American Climate Corps, electric vehicles, and climate policy.
“Lowering energy costs” revolves around “cheaper, cleaner energy and with tax credits to make home energy use more efficient and affordable.” Except that free-market choice by consumers themselves–with their own money on the line–is not what the government wants. And special tax favors for some are paid for by all. Classic misdirection….
Jobs? The claim that the “landmark” Inflation Reduction Act “has so far directly created over 300,000 jobs in communities nationwide” is the broken-window fallacy as election propaganda. What would have the (taxpayer) resources done if they had not been hijacked by the federal government? What cheaper, more reliable electric generation capacity would there be without DOE grants, the Production Tax Credit, and the Investment Tax Credit? What would the price of a new car be without the subsidies to electric vehicles. What would the price of new appliances—such as stoves, refrigerators, washing machines—be without the book of mandatory efficiency standards from DOE.
American Climate Corps. “Democrats launched the American Climate Corps, a new work force training and service initiative that will put more than 20,000 young Americans to work on clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience projects nationwide,” with a goal to triple its size by the start of 2030. Ouch! And civil libertarians, please stand up. The idea of a New Deal works program propagandizing youth is scary and Orwellian to the max.
Electric Vehicles. This one has turned into a campaign liability, so the Platform’s entire paragraph is worth reciting.
With tax credits, Democrats helped quadruple sales of electric vehicles, with the goal that 50 percent of all new passenger cars sold in the U.S. by 2030 be electric. We’re protecting American children from asthma-related diesel pollution by giving school districts rebates to buy thousands of electric school buses so kids don’t have to breathe polluted air. We’ll keep working to electrify the nation’s fleet of school buses, transit buses, and federal vehicles, including the U.S. Postal Service fleet. We’ll double funding to repair and expand active transportation and public transit, reducing pollution and traffic, and connecting people to jobs and opportunity. And we’ll work to electrify our ports and waterways, prioritizing progress towards a goal of zero-emissions freight.
So what are the cost and operational disadvantages of this forced transition? If electric vehicles, school buses, and port machinery are not already in service, why not? And where is the money coming from in the federal budget? Is a surplus being worked down? Or is the deficit and debt ballooning?
Climate Activism. No surprise here. “President Biden has restored America’s global climate leadership, once again making our nation the world’s pivotal force against climate change. The United States rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement on day one of his presidency, and President Biden set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, in line with climate science.” Continuing:
The Administration has rallied the world to commit for the first time to transitioning away from fossil fuels. It set a bold new goal for nations to triple renewable energy worldwide and to double energy efficiency by 2030; and it helped to launch a new global clean-energy supply chain partnership to make that happen. As Democrats, we believe the United States has an indispensable role to play in solving the climate crisis, and we have an obligation to help other nations carry out this work.
The failure of climate mitigation policies, now in its fourth decade, speaks for itself. Oil, natural gas, and coal are each in a global growth mode despite governments madly spending money and increasing mandates at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. Social injustice at the expense of the average person–whatever happened to Democrats as the Party of the small and vulnerable?
Finally, the bogeyman of Big Oil returns in the heart of the document. “Throughout, we’ll keep standing up to Big Oil, as our clean energy boom breaks the industry’s monopoly hold on energy markets….”
Going forward, we’ll also eliminate tens of billions of dollars in other unfair oil and gas subsidies. When windfall profiteering causes prices to spike at the pump, we’ll release our own supplies to keep costs down for American families. And, when we hear of potential collusion or price-gouging, we’ll hold oil and gas executives accountable.
Maybe with electoral defeat, the Democratic Party can remake itself on energy and climate policy.
Google’s former chief Eric Schmidt thinks we shouldn’t let AI’s ballooning power consumption worry us, because putting AI to work on climate change issues will be our best shot at solving them.
Schmidt was speaking at a recent AI summit in Washington DC, and his comments echo those of Microsoft founder Bill Gates who expressed very similar sentiments at an event in London earlier this year.
…
“All of that will be swamped by the enormous needs of this new technology,” he said, adding that “we may make mistakes with respect to how it’s used, but I can assure you that we’re not going to get there through conservation.”
Schmidt further stated that he believes that “we’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it,” and that he would rather bet on AI solving the problems than constraining the development of the tech and still having the problems anyway.
This rather optimistic view of the Earth-saving potential of AI can perhaps be explained by the fact that Schmidt has his own investments in the technology. According to Business Insider, he is the founder of White Stork, a defense company that develops AI-powered drones.
I guess in the future radical greens won’t enjoy the same social media and search engine privileges they once did.
A green political movement can disappear really quickly when it outlives it usefulness, just look at the rapid fall into obscurity of Greta Thunberg and her “Fridays for Future” movement.
Guest Post by: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This summary serves as a fact check on the biggest false claims made in the media in September, 2024.
Guest Post by: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This summary serves as a fact check on the biggest false claims made in the media in September, 2024.
We’re taking a break this month from the tiresome comparison of NASA satellite data with real-time surface stations reporting to bring you this graph (OK, it’s our straight red line) from the Washington Post:
As you can plainly see, the supposed “global temperature” has been cooling for 485 million years. But you may be thinking, are global temperatures from that far back really credible? Here’s the answer: As there is no such physical thing as “global temperature,” all guesstimates of such an imaginary thing are equally valid. And now that we have solved the alleged climate crisis, let’s move on to this month’s fact checks.
Links: The Washington Postarticle, U.S. fish and Wildlife Service comments.
To close out this month, let’s go back to the Washington Post graph focusing on the most recent period shown in the inset. The recent warming did not begin with the advent of coal-fired power plants, SUVs and cheeseburgers. It began 20,000 years ago, which is about 15,000 years before recorded human history. Until next month, check out these and more fact checks at:
Total CO2 emissions have not increased for 10 years. Emissions from fossil sources have increased slightly, but this has been offset by reduced CO2 emissions due to changes in land use (deforestation, forest fires, agriculture). See next graphic, source: Global carbon project 2023) (Red: total CO2 emissions, Black: CO2 emissions from fossil sources, Brown: CO2 emissions from land use).
the unusually strong warming of global temperatures since 2023 continues. And although the strong El Niño of 23/24 is over, the temperatures remain high. At this point, I have pointed out two possible influences of warming. One is the eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga in 2022, which threw a column of water up into the stratosphere and increased the concentration of water (the most important greenhouse gas) by 15%, thereby causing a warming effect of a few tenths of a degree.
Another important reason for warming is the reduction in sulphate dust particles due to the international limitation of the sulphur content of shipping. NASA scientists came to the conclusion that the air pollution control measure reduced the dust particles in the air that contribute to cloud formation and therefore increased direct sunlight on Earth. They calculate that 80% of the warming since 2020 is due to this measure. It is true that the extraordinary warming is being used by parts of politics, the media and climate activists to tighten the steps to reduce CO2 emissions. However, the development of total CO2 emissions over the last 10 years hardly allows for a causal relationship between the extraordinary warming and CO2.
Total CO2 emissions have not increased for 10 years. Emissions from fossil sources have increased slightly, but this has been offset by reduced CO2 emissions due to changes in land use (deforestation, forest fires, agriculture). See next graphic, source: Global carbon project 2023) (Red: total CO2 emissions, Black: CO2 emissions from fossil sources, Brown: CO2 emissions from land use).
Of course, CO2 concentrations in the air have also increased in the last 10 years, as about the same amount has been added every year and today only about 57% of emissions are absorbed by oceans and plants. The rest will be mined in a few decades. The greenhouse effect caused by CO2 has therefore increased slightly over the last 10 years, but it does not explain the strong warming of the last three years (see first graph of the UAH temperatures at the top).
As early as 2021, Dr. Hans-Rolf Dübal and I carried out a sensational evaluation of NASA’s measurements of incoming short-wave solar radiation and long-wave reflection caused by greenhouse gases. We came to the conclusion that around 80% of the warming is due to increased irradiation of short-wave radiation from the sun. The main reason for this was the decline in clouds. Higher permeability to incoming solar radiation leads to warming. Of course, an increase in radiation to the earth also leads to an increase in long-wave radiation from the earth and an increase in the greenhouse effect.
But the result was clear. The greenhouse effect of CO2 has a subordinate significance for the warming of the last 20 years. The main effect was the increasing permeability of the clouds to solar radiation, which is also reflected in an increase in the number of sunshine hours per year. In Europe alone, sunshine hours have increased by 250 hours a year in the last 20 years. Other researchers confirmed this surprising development, such as NASA researcher Dr. Norman Loeb, who is responsible for the satellite measurements, Prof. Graeme Stephens (Caltech) and Prof. Thorsten Mauritsen (Stockholm University) or the Finnish climate scientist Prof. Antero Ollila.
But why have the clouds thinned out in the last 20 years? The main candidate for this development is environmental protection measures worldwide for the capture of dust and sulphur dioxide (SO2) – first in the USA and Europe from 1980 and then increasingly in China and Southeast Asia from 2005 onwards. Sulphur dioxide emissions fell by almost half from 2005 to 2022. In addition, from 2020 onwards, shipping emissions were reduced. They alone removed 7 million tons of sulfur dioxide from the air above the world’s oceans.
The decline in clouds is the main cause of warming over the last 20 years The publication by Dr. Hans-Rolf Dübal and me is from 2021 with data up to 2020. We asked ourselves: How has the trend of cloud decline continued since 2020 and have therefore updated the data from the CERES satellite. To anticipate it: the warming of the years 2020-2023 (annual averages) can easily be attributed to the increase in direct solar radiation due to the further thinning of the clouds.
A comparison of the development of short-wave radiation on Earth and long-wave radiation emitted by Earth shows that 2.5 W/m2 is the change in shortwave radiation and 0.66 W/m2 is due to the greenhouse effect. We calculated the radiation effect of CO2 according to the 5th IPCC report of 2018. (pp. 8SM-16). We determined the short-wave radiation from the CERES satellite data. (see next graphic: red : radiation effect of short-wave solar radiation, blue : radiation effect of CO2.
Mind you, these are measurements, not model calculations!
It should be in the highest interest of politics and science to clarify the causes of the increasing solar radiation in detail. Certainly, the reduced cloud-forming dust and sulfur particles played a role. The extent to which warmed oceans contribute is not clear. As it is, however, we are groping in the dark – but politicians are quite certain that a radical fight against CO2 can be derived from this.
Politicians are fighting CO2 – whatever the cost
There is hardly an activity that is not considered by politicians with a punitive tax on the CO2 emitted. From gas and oil heating to fuel, from the manufacture of industrial products to electricity generation, from the CO2 toll on truck transports to the taxation of aviation, goods and services are becoming more expensive and the state is skimming off tens of billions of euros. Yes, even waste incineration will now be subject to CO2 levies and thus the waste fees will also increase. Hardly anyone still has an overview of where the state intervenes and diverts the money collected into subsidies for wind turbines and solar systems.
The latest addition is the CO2 levy on ship transport. Since 1 January 2024, ship transports have also been subject to the CO2 levy. From 2024, 40% of CO2 emissions will be covered by the payment obligation, 70% from 2025 and 100% from 2026. About 6.4 billion will flow into the coffers of the national governments. Intra-European traffic is burdened by 100%, overseas traffic by 50%. For a forty-foot container from Germany, which transports machines or other goods to the Far East or the East Coast of the USA, according to Maersk, the second largest container shipping company, you have to pay €170 in CO2 tax. A Chinese transport pays nothing. The freight rate currently costs about 400 € per container. This clearly shows that transports to and from Europe are becoming more expensive. Refrigerated ships, which also emit CO2 for cooling, have to reckon with 280 € per container.
If an ore freighter sails from Brazil to Germany, it will pay about €2 CO2 tax per ton of ore or coal in 2026. (0.06 t CO2 times 65 €/tCO2 times 0.5). If the ore freighter sails from Brazil to China, it pays nothing. ThyssenKrupp imports about 20 million tons of ore and coal per year. That makes 16 million in 2024 and 40 million in 2026 for the state treasury.
Why does the German government allow its own companies to be worse off in competition with China? The fact that ships on the route from East Asia hardly want to pass through the Suez Canal because of the Houthi attacks and therefore have to sail around Africa triples the CO2 costs. But that doesn’t interest the Brussels Eurocrats. The whole thing runs under the promising title “Fit for future”, which the federal government and the members of the CDU, Greens and SPD in the European Parliament have agreed to with great conviction. What does the competitiveness of an exporting nation like Germany matter when it comes to supposedly saving the climate?
So, just as I predicted yesterday, Milton only hit Florida as a Cat 3 storm, and not the monster, record breaking, once in a century, historic storm which we were told it would be, and which is even now still being reported. (To recap, hurricanes are graded Cat 1 to 5, with 5s being the most powerful).
So, just as I predicted yesterday, Milton only hit Florida as a Cat 3 storm, and not the monster, record breaking, once in a century, historic storm which we were told it would be, and which is even now still being reported. (To recap, hurricanes are graded Cat 1 to 5, with 5s being the most powerful).
Just check some of the headlines:
Florida has been hit by 41 hurricanes of Cat 3 strength or greater since the start of records, and in the US as a whole Milton only ranks the 75th most intense hurricane, in terms of minimum pressure.
Every hurricane can be potentially deadly, every hurricane brings damage and flooding, but there is no evidence that Milton is any more than just another run of the mill storm, either in terms of winds, rain or storm surge. Storm surge has been no more than 8ft, according to Sarasota’s mayor, which is consistent with a strong Cat 2.
As NHC notes, the highest sustained wind speeds measured were 78mph at Venice , which is on the coast only about 10 miles to the south of Siesta Key . Sarasota-Bradenton is a similar distance to the north and had only 40mph winds. They certainly cannot be called catastrophic.
This of course raises the question of why media reporting has consistently tried to portray Milton as something much worse than it actually was. As I reported yesterday, the official forecasts from the NHC have been predicting a weakening of the storm as it approached Florida for some days now.
And as is usually the case, warning intensities have been grossly overestimated in comparison with what the satellite data has been saying:
Hurricane forecaster naturally tend to guess on the top side, as they don’t want to be accused of underestimating a big storm.
But the media do not have that excuse. Partly this stems from the desire for scary headlines.
But there is definitely another motive at play here. By building up public expectations of a record, monster storm, the public then go on to believe that the film footage they see is confirmation of that.
They do not realise, and they are not told, that Florida sees hurricanes like this nearly every year.
If they want to know what exceptional really means, they should look back at hurricanes like 1926 one, which wiped Miami off the map. Or the 1928 Okeechobee one which killed 2500.
Or the most powerful US hurricane on record, 1935’s Labor Day storm, which hit the Florida Keys with winds of 185 mph and a 20ft storm surge, causing catastrophic damage there.
As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida’s west coast, the state’s preparation efforts under Governor Ron DeSantis’s leadership have reached unprecedented levels of scope and competence. From the strategic staging of supplies to innovative traffic management, Florida’s comprehensive approach to hurricane readiness sets a new standard for disaster preparedness.
As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida’s west coast, the state’s preparation efforts under Governor Ron DeSantis’s leadership have reached unprecedented levels of scope and competence. From the strategic staging of supplies to innovative traffic management, Florida’s comprehensive approach to hurricane readiness sets a new standard for disaster preparedness.
This level of preparedness ensures that even if supply chains are disrupted in the aftermath of the hurricane, essential resources will be available to affected communities.
Mobilization of Electrical Linemen
Recognizing the critical importance of power restoration after a hurricane, Florida has marshaled an unprecedented force of electrical linemen. Governor DeSantis announced that over 37,000 linemen are either already in Florida or en route to the state. This number is expected to exceed 40,000 by the time Milton makes landfall, significantly surpassing the resources deployed for previous hurricanes like Helene
The scale of this mobilization is particularly impressive given the ongoing power restoration efforts in neighboring states affected by Hurricane Helene. DeSantis noted that some linemen are traveling from as far as California to assist Florida. This massive deployment of skilled workers positions the state to rapidly restore power in the wake of the storm, minimizing the duration of outages and accelerating recovery efforts.
This hotline serves as a central resource for residents seeking information and assistance. Local governments and emergency management offices are utilizing various platforms to disseminate information. For instance, many counties are using their websites and social media channels to provide real-time updates on shelter locations, evacuation orders, and safety instructions. The Florida Division of Emergency Management maintains a comprehensive website (FloridaDisaster.org) that serves as a one-stop resource for hurricane-related information
Governor DeSantis has also been conducting regular press conferences, providing direct updates to the public and media. These briefings cover a wide range of topics, from evacuation orders to resource deployment, ensuring that residents have access to the most current and accurate information
Innovative Traffic Management
To facilitate smooth evacuations and prevent gridlock, Florida has implemented several innovative traffic management strategies. One of the most significant measures is the suspension of tolls on major highways in West Florida, Central Florida, and on specific routes like Alligator Alley and 595 Express. This action removes a potential barrier to evacuation and helps maintain traffic flow.
This forward-thinking strategy addresses the needs of both traditional and electric vehicles, ensuring that all evacuees can reach their destinations safely. To combat potential price gouging, the state has activated its price gouging hotline and is actively monitoring complaints. This vigilance helps protect consumers during a vulnerable time and maintains public trust in the evacuation process.
As Hurricane Milton approaches, Florida’s preparation efforts under Governor Ron DeSantis’s leadership stand out as a model of comprehensive disaster readiness. From the strategic staging of supplies and personnel to innovative traffic management and proactive fuel distribution, the state has demonstrated an unprecedented level of competence in hurricane preparation. The multi-faceted approach addresses not only immediate evacuation needs but also positions the state for rapid recovery in the storm’s aftermath. By leveraging technology, partnering with private sector entities, and implementing creative solutions to longstanding challenges, Florida has set a new standard for hurricane preparedness. As the storm makes landfall, the true test of these preparations will begin. However, the thoroughness and scale of Florida’s efforts provide a strong foundation for protecting lives, minimizing damage, and accelerating recovery. The lessons learned from this approach are likely to influence disaster preparedness strategies not only in Florida but across the nation and beyond.
North Africa seems to be greening as a result of climate change, which mostly occurs naturally.
Satellite photos and studies have shown that the Sahara desert has been shrinking over the past 40 years, e.g. read here and here.
The latest news is from the southeastern Moroccan desert, which is among the driest around the world, where it is reported to have gotten up to 100 mm of rain within a 24 hour period in September. Hard hit were villages 400 miles from the capital city of Rabat, including Tata, reports Al Jazeera here.
“What’s also fascinating is that normally dry lakes in the Sahara are filling due to this event,” said Moshe Armon, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Several of these lakes are visible in the image as dark blue areas, including one in Morocco’s Iriqui National Park (shown in detail within the inset circle).
“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” added Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology. See more photos here.
“Preliminary satellite analysis shows accumulations of many tens to more than 200 millimeters of rainfall in the areas affected—roughly equivalent to what the region receives in a year. The rainfall accumulation estimates are based on NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM) data,” NASA reported.
The rains, of course, are welcome, making a harsh region a bit less harsh for those living there. Nothing you’ll hear about in the climate propaganda media.
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