Weather is NOT Climate

Anomalous Weather: Both a Weapon and Scourge of Climate Hysterics

James Murphy
New American


Weather is different from climate. There, I said it.

When late season blizzards and an unusually large amount of rain fell this spring in parts of the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River Valley — weather events — causing widespread flooding, adherents of the climate-change religion tore their garments, put on sackcloth, and loudly lamented that global warming was to blame.

A high priestess of Climate Hysterianism, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said in Congress recently, “Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, under water. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back and we’re here and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than their own families? I don’t think so! I don’t think so!”

While tragic for those involved, this year’s floods along the Mississippi are hardly unprecedented. The list of major floods on the Mississippi is long. It is a giant river, and the residents who live adjacent to it understand that it floods frequently. 

Unfortunately, for climate hysterics, weather and its cousin climate don’t always cooperate with their beliefs. Consider for instance, the recent springtime weather in Minnesota.

Worst Storm to Hit New Zealand---Evah!

The Irony Of It All

This past week has seen memorials and services marking the sinking of the Wahine fifty years ago.

Wikipedia provides a terse summary of what occurred:

TEV Wahine was a twin-screw, turbo-electric, roll-on/roll-off passenger and vehicle ferry of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. She was launched at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan, Scotland, in 1965 and worked the New Zealand inter-island route between Wellington and Lyttelton from 1966. On 10 April 1968, near the end of a typical northbound crossing to Wellington, she was caught in a fierce storm stirred by Tropical Cyclone Giselle. She foundered after running aground on Barrett Reef and capsized and sank in the shallow waters near Steeple Rock at the mouth of Wellington Harbour. Of the 734 people on board, 53 people died from drowning, exposure to the elements or from injuries sustained in the hurried evacuation and abandonment of the stricken vessel.

The storm that ripped through Wellington is described as "the worst recorded in New Zealand's history":

Thankfully We Live in an Enlightened Age

A Warning to Jews and Lepers

Atmospheric calamities provoke ignorant fears.  Scapegoats must be found.  In the early 14th century, Europe was troubled by very, very bad weather--somewhat akin to what the UK, Europe, and the United States have experienced over the past eighteen months.

The summer of 1314 was uncommonly cold and wet in Europe.  Crops rotted, harvests were late, and alarmed authorities placed price controls on farm products and firewood.  All these were routine disasters that had happened many times before. 

The awful weather of 1314, however, was just the beginning of a succession of catastrophes.  Bad crops seldom happen two years in a row, but the weather in 1315 was even worse than during the previous year.  Heavy and incessant rains caused flooding that smashed dikes.  Rising rivers destroyed villages.  Violent storms crashed onto the coasts [c.f. the floods and storms in the UK this winter, Ed.]  The tragedy stretched from Scotland to Italy and from the Pyrenees to the homes of the Slavs.  Food prices rose over fivefold and starvation was widespread.  Even that was not the end.  The weather wreaked havoc once again in 1316, causing the worst famine in European history.  People ate cats, rats, insects, and animal droppings, and then, lacking anything better, dug up corpses in the burying grounds.  Epidemics and violent crime were widespread.  Bloody and public self-flagellation was common.  Scapegoats--Jews, lepers, noblemen--were murdered without hesitation.  [Peter L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000),  p.97]

Some observations spring to mind.