The Obama Administration Lies About Hurricanes

Whether human activity significantly influences the Earth’s climate is a matter of opinion, but it is a simple, undeniable fact that there has been no increase in extreme weather events, either globally or in the U.S., in recent years. Even the IPCC, the U.N.’s corps of true climate change believers, admits that this is true.

Hurricanes, for example, have been counted, tracked and measured for many years. There has been no increase in their frequency or severity. In fact, here in the U.S., we are in the midst of the longest period during all of recorded history in which there has been no landfall of a Category IV hurricane. The Earth’s climate warmed, to some degree, from 1975 to 1998 (just as it did from 1910 to 1940) and has been stable since 1998, yet there has been no increase in severe weather events of any kind.

Which brings us to Janet McCabe, who has been nominated by President Obama (or someone acting on his behalf while Obama was golfing) to be Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation of the EPA. The position is an important one; among other things, OAR is responsible for administering the Clean Air Act, under which the EPA has declared CO2 to be a pollutant, with far-reaching consequences for the nation’s economy. Ms. McCabe takes the conventional pro-government line on global warming; when she testified before the House Science Committee just last month, she said:

There are costs to our economy and to society from the impacts of climate change that is already happening. In 2013, there were seven extreme weather events. Which I think is a nice way of saying great, big, huge horrible storms that cost the economy over a billion dollars each. This is a real economic impact on our communities, our families across the country… The scientific community has identified a number of impacts of climate change. Among those are increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

So it sounds like she is familiar with the scientific literature and ready to defend the administration’s claims. Right? Wrong. She testified today in connection with her pending appointment, and, when asked by Senator Jeff Sessions whether hurricanes have, in fact, become more frequent, she hurried to disqualify herself as one who possesses no knowledge whatsoever. It was a revealing scene. The facts are clear, and no one disputes them: hurricanes have grown neither more frequent nor more severe. But Ms. McCabe understands that the Obama administration wants to push the extreme weather lie, as she did last month, and so she bobbed and weaved so as to live to fight again–to peddle lies, again–another day:

Prior administrations have employed liars, to be sure. But the Obama administration is perhaps unique in that you simply can’t work in it unless you are prepared to be a liar of epic proportions.

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