FEMA’s DEI Crippled Hurricane Helene Response

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

“I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides that they are experiencing right now,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell protested to CBS News.

The ravages of Hurricane Helene had left parts of Asheville, North Carolina underwater, but it wasn’t just the homes and roads that were underwater, but FEMA’s botched response..

Criswell, who had been appointed to head FEMA by the Biden-Harris administration as a reward for coordinating New York City’s horrendously botched response to the pandemic, posed in a starched FEMA blouse and gold necklace on a morning show even as private volunteers were once again having to step in because the Federal Emergency Management Agency had failed.

FEMA was unprepared for the flooding because under Criswell, a DEI hire whose resume included being “the first woman commissioner of New York City Emergency Management”, the agency had shifted from disaster management to DEI disasters.

Goal 1 of FEMA’s Strategic Plan was to “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management”. FEMA’s Objective 1.1 was also not disaster management, it’s to “cultivate a FEMA that prioritizes and harnesses a diverse workforce”. FEMA’s leadership was required to make its priority “integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion in delivering the agency’s mission.”

Leading the way in implementing FEMA’s new ideological disaster management was Vice President Kamala Harris who claimed that she had started one of the “first environmental justice units of any DA’s office” when she helped turn San Francisco into a crime zone, and claimed that it’s “communities of color that are most impacted by” weather and natural disasters.

Kamala then argued that “we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity” so that minorities would be first in line for aid regardless of who has the greater need.

FEMA kicked off hurricane season in 2022 with a preparedness campaign contending that black people were more vulnerable to hurricanes because, according to FEMA Deputy Administrator Erik Hooks, “black communities are on the frontlines of climate change.”

Hooks, another Biden-Harris nominee, had been appointed deputy administrator despite only five years of experience in emergency management, in order to “infuse equity across our agency” described the campaign prioritizing black people for natural disasters as reaffirming “our commitment to equity”. But FEMA’s commitment to equity was getting people killed.

“Black and African American communities often suffer disproportionate impacts from disasters. This is something that we must work to change and that starts with how we prepare,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell argued.

A few weeks later, Hurricane Ian became the third most expensive weather disaster and claimed over 150 lives. Most of the dead were white senior citizens. Elderly people living near the coast were the ones actually most at risk. FEMA had sacrificed their lives for equity.

Instead of atoning for the lives lost, Administrator Criswell doubled down by signing an agreement with the NAACP, a Biden-Harris administration ally, and assured illegal aliens that they could apply for taxpayer-funded aid. FEMA directed millions to creating “equitable” fire departments and tried to make sure too many white people weren’t applying for disaster aid.

During the devastating fires in Hawaii last year, FEMA was busy running DEI training which falsely claimed white supremacy is “ingrained in nearly every system and institution in the U.S” as part of ‘Goal 1’ and its mandate to make “equity a foundation of emergency management.

The introduction to FEMA’s Building Alliances for Equitable Resilience by Chauncia Willis, a former wellness and diversity coach, urges disaster officials to reach out to “LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, Black Lives Matter chapters”.

The DEI bureaucracy at FEMA had fundamentally tainted its risk calculations. As Freedom Center Investigates revealed in a 2022 investigation, the agency’s National Risk Index had baked in a “social vulnerability” component based on the percentage of minority groups.

A town that is 40% black, 33% Hispanic and 12% Asian is calculated by FEMA as being more at risk than a town that is made up of 23% Italian-Americans, 44% Irish, 9% Jews and 18% Swedish-Americans. Two towns with the same risk level, but different racial numbers will put the minority town ahead of the non-minority one when it comes to aid to prepare for a disaster.

Asheville, North Carolina, which has an 84% white population and only 4.5% black population, was doomed to be considered lower risk than similar black or minority areas because of the systemically racist algorithms being employed by federal bureaucrats at FEMA.

Administrator Criswell told the media that FEMA couldn’t have been prepared for the historic flooding in North Carolina, but the area has a history of floods going back two centuries. The Great Flood of 1916 had killed 80 people and flooded the area with more rain than ever before. Had FEMA studied the history of floods, instead of the history of race, it might have been ready.

But the Biden-Harris administration had illegally mandated racial discrimination across every federal agency with its ‘equity’ executive orders.

The dead in North Carolina are just more of the victims of the systemic racism of equity.

FEMA’s failures in Hurricane Helene were not an accident. They were the inevitable outcome of prioritizing ideology over mission, quotas over merit, and race over need. A DEI leadership dedicated to enacting DEI has ineptly presided over another natural disaster. From East Palestine to Ashevillle, the Biden-Harris administration has allowed innocent people to suffer and die because the racist ideology of equity values some lives less depending on their race.

The foundation of disaster management can either be racial equity or disaster response.

FEMA Administrator Criswell, Deputy Administrator Hooks, and FEMA’s DEI bureaucracy have demonstrated that it cannot be both because there’s no room for DEI when people are dying.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Looming ‘clean’ energy disasters off our coasts

One broken wind turbine blade shut down Massachusetts beaches. What would hurricanes do?

Paul Driessen

Photos of oil-covered seals and birds from California’s 1969 Santa Barbara blowout helped launch the environmental and stop-oil movements. Some 90,000 barrels polluted ocean waters and yet, when I was scuba diving beneath it two decades later, the same production platform support structure once again hosted a magnificent ecosystem with millions of anemones, mussels, starfish, crabs and fish.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon drillship disaster killed eleven workers and blasted 3-4 million barrels of oil and enormous amounts of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. Yet within a surprisingly short time after the runaway well was capped, wave action, oil-dispersant chemicals, dust-covered oil droplets slowly sinking to the seafloor, and other natural forces had cleansed the waters of oil.

Those other forces were hydrocarbon-degrading microbes that are always present in ocean waters worldwide – but rapidly reproduce when they sense oil in their environs. After depleting the hydrocarbon food sources, the microbes die off to normal numbers, and new organisms degrade the byproducts the initial foragers created, until those nutrients are also gone. Then their populations also plummet, in a newly clean ocean.

The disasters spurred industry to implement better blowout prevention technologies and procedures.

Irrelevant, anti-oil activists say, they also emphasize why we must banish oil and gas – and replace fossil fuels with clean, green wind, solar and battery power. Otherwise, wildlife, beaches and tourism will be threatened repeatedly by oil spills.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed alternatives won’t work – especially as AI, EVs, data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries, double or triple electricity generation demands. Intermittent electricity cannot power modern nations. Wind and solar cannot produce thousands of essential products that require petrochemical feed stocks. These energy sources are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They endanger wildlife.

A recent mishap off the Nantucket, Massachusetts coast underscores yet another reason why hundreds or thousands of monstrous wind turbines cannot be permitted in America’s coastal waters.

Shards, chunks and finally the rest of a turbine blade fell into the ocean. One blade ... from a 62-turbine project that’s only three-fourths completed ... broken by its own weight, not by a storm.

And yet beaches had to be closed amid peak tourist season, while crews picked up pieces of fiberglass-resin-plastic-foam blades, and boats dodged big pieces floating in the water. Worse, Vineyard Wind didn’t tell Nantucket officials about the problems until two days after the blade began disintegrating.

Each blade is 350 feet long and 140,000 pounds. That’s more than a fully occupied Boeing 737 jetliner. Vineyard Wind involves 186 blades: 65,000 feet (12 miles) in total combined length, weighing in at a combined 26,000,000 pounds!

The Biden-Harris offshore wind plan calls for 30,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2030. That’s 2,500 gigantic 12-MW offshore turbines. That won’t even meet New York State’s current peak summer electricity needs, before all these extra demands kick in. Offshore wind’s contribution toward meeting future demands for all Atlantic Coast states could easily require 5,000 such turbines: 15,000 blades, weighing a combined 2 billion pounds and spanning a combined 5,250,000 feet (995 miles)!

Even more disturbing, the entire Atlantic coastline is hurricane country. Every year, almost without fail. The only questions are how many hurricanes, how powerful, and where each one will hit.

NOAA records for landfalling hurricanes – those that actually hit US beaches and cities – reveal that 105 Category 1-5 hurricanes struck the Atlantic seaboard, from Florida to Maine, from 1851 through 2023. Add in those that remained at sea, where the turbines will be, and that number could double.

Of that total, 23 were Category 3-5 (111-157 or higher mph winds). Most struck Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. But 39 made landfall between North Carolina and Delaware – and 19 hit Northeastern States, including nine Category 2-3 monsters (96-129 mph winds).

Mind you – these turbines will be weakened by constant corrosive salt spray and frequently by sub-hurricane storms. When the inevitable big hurricane roars up the coast, devastation will follow.

Kamala Harris is bullish about offshore wind. For the last 3-1/2 years she’s helped run an administration that’s determined to convert the USA to wind, solar and battery power, expedite permits for onshore and offshore “clean energy” projects, and even waive requirements that offshore wind developers post bonds and pay for removing damaged, broken and obsolete offshore wind towers.

She supports banning plastic straws but has never asked how many plastic straws it would take to equal 15,000 offshore wind turbine blades. (Using nautical terms, an unfathomable number.) Moreover, plastic straws don’t contain dangerously sharp fiberglass shards, and can’t sink fishing boats that collide with enormous but hard-to-see slabs of turbine blades.

Ms. Harris, Tim Walz and other wind zealots ignore worries about hurricanes wiping out forests of offshore wind turbines as anti-wind fearmongering. History says otherwise.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane clobbered Florida with 200+ mph devastation, Georgia with Category 1 winds. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 smashed into New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts with 115-120 mph force. 1944’s Great Atlantic Hurricane – punished the coast from North Carolina to New Jersey and Massachusetts with Category 2 winds.

Edna hit the Northeast with Category 2 winds in 1954, Donna did it again in 1960, and Gloria clobbered the region with 96-115 mph blasts in 1985, even reaching New Hampshire and Maine! Isabel hit North Carolina and Virginia in 2003. The “minor” Category 1 hurricane of 2012, better known as Superstorm Sandy, was also devastating.

This summary includes just some that hit North and Mid-Atlantic States, and a few that slammed Florida, Georgia and South Carolina – all prime territory for forests of offshore turbines, fixed to the seafloor or insanely sitting atop enormous floating platforms off Maine and other states. They’d all flounder.

Replacing hundreds or thousands pf torn, damaged and smashed turbines and blades would take years, perhaps decades. Meanwhile, there would be no electricity in a Harris-Biden-Walz-Democrat government-mandated all-electric Eastern Seaboard. The absence of heating, air conditioning and power for homes, hospitals and everything else would displace millions and kill thousands.

Hopefully, politicians and bureaucrats could expedite new gas turbine and modular nuclear power plants. That would mean only a few years of deprivation and blackouts, instead of many years, perhaps decades.

Otherwise, floating slabs of broken turbine blades would endanger boats for months or years, until they are retrieved, hauled ashore and landfilled. Cleaning up billions of sharp shards of fiberglass – each an inch to a couple feet in length, and nearly invisible – would likely take decades, during which time they would impale and imperil beach walkers, swimmers, fish, whales, dolphins and other marine life.

I’m not a microbiologist, but I’m not aware of any microbes that devour fiberglass, resin or plastic foam.

With no bonds or requirements that Big Wind cover cleanup and turbine removal costs, electricity-bereft taxpayers and ratepayers would be left holding the bag.

Before we rush any further into this “renewable energy transformation,” can we first have some realistic, commonsense analysis? Can we at least think before casting our ballots this fall?

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. 

The Media’s Rank Dishonesty About ‘Climate Change’ And Hurricane Ian

October 8, 2022  By Jerome Corsi

As Hurricane Ian hit Florida, Michael Mann of the infamous “hockey stick” global warming graph, and Susan Joy Hassol, publisher of Climate Communication’s “Quick Facts,” which are devoted to explaining extreme weather events as anthropogenic catastrophes, rushed an op-ed piece into print. Their opinion piece, published in The Guardian and predictably entitled, “Hurricane Ian Is No Anomaly,” blamed global warming. Mann and Hassol editorialized:

Climate change once seemed a distant threat. No more. We now know its face, and all too well. We see it in every hurricane, torrential rainstorm, flood, heatwave, wildfire, and drought. It’s even detectable in our daily weather. Climate disruption has changed the background conditions in which all weather occurs: the oceans and air are warmer, there’s more water vapor in the atmosphere and sea levels are higher. Hurricane Ian is the latest example.

Mann and Hassol argued that “the storms of the past five years—Harvey, Maria, Florence, Michael, Ida, and Ian—aren’t natural disasters as much as human-made disasters whose amplified ferocity is fueled by the continued burning of fossil fuels and the increase in heat-trapping carbon pollution, a planet-warming ‘greenhouse gas.’”..........To Read More...

 

It would be nice if progressives concentrated on fixing the man-made disasters they caused instead of theoretical ones they make up

October 8, 2022  By Jack Hellner

The media and others continually said Ian was the deadliest hurricane in Florida in over 90 years, as if that is a meaningful statistic. They say that Ian was caused by manmade climate change. Of course, they gave zero scientific evidence to support that statement, because there is none, but the indoctrination continues.  Only one of the deadliest 24 hurricanes in the U.S has occurred after 1970. Eight of the deadliest occurred before 1900.

There has never been a correlation between temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity and the use of energy related natural resources. When there is no correlation, there can't be causation.  The radical leftists want to control us, not the climate. The 30 Deadliest U.S. Mainland Hurricanes........To Read More...

Hurricane hype, lies, censorship – and reality

Politicized hurricane and climate science breeds distrust, green energy and economic disasters

By Paul Driessen

Hurricane Ian is in the history books, having unleashed its Category 4 fury on southwestern Florida. Even as the area slowly digs out and rebuilds, the devastation and tragedies will linger in reality and memories. 

Ian was the latest of 123 hurricanes to hit the Sunshine State since official recordkeeping began in 1851. But not surprisingly, some wasted no time trying to link Ian to the most dominant issue of our time.

Climate change is “rapidly fueling super hurricanes,” a Washington Post headline proclaimed. “I grew up [in Florida] and these storms are intensifying,” CNN’s Don Lemon insisted. Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are making hurricanes “stronger, slower and wetter,” reporter Morgan McFall-Johnsen asserted. They’re becoming more frequent and intense, multiple commentators pronounced.

Ian should have “finally ended” the debate about “whether there’s climate change,” President Biden stated, as he assessed damage along Florida’s Gulf Coast with Governor and First Lady DeSantis.

The newest fear-mongering is slightly more sophisticated. Now hurricanes are gaining strength more rapidly, because of fossil fuels. The phenomenon even has a fancy name: “rapid intensification.”

This clever claim cannot be proven or disproven, because we didn’t have technologies to measure how rapidly certain storms intensified even a few decades ago. But for climate-obsessed White House and Deep State officials, news and social media campaigners, and academic and corporate grant seekers, it’s another incontrovertible truth.

It certainly enhances climate propaganda efforts and advances anti-fossil-fuel, pro-wind-and-solar agendas. But are “rapid intensification” and these other assertions supported by actual evidence?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides an extensive, handy resource: the complete record of all hurricanes that struck the continental United States (made landfall), 1851-2021. It offers fascinating insights, reveals surprising short term and recurrent cycles, but does not provide data to support claims of any recent trends, such as more frequent and intense, or stronger, slower and wetter.

Among its revelations is the sheer number of hurricanes – hundreds of them, many of which struck multiple states before dissipating, returning to pound other unlucky states, or heading back out to sea to maul Caribbean or Atlantic islands. Florida appears to have been hit more often than any other state.

Also surprising is the number of times New York and other Upper Atlantic States got pummeled. “Superstorm” Sandy (2012) was barely a Category 1, but NY State and City have been pounded and inundated by hurricanes as far back as 1869, including two Category 3s, in 1954 and 1985.

Another northernmost cyclone, Fiona (barely a Category 2 when it hit Nova Scotia this September 24), was quickly branded Canada’s “strongest and costliest cyclone on record.” It may have been costly – for the same reason today’s US hurricanes are: extensive, expensive development along coastlines. But the powerful 1775 Newfoundland hurricane caused storm surges up to 30 feet high and killed over 4,000 people; it’s still Canada’s deadliest natural disaster.

Returning to the southernmost USA, Florida was absolutely slammed by five Category 4, two Cat 3, one Cat 2 and four Cat 1 hurricanes in just six years. Thankfully, it was October 1944 through October 1950, before coastal development took off. But the loss of life was still horrific.

Imagine those twelve hurricanes punishing the state’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts today. It could happen.

Florida got bludgeoned again more recently – with one Category 2, one Category 4 and six Category 3 hurricanes hitting it in just 15 months: August 2004-October 2005. Some would call that an upward trend (doubtless due to global warming). However, not a single hurricane of any magnitude hit Florida during the following eleven years. (Was that significant downward trend also due to manmade climate change? Or must we employ liberal double standards again?)

Even more startling, during the nearly twelve years between Wilma (Florida, Category 3, October 2005) and Harvey (Texas, Category 4, August 2017), followed two weeks later by Irma (Florida, Category 4) –  not a single Category 3-5 “major” hurricane struck the US mainland, anywhere. That’s an all-time record, surpassing the previous nine-year record, set in 1860-1869.

Equally amazing, the USA didn’t experience a single Category 5 hurricane until 1935. The next three struck in 1969, 1992 and 2018. All but Camille hammered Florida. Either these monsters truly didn’t exist before 1935, or we just couldn’t measure winds speeds above 156 mph until the 1930s.

The NOAA records reveal, and experts like Roger Pielke, Jr. can find, no upward trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. There are cycles of multiple monstrous storms, interspersed with stretches of few or no major hurricanes, or any hurricanes at all. But no discernable trends. (The strength of the epic Nueva Senora de Atocha hurricane of Mel Fisher fame in 1622 is anyone’s guess.)

But because of hyper-hyped hurricanes and other climate crisis fables, we’re supposed to abandon the fossil fuels that are 80% of the energy the United States and world require to sustain our factories, homes, hospitals and living standards; that give us affordable food, strong houses, early warning systems, and vehicles with enough fuel to get us out of harm’s way and rescue people trapped by flood waters.

Michael Bloomberg is now funding an $85 million campaign to end petrochemical manufacturing in the United States! That would force us to do without or import feed stocks for nitrogen fertilizers, makeup, paints, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fiber clothing, and plastics for toys, cars, boats, medical devices, packaging, solar panels – and wind turbine blades and nacelles. Even the frames on the Glock and Springfield pistols that Bloomberg’s private security guards carry are derived from petrochemicals.

(Bloomberg also thinks you just drop seeds in the ground, add water, they grow and you eat.) 

As to that fossil-fuel-free utopia – how many thousands of wind turbines, millions of solar panels and millions of backup battery modules would Florida alone need to power its economy? How many of them would have survived Ian’s, Andrew’s or Michael’s ferocious winds, floods and storm surges? How many years would it take to replace them afterward?

We can build gas turbines and nuclear power plants to withstand these natural furies – and we wouldn’t need many of them. How do we fortify sprawling “renewable, sustainable” energy systems?

So while you’re filling your gas tank, looking at your grocery bill and reflecting on what’s left of your retirement savings, you may want to listen less to Joe Biden and John Kerry – and more to real experts like Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, Stanley Goldenberg, Roger Pielke, Jr. – and the Miami National Hurricane Center’s Jamie Rhome, whom Don Lemon tried to browbeat into linking climate change to Ian.

The Biden White House and UN Intergovernmental Politicized Climate Cabal (IPCC) cannot abide that. They mean to monopolize the conversation, impose their climate and energy agenda, and silence anyone who challenges them.

The White House even has an Office of the National Climate Advisor, which works hand-in-glove with Big Tech and news organizations to censor, deplatform and demonetize inconvenient facts about climate models, actual global temperatures, hurricane and climate change reality, fossil fuel benefits, and the massive land areas, raw materials and mining required for wind, solar and battery power. Anything that differs from its narrative is “denial” and “disinformation.”

At stake are our freedoms and living standards, our access to reliable, affordable energy, and the looming specter of life in a totalitarian state of constant deprivation. Remember that in November.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental and human rights issues.

 

Electric vehicles are exploding from water damage after Hurricane Ian, Florida official warns

By Thomas Catenacci October 6, 2022  

A top Florida state official warned Thursday that firefighters have battled a number of fires caused by electric vehicle (EV) batteries waterlogged from Hurricane Ian.

EV batteries that have been waterlogged in the wake of the hurricane are at risk of corrosion, which could lead to unexpected fires, according to Jimmy Patronis, the state's top financial officer and fire marshal. 

"There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start," Patronis tweeted Thursday. "That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale."

"It takes special training and understanding of EVs to ensure these fires are put out quickly and safely," he continued in a follow-up tweet. "Thanks to [North Collier Fire Rescue] for their hard work.".....To Read More....

 

A Hurricane in 2022 Is Trump's Fault

Daniel Greenfield September 28, 2022 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Puerto Rico, President Trump approved a major disaster declaration a day faster than Biden did for the island after Hurricane Fiona hit. Trump’s alacrity went unrewarded when local Democrats and the media blamed him for the hurricane.

CNN, which has been much slower to provide coverage of Fiona on the island, flew Anderson Cooper out there to wade uncomfortably around and do interviews with leftist politicians wearing custom-printed, “Help Us, We Are Dying” t-shirts in between posing for glamor shots.

Instead, Cooper is currently promoting a podcast with leftist hack Stephen Colbert.

The dramatic difference in coverage can be summed up with two Reuters headlines, five years apart, “Puerto Ricans say Trump’s disaster response was too slow” and “Puerto Rico power grid no match for Fiona; residents unsurprised.”

The New York Times went even further blaming President Trump for Puerto Rico’s power grid going down in 2022. According to the leftist paper, the number one reason that the island’s power is down is because “the Trump administration also placed restrictions on portions of the island’s aid out of concerns that the money would be mismanaged or squandered.”

There was indeed massive fraud with multiple officials, including Julia Keleher, the former Secretary of Education for Puerto Rico, the head of Puerto Rico’s Association of Certified Public Accountants, and multiple FEMA officials, getting busted.

Amon those arrested was Ahsha Nateef Tribble: Obama’s Senior Director for Response and an interim Deputy Homeland Security Advisor. Obama’s girl pled guilty this May, but the media has not seen fit to cover the minor matter of an Obama NSC official going down or to mention it in relation to the latest disaster in Puerto Rico: this time taking place on Biden’s watch.

Instead, Biden is being praised for lifting anti-corruption restrictions while promising to pour more money into Puerto Rico. The influx of money will only further feed the corruption without actually benefiting ordinary people. There’s plenty of history that makes that all too clear.

Every time there’s a major storm, Puerto Rico’s power grid goes down. That’s been the case long before Trump’s presidential run. Even without storms, the LA Times reported that under Obama, island residents “were suffering power outages at rates four to five times higher than average U.S. customers”. Puerto Rico’s electric grid is ancient, its public utility was broken and its linemen had moved to America. Also the island is notorious for its culture of corruption.

Somehow that became Trump’s fault. And in 2022, it is still somehow his fault.

After trying to blame Trump for restricting funds to fight corruption, the New York Times is forced to admit that the island government isn’t spending the money that it has. Bloomberg notes that, “Of the $21 billion that FEMA has designated for public assistance projects overall in Puerto Rico, only 2% has been spent.” Much as during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria when aid was left sitting in warehouses, what Puerto Rico has isn’t even being used by the local government.

But when the media isn’t blaming Trump, it’s blaming global warming or privatization. Even though it was the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA):, the bankrupt public utility whose defunct equipment, missing employees and general dysfunction had led to the original massive outrage during Hurricane Maria, resulting in overdue privatization.

The one man the media isn’t blaming is Joe Biden. Much as the media didn’t blame Bill Clinton or Obama for the hurricanes that happened on their watch or the resulting consequences. When a hurricane hits Puerto Rico while a Republican is in office, it’s his fault. But when a hurricane hits during a Democrat’s term, then it’s obviously due to either climate change or a Republican.

Even though Biden took a day longer than Trump to approve disaster relief, media coverage has emphasized how much he cares about Puerto Rico. After Maria, the media claimed, with no evidence, that Trump was bigoted toward Puerto Ricans and that his neglect was killing them.

After earthquakes in 2020, the media doubled down on the narrative with CNN headlining its coverage, “Trump stays publicly silent on Puerto Rican earthquakes but has signed emergency declaration”. Democrats rushed to capitalize on the disaster, including Joe Biden who stated, “It’s unconscionable that so much of the hard work of disaster recovery continues to be left undone. We’ve got to deliver concrete support for Puerto Rico now before more lives are lost.”

Now that Biden is in office, the work remains undone. But somehow it’s not his fault.

At a press conference, Biden promised, “We’ll do everything, everything we can to meet the urgent needs you have and we know they’re real and they’re significant. And we’re there. And I know, bad joke, ‘I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help.’ But we really are.”

The federal government has been coming to Puerto Rico to help for generations. It hasn’t helped. After tens of billions of dollars in aid, the island is no better off than it was before.

In 2017, it was asking for $94 billion in aid. That’s all the more startling when you consider that Puerto Rico’s current population is only a little over 3 million. That would have been over $30,000 per person. Even the billions allocated to it come out to about $7,000 per person.

Not that the average Puerto Rican will ever see any of that money.

Instead of telling the truth about that, Puerto Rico’s current state is always Trump’s fault. And will remain his fault until another Republican sets foot in the Oval Office and pulls up a chair.

Much like the inner cities, it’s easier to throw around accusations of bigotry than to reckon with what is actually wrong. And that’s convenient because Democrats profit financially and politically from Puerto Rico’s disasters. The worse things get on the island, the better the odds of winning Florida. Feeding corruption just makes things worse for Puerto Ricans and better for Dems.

Puerto Rico’s real problem isn’t Hurricane Maria or Hurricane Fiona, it’s Hurricane Biden.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. Thank you for reading.

Europe’s ‘unprecedented manmade floods’

Separating myth from reality about extreme weather events today and over the centuries

Paul Driessen 

Deadly floods in Germany and Belgium have put climate change back in the news in time for the COP-26 climate gabfest in Glasgow. Not surprisingly, government officials again blamed fossil fuels, greenhouse gases and manmade climate change for the calamities, to deflect attention from their official incompetence – as they did with SuperStorm Sandy and recurrent wildfires. 

They’re blaming the very fossil fuels that power Europe’s economy; build, heat and electrify homes; and power the boats, ambulances and other equipment that were used to rescue people, recover bodies, and nurse survivors back to health. 

They’re the same officials who could and should have prepared their communities for floods like those that hit Germany and Europe every few decades. But failed to do so. They were warned days in advance that the rains and floods were coming – and were told almost exactly where and when the rains and floods would hit. But did nothing. 

They were supposed to warn people – and get them out of harm’s way. But they failed to warn their citizens that they, their homes and their children would be swept away by raging waters, if they didn’t evacuate immediately. 

No wonder they want to blame manmade climate change – for almost every extreme weather event. They want to avoid accountability and protect their political and financial stakes in Climate Crisis, Inc. About the last thing they want people to see are the climate realities that would confound their myths and fear-mongering, put today’s extreme weather events into proper context, and keep their constituents from being bamboozled by future climate lies. 

FLOODS are not uncommon, they are not unprecedented, and they are not kind to people, civilization or nature. Indeed, devastating rains and floods occur with regularity, and the more concrete, asphalt and buildings we put in cities, the less drainage we have, and the more flooding we get – in Europe, Houston, New York City and everywhere else. 

The great Arno River flood of 1966 impacted much of Florence, Italy and damaged or destroyed many magnificent works of art. The 2002 Vltava River flood left high water marks 10 feet up on buildings, and 30 feet above the river’s normal water line; 1784, 1845 and 1997 Czech floods were even worse. 

What caused all those floods? the deadly German floods of 1790 and 1910? the Johnstown, Ohio Flood of 1889? the 1976 Big Thompson Canyon flash flood that roared down a narrow Colorado gorge, leaving residents and campers few avenues of escape? All those floods were natural, but today’s are manmade? 

HURRICANES are also common, recurring, devastating and deadly. It’s fashionable to blame Harvey and Irma and other recent hurricanes on fossil fuels, carbon dioxide, and us humans. But it’s ridiculous. 

Between Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and Harvey and Irma in 2017, the United States enjoyed a 12-year major hurricane drought: 12 years without one Category 3-5 hurricane making US landfall. It was the longest period in recorded history that America was not hammered by a major hurricane. 

If we’re going to blame every modern era hurricane on fossil fuel emissions – shouldn’t we also thank fossil fuel emissions for that unprecedented 12-year absence of truly deadly hurricanes? (It wouldn’t be honest science, but it would be honest politics.) A far better approach would be to prepare better for all of Mother Nature’s future onslaughts. 

US property damage in raw dollars from hurricanes has certainly increased – because more people are building more expensive homes along our coasts, where hurricanes strike with regularity and intensity. But death tolls are way down, because buildings are built better, and (unlike in Germany and Belgium recently) people get warned far enough in advance to get out of harm’s way. 

Equally positive, global property damage from weather-related disasters, as a proportion of global gross domestic product, went down significantly since 1990, largely for the same reasons. Deaths are down too. 

TORNADOES. A Washington Post chart makes it abundantly clear that violent F4 and F5 tornadoes have been less frequent the last 35 years than they were during the 35-year period 1950-1985. Even more amazing, for the first time in history, the United States was not hit by a single violent twister in 2018. Was that because of fossil fuel emissions? 

Indeed, very few tornadoes compare to the horrific Gainesville, Georgia tornado of 1936, which killed 450 people – or the even more horrendous, record-setting the Tri-State Twister of 1925. That one lasted 3.5 hours, traveled 220 miles, obliterated entire towns, and killed nearly 700 people

BLIZZARDS are also common. But predictably, almost every big winter storm nowadays gets blamed on “carbon” (CO2) emissions, and we’re told to expect far more if we don’t end fossil fuel use. 

Climate con artists want us to forget the Nebraska School Children’s Blizzard of January 1888, when a relatively warm day, with snow melting all around, suddenly became a vicious storm. In less than three hours, Midwestern temperatures plummeted from plus-35 to minus-20 and even minus-40. Winds howled down from the North, bringing several feet of heavy snow. The storm killed some 500 people across several states, most of them in Nebraska. Many were children trying to get home from collapsing schoolhouses, and parents out looking for their children. 

That blizzard made US and international news. But it was soon overshadowed by the Great Mid-Atlantic Blizzard of March 1888. That one buried New York City and much of the East Coast under mountains of snow, and killed over 400 people. Dozens of New Yorkers weren’t found until days later, when their frozen remains were dug out of massive snow drifts. 

TEMPERATURES. The dawn of the industrial age coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age, so the warming is mostly natural. Climate models predict much higher temperatures than we’re experiencing. And average global temperatures have barely budged since 2002, except during El Niño events. 

People once learned important lessons from extreme weather events. Midwesterners invested in stronger homes and schools, developed better weather forecasting, made sure they kept winter clothing with them and their kids even when the weather looked balmy, and built tornado warning systems and shelters. New York City built a subway system, enabling people to travel underground, safe from deadly cold and snow. 

Today, too many government officials prefer to collude with activists, subsidy-seekers and media sidekicks to blame “manmade climate change” for every disaster. They ignore their own roles in the property damage and death from natural disasters like SuperStorm Sandy. They pretend they can control the climate and weather – while getting richer and more powerful embracing anti-fossil fuel policies. 

After countless millennia of natural disasters, we’re supposed to believe extreme weather events are now manmade, and temperature changes, droughts and storms are now our fault. At humanity’s most technologically advanced level in history, we’re supposed to be unable to cope with, adapt to or recover from climate and weather events. 

We cannot afford to be bamboozled by climate con artists – who for their own selfish reasons claim we must immediately get rid of the fossil fuels that provide 80% of America’s and the world’s energy ... and then magically replace those fuels with expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent, land-intensive and  raw materials-hungry wind, solar and battery power. 

If we let ourselves get deluded, electricity prices will skyrocket, blackouts will become commonplace, our jobs will disappear, our living standards will plummet, our lives will be at greater risk, our environment will be destroyed – and we’ll deserve what we get. It’s time to fully and honestly reassess “the science” behind this supposed “climate crisis.”

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, human rights and economic development.

 

The Puerto Rican Genocide That Wasn't

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 5 Comments Friday, October 20, 2017

The Mayor of San Juan recently took a break from her tour of every cable news network on the planet to text an accusation of genocide aimed at President Trump.

"WE WILL NOT BE LEFT TO DIE,” Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz texted. “I ask the United Nations, UNICEF and the world to stand with the people of Puerto Rico and stop the genocide.”

The death toll in Puerto Rico currently stands at 48.

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20. As we approach October 20, the death toll from the hurricane is a lot less than the death toll from the deadliest month in Chicago.

Despite media arm waving, with only 117 people not accounted for, the actual death toll in Puerto Rico isn’t likely to rise very much. And even a death toll of 48 was only achieved by listing people who died of heart attacks and other medical problems that could not be treated because of hurricane damage. It’s unknown whether some of them might have lived without the hurricane. It’s guesswork.

The previous, incomplete death toll showed that the actual hurricane seemed to have only killed 19 people. 2 suicides were also attributed to the hurricane. As were respiratory failures “indirectly linked” to the hurricane.

But the media has been working hard to inflate the death toll.

"We'll probably never know exactly how many people died," the Washington Post speculates. "Hurricane Maria likely killed more people than Puerto Rico says," the Daily News ghoulishly insists.

Some media accounts fantasize about hundreds of bodies piling up in morgues. How many of those deaths are due to the hurricane and how many to the ordinary course of disease and crime? (Puerto Rico has higher crime rates and mortality rates for many diseases than the United States.)

Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security implying that the "true death toll" is being underreported to "portray relief efforts as more successful than they are".

Velasquez demanded a Federal audit of the local authorities with findings to be delivered in 10 days.

The numbers just aren’t high enough. It’s hard to have a genocide with only 48 people.

And that’s the real agenda.

Velasquez and the Washington Post aren’t trying to help Puerto Rico by raising the death toll. Instead they want a higher death toll because it gives them ammo for their attacks on President Trump.

To have a proper death toll, you need it to be hundreds. Or even better yet, in the thousands.

A genocide of 48 people makes Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz parading around in her “WE ARE DYING” t-shirt for Anderson Cooper look silly.

“We are dying,” the left-wing politician warned on CNN on September 29. These days, she’s warning of some sort of future genocide that will eventually come about due to “the lack of appropriate action of a president that just does not get it.” Weeks later, the genocide has yet to materialize.

The House passed a $36.5 billion disaster relief package, most of which will go to Puerto Rico. Both President Trump and Speaker Ryan came to see the disaster firsthand. Meanwhile there are constant accusations that local politicians and their supporters are stealing relief supplies.

Puerto Rico has major political, social and economic problems that have nothing to do with the hurricane. If President Hillary Clinton were guzzling chardonnay in the White House in between delivering cross presidential addresses about the vital importance of gun control and socialized medicine, Hurricane Maria would have been a passing story in the press.

Hurricane Georges and Tropical Storm Jeanne took out power and water in much the same way as Maria. After Georges, President Clinton didn’t visit Puerto Rico. Hillary Clinton did.

Why did Hillary visit Puerto Rico?

Less than six months later, Hillary’s Senate campaign had begun creaking to life. New York has a large Puerto Rican population. Instead of paying a presidential visit, Bill sent his wife to kickstart her political campaign by exploiting a natural disaster. It’s unsurprising that Hillary attempted to politicize the latest natural disaster in Puerto Rico. That’s just what she soullessly does.

And it’s what the left does.

Their standards are now so low that 48 people dying in a natural disaster qualifies as a genocide.

But this was never about Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria, like the Las Vegas shootings, was one of many backdrops whose only purpose is political posturing.

The left doesn’t care about Puerto Rico. It’s only sad that more Puerto Ricans didn’t die so that their corpses could be exploited for more partisan political attacks until the next shiny object comes along.

Think how much better their headlines could be if there were 48,000 dead or 480,000 dead.

Meanwhile in San Juan, Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz is still waiting for the genocide while exploring the limits of the local t-shirt printing place whose proprietors are apparently the only survivors.

Them and the guys who have to blow dry Anderson Cooper’s pants each time he gingerly descends down to the waist into the water so that the viewers at home can be properly horrified and impressed.

Puerto Rico is a tragedy, but it’s not a genocide.

The fake news narrative has come apart. The death toll isn’t there. And as the repair crews do their work, as the power comes on, the roads are cleared and drinking water is restored, normalcy will come back. There may be attempts to inflate the death toll by attributing assorted deaths to the storm on dubious grounds. But even then the end result will fall far short of the left’s genocidal fantasies.

But by then the left will have moved on. There will be more shootings to link to gun control or another natural disaster to link to global warming. Any attempts to impose a reality check on the Iran Deal or action against North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will be met with alarmism about nuclear war.

The left will always have something to freak out about. Even now, Harvey Weinstein’s grotesque bulk has pushed Puerto Rico and its genocide off the front pages. And the media is already, with unerring inevitability, trying to clumsily connect the crimes of the top Dem donor to President Trump.

But that is just how the media works. Disaster + Trump = Story. That’s the formula for everything.

The Great Media Puerto Rican Genocide of 2017 didn’t pan out. But neither did Katrina. There will always be another story, another lie, another scandal and another thousand hit pieces wrapped around it. For a brief moment, the cameras of the media turned on Puerto Rico. And even now, they’re turning away. Eventually all the reporters will depart leaving behind only their luggage tags and mango aftershave. The warm wind will blow through their empty rooms and stir their stained bedsheets.

And Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz will sit surrounded by t-shirt mementos that remind her of the time when everyone knew her name.

(This article originally appeared at Front Page Magazine.)

 

Trump Not Letting Media Turn Puerto Rico Into His 'Katrina'

Larry Elder Oct 05, 2017

President Donald Trump punched back hard against the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, who accused him of insufficient concern about her island. In doing so, Trump shows that he learned from President George W. Bush's mistakes. Bush 43 seemed to expect a certain level of fairness and civility from the media.

When, for example, Sen. Ted Kennedy, about the prewar Iraq intelligence, said, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie," the Bush White House did not aggressively push back against that venomous assertion. When critics made the hideous accusations that President George W. Bush was "lying us into war," the White House did little to fight back.

That, at least, is the assessment of both former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, whom I had the privilege of interviewing. Cheney and Rumsfeld lamented their failure to aggressively and loudly refute the accusation. Why didn't they fight back? Both told me that they considered the charges so incredibly offensive and easily refuted that few would believe it.........To Read More....

US militarizes Puerto Rican relief effort

By Rick Moran October 9, 2017

As recovery efforts for Puerto Rico from hurricane Maria enter its third week, the plight of most residents remains perilous. Food and water deliveries are spotty at best, and government officials are pointing the finger at the incompetence of local mayors who are not following through in getting relief supplies to those who need it most. In response, the U.S. is planning to basically militarize relief efforts, doing the job that local mayors appear incapable of doing..........The efforts to politicize the crisis by the Democratic mayor of San Juan, covering up for her own incompetence, aren't working.........Read more

Rivera Refutes ‘Fake News’ Stories About Trump Admin’s Response To Puerto Rico

By Randy DeSoto on October 4, 2017

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who has been on the ground in Puerto Rico for over a week, refuted media reports that the Trump administration has failed to adequately respond on the island following Hurricanes Irma and Maria.  “Whatever you read in the so-called fake news … I think the president and the first lady were amazingly gracious and graciously receiving by the grateful Puerto Rican people,” Rivera said on Fox News on Wednesday.........Appearing on Hannity on Tuesday night, Rivera said the Trump administration is doing good work under difficult circumstances.  Regarding the 34 dead from the storm, Rivera said, “Blame Hurricane Maria for those deaths. Don’t blame President Trump.”.....To Read More....

What natural disasters should teach us ​

Hurricanes, landslides and other disasters show Africans why we need fossil fuels

Steven Lyazi

I express my deepest sympathies to the people in the Caribbean and United States who have been impacted by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. The loss of life was tragic but has thankfully been much lower than in many previous storms. Buildings are stronger, people get warned in time to get out, and they have vehicles to get to safer places until the storms pass.

I also send my sincere sympathies to my fellow Ugandans who have been affected by terrible landslides in eastern Uganda, near Kenya. Natural disasters often strike us hard. Sometimes it is long droughts that dry up our crops and kill many cattle. This year it is torrential rains and landslides.

This time we were lucky. The collapsing hillsides destroyed three villages, but thankfully it was daytime and people were outside. They lost their homes, cattle and ripened crops, but not their families. A horrendous mudslide in the same mountainous area in 2010 buried 350 parents and children under 40 feet of mud and rock.

People there have been cutting down trees for decades – for fuel, lumber and to grow crops. Now no roots hold the hills together when it rains. More cracks have appeared in the hills, so more slides are likely. But people don’t want to leave their lands, and they’re not planting new trees either.

Some people are ignoring all this history and the human roles in causing these “natural” disasters. They are blaming the rains and mudslides on global warming, climate change and the fossil fuels that modern industrialized countries burn to provide modern homes, travels and living standards.

These false claims are intended to divert us from real problems. They are intended to justify demands and campaigns that Ugandans and other Africans should rely on a few wind turbines and solar panels and should never use oil, natural gas or coal to provide cheap, reliable and plentiful energy so that we can live more like Americans or Europeans.

These people want to become our Jesus, and save us from “global warming disasters,” by keeping us poor and at the mercy of Mother Nature. Former vice president Mr. Al Gore said manmade global warming has increased the number and strength of tornadoes and hurricanes, Mount Kilimanjaro’s glacier would disappear by 2016, and Arctic summers would be ice-free as soon as 2014.

None of this happened. So he just changed the year when the disasters will hit. Mr. Gore declares in his film that “it is right to save humanity.” Yes, it is and I support that with no argument.

But I would suggest that he and his friends begin by injecting their own billions of dollars into fossil fuels and nuclear energy to create jobs around the world, help us build modern homes, uplift economies so that people can live a self-sustainable life, and get rid of the diseases that are killing us.

He needs to stop trying to scare us by spreading false gospels about mankind and fossil fuels. He needs to stop trying to save humanity from movie disasters, when we face real disasters. He needs to stop making us rely on renewable energy, while he continues to have many big homes, drive around in big cars and fly in private jets all over the world.

Just in the last 25 years, fossil fuels have helped over 1.5 billion people in developing nations get electricity and escape deprivation, starvation, and lung and intestinal diseases that used to kill them and their children. But Africa, India and Asia still have vast regions that need to be electrified. More than a billion people in those regions still do not enjoy the wonderful blessings that electricity brings.

These places need more coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Thankfully they are building them, no matter what Mr. Gore and his radical friends say. Mr. Gore and his friends have fancy homes with every modern technology that electricity can bring. They have cars and modern hospitals.

My family in Kampala has a few of these things – a few lights and a radio, small stove and not even a little refrigerator. I just got a used computer that a friend sent me from the United States. Someday we would like a television and a normal sized refrigerator, like what we see in Europe and the States. Can we dream that someday we will have air conditioning?

Can the people in eastern Uganda dream of a time when they can rebuild their homes with more than mud and sticks? And actually have electricity, lights, refrigerators and stoves?

Radical Al Gore, renewable energy cheerleaders and climate activists have sweet homes and nice cars, jets and trains to take them anywhere they want to go 24/7. They cannot even come close to understanding how it feels to live in darkness, drink dirty water, and have no medicine except herbs and the grace of God when they get sick from malaria and other diseases they have never even heard of. They cannot imagine not being able to have a cold drink or hot coffee when they want one.

But they tell us we should be happy to enjoy the tiny improvements we might get from wind and solar power, as an “acceptable” and “preferred” and “sustainable” alternative to really better lives.

I have said this in my past articles, and I will still say it again. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 700 million people still cook with wood, charcoal and animal dung, Hundreds of millions get horribly sick every year – and thousands die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, because we have to breathe smoke from open fires and don’t have refrigeration, clean water and safe food. Hundreds of millions are starving and malnourished, and try to survive on a few dollars a day.

Mr. Al Gore, how many dollars do you “survive” on per day? How many homes and refrigerators do you have? Can your refrigerators hold more than a few vegetables and a few bottles of milk or water?

To use the words of Rabbi Daniel Lapin, our impoverished masses simply want to take their rightful, God-given places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people. Instead, we are being told “that wouldn’t be sustainable.” We are being told that improving our health, living standards and life spans is less important than avoiding the forthcoming climate cataclysm that Mr. Gore and his movies and computer models say will happen if we Africans modernize with fossil fuels.

These claims – and the false solutions to make-believe problems sometime in our future – ignore the real disasters and deaths that face us right now, every day of the year. They are intended to divert us from the better lives and sweet homes we dream of. They are intended to make Mr. Gore and his friends and the radical cheerleaders feel like they are saving Africans and our planet, while in reality they are killing millions of us every year.

Right this very minute, climate alarmists are blaming hurricanes and landside on fossil fuels. While they enjoy fancy homes, cozy beds and sofas, heating and air conditioning that keep them comfortable all year round, televisions and Alexa music, air travel whenever they want to go somewhere – they tell us Africans we should be happy and content with our “simple lives.” They tell us we should keep our oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy underground and untouched.

This is disgraceful. It is unacceptable. We will no longer tolerate it.

Alexander King was the co-founder of the Club of Rome, which wrote The Limits to Growth book. During World War II, he organized production of a new insecticide and gave it the name DDT. The chemical saved the lives of thousands of Allied troops in the Far East. It was also used to stop typhus epidemics in Europe after the war.

But later on he said: “My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem. Of course, I can’t play God on that one.”

But King and his followers did play God. They got DDT banned and even blocked its use in preventing malaria for decades. Millions of African parents and children died. Now his descendants want to keep us from using fossil fuels. Where is the justice and humanity in any of this?

Steven Lyazi is a student and worker in Kampala, Uganda. He served as special assistant to Congress of Racial Equality-Uganda director Cyril Boynes, until Mr. Boynes’ death in January 2015. He plans to attend college and help his country and Africa get the energy and other modern technologies they need.