Climate change and hurricane intensity

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Sept 22

Never one to let a tragedy go unexploited, Justin Trudeau appeared in Atlantic Canada to talk to the people affected by post-tropical storm Fiona about climate change.  Fiona is not related to climate change, either in origin or intensity, but never mind.

Between 1950 and 2020, Canada was impacted by no fewer than 140 tropical systems, with two being Category 3+, 34 being Cat 1+, 79 tropical depressions, and 140 extra-tropical systems.  The strongest storm to make landfall in Canada was Hurricane Ginny in 1969, and of course there is Hurricane Hazel of 1954.  The deadliest hurricane to hit Canada was in September, 1775, in Newfoundland, that killed over 4,000 people.  This was when atmospheric CO2 levels were at pre-industrial lows.

It is a myth that hurricanes are increasing in “intensity,” and climate change is responsible.  Hogwash!  Hurricanes are powered in part by differences in temperature, not absolute temperature.  The difference between 30℃ and 15℃ is the same as between 30.5℃ and 15.5℃.  The NOAA believes that hurricanes may increase in intensity by 5 percent but decrease in number by 25 percent by the end of this century.

Climate charlatans are utterly shameless in pushing their strange agenda.  Canada particularly ought to be exempt from this nonsense, because, even if you believe that CO2 is the driver of climate change, Canada is responsible only for 1.5 percent of it.  We can’t solve the problem because we aren’t part of the problem, and we’re no moral example to India and China.  Xi Jinping doesn’t listen to us.

If you want to play the morality game, India and China are lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by creating fossil-fuel fired electrical generation.  They aren’t going to stop, so why is Justin Trudeau out there shamelessly talking about crippling Canadian industrial and agricultural output for the sake of something that, by his lights, is going to happen?  You get the feeling that Trudeau’s climate change agenda has nothing to do with affecting the climate.

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