A Newspaper Hiding Behind Activists
In the CBS comedic television series, “Rules of Engagement”, which ran for 6 years ending in 2013, Patrick Warburton playing the part of Jeff Bingham said, “A lie undiscovered becomes the truth”. This being the case, if only one side of a news story is found, then it must automatically be the truth. If the truth is eventually discovered, it may still be considered a lie, depending on one’s ideology.
A few days before the arrival of Hurricane Milton, the international newspaper The Guardian headquartered in London, England printed the headline “Ron DeSantis is unfit for hurricane response, activists say: ‘Florida isn’t safe’” The news organization, which claims to be “entirely free from political and commercial influence”, stealthily lays that accusation on climate activists. This, despite being a progressive member of that same activist sect.
The Guardian staff must have very undersized memories of history. In September of 2022, Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s west coast. DeSantis, in all facets of state government responsibility, handled the storm masterfully, even getting recognition for his efforts from President Joe Biden.
Regardless of the headline, The Guardian article essentially had nothing to do with DeSantis’ storm management. Rather the complaint emerged from his politics, rejecting climate change, specifically as a contributor to storm numbers and intensities. As well, they reprimand him for his support of fossil fuels.
It matters not, that even the UN Intergovernmental Panel (IPCC) on Climate Change and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) agree with the Governor.
A day after Hurricane Milton made landfall, as expected, a reporter questioned the Governor on global warming involvement with Hurricane Milton. Desantis responded with the following:
“I think if you go back to 1851, There’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower bear. So the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is. I think there have been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than Milton did. And of those, 17 occurred, I think, prior to 1960.
And the most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labor Day hurricane. Barometric pressure on that was 892 millibars. It totally wiped out the Keys. We’ve never seen anything like it. And that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida. The most deadly hurricane we’ve ever had was in 1928, the Okeechobe hurricane killed over 4,000 people. Fortunately, we aren’t going to have anything close to that on this hurricane.
But even ones like Ian, where you had… Wasn’t even close to that. I just think people should put this in perspective. They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something there’s nothing new under the sun. This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history, and it’s something that will continue to deal with. I think what’s changed is we’ve got 23 million people.
A storm that hits is likely to hit more people in property than it would have 100 years ago. And so the potential for that damage has grown. But what’s also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to prestage the assets. I mean, we never did the prestaging of power assets until I became governor. Now people expect that, but that wasn’t what was done in the past. That’s why people would be out with power for three weeks when we have hurricanes. We thought that that’s not good. Now we have to pay to get these guys to come in. But my view is the quicker you get everyone hooked up, the better off the economy is going to be anyway.”
DeSantis was obviously prepared for the question. You may watch the video on X linked here.
The following image depicts the 10 strongest hurricanes that have hit Florida. These are measured by Mean Sea Level Pressure (or barometric pressure). Note the historical significance – remarkably when climate change was not a ‘thing’.