RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/23/theres-more-to-story-than-climate-change-the-media-must-keep-pushing-and-asking-questions-about-the-lahaina-fires/

The legacy media, quick to attribute every natural disaster to climate change, has actually done some good reporting recently on the tragic wildfires that destroyed the town of Lahaina and killed probably more than 100 people as many are still missing. Media reports were not so honest at first.

In the initial days after Lahaina burned, of course, outlets like The New York Times breathlessly said climate change made Hawaii “a tinderbox.”

This is despite the fact that, regardless of the public perception of Hawaii that the Times authors give, “a far cry from the dry landscape normally associated with fire threats,” the island state is actually one of the most fire-prone in the country. This is due in large part to its unique geography, which allows eastern trade winds to dump water on the eastern volcanic slopes – leading to the familiar verdant rainforest. But the western sides of Maui and the other islands in the chain are a lot drier naturally, and are home to dry grassy hills.

This effect was compounded by a passing hurricane to the south. Because the wind goes from a high-pressure zone to a lower-pressure zone, the low pressures of Hurricane Dora far to the south aided in the accelerated downhill wind speeds on Maui. These high, dry winds knocked around power cables that may have led to the initial sparks, which were then turned into firestorms that swept downhill and through town. 

So, are hurricanes to blame? No. Despite media claims, data show hurricanes are not getting more frequent or extreme. Is drought the culprit? Also, not likely. While the Times cited a 2015 study that claimed Hawaii was seeing less rainfall, available drought severity and coverage data seem to refute this.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/when-humanity-becomes-the-enemy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

At the end of the 18th century, the economist Thomas Malthus predicted that the world’s population would outstrip food supplies unless the increasing number of people was checked by restraints such as war, famine or disease. As a result of his apocalyptic prediction, he thought that most people should die without reproducing.

In fact, although the world’s population has massively increased since then, hunger and the absolute poverty that produces starvation have declined. Science, progress and human ingenuity produced a dynamic which Malthus failed to foresee, along with other flaws in his thinking. So he has been proved spectacularly wrong. Everyone knows that… don’t they? 

Well, apparently not. From the readers’ comments thread below my column in this morning’s Times of London (£), it appears that most of them believe Malthus was right! Reader and after reader wrote it was obvious that the world’s resources were finite, and so it was obvious that there were too many people in the world as a result. 

The fact that the global catastrophe Malthus had predicted hadn’t happened was brushed aside. All that meant, they said, was that this hadn’t happened yet. But it would in the end!

This absence of reason is alarming; but it explains why so many have fallen for today’s corresponding myth of imminent global apocalypse: catastrophic man-made global warming. “Malthus was right!” tells us something very frightening about public ignorance, gullibility and the persistent grip of religion-substitute beliefs that are a byway to hell.

In my Times column, I wrote about the reaction of a leading British demographer, Professor Sarah Harper, to the 20-year low in the birthrate in England and Wales which reflects a long-term trend of falling birth rates across the world. 

Professor Harper commented that falling birthrates in the west were “good for . . . our planet”. Declining fertility in rich countries, she said, would help to address the “general over-consumption that we have at the moment”, which was having a negative impact on the world.