The Left would never let a tragedy go to waste or squander an opportunity to demagogue on the progressive agenda du jour. So it was predictable when the reports began rolling in asserting that Hurricane Harvey was the product of climate change.
Newsbusters summarizes mainstream media's weekend reportage of the disaster:
On Saturday, climate change again became a source of blame for Hurricane Harvey and its path of destruction along the Texas coastline as it moved inland where it has since dropped biblical-like amounts of flooding in the Houston area. Two hosts on CBS and MSNBC invoked climate change, without taking into account things like steering currents.
Mid-Saturday afternoon, MSNBC Live host Thomas Roberts brought on Aerisweather founder Paul Douglas to promote this claim seconds before a press conference by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R).
“So, the demotion from a category four to a tropical storm really hasn't stopped the threat of what is going on historic rainfall, more than 40 inches predicted and leaving nearly 300,000 people without power currently. Could climate change be fueling the history-making nature of this storm? It's a question a lot of people are wondering,” Thomas claimed.
Douglas began stating his approval, but was cut off by the press conference. Nevertheless, Douglas returned later in the hour and after a discussion of the rainfall totals and where Harvey could rank among the worst hurricanes ever, climate change returned.
Roberts set Douglas up again:
Paul, as we don't want people to be fooled again by the downgrade and the severity of what it means for the rain and the historic flooding over the next couple of days, but bigger picture, explain why this could be more to do with climate change.
Douglas finally laid out what Roberts wanted, explaining that “a warmer climate is now flavoring all weather, Thomas.”
He conceded that Harvey “would have formed regardless,” but still found a way to shoulder the blame on climate change:
[B]ut the fact that it passed over water that is two to three degrees warmer than average, that helped to fuel the storm, and also water levels, sea level is a foot higher in Galveston than it was a century ago so that’s making the storm surge on the Texas on the coast even worse. So, a convergence of factors, climate change flavored the storm. It probably will make the rainfall amounts much worse than they would be otherwise.
Likewise, on Saturday's CBS This Morning leftist NYU professor Michio Kaku told hosts Anthony Mason and Dana Jacobson that "the Gulf of Mexico is two degrees warmer" (of course due to climate change).
Jacobson happily chimed in, "and that's the theory that climate change is impacting all of this."
Never mind focusing on the destruction of the storm itself, on President Trump's stellar response, or on the brave men and women who are helping to rebuild their city and lend a hand to their neighbors in crisis. That's not what the major networks deem is important when there are political agendas to push.
