No Hurricanes for SC This Year?

Hurricane Irene Via NASA

According to scientists at Coastal Carolina University, we won't have any hurricanes hit the Palmetto State this summer.

But wait! I was told that global warming would increase hurricane activity. How can this be?

Obama Cuts Through Red Tape

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, President Obama has repeatedly said that he wants his administration to cut through the “red tape” and inefficiency of government regulations and rules in an effort to more efficiently bring relief to the devastated Northeast.

“We are here for you,” Obama said in Brigantine, N.J. “We are not going to tolerate red tape. We are not going to tolerate bureaucracy.” 

Does anyone else find this kind of funny that Obama is repudiating government regulations? Let me see if I can figure this out.

We have a government, with rules and regulations in place. Ok, check. Now we have natural disasters, which occur from time to time. We don’t always know exactly when a natural disaster will occur, but we know that eventually, we will have one. Apparently, these rules and regulations don’t allow for efficient disaster relief, so the President has simply told his administration: Hey y'all, just ignore the rules. The normal course of government is too damn inefficient. Just deregulate as you go on an ad-hoc basis to get things done.

This strikes me as really funny when it comes from a President who is committed to enlarging the Federal Government and increasing regulation. If we’re just going to suspend the rules and regulations when it suits us (and apparently the President can just ignore these regulations when it suits him) why not just get rid of these inefficient rules entirely? It’s almost like the government is the problem, and getting it out of the way is the answer.

Hurricane Experts Give Up Trying

In South Carolina, the natural disaster that we worry about more than any other is the hurricane. (No, not this one.) Every so often, the weather experts tell us whether or not we should expect an active hurricane season or not. Personally, I put very little stock in these predictions. However, we're seeing a change in this:

“We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year … Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

Basically: Our predictions have been worthless, so we're going to wait until the hurricanes are closer before we try to predict them so we stop making fools of ourselves.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

What? You're telling me that even with a "supercomputer" you can't predict general hurricane patterns a couple of months out?

One Question: Are we still supposed to go along with all your friends who are telling us that the entire earth is going to heat up in the next twenty years, the polar ice caps will melt, the cute polar bears will all die, and we'll all cook to death because Mrs. PP (and company) drives an SUV?

Just checking, because if you can't tell me whether or not a hurricane season is going to be big or not in less than a year, I have trouble believing you when you talk about things that will happen in 20 years.

[H/T: Ace]