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Max Mayfield Shouts: It’s Not Global Warming!

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 26,2005


RUSH: The global warming crowd is still out there — despite the words of experts — claiming that global warming was the direct cause of both these hurricanes. Max Mayfield was on CBS’ Slay the Nation with Bob Schieffer yesterday. He’s the director of the National Hurricane Center, and Schieffer said, “Do all these hurricanes, so many of them this year, and this is more than we normally see [sic], does it have anything to do with what we’re doing here on earth? In other words, does this have something to do with global warming?”
MAYFIELD: Bob, hurricanes, and especially major hurricanes, are cyclical. We’ll have a few decades of really active hurricanes, and then inactive periods followed by active periods again, and one of the best correlations we have is with the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. If I can show this graph behind me here, this shows major hurricanes. We had a lot of major hurricanes in the fifties and sixties, not nearly as many in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties, and then in 1995, they really picked up again here as have the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. So, I think that this activity that we’re in can be explained without invoking global warming and the bad news here is we are in this active period and the research meteorologists tell us it may last another ten or 20 years.
RUSH: Max Mayfield has been shouting this from the rooftops for the past three weeks because people have been asking him on all these appearances he does during these hurricane, “Is this global warming?” (panting) breathlessly wanting a yes. “Is this global warming? Is this because Bush didn’t sign the Kyoto protocol?” (panting) They sound like a bunch of eager dogs out there that haven’t been fed and they’re waiting for the Kennel Ration, and Mayfield says, “No! It has nothing to do with it. Look at the cycles. Look at the powerful hurricanes we had in 1900 and o the 1930s, the 1950s and on in.” Max Mayfield made the rounds Sunday, went to George Stephanopoulos’ show. Question: “A lot of theorists believe we’re at the front end of a 20-year cycle of ferocious hurricanes. What do you think is causing it?”
MAYFIELD: Well, we think the best correlation we have here is with the sea surface temperatures.
RUSH: (laughing) Poor guy.
MAYFIELD: If I could just very briefly show you this. This shows a major hurricane back in the forties, fifties and sixties, a lot of major hurricanes; not nearly as many in the next 25 years, and then 1995, we started getting this increase, so we think that this is just a normal cycle, and, you know, these cycles may last ten, 20, 30 years, and we could well be in another — well, we are in an — active period that may last another ten or 20 years.


RUSH: Now, Mayfield has been saying this for three weeks, and so has William Gray who is the Colorado state forecaster. Al of the hurricane meteorologists experts have been saying this. Anybody want to make a bet that the mainstream press will still quote the experts far more loudly who say it is global warming? This ought to be a dead issue, now. Here’s the director of the National Hurricane Center! It won’t be. Global warming as the cause of hurricanes will be the surviving story because global warming is in the media template. The media template: “America is evil. America is too prosperous. America is too large, too big a superpower. America steals. America uses an unfair share and portion of all the world’s resources, and we’ve got to be causing this,” and so it’s going to remain. Barbra Streisand… Just to give you an example. Drudge headlined this over the weekend. Barbra Streisand, a well known meteorologist, well-known weather expert, well known anti-war expert, well-known expert on social policy, well-known military expert, Barbra Streisand, says that these back-to-back storms are proof positive that we have entered a new period of global warming. “We are in a global warming emergency state, and these storms are going to become more frequent, more intense.” She’s making these statements on her website. She’s upset that people don’t see this, but Drudge went and did some research and found a whole lot of cat five hurricanes long before any experts started talking about global warming. Barbra Streisand, by the way, interviewed by Diane Sawyer here on all this, but Diane Sawyer “did not remind Streisand that a Category 5 hurricane struck the Bahamas with 160 mph winds — when the singer was five years old, in 1947! And when Streisand was 8 years old, a Cat 5 hurricane — named ‘Dog’ — packing 185 mph churned-away in the Atlantic.
“When she was 9, a Cat 5 storm named ‘Easy’ ripped the seas with 160 mph sustained winds. Streisand was 13 years old when ‘Janet’ hit Mexico with 150 mph winds. Streisand was celebrating her sweet sixteen as ‘Cleo’ formed with 140 mph. At 18, Streisand read news about ‘Donna’ AND ‘Ethel’ — both storms carried 140 mph winds and formed 9 days apart in 1960! One year later, when Streisand was 19, it happened again: Two Category 5 storms scared the world: ‘Carla’ and ‘Hattie!’ ‘Carla’ maxed out at 175 mph winds the year Streisand made her television debut on ‘The Jack Paar Show.’ And who could forget Hurricane ‘Camille’ — which smashed into the United States with 190 mph, just as ‘Funny Girl’ garners eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture and one for Barbra as Best Actress. Up next on the weather warning watch, Streisand says to ABC: ‘There could be more droughts, dust bowls. You know, it’s amazing to hear these facts.'” She goes on Good Morning America or wherever she appears with Diane Sawyer or anybody else, nobody counters her lunacy and idiocy with facts. But the historical record on hurricanes is clear, and Max Mayfield is doing his best to shout it from the mountaintops.
The media does not want to hear it.
Instead, the words of such noted experts as Barbra Streisand triumph and prevail and receive louder amplification than those of the director of the National Hurricane Center. Barbra Streisand, by the way, proves consistently one of my points, and that is: Most people’s historical perspective begins with the day they were born. The worst of times, the best of times, all happen within everybody’s lifetime. Whatever is happening bad, it could never have been worse. Why, this is the end — and Streisand is just an absolute, pure dunce. If you told her, if you gave her, if you let her read, you put it in front of her, the historical record of violent, dangerous, loud, category 5 hurricanes that predate her birth, she would just ignore it. She’d flip it away, flick it away and say something about the “fact” that never has it been this bad or some such thing because it’s all oriented, folks, on a blame-America agenda — and that is the American left, and they want candidates to say this, like I told you last week. They want their candidates to be talking this way. That’s one of the reasons all these activists are saying and doing what they’re saying. They want it echoed by the people they want to vote for.
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