RUSH: Yes siree, Bob. Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across — hang on just a second. Mix microphone. Bring up the… Good. Okay, again, three, two, one. Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, convers… Bring it down just a little bit. What the hell, hit the jingle. Let’s just get started.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: Live from the Left Coast at our satellite studios in Los Angeles, it’s Open Line Friday.
RUSH: Yes siree, Bob. Here we go, folks! All ready to have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. Your host — your beloved host — is being impugned, lied about, unfairly criticized all over the Drive-By Media. It’s typical, and I can’t wait to play for you the examples. It’s great to have you here. Open Line Friday. Whatever you want to talk about is fair game, fine and dandy. It can be anything at all. It’s 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. Email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
Have you ever noticed, ladies and gentlemen, how the… You know, I call them the left, the liberals, the Democrats, whatever. Have you ever noticed how they claim they love Mother Nature? They just love it! They don’t like humanity much because humanity destroys Mother Nature. But they love Mother Nature. But then when Mother Nature does something nasty, like give us a drought or give us a hurricane, it’s not Mother Nature’s fault. No! It’s our fault. It’s mankind’s fault because man has brought about climate change.
And Mother Nature is merely another poor victim of capitalism and uncaring, unfeeling, mean-spirited, extremist human beings. I just… I look at what has been reported about this hurricane, what was reported before it hit. By the way, for those of you wonder, we dodged the bullet as I knew. Well, I didn’t even any… I look at the models yesterday and the forecast, and I was telling everybody that was asking, “Look, it’s gonna go enough away from us that we’re not gonna get the brunt of this,” and it did. We had some damage where I live…
Well, no damage. There was one down tree. This is another thing. I got an email, “There’s a tree down on your property!” I said, “Oh, no, really? A tree down? Should I go home?” So somebody sent me a picture. It was the neighbor’s tree and about two feet of it was in the street. So everything is fine. I’m not able to get back home yet for a couple of reasons, but we should be back to normal on Monday up and running. If not, it doesn’t matter, folks. We’ll be here wherever we are. It doesn’t matter where “here” is. We’re here and I will be here.
But, as of yesterday’s program, we spent a lot of time talking about how there’s a lot of variances in what we’re being told about the high winds, various place like Nassau and Haiti, and then we had on-the-ground reports from those places that were not at all consistent with what we were being told the high and the wind gust and the sustained winds were. So I mentioned this, and at the Huffing and Puffington Post…
You know, folks, you heard me on this program yesterday. You have to be a special kind of stupid to write… (interruption) What is that? Is somebody farting? What is that? (interruption) It sounds like somebody farting, or putting makeup on, whatever. (interruption) You’re not hearing it? (interruption) There it is again. You didn’t hear that? (interruption) All right. Well, I will try not to be distracted by it. I mean, it’s not overwhelmingly loud, but it sounds like… I’m telling you what it sounds like.
It sounds like William Shatner’s in here, okay? Well, he’s known for that. On purpose. It’s part of his act. You have to be a special kind of stupid, and actually you can’t blame… (interruption) There it was again. You can’t blame the Huffington and Puffington, ’cause their source here is Media Matters, which has defined a special kind of stupid. Here’s how the Huffing and Puffington Post story begins: “Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh suggested this week that the National Hurricane Center was playing games with its forecasts to cause false alarms and scare people.
“‘It’s in the interests of the left to have destructive hurricanes so they can blame it on climate change, which they can desperately try to sell,'” they quote me as saying. “While Limbaugh admitted that Hurricane Matthew was a serious storm…” Of course, that doesn’t matter. I “admit” that it’s a serious storm. “…Limbaugh also claimed that it was the first of its kind in more than a decade.” It is! It’s the first major hurricane — and it hasn’t struck land yet, by the way, which is not good ’cause it’s not weakening that way.
It’s traveling up the east coast of Florida. “While he was correct that no storms in that time period were major, the so-called hurricane distraught was misleading, according to Weather Channel senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman.” This is… Anybody honestly assessing this… Who uses the term “hurricane drought” anyway? We just haven’t been hit by any major storms. It’s inarguable. (interruption) Are you hearing that? Okay, somebody just started playing music.
Literally, it’s as loud as my voice. I don’t know if they can hear this on the broadcast. (interruption) It’s not going out on the air? (interruption) Okay, well, now it’s… It was a guitar riff, like somebody playing some soft, cool jazz tune. (interruption) There it is again. Now it’s a country tune that’s playing. (interruption) Do what? (interruption) I’m sorry, folks. I’m being… I don’t know if we’re being sabotaged here or not, but the engineers cannot hear what I’m hearing in my feed. (interruption) Ah, that’s what… Okay, somebody… (interruption)
It was not sabotage, and I didn’t think it was sabotage. I just threw it out as a possibility. But somebody had a potentiometer here turned up that should not have been turned up. Volume control, for those of you in Rio Linda. Anyway, who talks in terms of hurricane droughts anyway? There just haven’t been any, and I don’t think that it is disputable that the left is using hurricanes… Do you realize there’s not gonna ever be another normal weather event ever again? A thunderstorm, a tornado, they’re gonna attach… They already do.
Every standard-operating meteorological event they treat as something special now, as something unexpected, as something unprecedented, and it’s exactly because they have a political agenda attached to this. You know what’s really scary? I think… You know we sit here and we talk about media bias and how the media’s thrown in with the Democrat Party. I think it’s worse than that. I was thinking about this last night. I was looking at all this coverage, the hurricane and how people reacted to what I said yesterday, and I don’t think it’s bias.
It is bias, but it’s gone beyond that. I think now that the media exists to defend the state. The media exists to defend the Regime. The media considers itself to be part of the state, the government, whatever term you want to use. But “state” has a special connotation to it in this lingo the way I’m using it. It used to be that the media was suspicious and doubtful. You remember the old phrase — what is it — “holding truth to power” or something?
But what that meant was that people who are more powerful than the rest of us are gonna get special attention and special accountability, because they had so much power because we had elected them. And they have that much power, so they were gonna be watched and they were gonna be analyzed. That stopped happening. There is no watching. There is no analysis. There is nothing but pure defense of the state. That’s what the media has become. And so here I am.
The state, in this case, is the commerce department, which is the National Weather Service, which is the National Hurricane Center, which is the National Oceanographic and Aeronautical Association, whatever it is — oh, and NOAA — and they’re out there all saying the same things, and Algore has made a point of pointing out global warming is responsible for stronger hurricanes. And after saying that, we didn’t have any for 11 years. But you can’t escape it — you can’t — any time this hurricane was talked about.
When they go to talk to a guest, some special meteorologist expert or hurricane specialist, there was always a link to climate change. We had this Ron what’s-his-name from NBC who actually said that the United Nations panel on climate change, once they get the document signed, it’s designed to stop these kinds of hurricanes, and the media doesn’t question it. The media doesn’t oppose it. They don’t question it. They never even doubt it.
They just report it, and when anybody comes along and does the job the media used to do — which is doubt and suspect what people in power tell us — we get attacked because we are then portrayed as enemies of the state. I think that’s really what’s going on with the media these days, in addition to whatever left-wing bias. But they have now grown to become one with government, one with the idea of Big Government. They consider themselves to be part of it. The fact that they’re all Democrats is icing on the cake.
But it’s the power that goes along with being part of the state. It’s the connections. It’s everything. And anybody that comes along with an opposing view — anybody that does not accept whatever the government says about anything — is immediately targeted, held up for ridicule. This is what the media themselves used to do. Now, you know as well as I do that whatever we’re talking about in terms of a hurricane or a major thunderstorm or high winds, nothing is “normal” anymore. Let me ask you this.
Gauging how successful they’ve been, this hurricane, did you need anybody to make you think about global warming when you first heard about it, or did you automatically say, “You know what? Global warming!” Why did you think it? Because they put it in your mind. They put it in your head. They talk about it so often. Major weather disasters — which used to be normal and constantly occurring — are now portrayed as dramatic, drastic, special, one-of-a-kind. Every damn one of them is one-of-a-kind, and there’s always a reason.
Humanity is causing it, not Mother Nature.
Mother Nature has become a victim of humanity. It’s absurd. The whole thing’s 180 degrees out of phase. And I just think it requires a special kind of stupid to be this compliant. It doesn’t take any courage; it doesn’t take any guts. Can you imagine the media being compliant with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan? Can you imagine them not doubting a thing? Can you imagine them thinking they are in the same government with Reagan or Nixon or George W. Bush, take your pick?
If you agreed with George W. Bush, you were the problem. You were a suspect. You were an enemy of the state. So the state is liberalism, whether it’s in power or not. And anybody that takes an opposite point of view or questions it becomes an enemy of the state. And it’s on that basis that you are reported on. It’s on that basis they tell jokes about you. And it’s all done to discredit critics because the state must never be wrong.
The state must be infallible, and therefore the journalists reporting for the state — not on the state, not about the state, but reporting for the state — must also be infallible. And somebody questioned them. This no different than questioning the pope. You can’t do it! Except they can. The left can ’cause the pope doesn’t conform with the state, particularly when it comes to abortion. So the pope is also an enemy, the Catholic Church is, ’cause it doesn’t conform with the state.
I’m an enemy of the state, because I have not bought hook, line, and sinker that every drop of rain that falls, every gust of wind over 30 miles an hour is because of climate change and therefore my fault and your fault, ’cause that’s flat-out BS. And it takes a special kind of stupid to acquiesce, to go along, to not think in a challenging way, to not be suspicious, to not even question it. And that’s how we get to a point where an NBC reporter can actually tell people that after a piece of paper is signed at the United Nations, hurricanes will be stopped.
Why wait for that? If we have the ability to stop know to stop hurricanes by signing a piece of paper, why haven’t we signed the piece of paper before? Why didn’t we do it two weeks ago so this wouldn’t have happened? And when it does happen, the hurricane, why don’t we sign up the piece of paper to make it stop then? Why don’t we tell that hurricane, “Stop, Dude. You have just been signed! We are relegating you to irrelevancy.
“We just signed a piece of paper the United Nations, and you don’t exist!” The hurricane goes away? Doesn’t happen, does it? Why don’t we steer it away from people? Why don’t we steer it away? Why don’t we go out there and make it less strong? Because we can’t, and yet they have made people think that we’re gonna be able to do this, and people are falling for it. Average, ordinary Americans are falling for it because it. It’s reported each and every day; there’s no questioning of it.
And the blind observance to the state is the greatest threat this country has, because when you have the wrong people in leadership in the state, you can say good-bye to the United States as founded. That is why the Founding Fathers granted the press constitutional responsibilities. The press is the only business in the country that has constitutional freedoms specifically spelled out for the express purpose — and Founding Fathers hated it.
They were criticized and ridiculed left and right. But they knew that was how to do it. That was the check on the collection of and the concentration of power, by always doubting it, by showing it to be wrong when it was wrong, by causing people not to be blindly obedient. But yet that’s where we are. Only an idiot would assume that my statement yesterday on the hurricane… Anything I said about it yesterday. Only an idiot would assume that I meant that I thought left-wingers were causing damaging hurricanes.
But that’s what’s being said. They are taking what I said and rewording it, claiming that I’m telling you that left-wingers are trying to make hurricanes worse so that they can sell global warming to you. That requires a special kind of stupid. Instead of cynically taking ideological and propagandistic advantage of them when they occur, it takes a special kind of stupid to make that leap, which is why it was made by a leftist. The headline of this Huffing and Puffington Post story: “Rush Limbaugh Thinks Hurricanes Are Part of a Left-Wing Conspiracy.”
No, I don’t, because we don’t control them!
It’s the way they’re reported. It’s the way they are forecast. It is the way they are used. Hurricanes have been around for millennia. (For those of you in Rio Linda, that’s thousands of years.) They’ve been bad. They’ve been inconsequential. They’ve been catastrophic. They’ve been everywhere on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They’ve been everywhere on any scale you want to be, before we even conceived of this premise of manmade global warming. Hurricanes and every other weather has been, including ice ages. Where we live now used to be buried under 10 feet of ice.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, I’ve got some audio sound bites that are gonna illustrate all this when we get back from the next break. But I just have to tell you, folks, something. In the 1950s, the state — the media and the left — blamed extreme weather on nuclear bomb testing, which they opposed, obviously. In the 1960s, the media and the left blamed extreme weather on space exploration. Remember those rocket launches were doing horrible things to the atmosphere?
We got a serious thunderstorm, and they blamed it on the rocket launches. If you don’t, you’re not old enough. Trust me, I do. The media opposed rocket launches because they thought it was gonna lead to warfare. In the 1970s and 1980s, the media-left blamed, quote, “extreme weather” on air pollution due to industry. Remember acid rain and all the cities that were gonna be destroyed by acid rain?
The media-left opposes industrialized states and businesses, and so how their enemies live is gonna get blamed for whatever they can most easily sell. If they want to you hate Big Business, then blame the weather that affects you every day and tell you that it wouldn’t be this bad if it weren’t for what Big Business is doing or if we weren’t testing nukes or if we weren’t launching rockets.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: In addition to all these things that the media and left blamed extreme weather on — nukes, nuke testing, rocket launches, extreme weather being blamed on air pollution, acid rain — they now blame extreme weather on climate change, global warming. Now, what is that caused by? What’s causing climate change?
Well, if you listen to them, capitalism is. Our progressive, advancing lifestyle, our SUVs, our air-conditioning is causing climate change. Our output of CO2, which is a direct result of our civilization and standard of living improving, and they blame that because they don’t like capitalism. It’s a threat to socialism. Socialism is where they are fully empowered. In Capitalism, they’re not; they resent it. What has always stunned me, not just about weather and climate change and how it’s dramatically didn’t today, you can read…
Like Drudge is getting a lot of grief today in places like Popular Science where you would expect… Popular Science, you would expect it to be about science. It’s not. It’s about politics. So Drudge advances on his website the same theory I’m advancing that there might have been a little bit of global warming hype in the warnings and forecasting the hurricane, and they think it’s the most outrageous thing in the world. You’d have to be a Looney Toon to think that.
Now, why do they think that? They’re not even suspicious, and it’s because they have totally bought into it. They have become totally obligatorily acquiescent to the state. Journalists are supposed to be curious and doubtful and distrustful. But they have been overtaken by what I call “a special kind of stupid,” defending the state on every single premise and dismissing any criticism as illegitimate. There isn’t a one of them that hasn’t bought into mankind is destroying the planet.
And I remember when practically all journalists doubted and were suspicious of government and investigated and looked into some of these claims that government would make, and in some cases it irritated us because there were honest people they were trying to destroy. But the difference now is that the media acts as though it is a branch of government charged with defending and protecting the state, and that is exactly what’s going on.
That is at the root, I maintain, of everything bothering us. We call it media bias. We call it unfairness. We call it a rigged game, whatever. What it actually is, is that the media is the state and they have taken on as their job, as their responsibility, to defend and protect the state and destroy anybody who criticizes the state. Now, you mark my words — it’s already true now. — there will never be another normal weather event ever, and there’s obviously a total absence of any critical thinking in our country.
There’s just total buy-in, acquiescence to the state. You know, I watched last night… I was up late, I was up late ’cause I was trying to find as much information as I could about this thing as it was passing the closest to where I live that it was going. So I found some live TV broadcasts of local TV stations in Florida, and as I’m watching this, I was especially sensitive to how it was making me feel, and I tried to get objective, and I tried to watch it as people who were there who were residents watching it, if they had power.
And I’m telling you, this coverage made me wanted to run, made me want to cover, made me want to cower, made me want to flee — and then they showed pictures of downed tree limbs in the street. Not trees. They even had a reporter standing over a downed stop sign pole, as though something had died, as an indication of how dangerous things were. A downed stop sign pole, and it was almost like a memorial service was being done for it. I’m watching this, and I’m in a stunned set of disbelief.
And then sometime later on CNN here comes little Brian Stelter, their media analyst, with a tribute, a shout-out to the bravery of these journalists out there risking their lives to bring the story of this destructive hurricane brought to us by global warming. I said, “Yep, yep. That’s bravery. These guys may be no different than the Rangers that climbed the hill at Pointe du Hoc at Omaha Beach. What bravery, what courage to stand out there and possibly get blown away,” all in service to the state — and it made me remember something.
I wonder how many of you are going to remember this. You know, the government is gonna be patting itself on the back, with a sense of achievement for overcoming this historic event. They’re gonna be patting themselves on the back. They faced this thing head on. Global warming brought us this massive hurricane, but the government mobilized. They put journalists and everybody into gear, and who knows how many things that might have happened didn’t. I remember one year, it might have been the nineties, Cuba was hit with a series of hurricanes.
It was just… It was almost unfair. And as one was approaching, Fidel Castro actually went out to Pinar Del Rio, which is in the Vuelta Abajo. It’s in the valley on the western side of Cuba and he actually went out there and he stood up, and he raised his hands, stopping the hurricane! He shouted at it, “Not here, no more,” and the hurricane missed Cuba. It went around Cuba, and the Cuban media placed Fidel for the courage to go out there and tell this hurricane what-for.
The only reason I know about this is it was reported in the United States media, not with a bunch of people laughing, but it was with incredulity. “Wow, Fidel went out there!” I’m not saying our media fell for it. Just, it wasn’t ridiculed. It wasn’t laughed at. It wasn’t held up for ridicule. Not like they hold Matt Drudge up for ridicule or me. No, no! Fidel Castro, he was treated with great respect.
He had the courage to go out there and at least try to stop this hurricane from devastating his little communist paradise. It’s stunning stuff — and, of course, Fidel’s media is part of the state. Now… Okay, I’m gonna take a break here. I know it’s Open Line Friday, gotta get to calls soon but I’ve got a series of sound bites you have to hear because it backs all this up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Very quickly, here’s how it happened. This is what I said yesterday on my program, and I want you to note how seriously I was describing this hurricane — which I did — and how seriously I also treated it.
RUSH ARCHIVE: This has been a serious storm from the get-go and I have perfected being able to analyze how hurricanes are reported. I’ve become an expert in spotting the politics in hurricane tracking and hurricane forecasting. And by that I mean the National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service, which is part of the Commerce Department, which is part of the Obama administration, which, by definition, has been tainted, just like the DOJ has. And we know… In fact, Obama is actually telling people that global warming, that climate change is having a very profound impact on the war in Syria. It’s patently absurd.
RUSH: As an aside, you realize how dangerous that is, too? That there’s a civil war in Syria, and it’s bad, and people are being killed, and our president is chalking it up to climate change. How does that gonna dictate the way we fight it? I mean, we can’t stop climate change other than sign pieces of paper in the U.N., so what is this…? That is dangerously insincere. And he knows better. I maintain Obama knows it isn’t climate change that’s responsible for the war in Syria. But he can advance the size of government, the intrusion of government in people’s lives, and he can exempt himself, by the way, by blaming it on something that nobody has any control over. Here’s Conan O’Brien. This is… You’ve heard what I said about this. Conan O’Brien had to go fell jokes on this yesterday on his show and this is how this Sunday.
O’BRIEN: Rush Limbaugh, whose show is headquartered in Florida, says the government is hyping Hurricane Matthew to sell climate change.
AUDIENCE: (boos)
O’BRIEN: Yeah. Limbaugh was unable to finish his comments because he was suddenly under 200 feet of seawater just bubbling and burbling.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
MAN: Yeah!
O’BRIEN: That’s all you could hear is bubbling.
RUSH: Lousy comedy because good comedy must have an element of truth in it. That’s what makes it funny. There’s no truth in this. I’m not even in Florida. There’s no 200 feet of water. We didn’t get any damage to speak of at all where I live. I mean, the usual downed tree limbs and leaves all over the place. But we escaped it. But, you see, the point is, “said the government’s hyping Hurricane Matthew to sell climate change.” It’s inarguable! But to him, that’s just the most outrageous thing that anybody would ever say. Why? ‘Cause Conan, for lack of ability to critically think, has just bought hook, line, and sinker into whatever the state says. And the state is infallible. Here is next back in a moment.
OBAMA: Many of you will remember Hurricane Sandy, where initially people thought this doesn’t look as bad as we thought and then suddenly you get massive storm surge and a lot of people were severely affected. And so I just want to emphasize to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane, that the potential for storm surge, flooding, loss of life and severe property damage continues to exist, and the people continue to need to follow the instructions of their local officials over the course of the next 24, 48, 72 hours.
RUSH: Okay. That’s fine as far as it goes, but then after he finishes, that was from this morning. When he finishes and he starts talking about it, and you have your obligatory guests referring to global warming as in a discussion as confirming what Obama’s saying. “Oh, yes! These storms can sucker you. They can fool you. They can do all kinds of things. Obama’s right about this, climate change, you never know what these things.” It just as subtle as that. Now, last night… I get time zones confused. It must have been midnight here. Had to be two a.m. Eastern time CNN announced that there was little to no property damage to report to date in Florida. Fine. That’s great, but it doesn’t dovetail with the warnings everybody got. This morning in Miami at the National Hurricane Center, the director, Rick Knabb, held a press conference. This is portion of what he said…
KNABB: If you are in an area that has been told to evacuate and your authorities are telling you that you still have time to evacuate, I want to personally plea with you to get out right now. Don’t wait one more moment. Save yourself, save your family, save your friends. Don’t be part of the history of this hurricane that might include, along with the fatalities in the U.S. due to water. You want to be on the positive side of history.
RUSH: Okay. Look, I don’t need to add anything to this. You see the — what do you want to call it? The scare. Save yourself. Hang on. The piece de resistance is coming shortly. Save yourself, save your family. Here now is the sheriff of Martin County, Florida, William D. Snyder.
SNYDER: People do not seem to get it and are not leaving. And I have already checked. I’m not saying this to be theatrical. You all know me. You don’t lean towards bravado, but I talked to my detective captain earlier today, and I asked him, “Do you have body bags? Are you prepared for mass casualties?” Because if people do not leave and we get 140-mile-an-hour wind gusts in some of our mobile home places, we are going to have fatalities.
RUSH: Yeah, I think it’s long gone out of Martin County. That’s just north of Palm Beach County. But body bags. Imagine you’re watching this. You know, your average American Tom Dick or Harry, Mary Jo and Sally are watching this, “Did you hear that, Mabel! They’re talking body bags. Oh, my God. We’re gonna die! Oh, gee. We’re gonna die.” Positive side of history. But this, folks, from yesterday on the Fox News Channel with our old buddy Shep Smith, this is the piece de resistance.
SMITH: Despite the warnings, lot of lots of people here in the United States have said we’re not going anywhere. We will not cover your funerals and we will not feel sorry for you. They’re stocking up supplies, boarding up their homes, and hoping — which is moronic. Matthew is a rare Category 4 hurricane. This moves 20 miles to the west and you and everyone you know are dead — all of you! — because you can’t survive it. It’s not possible, unless you’re very, very lucky. And your kids die, too.
RUSH: Okay. Fox News Channel, Shep Smith telling you that if you die it’s ’cause of your stupidity and they’re not gonna cover your funeral at Fox. You’ll have to find somebody else to cry for you. ‘Cause you can’t survive this. If it moves 20 miles to the west, then you and everybody you know are dead. And your kids die, too. Now, what are people supposed to do with that? Fearmongering in the name of liberalism is a virtue. Fearmongering in promotion of the state is a virtue.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, for those of you who still on the fence on this global warming attachment to hurricanes, I want to take you to PBS and the Newshour formally with Jim Lehrer last night hosted by Judy Woodward, and she’s got this Goddard Institute of space studies Gavin Smith on about Hurricane Matthew. She says, “Mr. Smith, at the time when many in the U.S. are focused on this big hurricane headed for the mainland, this has to give scientists the concern they’re gonna get even bigger. How should Americans and others think about climate change in the face of something like this?” You can’t escape it, is my point. And nobody doubts it. And here is the Goddard Space Studies director’s answer.
SMITH: So one of the key things is sea level rise. Sea level rise is one of those aspects of change that multiply the damages that are caused by, uh, just the natural variation of climate and the, uh, the natural variation of — of hurricanes and — and storms that we see. Plus, we have some expectation that hurricanes themselves — and storms themselves — will become more intense, uh, perhaps less frequent, but more intense. And then, uh, that obviously adds to the damages as well.
WOODWARD: Well, it’s an occasion to think about all of this and to think about, uh, the interconnection.
RUSH: From a couple of scientists in a book called Marine Geology: “It is instructive to note that over the [150 years] of ever-increasing fossil fuel utilization and atmospheric CO2 buildup, the frequency of the most intense category of hurricanes in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico has been lower than it was over the prior” 5,000 years.