The Grand Solar Minimum is a time when The Sun goes into a kind of hibernation, where Planet Earth will not be receiving the heat it normally depends on to carry out most of life’s necessities. Solar Cycles run every 11 years, some have lasted 6 cycles.
Major challenges will be arriving all at once, such as finding, growing, cooking, and storing food. Many of us will be faced with not being able to receive power from the standard electric & gas companies that we totally depend on.
Transportation infrastructure will be affecting supply chains and basic levels of transportation such as buses, trains, and cars. Heating our homes will be imperative!
Dr. Valentina Zharkova, founder of ZVS Research Enterprise Ltd, at Solargsm.com. is a Solar Physicist, Mathematician, Teacher, and professor, who joins us to share her scientific findings about our main star, The Sun.
She shares how and the Suns’ Activity has impacted life in the distant past and why our ability to measure it is so advanced, that we will have a front-row seat at this Earthly Cycle.
This interview is about leaving you with a totally different framework in which to clearly understand the importance of this Solar Cycle & why it’s urgent that we understand how the Sun works, and how measuring it has totally changed over the last 2-300 years. You and your loved ones still have time to prepare for this upcoming Solar Cycle.
It’s advisable to have paper and pen with you so that you don’t miss the key distinctions that you would ordinarily not receive in ordinary climate science data and discussions.
Share this with everyone you know and care about. Don’t miss this Special!
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It’s Rainmaking Time Weather and Climate stories here
Dr. Valentina Zharkova’s recent talks at the international meetings about the modern grand solar minimum (2020-2053) and the role of orbital motion of the Sun on the temperature increase on Earth and other planets (with ppt files)
* Presentation at the International Conference in Astrophysics, 23-25 May 2023, Kyiv, Ukraine: Comparison of solar activity indices: sunspots and eigen vectors and the modern Grand Solar Minimum in progress (2020-2053) download
* Presentation at the International Conference in Astrophysics, 23-25 May 2023, Kyiv, Ukraine: Periods of solar activity and orbital asymmetry of solar radiation deposition into the terrestrial atmosphere download
David Evans, who consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) 1999-2005 and 1998-2010, and was a believer in AGW until the evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself in 1998 to 2006, when he became a skeptic.
“The AGW scam involves a “regulating class’ of believers, consisting of the UN, western governments, major banks and finance houses, NGOs and greenies, totalitarian leftists, government-funded scientists, academia, renewables corporations and the mainstream news media. Against them are the doubters: independently-funded scientists, private-sector middle class, and amateurs. The regulating class does not try to hide its belief that it is cleverer and morally superior. Their solution is regulation of the whole world’s economy by themselves, which was the object at the failed Copenhagen climate conference. On climate change, the regulating class has won over the leadership of most professional and business organizations by lobbying and pressure.”
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Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation
“The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present- and is gravely to be regarded. Yet in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. “
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Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, visited Australia in July 2011. In referring to the ideological orientations of those individuals and organisations who have significant financial and other vested interests in propagating the ‘Doctrine’ of anthropogenic induced climate change, President Klaus said: “They want to change us, to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences, they want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. What is endangered is freedom, the climate is okay.”
After noting that today’s human-induced climate change alarmists are the ideological descendents of the zero and negative population growth advocates of the 1970s who erroneously forecast that human population pressures would lead to increases in global poverty and growing shortages in resources, President Klaus went on to add: “They hate us, the humans, they consider us selfish and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world - called communism - and I know that it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”
SEEN IN THEIR OWN WORDS:
* Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General who chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse...isn’t it our job to bring that about”.
* “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention ...and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or...one invented for the purpose.” Quote by the Club of Rome.
* UN Climate Chief Christine Figueres said “Our aim is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to change the global economic system (destroy capitalism).”
* UN IPCC Lead Author Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010. “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
* Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, seconded Strong’s statement: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of globaL warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
* Richard Benedick, a deputy assistant secretary of state who headed policy divisions of the U.S. State Department, stated: “A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”
* “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
* “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
* “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace”
* “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
* “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
* “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
* “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
* “Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” Professor Maurice King
* “The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” - Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview
* “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.” David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
* “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
* “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
* “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
* “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” - Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
* “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable.” Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
* “All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.’ - Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
* “Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.” - Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society
* “Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” - Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
* “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” - Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
* “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” - Prof. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
* “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.” - United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment
* “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal” -Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
* “… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.” - Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
* “One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
- Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
* “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
* “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems."- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
* “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.” -Christopher Manes, Earth First!
* “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
* “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” - Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
* “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen."- Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
* ‘In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.’ - Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
* “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
* The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe” - emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
* “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.” David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager
* *Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send out entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced - a catastrophe of our own making.” Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth
* “By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic. Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia
* “Climate Change will result in a catastrophic, global seal level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis” Greenpeace International (It has risen less than 7 inches in 100 years and is decelerating)
* “We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.” Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“ “In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan[ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late.’ Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“ “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.’ UN Commission on Global Governance report
* ‘The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.” Rene Dubos, board member Planetary Citizens
* “A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income.” Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
* “Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.” Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
* “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced - a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” - UN Agenda 21
* “Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” - Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
* ‘In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways."- Dr. Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
* “Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.” Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute
* Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff recently admitted that the ‘Green New Deal’ was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing”.. nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy. The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it was not originally a climate thing at all,” Saikat Chakrabarti said
Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “the hottest month [July] just ended. We witnessed scorching heat, extreme weather events, wildfires, and severe health consequences.”
He added, “It’s a stark reminder of the urgent need for collective action to address climate change. Let’s use this alarming milestone to fuel our determination for bold climate action.
“Together, we can turn up the heat on sustainable solutions and create a cooler, more resilient world for generations to come.”
Myron Ebel, director and senior fellow at the Center for Energy and Environment, notes that while June and July were hot in many locations, others - such as Los Angeles with the 10th coolest June on recent record according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - experienced below-average temperatures.
On July 27, President Biden stated that “record temperatures - and I mean record - are now affecting more than 100 million Americans. Puerto Rico reached a 125-degree heat index last month. San Antonio hit an all-time heat index high of 117 last month.”
Rather than citing actual temperatures where, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), Puerto Rico on the day referenced was 95 degrees - not 125 - since index measurements combine temperature and relative humidity.
According to the NWS, San Antonio’s 117-degree heat index that month resulted from just three days of 105-degree temperatures from June 19-21.
And whereas Houston experienced 10-degree-higher-than-average July temperatures, some rural Texas towns such as Water Valley at 99.8 degrees compared with a prior 97-degree average reflected little change.
Climatologist and professor John Christy, director of the University of Alabama Huntsville Earth Science Center, points out that “regionally, the West has seen its largest number of hot summer records in the past 100 years, but the Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest are experiencing their fewest.”
As Dr. Christy, also a former NASA scientist, observes, “for the conterminous U.S. as a whole, the last 10 years have produced only an average number of records...The 1930s are still champs [for producing the most 100-plus temperature days in a year].
Conveniently omitted in alarmist reports is the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) temperature data for contiguous states, revealing that the number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), which peaked in the 1930s has been in an 80-year overall decline.
Bear in mind that this preceded the 1940s when World War II weapons industries released massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, global temperatures declined in fits-and-starts from the mid-1940s until the late 1970s, when most of the climate science establishment and media were predicting the beginning of the next Ice Age with galloping glaciers threatening Manhattan.
A decade later, abetted by then- Sen Al Gore’s feverish 1988 hearings in Congress in concert with the U.N.’s obsession with passing the Kyoto Protocol global wealth redistribution plan capping CO2 in developed countries - mainly the U.S. -its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared an opposite and imminent global warming emergency which continues to give a pass to China, the world’s largest emitter.
Whereas Christy and virtually all other informed climatologists fully recognize that climate obviously changes due to numerous complex natural factors and that a warming trend has ensued since the three-century-long so-called “Little Ice Age” ended in the mid-1800s, we shouldn’t confuse 30-year-long climate attributions with decadal and shorter regional weather patterns and occurrences.
Christy told the Epoch Times that global satellite readings he measured with meteorologist colleague Roy Spencer which go back only to 1979, show that while last July was the warmest by about a quarter of a degree, an “early and strong El Nino” was a “major factor” in the increase.
The term “El Nino” refers to entirely natural, relatively short multi-year periodic events in the Pacific Ocean leading to warmer temperatures in North and South America which are typically followed by La Nina’s that reverse results to cooler circumstances with trade winds that push warm water toward Asia.
All-in-all, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data does show that average global surface temperatures have increased by two degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900), and few will argue that CO2 hasn’t had some (yet unmeasurable) contribution.
Confirming that recent satellite data shows global temperatures rising steadily at about 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit every decade, Christy nevertheless emphasizes that we should understand that this current trend is bouncing back from the 19th century, which was one of the coldest in the last 10,000 years.
The Roman Warm Period two thousand years ago was just as warm or warmer, as was the Medieval Warm Period a thousand years ago - long before mankind introduced smokestacks and SUVs
Let’s also be mindful that CO2 is essential to plant food that satellites reveal is making our world greener, extending growing seasons, feeding more people and other of God’s creatures, and fundamentally extending and improving our lives.
Whereas President Biden claims, “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of climate change anymore,” where “the No. 1 weather-related killer is heat - 600 people die annually from its effects,” he fails to mention that cold weather conditions kill far more each year.
According to the Breakthrough Institute, heat is responsible for about 500,000 annual deaths worldwide, while cold temperatures account for 4.6 million excess fatalities.
It’s also high time for Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus to come clean and set records straight on WHO’s botched information about COVID-19 before again misrepresenting facts about weather.
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See the years with the highest all-time state temperatures here.
More Climate Alarmists Misinformation about Emperor Penguin’s Breeding Failure!
The recently published paper by Peter Fretwell titled Record Low 2022 Antarctic Sea Ice led to Catastrophic Breeding Failure of Emperor Penguins, set off a wave of misinformed doomsday articles, as his introduction stated “Recent efforts to predict emperor penguin population trends from forecasts of sea ice loss have painted a bleak picture, showing that if present rates of warming persist over 90% of emperor colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.
A sea ice physicist at the British Antarctic Survey added to the fearmongering stating “This paper dramatically reveals the connection between sea ice loss and ecosystem annihilation. Climate change is melting sea ice at an alarming rate.”
However, there was absolutely no evidence the lack of sea ice was due melting from global warming. All previous research has shown because of the extreme cold melt ponds are rarely observed in Antarctica. The annual loss of fast-ice (ice fastened to the shore) that Emperors often use for a breeding, is largely due to breakouts, not melting. And a careful examination of the 5 colonies that Fretwell analyzed, strongly suggest the paper’s claims were just promoting the climate crisis hoax.
Nonetheless, the dishonest doomsday internet activist GoGreen@ecowarriorss pounced on the misinformation and tweeted “Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears Ultimately, they cannot survive in an ever warming world and neither can we or most other species bar cockroaches and a few other hardy species. MSN.com fearmongered, “Emperor penguins are running out of ice to breed on.’
Click bait media like USA Today headlined, “Climate change hits emperor penguins: Chicks are dying and extinction looms, study finds ‘stating “due to the dramatic loss of sea ice, several colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica face “quasi-extinction” in the decades to come. And as expected CNN wrote, “‘Catastrophic’loss: Huge colonies of emperor penguins saw no chicks survive last year as sea ice disappears.;
But Fretwell’s 5 colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea (circled region) were NOT huge as illustrated by the small circles. Furthermore, climate scientists had determined that atmospheric circulation variability over the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Sea is larger than in any other region of the Southern Hemisphere, which is why the fast-ice extent is so variable there and so prone to the early breakouts that happened in 2022. The regions instability also suggests the 5 colonies were likely only temporary.
1. Satellites first discovered the Bryant Coast colony in 2014, but there were no penguins observed there in 2010.
2. The Pfrogner Point colony was only discovered in 2019. Its estimated population of 1200 pairs bred on a stable ice shelf, not on fast ice. Yet they still abandoned the colony in November.
3. There was no breeding failure on the Rothschild Island colony because there, fast-ice persisted as needed until the end of December.
4. Smyley Island colony was first discovered in 2009, and its populations vary wildly, between 1000 and 6500 breeding pairs.
5. The Verdi Inlet colony was first discovered by satellite in 2018 and its population also varied wildly.
Tremendous sea ice variability in the Bellingshausen Sea is caused by the shifting location and strength of the quasi-permanent pressure system, known as the Amundsen Low. As seen in the illustration, the Amundsen Low’s clockwise circulation caused reduced sea ice (red) in the Bellingshausen Sea and above average sea ice (blue) in the Amundsen and Ross seas. Also notice there was no other loss of sea ice along the coast where Emperors breed. Low sea ice elsewhere (red) was caused when weaker winds did not extend the pack ice further away from the coast.
Years when the Amundsen Low is stronger, the winds in the Bellingshausen Sea that blow towards the coast prevent sea ice expansion. Those stronger winds also carry more moisture and cause some of Antarctica’s most intense snowfalls. Heavy snowfall insulates the fast-ice and prevents warmer ocean heat from ventilating. That trapped heat then reduces the normal thickening of the fast-ice, making fast-ice in this region more vulnerable to breakouts.
Finally, the Amundsen Low is very sensitive to El Nino and La Nina events that shift the winds location and strength. The fast ice breakouts of the 5 colonies had nothing to do with a climate crisis but were driven by natural atmospheric circulation patterns unique to the Bellingshausen Sea.
Shame on all the alarmists that weaponized weather and natural penguin migrations to push a climate crisis!
See the story by David Siegel Jim highlighted here.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an utter disgrace. I have been following its antics since Katrina. It’s #1 priority in disasters seems to be photo-ops.
The full Daily Mail story is here. Kathleen and I have merely toured the Grand Wailea beach resort as we can’t afford to stay there! I just went to their website to get the current price of a room. See for yourself. Rooms start at $900/night.
Meanwhile, the people of Lahaina had to listen to President Biden drone on yesterday about a kitchen fire (no one hurt) at his home that threatened his prized Corvette.
Local government officials in Hawaii continue to stonewall residents of Lahaina as to the number of deaths. The current death toll is an awful 114; there are indirect indications the total number of deaths may be significantly higher. When residents press the mayor for answers, this is what they get.
Lahaina is hardly the only time FEMA has been accused of being unresponsive. Read this letter from the mayor of Lake Charles to FEMA in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Laura.
In the strongest possible manner, please contact your congressional delegation and urge them to work together to create a National Disaster Review Board modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
How Will the National Disaster Review Board Function?
When there is, for example, a commercial airline crash, the NTSB takes over the scene and the press relations. Their investigators, who are experts—while they work with the local authorities—and take the lead. There is none of the game-playing that goes on such as at the red link above. With a National Disaster Review Board, we would know how many have been identified as perished and how many are missing.
The NTSB has a lab where they analyze evidence gathered during a plane crash. They same lab recovers the data from an airliners’ cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder (the “black boxes” on every airliner). What I really like about the NTSB is they invite all interested parties to the investigation. For example, if Boeing manufactured the plane, they have a representative to participate and lend their expertise.
That’s how I got acquainted with the NTSB--we were participants in investigations in railroad derailments and plane crashes. In the case below, it was clear when they walked in that they had one impression as to what had occurred. We presented the evidence and they changed their minds --they were open-minded and wanted to get things right.
While it is not a perfect comparison, the National Disaster Review Board would take over the site of the Lahaina fire and invite local fire, emergency management, National Weather Service, Hawaii Electric and the others involved to participate. Then, like the NTSB, there would be a public hearing (for this case in Maui) where local residents could offer their input as to what occurred, vent their frustrations, et cetera. After about 9-12 months, a full report with findings of fact and recommendations for improving safety, would be issued. In some cases, like the NTSB, it would offer recommendations to Congress and the Administration where changes in policy are needed.
I am a Reagan (small government) conservative and it goes against my political grain to advocate increasing the size of government. But, all evidence seems to be that our disaster responses are getting worse, not better. That is why it is essential for a National Disaster Review Board to be created at the earliest possible time.
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