Rush Limbaugh Thinks Hurricanes Are a Liberal Plot

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh continued his crusade against science on Wednesday, alleging the National Hurricane Center, “which is part of the Obama administration, which by definition has been tainted just like the [Department of Justice],” is “playing games” with hurricane forecasting so the left “can blame it on climate change.”

Claiming he has “perfected being able to analyze how hurricanes are reported,” and is now “an expert in spotting the politics in hurricane tracking and hurricane forecasting.” Limbaugh berated President Barack Obama’s administration for “actually telling people that global warming, that climate change is having a very profound impact on the war on Syria.”

Limbaugh said “it’s tactically absurd” that climate change impacted the Syrian war, despite a 2015 report in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences that noted many factors, including corrupt leadership, growing inequality and massive population growth, sparked the conflict. Included among the factors revealed through the study? Climate change. Per National Geographic:

“But their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compiled statistics showing that water shortages in the Fertile Crescent in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey killed livestock, drove up food prices, sickened children, and forced 1.5 million rural residents to the outskirts of Syria's jam-packed cities—just as that country was exploding with immigrants from the Iraq war.”

In an interview Richard Seager, a Columbia University climate scientist and the study’s co-author said climate change was a factor in the drought that led to the country’s unravelling. "The entire world needs to be planning for a drier future in that area. And there will be lots of global implications,” Seager said.

But for Limbaugh, the very real implications of global climate change are voodoo science. “It’s in the interest of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change, which they can desperately continue trying to sell,” Limbaugh charged.

Limbaugh went on to lament Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning work in the field of climate studies, arguing that the former Vice President was wrong in predicting that Hurricane Katrina was “just the beginning.”

“We had 11 years of no hurricanes,” Limbaugh said. “Eleven straight years of no major hurricanes striking land in the United States, which just bores a hole right through the whole climate change argument.”

Of course, dozens of damaging hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S. since 2005. Just three years after Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ike struck Florida, Texas and Louisiana; Ike was the fourth costliest hurricane in U.S. history, racking up $25 billion in damages. In 2013, Hurricane Sandy hit 24 states, killing 233 people and costing the government $75 billion. Still, for Limbaugh, it’s the climate change scientists who are twisting facts to suit their narrative. Got it.

Limbaugh then compared hurricanes with UFOs, noting alien spaceships “never land where there are smart people.”

“UFOs always land in trailer parks and places,” he continued. “You ever notice that? UFOs land in swamps. They land out where nobody lives. They don't go to MIT. They don't go to Harvard. Well, a hurricane hitting a swamp is worthless to the global warming crowd.”

Limbaugh concluded his anti-science rant by saying he knows, based on his extensive expert knowledge of the politics of weather forecasts, that impending Hurricane Matthew is legit. “Well, this hurricane there has been no politics,” Limbaugh said. “This is a serious bad storm.”