With Ice Growing At Both Poles, Global Warming Theories Implode

Published on October 1, 2016

Written by Alex Newman

In the Southern Hemisphere, sea-ice levels just smashed through the previous record highs across Antarctica, where there is now more ice than at any point since records began. In the Arctic, where global-warming theorists preferred to keep the public focused due to some decreases in ice levels over recent years, scientists said sea-ice melt in 2014 fell below the long-term mean. Global temperatures, meanwhile, have remained steady for some 18 years and counting, contrary to United Nations models predicting more warming as carbon dioxide levels increased.

Of course, all of that is great news for humanity — call off the carbon taxes and doomsday bunkers! However, as global-warming theories continue to implode on the world stage, the latest developments will pose a major challenge for the UN and its member governments. Later this month, climate “dignitaries” will be meeting in New York to forge an international agreement in the face of no global warming for nearly two decades, record ice levels, and growing public skepticism about the alleged “science” underpinning “climate change” alarmism.

As The New American reported last month, virtually every falsifiable prediction made by climate theorists — both the global-cooling mongers of a few decades ago and the warming alarmists more recently — has proven to be spectacularly wrong. In many cases, the opposite of what they forecasted took place. But perhaps nowhere have the failed global-warming doom and gloom predictions been more pronounced than in the Antarctic, where sea-ice levels have continued smashing through previous records. For each of the last three years, ice cover has hit a new record high.

The most recent data show that the Antarctic is currently surrounded by more sea ice than at any other point since records began. In all, there are right now about 20 million square kilometers of frozen sea area surrounding the Antarctic continent. That is 170,000 square kilometers more than last year’s previous all-time record, and more than 1.2 million square kilometers above the 1981-to-2010 mean, according to researchers.

“This is an area covered by sea ice which we’ve never seen from space before,” meteorologist and sea ice scientist Jan Lieser with the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) told Australia’s ABC. “Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we’ve never seen that before, that much area. That is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia.”

Despite having predicted less ice — not more — as a result of alleged man-made global warming, some alarmists have comically tried to blame the record ice on “global warming.” Indeed, in a bizarre attempt to explain away the latest findings, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC boss Tony Worby tried to blame “the depletion of ozone” and the “warming atmosphere” for the phenomenal growth in sea ice — contradicting previous forecasts by warming alarmists, who warned that ice would decrease as temperatures rose along with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

The biggest problem with Worby’s claim, however, is the fact that the undisputed global temperature record shows there has been no warming for about 18 years and counting — contradicting every “climate model” cited by the UN to justify planetary alarmism, carbon taxes, energy rationing, massive wealth transfers, and more. Dozens of excuses have been concocted for what alarmists refer to as the “pause” in warming, as many as 50 by some estimates. The Obama administration’s preferred explanation, for which there is no observable evidence, is often ridiculed by critics as the “Theory of the Ocean Ate My Global Warming.”

However, scientists and experts not funded by governments to promote the alarmist narrative say the observable evidence simply shows the man-made CO2 theories and “climate models” pushed by the “climate” industry are incorrect. More than a few climate experts and scientists have even warned that a prolonged period of global cooling is approaching quickly. The consequences could potentially be devastating — especially if warming alarmists succeed in quashing energy and food production under the guise of stopping non-existent “warming.”

Also in response to the fast-expanding ice, some die-hard alarmists and warming propagandists styling themselves “journalists”have recently been hyping a relatively tiny part of the Antarctic ice sheet that may — centuries or even millennia from now — go into the sea. Numerous independent scientists and experts quickly debunked the fear-mongering, however, pointing out that it was almost certainly due to natural causes and was nothing to worry about.

In an ironic incident that sparked laughter around the world, a team of “climate scientists” who set out to show how Antarctic ice was supposedly melting ended up getting their ship trapped in record-setting ice — in the summer!Millions of taxpayer dollars and massive quantities of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions were required to rescue the stranded and embarrassed warming alarmists after their misguided adventure.

Another key tactic of the warmists to deflect attention from the expanding polar ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been to hype changes occurring in the Arctic instead. Unfortunately for the alarmists, however — critics often ridicule the movement as a “cult” for desperately clinging to its beliefs despite the evidence, not to mention the “Climategate” scandal — that will now be much harder to do with a straight face.

“After the very high melt rates of the 2007-2012 period, the trend reversed in 2013 and especially in 2014 when the melt fell below the long-term average,” explained German professor and environment expert Fritz Vahrenholt, adding that the heat content of the North Atlantic was also plummeting. “In other words: The 21st century climate catastrophe is not taking place.”

Decades ago, of course, Newsweek reported that Arctic ice was growing so quickly due to man-made “global cooling” that “scientists” were proposing to melt the polar ice cap using black soot. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. More recently, “climate” guru Al Gore had been regularly predicting that the entire polar ice cap would be gone by now. Instead, it is now far more extensive than when he made his now-discredited predictions.

Of course, UN bureaucrats, many of whom depend on sustainable alarmism for their livelihood, still have their heads in the sand about the implosion of their theory. On a call with reporters last week, for example, UN “climate team director” Selwin Hart, who serves under Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, claimed an upcoming global-warming summit in New York “will be a major turning point in the way the world is approaching climate change.” He may be right, though probably not in the way he intended. The conference, which will be skipped by key world leaders, is meant to put climate alarmism “back on top of the international agenda,” Hart added.

In the United States, meanwhile, as the evidence continues to contradict the alarmist predictions, polls consistently show that a solid majority of Americans reject the UN’s man-made global-warming theories. Like the UN, however, Obama continues to act as if the discredited theories were gospel, promising to save humanity from their carbon sins by lawlessly bypassing the U.S. Senate and the Constitution to foist a planetary “climate” regime on the American people. Lawmakers have vowed to prevent any such schemes, but it remains unclear how far the White House is willing to push the issue. After failing even with a Democrat-controlled Congress, the EPA is already working to impose Obama’s anti-CO2 schemes on America by executive decree.

With the evidence discrediting UN global-warming theories literally piling up on both ends of the Earth and everywhere in between, alarmists face an increasingly Herculean task in their bid to shackle humanity to a “climate” regime at next year’s UN summit in Paris. However, to protect the public — and especially the poor — from the devastation such a planetary scheme would entail, Americans must continue to expose the baseless alarmism underpinning what countless scientists now refer to as the “climate scam.”

 Photo of typical Antarctic landscape

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

Related articles:

Embarrassing Predictions Haunt the Global-Warming Industry

Obama Plotting to Bypass Congress on UN Climate Regime

Media Ridiculed for Hyping “Antarctic Collapse” Amid Record Ice

Global Warming Alarmists Stuck In Antarctic Sea Ice

Record Antarctic Sea Ice Chills Climate-change Projections

Desperate Dash of Global Warming

UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity

Climate Alarmists Push Chinese Communism, Population Control

In Historic Blow to Climate Hysteria, Australia Kills Carbon Tax

Carbon Scam by UN and World Bank Behind “Genocidal” Land Grabs

Desperate Dash of Global Warming

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The Lessons of the Failed Armistice of 1918

COMMENTARY BY

Victor Davis Hanson

The First World War ended 100 years ago this month on Nov. 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Nearly 20 million people had perished since the war began on July 28, 1914.

In early 1918, it looked as if the Central Powers—Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—would win.

Czarist Russia gave up in December 1917. Tens of thousands of German and Austrian soldiers were freed to redeploy to the Western Front and finish off the exhausted French and British armies.

The late-entering United States did not declare war on Germany and Austria-Hungary until April 1917. Six months later, America had still not begun to deploy troops in any great number.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. By summer 1918, hordes of American soldiers began arriving in France in unimaginable numbers of up to 10,000 doughboys a day. Anglo-American convoys began devastating German submarines. The German high command’s tactical blunders stalled the German offensives of spring 1918—the last chance before growing Allied numbers overran German lines.

>>> Watch Victor Davis Hanson’s talk at The Heritage Foundation on the lessons of World War I.

Nonetheless, World War I strangely ended with an armistice—with German troops still well inside France and Belgium. Revolution was brewing in German cities back home.

The three major Allied victors squabbled over peace terms. America’s idealist president, Woodrow Wilson, opposed an Allied invasion of German and Austria to occupy both countries and enforce their surrenders.

By the time the formal Versailles Peace Conference began in January 1919, millions of soldiers had gone home. German politicians and veterans were already blaming their capitulation on “stab-in-the-back” traitors and spreading the lie that their armies lost only because they ran out of supplies while on the verge of victory in enemy territory.

The Allied victors were in disarray. Wilson was idolized when he arrived in France for peace talks in December 1918—and was hated for being self-righteous when he left six months later.

The Treaty of Versailles proved a disaster, at once too harsh and too soft. Its terms were far less punitive than those the victorious Allies would later dictate to Germany after World War II. Earlier, Germany itself had demanded tougher concessions from a defeated France in 1871 and Russia in 1918.

In the end, the Allies proved unforgiving to a defeated Germany in the abstract, but not tough enough in the concrete.

One ironic result was that the victorious but exhausted Allies announced to the world that they never wished to go to war again. Meanwhile, the defeated and humiliated Germans seemed all too eager to fight again soon to overturn the verdict of 1918.

The consequence was a far bloodier war that followed just two decades later. Eventually, “the war to end all wars” was re-branded “World War I” after World War II engulfed the planet and wiped out some 60 million lives.

What can we learn from the failed armistice of 1918?

Keeping the peace is sometimes even more difficult than winning a war.

For an enemy to accept defeat, it must be forced to understand why it lost, suffer the consequences of its aggressions—and only then be shown magnanimity and given help to rebuild.

Losers of a war cannot pick and choose when to quit fighting in enemy territory.

Had the Allies continued their offensives in the fall of 1918 and invaded Germany, the peace that followed might have more closely resembled the unconditional surrender and agreements that ended World War II, leading to far more than just 20 years of subsequent European calm.

Deterrence prevents war.

Germany invaded Belgium in 1914 because it was convinced that Britain would not send enough troops to aid its overwhelmed ally, France. Germany also assumed that isolationist America would not intervene.

Unfortunately, the Allies of 1939 later repeated the errors of 1914, and the result was World War II.

Germany currently dominates Europe, just as it did in 1871, 1914, and 1939. European peace is maintained only when Germany channels its enormous energy and talents into economic, not military, dominance. Yet even today, on matters such as illegal immigration, overdue loans, Brexit, and trade surpluses, Germany tends to agitate its allies.

It is also always unwise to underestimate a peaceful America. The U.S. possesses an uncanny ability to mobilize, arm, and deploy. By the time America’s brief 19-month foray into war ended in November 1918, it had sent 2 million soldiers to Europe.

Had the armistice of November 1918 and the ensuing peace worked, perhaps we would still refer to a single “Great War” that put an end to world wars.

But because the peace failed, we now use Roman numerals to count world wars. And few believe that when the shooting stops, the war is necessarily over.

Robert Bowers and scapegoating social media

By Ben Crystal

Robert Bowers and scapegoating social media 

In keeping with American custom, the aftermath of the terrorist attack which stole the lives of 11 Americans at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was filled with the usual politicized finger-pointing at the expense of legitimate concern for those affected. Why waste time with icky old mourning when we can blame President Donald Trump's bombast, the Democrat Party's association with vicious anti-Semites, and/or the NRA? It's just a complicated way of avoiding pinning the tail on the right donkey, a Nazi-wannabe wingnut named Robert Bowers? The debate over who incited him continues endlessly across the politisphere. But nearly all the accusers have noted a common suspect: social media. And nearly all of them are wrong to do it. In fact, humanity's increasing interconnectedness is actually forcing us to be better, not worse.

Social media may be a "wretched a hive of scum and villainy," but wretched hives of scum and villainy have existed since well before we could email other neat-o gifs we made of Obi Wan Kenobi explaining Mos Eisley to Luke Skywalker. Social media, which is merely the latest method by which humans communicate with one another, is no more to blame for the human condition than the invention of the telegraph. It's merely another web, overlaying another era.

To be sure, Bowers made his intentions known before he began his brief reign of terror, flooding internet outlets with voluminous diatribes against Jews, Trump, and anyone and everyone else who made his tinfoil hat feel too tight. Multiple legacy media outlets have since pointed to Gab, the platform on which he really let his freak flag fly, as somehow responsible for Bowers' rampage. The left-wing mouthpiece New York Times labeled Gab, formed partly in retort to Twitter's simultaneous crackdown on conservatives and promoting of extremist liberals, an "extremist-friendly site." Former Democrat Party fuhrer and failed presidential candidate Howard Dean even demanded Gab be prosecuted as Bowers' accomplices. Surely, the snakes filling Robert's head wouldn't have squirmed so much if the internet wasn't filled with so much snake squirming fuel. I have never visited Gab. I have been told there are, in fact, a sizeable number of trolls under that particular bridge. So, what if there are? Louis Farrakhan has nearly half a million followers on Twitter, and feelings about the "Chosen People" which neatly mirror those of Bowers. Let me know when they demand someone slap the metaphorical cuffs on Twitter. I won't hold my breath.

And history doesn't bear out blaming social media for human failings. How many people were murdered in the name of politics, religion or land prior to the first Instagram post? While I'm sure ISIS enjoys the convenience of whichever encrypted messaging app they use to direct whichever jihadi to blow up whichever nursery school is next on their list, Al Qaeda had a pretty big run in late 90s and early 2000s using dialup modems, cell phones the size of bricks, and VHS tapes of Osama bin Laden yukking it up with that Zawahiri creep. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the other superstars of fascism and communism's heyday piled up body counts in the tens of millions in eras in which communication technology was barely one step past Morse code. Scrolling backwards through history, as "social media" is reduced to "outdoor yelling," humanity gets progressively more Hobbesian, not less. In light of the Pittsburgh atrocity, ask any Jew about the "good old days" before Facebook.

The argument that social media is to blame for acts of terrorism is just another way for the human family to explain away the behavior of the cousins we don't invite to Thanksgiving; another way for us to avoid taking responsibility for our own poor performance as a species. The proper response to monsters is to shine the light on them, not let them haunt the dark. If anything, people would be better served by MORE involvement in whatever media is available, not less. There's a reason the first thing tyrants do is get control of the people's access to information, and therefore, each other.

Invasion, USA

Invasion, USA 

An army is marching on us. Right now, somewhere beneath the line that separates the United States from the Third World, a massive force approaches, intent on pouring into America like the Spaniards did in Mexico. They rolled across Mexico's southern frontier — and Mexico's finest — liketoros over juevos. While the arena-sized crowd contains many men, women and children whose dreams of life among the gringos are filled with champagne and caviar — or at least potable water and edible food — many among them are thinking more "Grand Theft Auto" than "America the Beautiful."
The latest estimates place the size of the mobs around 10,000. Even if only 1 percent of them aspire to an American nightmare instead of an American dream, that's 100 new rapists, murderers, MS-13 narcoterrorists or garden-variety thugs who are making a run for our border. While the overwhelming majority might never do worse here than overstaying the time on the parking meter, I would be remiss if I did not note that nearly all of them illegally crossed the border separating Guatemala and Mexico, and say they plan to do the same when they reach the border separating us from them. Whatever they intend, from day labor to drug dealer, they intend to do it here. And somehow, despite the danger unfettered illegal immigration presents to any nation which allows it — I'm looking at you here, pretty much every country in Europe — we're actually embroiled in a debate over what to do.

While Americans who think America is worth protecting have expressed alarm, the Democrats are acting like little kids on the night before Christmas. While conservatives see people, some of whom are intent on doing serious harm to the Union, liberals see potential voters to be purchased with taxpayer-funded entitlements. While I suggest we consider combing the mob for malefactors, the pro-amnesty crowd wants to show them where we keep the valuables. While we call for action to preserve the country, they act on what the country should call illegal aliens.

Moreover, they don't even like the place. Even at the heights of the Obama regime's war on liberty, liberals never stopped shrieking about their grievances. Since Hillary Clinton came up one burrito short of the El Presidente Special, they've yammered about the racism and sexism which define everyone and everything. The same people who insist we should let every Tomas, Ricardo and Jorge crash on our national couch despise everything about America. Imagine how disappointed our newest residents will be when the liberals who rolled out the red carpet have turned the house into a replica of the crappy haciendas they fled. Eventually, we will have imported enough of what makes Latin America such a party that we'll be drinking ourselves under the same table.

The cohort bearing down upon us like Cortez on the Aztecs won't be the last. But rather than build up the battlements, we're yelling at each other about whether to build them at all. Someone should tell the pro-amnesty crowd how well that worked out for the Aztecs. 

Young Angry Men & Gangbangers March Towards U.S. Yelling “Vamos Para Allá Trump!”

Young Angry Men & Gangbangers March Towards U.S. Yelling “Vamos Para Allá Trump!” From Judicial Watch Besides gang members and mobs of young angry men, the Central American caravan making its way into the United States also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians. Judicial Watch is covering the crisis from the Guatemalan-Honduran border this week and observed that the popular mainstream media narrative of desperate migrants—many of them women and children—seeking a better life is hardly accurate. Guatemalan intelligence officials confirmed that the caravan that originated in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula includes a multitude of Special Interest Aliens (SIA) from the countries listed above as well as other criminal elements and gang members. There are also large groups of men, some with criminal histories, aggressively demanding that the U.S. take them in. During a visit to the Guatemalan town of Chiquimula, about 35 miles from the Honduran border, Judicial Watch encountered a rowdy group of about 600 men, ages 17 to about 40, marching north on a narrow two-lane highway. Among them was a 40-year-old Honduran man who previously lived in the United States for decades and got deported. His English was quite good, and he said his kids and girlfriend live in the U.S. Another man in his 30s contradicted media reports that caravan participants are fleeing violence and fear for their life. “We’re not scared,” he said waving his index finger as others around him nodded in agreement. “We’re going to the United States to get jobs.” Others chanted “vamos para allá Trump!” (We’re coming Trump) as they clenched their fists in the air. “We need money and food,” said a 29-year-old man who made the trek with his 21-year-old brother. All of the migrants interviewed by Judicial Watch repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan, insisting it was a spontaneous event even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews. A few claimed they heard about it on local news in Honduras. All of them said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty. “I just want to get back to the U.S.,” said a 32-year-old man who admitted he has been deported from the U.S. twice. “We are all just looking for work.” The group radiated a sense of empowerment. One marcher, who appeared to be in his late teens, yelled “you go live in Honduras and see what it’s like!” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, said in a local newspaper report that leftist interests seeking to destabilize the country are manipulating migrants.  Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, Hernández said. “The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” the president said, adding that many have returned to the country after realizing they’ve been fooled. Guatemala is overwhelmed with the sudden onslaught and immigration officials confirmed 1,700 migrants have been returned to Honduras on buses. The first wave of migrants totaled about 4,000, according to Guatemalan government sources, followed by a second, less organized group of about 2,000. The impoverished Central American nation needs help, including logistical, communications and civil affairs support to stop the human caravans. “There are only so many resources we can dedicate to this,” said Guatemalan Secretary of Strategic Intelligence Mario Duarte. Guatemalans are getting robbed and crimes are being committed by the people in the caravans, Duarte said.

Global warmists predict disaster in 10 years... again

By Jay Baler



Cooling, exonerating, slowing down, recanting and forswearing the most warmist, blaming, blowhardest, assaultive and attention-seeking fakeries in the week's fake news.

Global warmists predict disaster in 10 years… again

The nonsensical histrionics of the global warming alarmists are apparently nearing critical mass. In its Sunday edition, the fake news Washington Post greeted us with this alarming headline: The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.S. scientists say. 

The article states:

The world stands on the brink of failure when it comes to holding global warming to moderate levels, and nations will need to take "unprecedented" actions to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, according to a landmark report by the top scientific body studying climate change. With global emissions showing few signs of slowing and the United States — the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide — rolling back a suite of Obama-era climate measures, the prospects for meeting the most ambitious goals of the 2015 Paris agreement look increasingly slim. To avoid racing past warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels would require a "rapid and far-reaching" transformation of human civilization at a magnitude that has never happened before, the group found. "There is no documented historic precedent" for the sweeping change to energy, transportation and other systems required to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in a report requested as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The article went on to tell us that we had no more than 10-14 years to do something — but left unsaid was that that something meant stripping America of its wealth and making it a Third World backwater. Otherwise, global temperatures will rise 1.5-2 degrees, which will make parts of southwest Asia "literally uninhabitable," decrease the availability of food crops by half, bleach coral reefs, melt the Arctic, destroy the Amazon rain forest, melt the Siberian tundra which would release planet-warming methane from its depths, melt Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and, of course, flood the coastal regions.

That would be horrible news if true. Unfortunately for the U.N., this is simply a repeat of a U.N. prediction from almost 30 years ago. One, we note, that shows no signs of being remotely true.

Headlined, U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked, the article appeared in The Associated Press on June 30, 1989.

Back then, a senior U.N. official said entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if "the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000."

Noel brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP), said coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ?eco- refugees," threatening political chaos.

Brown predicted melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, flooded coastal regions, ecological refugees and 1930s Dust Bowl-like conditions.

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth's temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

Yet here we are, 29 years later, and none of Brown's predictions have come to fruition. And, as we told you before, global average temperatures are the same today as they were in 1988. And temperatures in 1988 were the same as they were in the early 1800s. We said it then. We'll say it today. There. Is. No. Global. Warming.

That temperatures are rising and man is the cause is fake news. Anyone telling you any different is either an ignoramus or is scamming you.

But it's Trump's fault

The Los Angeles Times couldn't resist taking the afore-mentioned U.N. report on global warming to take a potshot at President Donald Trump. In its reporting on the U.N. global warming scaremonging, The Times zinged Trumpas a "global outlier in terms of climate change" because he "rejected the 2015 Paris agreement signed by 195 nations to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, expressed skepticism about human-caused climate change and vowed to increase coal-burning."

But as the New York Post notes, the U.S. is the country that has reduced carbon emissions the most since 2015. U.S. carbon emissions are down by 0.5 percent, even though the American economy grew by 3 percent over that time.

Of the 25 nations that signed onto the treaty, only five have managed to reach even 50 percent of their pollution-reduction promise.

After seeing the report, French President Emmanuel Macron — a major champion of the Paris accord — sent out an interesting tweet.

It said, "The report is #GEIC scientifically proven: we have all the cards in hand to fight global warming. But everyone has to act now!"

By "everyone," Macron apparently means everyone but France, which hasn't come close to meeting it's climate promises under the accord. In fact, all the European Union countries are failing to meet their promises under the accord. Funny that the Times didn't mention that.

But that's precisely why Trump declined to participate. He accurately predicted that all the other countries would cheat, leaving Americans saddled with higher taxes and higher energy bills and an uneven playing field in the global economy.

Hurricane Michael was fake news

No, not the hurricane itself, which was very real. Especially if you were in its path. But claims that it was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast are turning out to be fake news.

As it approached landfall we were told repeatedly that its winds were sustained 150-155 mph, ranking it near the top for fiercest storm to hit the U.S. But recorded wind gusts in the storm's path don't bear that out.

The top wind gust reported at Tyndall Air Force Base was 129 mph (or 119 mph, depending on whether you're using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chart or The Weather Channel's graphic. Panama City's top wind gust was 116 mph. At Mexico Beach, said to be in the storm's bullseye at landfall, the top recorded gust was 104 mph. Other stations in Panama City recorded top gusts of 94 and 78 mph. And NOAA reported these gusts while simultaneously stating sustained winds were 150 mph. That's impossible.

In saying this we're not trying to diminish the hurricane's impact — which is incredible — but to point out that what you're being told is not and cannot be true.

Our hearts and prayers go out to those whose property was damaged or destroyed and those who were injured, and especially to the family members of those who lost their lives.

What we learned from the Kavanaugh hearing

If there's one thing we learned from the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, it's that girls don't lie about sexual assault and should be believed whenever they make accusations against a man. After Christine Blasey Ford "credibly accused" Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her, the FBI couldn't find a single solitary bit of corroborating evidence for her story. On top of that, she contradicted herself — and her legal team and her therapist — during her testimony. Still, the MSM — and most politicians — determined her story was "credible."

So given that we know that girls don't lie, we find the story about the Seneca Valley "mean girls" who were named in a lawsuit for falsely accusing a boy of multiple rapes to be fake news and proof that the patriarchal American society exists and all women are victims and boys don't have to be from wealthy families to be exonerated of rape.

If you missed the story, last week the parents of a teenage boy in Pennsylvania filed suit against five "mean girls," alleging they "conspired in person and via electronic communication devices to falsely accuse T.F. of sexual assault on two occasions."

According to the lawsuit, one girl accused the boy, identified in the lawsuit only as T.F., of sexually assaulting her at a pool in July 2017 where T.F. worked as a lifeguard. The girl's story was corroborated by another girl who also worked as a lifeguard and who claimed she was present when the assault occurred. After the charges were made, T.F. was fired from his lifeguard job. The next March, T.F. was charged with sexually assaulting a girl that he had walked home from school. Three girls corroborated that girl's story.

T.F. was subsequently charged with multiple crimes, spent time in juvenile detention and later confined to his home.

But this summer the girls' stories began to unwind. They finally recanted. All of them confessed to making up the story because they didn't like T.F. and "would do anything" to get him fired from his job and "expelled from school."

In other words, the one thing we learned from the Kavanaugh hearing turned out to be fake news.

But they said girls don't lie…

Not only do straight girls sometimes lie, but so do lesbians.

Ohio University student Anna Ayers, who is also a member of the OU Student Senate, was arrested this week and charged with three counts of "making false alarms" after she told campus police that she had received three threatening messages because she was a lesbo and member of the LGBTQ community. The messages she received were said to have included death threats and "expressed extreme hatred… because of who I am." They came to her at the Student Senate office and her residence.

The OU campus newspaper played up the story, and the school of journalism expressed support for her in her time of distress.

But it only took the campus police a few days to determine the story was fake. Ayers had sent the notes to herself prior to making the report to police.

According to a news release from the OU police department, making false claims is a first degree misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine.