RUSH: It took five minutes. Five minutes. It only took five minutes before the Democrat Party politicized the tornado in Oklahoma. They politicize everything, folks. They rub their hands together in glee when there is a natural disaster that they think they can spin in such a way as to advance their political agenda. If any of you doubt that global warming is a political issue and not a science issue, then you must open your mind and consider why in the world, ask yourself, why in the world, five minutes after the news hits of this horrible destruction, a Democrat senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, runs out and starts talking about global warming and blaming the tornado on global warming.
Tornado activity in this country is actually down. Temperatures have not risen for 15 years. There is no warming taking place and certainly no man-made global warming. Five minutes after the news of this tornado hits, a Democrat senator cannot wait to get hold of a reporter somehow, any way possible, and start shouting: “global warming.” What is the point? What in the world is served by that? What possible assistance can that observation be? What does it have to do with anything?
I really don’t even want to acknowledge this but I’m going to for the sake of the discussion. Even if there were global warming taking place, what point is made, what is served by calling attention to it five minutes before we even know the death toll. These people are just despicable. Five minutes. And then that chorus was picked up in any number of places in the media internationally. They were excited that they could say that the tornado was the result of global warming. I’ve had a story at the top of the Stack for the past couple days. It’s from the BBC, and these are the biggest global warming political aficionados you’ll ever run into. The BBC is as far left as anything in this country, and they are invested totally in the idea of man-made global warming. The story from the BBC is on the 19th of May, two days ago: “Climate Slowdown Means Extreme Rates of Warming ‘Not As Likely’.”
And here’s a pull quote from the story: “Since 1998, there has been an unexplained ‘standstill’ in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.” What do you mean, “unexplained standstill”? Unexplained only from their baseline, and their baseline is the flawed, fraudulent projections made by their flawed models. Nobody knows what the norm is. Nobody’s been alive long enough to know what the norm is. We’ve been around tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, billions, who knows, who’s counting, years. Nobody knows what the norm is. It’s height of folly to assume the norm is now when we’re alive.
So they’ve got these models that projected all this warming, and the warming isn’t taking place, so, my gosh, what’s wrong? Maybe nothing’s wrong, other than their stupid models. Maybe nothing’s wrong. Maybe there is no standstill. They have their models projecting warming over the next 100 years, and it isn’t warming. They don’t stop and think that their models are wrong. There’s something unexplained going on out there. For 15 years there has been this trend of no warming, and we’ve been fed a bunch of lies that we’re all about to burn to death. Five minutes after this tornado hits, the Democrats can’t wait to use it to advance their political agenda.
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RUSH: Anyway, the tornado. It’s a crying shame. It’s a natural disaster. They happen. The true test comes in a natural disaster. The people of Oklahoma know that they are in Tornado Alley. The true test is the aftermath, how people deal with it — and I have to tell you: From what I’ve seen, these people in Oklahoma are the backbone of the United States of America. I found the same thing, by the way, in Joplin.
Kathryn and I went to Joplin, Missouri, with a whole semi-truck load of Two If By Tea two years ago around the Fourth of July shortly after the tornado had ripped after that town to shreds. We found the people of Joplin were not crying and whining and moaning, and they weren’t asking where FEMA was, and they weren’t demanding that government show up. They had rolled up their sleeves and they were already starting to rebuild. We went in.
They had a big concert with a bunch of groups that came in and performed gratis. It was a pretty big party, a barbecue. As I say, we brought in a bunch of iced Two If By Tea. I made a short little speech on American exceptionalism and how the people of Joplin were illustrating, demonstrating it. It’s the same thing in Oklahoma, and you’ll hear it here on the sound bites coming up. Backbone of America. They know what can happen there. It’s happened before. This is a pretty bad one. This was a huge tornado.
But I just want to remind you of three things. Again, the BBC story. Because it took five minutes, folks, and the Democrat Party was politicizing the latest now to come out is Senator Boxer. Senator Boxer is now saying, “See! See! This tornado means there’s global warming.” Okay, so what? What do we do? We’re gonna raise taxes? What are we gonna do? All you Democrats — Sheldon Whitehouse, Barbara Boxer — what the hell could you have done to stop this?
Tell me!
What has global warming meant to that tornado?
Was it bigger and more powerful because of global warming? Is that what you want to try to convince people of? That if somehow we had taken steps on your so-called climate change, the tornado wouldn’t have been as powerful, wouldn’t have been as big, and may not have happened? What are you trying to convince people of? Do you realize how absurd you people are? Five minutes after this disaster and they’re trying to politicize it? For what purpose? I’ll tell you what purpose.
They want the government to get bigger, and they want you to drive smaller cars, and they want to dictate the way you live. They want you to use one sheet of toilet paper, whatever. (That’s an extreme example from Sheryl Crow, but still.) They want you giving up a little more of your economic freedom, they want you paying higher taxes, under the guise that somehow those people in Washington (in conjunction with people at the United Nations) know everything there is about the climate.
And if you just give ’em more money, well, they’re gonna do magic things and make tornadoes and hurricanes and so forth go away. Well, there’s a problem. There isn’t any global warming, and tornado activity has been on the decline. BBC: “Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term. Since 1998, there has been an unexplained ‘standstill’ in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly. The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast. But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.”
These people are simply throwing it up against the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s just gibberish, folks. There’s an unexplained “standstill”? Based on what? Why do they assume that what is happening now is normal, and that anything above or below what’s happening now is a disaster? They don’t know what “normal” is. There hasn’t been anybody alive long enough to keep records long enough to figure out an average. There’s no science here. This is all politics.
Unexplained standstill? From what? Okay, so they’ve got a bunch of computer models — which are flawed (garbage in/garbage out) — and their computer models said that over the past 15 years there would be a 1.5-degree rise centigrade in temperature. That hasn’t happened. “Uh-oh! Uh-oh! There’s an unexplained standstill.” There’s nothing unexplained. It’s just the temperature hasn’t changed. It’s easy! There’s no standstill. There’s only a standstill if you believe their garbage.
There’s only a standstill if you believe their baseline based on their fraudulent models, that there should have been a 1.5-degree increase in temperature in the past 15 years. So since what they predicted and what they thought was gonna happen didn’t happen, “Uh-oh! Something’s wrong.” No, no, no, no. We’re talking about nature, and these guys can’t control it, influence it, whatever, and they never will be able to. So there’s that. Then there’s USA Today. Doyle Rice on May 10th of 2013: “Tornado Activity Hits 60-Year Low.”
Ten days ago, USA Today!
How do these global warming wackos explain the lack of tornado activity up until yesterday’s tragedy? See, up until yesterday’s tragedy, tornado activity was on the decline. Now all of a sudden a tornado has happened. “Oh, oh, oh, oh! Global warming! Oh, oh, oh, oh! It’s getting really bad! Oh, oh!” It’s just like after Hurricane Katrina. What did they predict? “Massive hurricanes! Massive destruction!” Well, the number of hurricanes in the US plummeted. After the shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, what did they expect? “Oh, my God! Gun violence is going through the roof! Oh, my God, it’s horrible! We’re all gonna die.”
What did they find?
Gun violence is actually down, even including Newtown.
Ladies and gentlemen, look, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. You literally cannot trust anything these people tell you. You certainly can’t trust their predictions, because it’s all politics. It’s all designed to insult you. It’s all designed to fool you. You’re being spun on all of this stuff. Let me tell you what this USA Today story said ten days ago. “Quiet tornado season forecast to last into next week, at least.” Well, anybody want to sue these people for malpractice? Anybody in Oklahoma reading this, “Oh, good, I just read it in USA Today. There ain’t gonna be any tornadoes the next couple of weeks. We’re safe, Mabel, USA Today said so.”
They got a bunch of global warming experts, “Unexplained decline in tornado activity is gonna continue for the next two weeks.” Uh-oh. What went wrong? What went wrong is that these people do not know what they’re talking about from the get-go. It’s gibberish. They’re making it all up every day and they’re claiming that what they’re making up and spinning is science, and it’s the furthest thing from science. “The tornado drought is forecast to continue at least through the weekend. The USA in the past 12 months has seen the fewest number of tornadoes since at least 1954 –” says USA Today ten days ago “–and the death tolls from the dangerous storms have dropped dramatically since 2011.” Yet there’s global warming, and we should have seen more tornadoes.
Folks, the bottom line is that everything these people say or pretty much everything, is literally disproven every day. Back to the USA Today story: “Just two years after a ferocious series of tornado outbreaks killed hundreds of Americans, the USA so far this year is enjoying one of the calmest years on record for twisters. Through Thursday, tornadoes have killed only three Americans in 2013; by the end of May 2011, 543 Americans had died.”
That’s a pretty big difference, folks. By the end of May 2011, 543 Americans had died. Through Thursday of last week, only three had died. In just a two-year span. “The seven people killed from May 2012 to April 2013 is the fewest in a 12-month period since five people died in September 1899-August 1900, according to Harold Brooks, research meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. The year-to-date count of tornadoes is probably approaching the lower 10% of all years on record, said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman.”
Why has tornado activity been on the decline? “An unusually cool weather pattern from the Rockies to the East Coast. ‘Generally, the lower the temperature and/or the drier the air, the lower the number of thunderstorms,’ said AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.” Okay. So USA Today ten days ago said, “Nothing to see here. No tornadoes. They are way, way down, three deaths this year. By comparison, 543 same time two years ago. And from a Tulsa TV station, Jennifer Zeppelin, the chief meteorologist at KTUL-TV: “Weather Trends Show Fewer Tornadoes.” This is just five days ago, this story.
“May typically has been our peak month for tornadoes, but after the warmest year on record followed by an ongoing drought and cooler than normal temperatures – our weather has been anything but normal for the past 12 months. Meteorologists with the national severe storms laboratory track all the tornado stats for the U.S. and have noticed an interesting trend over the last decade – fewer tornadoes.” A Tulsa meteorologist noted just a few days ago that while tornado activity is down, to not let your guard down. And she was correct.
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RUSH: I want to play a sound bite from a montage of people who lost everything. From last night and this morning, these are tornado victims in Oklahoma. This is what I mean when I say that these people are the backbone of this country.
MAN: My security isn’t in the things I own. My security is in the Lord.
WOMAN: The last thing we lose in a situation like this is faith. We have to hold onto faith and trust God every moment.
MAN: You salvage what you can salvage. You thank God that he has another plan for you.
MAN: I’m a believer in Jesus, and by the grace of God, me and my children are alive, and our house is — we can repair it.
WOMAN: We prayed that God would save our house. We also prayed that if God didn’t, he would get us through, and he will.
MAN: By the grace of God, it’s just amazing.
WOMAN: We know that God is good, and we know that there’s people out there who are still alive, and we’re gonna find ’em.
RUSH: The media, as you can imagine, could not understand any of that. They were just shocked. They were literally stunned that, of all things, people would be thankful to God after such a thing. In the media’s minds, at least if you’re gonna be thankful, be thankful to Obama who’s gonna send in rescue aid, if that happens, by the way. Talk to people in New York and New Jersey about all the aid for Sandy. See if that happens.
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RUSH: We’re gonna go to Pittsburgh. This is Kathy, and I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, it’s an honor. I was gonna say it’s a pleasure to talk to you. It’s an honor to speak to you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Thank you. I’ll get right to the point. You spoke earlier about the Democrats and how they used every disaster and everything to promote their agenda, such as global warming. Well, yesterday when this was all unfolding I got on my Twitter feed, I seem to get news quicker than way than anywhere else, and before I saw anything about the tornado I saw a few Democrats tweeting the names of Republican, I assume Republican, lawmakers in Oklahoma that voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. I was disgusted. I mean, where does that even fall, where does that play into anything that happened yesterday?
RUSH: Well, those Republicans, by the way — and, of course, I wouldn’t expect these Twitterbobs, even if they did know what I’m gonna tell you, they wouldn’t include it, because they’re trying to advance a fraudulent concept.
CALLER: Of course.
RUSH: But the Republicans that voted against — the aid package was part of a huge budget-busting bunch of pork —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — that went way beyond disaster relief.
CALLER: Exactly what I tweeted back to him.
RUSH: They were not opposed to assistance. What these people on Twitter are trying to convey is that Republicans don’t care about people who are suffering, and just as soon let ’em die and just as soon let ’em not get their houses rebuilt, when in fact the bottom line is that we’ve got a Democrat governor, we’ve got a Republican governor trying to make everybody think he’s a Democrat in New Jersey, we got a Democrat president, and we still have people in dire straits where that hurricane hit. All these so-called people of great compassion with their hands on the purse strings, and there still hasn’t been a whole lot of relief aid that comes forth. Nothing to do with the Republicans.
Now, on an interesting note to this, Tom Coburn, Republican senator from Oklahoma, when the whole idea of disaster relief for Oklahoma hit, just yesterday, Tom Coburn said fine and dandy, but there better be some appropriate spending cuts somewhere in the budget. I don’t want this disaster relief to be a budget buster. So his own state — you know, let these Twitterbobs get hold of this. Tom Coburn in his own state said, fine, I’m all for disaster relief, but I’m not gonna authorize it or vote for it unless there’s corresponding budget cuts or spending cuts somewhere else so that it’s not anything but revenue neutral. Now, imagine that.
CALLER: Right. Well, the Democrat translation of that is that he doesn’t care what happened to the people in his state. All he cares about is making sure that relief is appropriated, you know, whatever the reason, they don’t understand that he does care. He’s just trying to be realistic. This Hurricane Sandy relief bill was ridiculously full of pork, and they had every right to vote against —
RUSH: Right, but here’s the thing, just in a low-information world, the people for whom all that’s intended believe it. The Atlantic Monthly has a headline: “Why We Can’t Forget That Oklahoma’s Senators Voted Against Sandy Relief.” It was a slush fund. It took money from relief and funneled it to Democrat loyalists. They called it a relief fund, and it wasn’t. It was a slush fund. And that’s why the Republicans voted against it. But low-information voters are not gonna get that news.
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RUSH: Here is the governor of Oklahoma on Good Morning America today, George Stephanopoulos talking to Mary Fallin. She’s a Republican. Stephanopoulos said, “We know how determined and resilient you are. Will Oklahoma be back?” And of course she said, no, George, this tornado’s totally wiped out the state, and I don’t think we’re gonna have a prayer coming back. We’re just gonna pack up. We’re gonna go to Mexico and try to replace the people in Mexico who’ve come here ’cause this tornado just wiped us out, George, no way we could come back. What is she supposed to say? Here’s what she did say.
FALLIN: Will we be back? Absolutely. Oklahoma has gone through this a couple times, and we’re resilient, strong, courageous people. Our people are very strong, and they will make it through this, but we’re gonna need a lot of prayer and a lot of support to get back on our feet.
RUSH: Prayer? We need to know the contents of those prayers before we give you any aid, Madam Governor. Well, the Tea Party groups had to divulge the contents of their prayers to get their tax-exempt status. The governor’s probably gonna have to divulge the contents of her prayers in order to get federal disaster aid. I’m telling you, these people are the backbone of America, folks. Will they be back? Of course they’re gonna be back. Here’s Sheldon Whitehouse yesterday afternoon, five minutes after the tornado hit. This is on the Senate floor, Democrat from Rhode Island.
WHITEHOUSE: Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together.
RUSH: He’s talking to himself. Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Republican, Rhode Island, care if Republicans run off the climate cliff? So the tornado happened because Republicans don’t believe in climate change, don’t believe in global warming and haven’t authorized the money. See, with more money, we coulda stopped the tornado. With more money we coulda told the tornado, “Go somewhere else. You’re not wanted.” Now, he complains about the money. See, Democrats aren’t supposed to care about what things cost.
WHITEHOUSE: When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover, and the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas. It hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.
RUSH: You know, that really is reprehensible. That really is. He ought to be made to apologize to everybody. Folks, do you know what you just heard? When storms tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama, wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover, and the damage that your polluters and your deniers are doing. So you polluters caused that tornado, and you global warming deniers, you caused the tornado, and you dare come ask us for money.
He just accused the people of Oklahoma of causing this disaster, and then coming to Washington with their hands out begging for money. And he says it doesn’t work that way. Because of your pollution and because of your denial of global warming, your messes also hit us in Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon. It hits Montana. So your polluters and your deniers aren’t just destroying your state, you’re destroying all of ours, then you dare come here and ask us for money? Folks, this is beyond the pale. Sheldon Whitehouse, obviously Democrat from Rhode Island, before it was even known what the death toll is, seeking to blame citizens in Oklahoma.
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RUSH: One more on the global warming and climate change and the tornadoes. Piers Morgan Live last night, CNN. He interviewed TV personality Bill Nye the Science Guy. Why are you laughing? Bill Nye is not a science guy. That’s why he’s a TV personality. Bill Nye is not a scientist. Bill Nye can explain to kids things like surface tension, why you can fill a glass above the rim and it won’t fall over if it’s just the right amount. He explains things like that, surface tension. He’s not a scientist. He knows it, and everybody else knows it. Doesn’t matter. CNN put him on as a scientist, and they had this little chat about the tornado and global warming.
MORGAN: As a scientist, when you hear about the size, scale, power, and devastation of this tornado, what does it tell you about the ongoing debate about climate change?
NYE: Well, climate change is — you — you just have to think of it. I mean, ten of the last 12 years have been the warmest years recorded.
RUSH: No.
NYE: Thunderstorms are driven by —
RUSH: No.
NYE: — heat, and a tornado is —
RUSH: No, no.
NYE: — a super thunderstorm —
RUSH: No.
NYE: — a result of a super thunderstorm.
RUSH: No.
NYE: So you gotta figure if there’s more heat driving the storm, then there’s gonna be more tornadoes.
RUSH: No. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. It’s cold air that causes these things. It’s cold air that causes hurricanes. This guy is not a scientist, folks. He’s a TV personality. But the BBC had a story two days ago: There hasn’t been any warming in 15 years. All of the global warming freaks know this, and it’s got ’em freaked out. They can’t understand it. And here he is (imitating Nye), “Well, ten of the last 12 years have been the warmest years recorded.” No, no, no, no, no.
Anyway, I just wanted to show you how this fraud is perpetrated. And it’s utterly harmless. I mean, Bill Nye the Science Guy is an utterly unintimidating — he puts on a white coat, looks like a scientist. His hair is unkempt. He looks like a scientist. He’s got the look down pat.