Weather-related reports from the establishment media convey two messages.
First, every severe weather event stems from climate change. And second, this should make you afraid.
How wonderfully refreshing, therefore, when establishment media reporters see their live weather broadcasts interrupted by people acting without fear.
This happened Wednesday during CNN’s live coverage of Hurricane Idalia’s landfall in Florida, according to Mediaite, as two young men floated past on an inflatable camouflage duck.
One of the men used a paddle to row the duck through knee-deep water down the streets of Tampa. To heighten the scene’s absurdity, the duck sported large sunglasses.
“So we’re going to step away from the seriousness of the storm for just one second,” meteorologist Derek Van Dam said. “You’ve got to bear with me because this is something you don’t see every day.”
Van Dam paused and tried to interview the two boatsmen. They kept floating.
To his credit, the meteorologist seemed amused by the situation. He lightheartedly described it as a “new way to beat rush-hour traffic.”
On the other hand, Van Dam sounded almost apologetic for interrupting a report that he knew CNN viewers would expect to contain much “seriousness.”
“I don’t want to minimize the serious nature of this storm, but this is what people are dealing with in Tampa as we speak,” Van Dam said.
Meanwhile in Tampa … #Idalia #HurricaneIdalia pic.twitter.com/CcTsfYpu1H
— The Recount (@therecount) August 30, 2023
Critics of CNN object not to the idea of taking a hurricane seriously — no one needs reminding that large storms pose dangers — but to the network’s relentless, simplistic and apocalyptic narrative.
In September 2022, for instance, then-CNN host Don Lemon repeatedly tried to coax the acting director of the National Hurricane Center into blaming Hurricane Ian on climate change.
Jamie Rhome did not bite. “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” he replied.
Indeed, devastating hurricanes plagued the Western Hemisphere long before the industrial era.
On Aug. 31, 1772, for instance, 17-year-old Alexander Hamilton survived a “dreadful” hurricane on the Caribbean island of St. Croix.
A week later, the future Founding Father described “the roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed.”
This kind of historical perspective should serve as an antidote to narratives of alarmism based on weather events.
Meanwhile, the silly inflatable duck reminds us never to surrender to fear.
In 1948, legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote an essay entitled, “On Living in an Atomic Age.” Only three years earlier, atomic bombs had destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The end of World War II thus marked the beginning of an era in which many people feared nuclear annihilation.
Lewis advised readers not to pretend that the atomic bomb created a new situation in human affairs. Everyone will die eventually. This must not change how we live.
“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs,” Lewis wrote.
Indeed, far better we should ride on floating ducks than live as frightened sheep.
