BATON ROUGE, Louisiana – Following unprecedented flooding that took the lives of 13 people and displaced more than 100,000 residents, the mainstream media were late to the scene for all the wrong reasons.
Weeks after the storms, even The New York Times editors admitted they had failed to cover the natural disaster, saying it took them two days before a story was ever posted on their website.
The Obama Administration’s recent labeling of the event as proof of “climate change” has piqued the mainstream media’s attention, however.
In a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scientist Karin van der Wiel claims that climate change was the cause of much of the flooding that swept southeast Louisiana.
“Human-caused, heat-trapping greenhouses played a ‘measurable’ role in the colossal rainfall totals, which were fueled by high humidity and a stalled storm system above the Gulf Coast,” van der Wiel said in the report, according to USA Today.
“The burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, which has warmed to levels that cannot be explained by natural variability, scientists say,” USA Today reports. “Rainfall patterns and humidity levels are also affected by this process, as warmer air can hold additional amounts of water vapor.”
Van der Wiel argues that rainfall in the state “is now expected to occur at least 40% more often” than in the past, citing computer models from NOAA which measured the amount of rain that impacted the region.
Likewise, The New York Times reported on the finding as well, though the liberal-leaning newspaper actually released a story in August immediately after the storm titled “Flooding in the South Looks a Lot Like Climate Change.”
The Washington Post reported the study as almost being settled fact, writing “The disaster was caused by two weather-related features, extreme humidity and near-stationary low pressure that hovered over the Gulf Coast for days. The moisture component is where climate change comes in — warmer air can hold more water vapor.”
And in lockstep with The New York Times, The Washington Post’s editorial board published a piece after the flooding, claiming the disaster should serve as a “warning” of climate change, complete with social Marxist language.
“The future is being rigged against vulnerable people by a system in which government and industry are complicit,” the Post wrote at the time. “No, we are not talking about the electoral system — we are talking about the climate.”
During the Louisiana flooding, famed New Orleans Meteorologist Bob Breck cautioned that the mainstream media and federal agencies would begin pushing the climate change narrative.
Breck wrote on his blog at the time that “Before the Global Warming folks jump on our recent extreme rain event” they needed to look at the issue of urbanization, writing “Man building and paving over previous fields that soaked up the rains. Now that additional runoff is causing water in areas that had never seen water before.”
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.