A hurricane warning from the National Weather Service has been issued for parts of the Florida coast. This is the latest in a series of hurricanes that have been heavily hyped up by the media and social media. I talk about why we need to stop making every hurricane the equivalent of Armageddon.
00:00:00.000So this big hurricane is on its way to Florida. This is definitely a boy who cried wolf problem every time now with the hurricanes, because every year, every year without fail, we're told about some monster historic storm that will have a devastating impact and potentially kill hundreds of people.
00:00:20.920And then, you know, the Drudge Report, if you go to the Drudge Report right now, it's just it's just one story after another. Very dramatic thing, which is what he always does with hurricanes.
00:00:31.300And then most of the time it comes and goes and it does some damage, but nothing historic occurs. And that's the end of it. And they're saying the same thing right now with this one, potentially.
00:00:41.700Um, and and who knows, you know, maybe it will be true. I'm not a meteorologist. So if you live in one of the potential areas affected by the hurricane, hurricane, don't listen to what I'm don't make any decisions based on what I'm saying.
00:00:54.720I mean, in general, in life, don't make decisions based on what I say, but especially with this, because I'm not making any predictions about what will or won't happen.
00:01:03.260But I'm just saying that we have to stop turning every hurricane into Armageddon because then it makes it impossible to actually distinguish the serious threats from the unserious ones.
00:01:13.960I remember I lived I lived in a in a in a coastal town. Well, near coastal. I lived very close to a coastal town, a few miles from the coast for for several years in my early 20s.
00:01:27.160And one of those years, we had a big hyped hurricane headed for us. I don't remember which one, what the name of it was, but I remember this, you know, the hype leading up to it very well.
00:01:38.700And I especially remember having this emotional conversation with my then girlfriend, now wife, and she was trying to convince me to, you know, we were on the phone.
00:01:49.900She was trying to convince me to leave, to evacuate and to go stay with her at her mother's house because it was going to be so dangerous.
00:01:56.760She was afraid I was going to die in the hurricane. And and and I said, you know, I couldn't do that because I had to work.
00:02:04.420And I mean, my town hadn't technically been evacuated because it was more inland.
00:02:08.800So, you know, and I had and I had a job and everything. So I was going to stay.
00:02:12.860And so I told her, I said, no, I must stay, my love. Fear not. Words to that effect.
00:02:18.460It's not exactly what I said, but something like that. And that night when the hurricane was supposed to hit in the middle of the night.
00:02:23.280And so I slept, you know, they said on the news, don't you don't want to be near windows.
00:02:28.160So I slept like behind the couch and in a sleeping bag away from the windows.
00:02:33.240And I was expecting I had canned goods and I had flashlights and I had whiskey.
00:02:37.240So I had all the stuff you need to get through the hurricane.
00:02:38.680And and I was expecting to wake up the next morning and it would be like the movie The Road where you'd have bands of cannibals patrolling the streets and, you know, just just utter devastation.
00:02:50.480And I woke up the next morning and all the damage consisted of there were some there was there was there were a lot of leaves that had blown onto my porch, which I had to sweep those away.
00:02:59.540That was annoying. And there was an especially large twig that had fallen onto the hood of my car.
00:03:04.540And, you know, actually scratched it a little bit. That was the extent of the damage after all of this hype.
00:03:10.300My point here is that coverage of hurricanes. I think the coverage is extremely irresponsible all the time now because there's no attempt to be reasonable or to be restrained.
00:03:21.700And the effect is that everyone treats hurricane coverage now like entertainment and nobody takes it seriously.
00:03:26.960And that's a dangerous situation because sometimes these hurricanes actually are bad.
00:03:32.560We know that really bad hurricanes do happen. They don't happen every year.
00:03:35.680I mean, every year we don't have a historic hurricane, unlike what we're told by the media and by climate change activists, which we'll get to that in a second.
00:03:44.060We don't have them every year, but sometimes they do happen.
00:03:46.120It's just that now if you if you live in one of these areas and you're trying to figure out, is this something like that or is this going to be a dud?
00:03:52.740I mean, to to leave your home and your work and everything behind, that's not it's not sort of an automatic thing.
00:03:58.660It's like a decision you have to make. And and so I don't I don't I don't envy the people who live in these towns where hurricanes happen,
00:04:05.780because how do you how how are you supposed to know anymore when every single hurricane is treated this way?
00:04:10.880So who knows? Maybe this will be one of those situations. I hope not.
00:04:15.380But we'll find out. There is one aspect of Hurricane Dorian, which concerns me.
00:04:21.880I'll just mention briefly here. Bloomberg has a report about an added threat of this storm.
00:04:28.100You see, Miami, which is maybe in line for the for the hurricane, like a lot of cities these days is infested with scooters.
00:04:35.360People go around on these scooters because they're too lazy to walk and too cheap to take an Uber.
00:04:41.700So they go around on these scooters everywhere. And so now some officials are worried that the hurricanes are going to sweep up these scooters and turn them into projectiles.
00:04:52.440And you're going to have, you know, people dying from flying scooters all over the place, which would be like the weirdest Sharknado sequel ever.
00:05:01.800Maybe there will be sharks on the scooters. That would be that's an idea, actually, for for a movie.
00:05:07.300Who knows? Anything is possible. All right. Before we go any further.
00:05:09.900And as I said, speaking of climate change activists, there's this one particular climate change activist who you've probably seen on your TV in the last few days.
00:05:22.060We're going to talk about about her and about that in a second.
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00:07:03.980Okay, so Greta Thunberg or Thunberg. Thunberg.
00:07:09.000I, you know, I haven't said anything about this story up until now because I don't care that much.
00:07:16.920But there is one aspect of it that really grinds my gears, as Peter Griffin might say.
00:07:22.240Greta is a 16-year-old climate change activist from Sweden who was invited to speak in front of a UN assembly in New York for some reason.
00:07:32.000I mean, of all the people in the world who maybe could speak on the issue of climate change, they said, let's get this 16-year-old in there.
00:08:26.400Everyone always asks me about Donald Trump.
00:08:28.920But, I mean, my message for him is just listen to the science and he obviously doesn't do that.
00:08:38.300So, I mean, I, as I always say to this question,
00:08:44.340if no one has been able to convince him about the climate crisis, the urgency, then why should I be able to do that?
00:08:55.280So, I'm just going to, to now focus on, on spreading awareness and that people in general will start caring and realize how big of a crisis this is.
00:09:57.200It's just, it speaks to, again, this problem, I think.
00:10:00.220It only makes it worse, this, this, this, this thing that we do now, where we push kids into the spotlight, and we make them mouthpieces for our viewpoints.
00:10:13.020And we really need to stop that, especially when the kid has mental health issues.
00:10:18.680And again, that's not an attack on her, that's sympathy.
00:10:21.520And it's just one more reason not to exploit her.
00:10:24.360Though, even aside from this, aside from mental health issues, even aside from that, the point still stands.
00:10:31.000The way I see it, there are two problems with turning kids into mascots for political views.
00:10:37.620First of all, they, the kids have to be put into that position by adults.
00:10:45.820It's not really something they can do on their own.
00:10:47.640No normal adolescent is going to be able to get this kind of media attention and all the rest of it on their own.
00:10:55.940They have to be elevated by adults, and that elevation is always done for exploitative reasons.
00:11:02.680Okay, it's never actually done because, wow, you know, this kid's insights are just so tremendous that we, you know, we have to let the whole world know what this person is.
00:13:14.200I've spent my adult life, you know, like many adults.
00:13:17.560I've learned, and I've thought about things, and I've studied issues.
00:13:20.520Not to mention I've been living, and I've been gaining experience, and I've been maturing, hopefully, to some extent.
00:13:26.900Now, granted, there are adults who don't really do any of those things, but many of us have.
00:13:31.300And those of us who are in that position of being basically mature adults who have learned and thought and studied and so on, those of us in that position, we, well, I can only speak for myself, I suppose.
00:13:45.180I have really no interest in the viewpoint of a child.
00:13:49.520I mean, I'm interested in my own kids' ideas and thoughts and everything because they are my kids, and I want them to develop their ideas and all that and share it with me.
00:14:02.340So I do care about, in that sense, that's all good.
00:14:06.520My point is, maybe I should put it this way.
00:14:08.580The political and ideological insights of children don't interest me.
00:14:16.540I don't go to kids for insight, especially in the politics, the ideology, philosophy, science, you know, those kinds of things.