Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest Hit by Storm UPDATE: New York Braces for Irene; Women, Minorites, NFL Fans Hardest Hit

Posted on | August 27, 2011 | 33 Comments

The past couple of days, I became irritated by non-stop TV hurricane hype, which depicted Irene as a cataclysmic danger to the East Coast. However, just because the cable-news hysteria was absurdly disproportionate to the actual threat didn’t mean Irene was harmless:

Six people, including an 11-year-old boy and a surfer, were dead and the East Coast was a solid wall of red hurricane warnings Saturday as Hurricane Irene began lashing the Virginia coast on its way to what forecasters and authorities warned could be a catastrophic run north.

Wait — what? A surfer?

In Florida, the Volusia County Beach Patrol confirmed that a surfer was killed Saturday when he was knocked off his board at New Smyrna Beach, where surfers flocked to take advantage of 10-foot waves kicked up in the wake of Irene.
“It appears he went over a wave and might have gone head first into the ground,” Tammy Marris, a spokeswoman for the agency, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

The dead surfer was a popular high-school math teacher, but the Daytona story concludes:

The National Weather Service and local officials continue to warn that dangerous rip currents are present all along the Atlantic Coast beaches. “If you are a weak swimmer, you should stay out of the surf,” the weather service stated in an advisory. “Even experienced ocean swimmers should check with lifeguards about where rip currents are occurring before going into the water.”

Ten-foot waves killing innocent surfers? I blame global warming.

UPDATE: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

This storm has caused a lot of concern for our environmentalist friends. However, according to the latest reports, no polar bears have been killed by the hurricane. So we can be thankful for that.

UPDATE II: This morning, I was worried because traffic on the blog was kinda slow, even for a Saturday. Then I checked the Wall Street Journal‘s special Irene blog and found out that the storm has knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes in North Carolina and Virginia. This means that many of our regular readers in those states probably don’t have WiFi and can’t even check the blog today — another tragic consequence of global warming.

UPDATE III: Irene’s tragic toll continues:

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Like the rest of the East Coast, the New York Giants were adjusting their lives around Hurricane Irene on Saturday.
After having their preseason game against the Jets postponed from Saturday to Monday, the Giants held a practice on Saturday morning. Tom Coughlin then sent his team home to be with their families and gave them an off day Sunday, when Irene is expected to hit New Jersey and New York hard.

So if the Giants don’t cover the spread? Right: Global warming.

PREVIOUSLY:

Aug. 27: More Predictable Than the Weather
Aug. 26: StormWatch 2011: Mass Hysteria!

Category: Global Warming

Comments

33 Responses to “Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest Hit by Storm UPDATE: New York Braces for Irene; Women, Minorites, NFL Fans Hardest Hit”

Callawyn
August 27th, 2011 @ 10:12 pm

Give that surfer a Darwin award.

Can you really blame the hurricane for that? Anyone that decides to go surfing in a hurricane, for the thrill of it, has no one and nothing to blame for the results but themselves.
Anonymous
August 27th, 2011 @ 10:34 pm

What? Blaming the victim?

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!
Tom Callow
August 27th, 2011 @ 10:40 pm

TV cameras, new reporters, satellite trucks, are a draw to some people.
I just thank god that Kate did not take the brood to the outer banks to experience more “camping” …. wait, maybe she should have done that, hmm..
Hurricane Irene Claims Six Lives | The Lonely Conservative
August 27th, 2011 @ 6:44 pm

[…] died due to the storm, including an 11 year old boy whose apartment building was hit by a tree, and a surfer in Florida. The bands are now starting to reach New Jersey and Philadelphia.I heard from a friend in West […]
William_Teach
August 27th, 2011 @ 10:45 pm

Well, if we consider that a 10 foot wave has a 20 foot face (or should, if the news source is measuring the waves correctly), that can be a pretty good fall. Back in the day when I used to live at the beach and surf constantly, those kinds of waves, especially ones driven by extranormal winds from storms, can be dangerous, as the local beaches are typically used to different types of swells, which means the surfers usually do not have the correct size boards for those waves. Often in Florida, they have lighter boards, and usually not long enough. Plus, the waves can be too big for the normal sand break.

I’ve been out on waves with 15-25 foot faces on a board best used on up to 15, and, damn, that can be exciting. But, these are rougher breaks with strange moving currents.
Anonymous
August 27th, 2011 @ 11:02 pm

Give that surfer the dumbest person award! The waves won, surfer lost. What the heck happened to common sense?
wdk535
August 27th, 2011 @ 11:50 pm

Bush’s fault.
Jr Deputy Accountant
August 28th, 2011 @ 12:39 am

That’s why my disaster plan includes a netbook with a 10 – 12 hour battery life and a Virgin broadband card. Can’t Obama just fire up the HAARP to send this storm off to Europe or something?
Mike
August 28th, 2011 @ 12:44 am

15-25 foot faces are ordinary surfing waves on the west coast. But the beach topography is different as is the equipment. When conditions produced ‘killer’ waves, the idiots would don their wetsuits and swim their boards out to the break and wait for the “big one” and of course, the attendant stories would come out in the paper about some hapless surfer being pulled out to sea and lost or getting tossed into a pier piling or on to coastal rock outcroppings and killed or severely injured.
JeffS
August 28th, 2011 @ 1:09 am

In related news, ManBearPig urges humanity to fight Global Warming by eating less meat:

“Industrial agriculture is a part of the problem,” Gore said Friday during an interview with FearLess Revolution founder Alex Bogusky. “The shift toward a more meat-intensive diet,” the clearing of forest areas in many parts of the world in order to raise more cattle and the reliance on synthetic nitrogen for fertilizer are also problems, he added, while chowing down on filet mignon at his new Southern California mansion, and relaxing after flying 16 hours on his private jet from a environmental conference in New Zealand. “I challenge everyone to go for a vegan lifestyle so that my meat bill isn’t so high….I mean, so that we can save the planet from humanity!”

OK, OK, so I elaborated a bit on the quote. That last part wasn’t there. But, hey, Al looks like he chokes down fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches thrice daily, so it’s possible.
lonely conservative
August 28th, 2011 @ 2:13 am

My traffic today was terrible until I posted video of the streaker on the Weather Channel. 🙂
adolph.stephens
August 28th, 2011 @ 2:23 am

I see opportunity
SaveTheSurfingPolarBears.nextdumbass idea
rob
August 28th, 2011 @ 2:40 am

I’m living on the Florida east coast, and what you northerners aren’t understanding, is that we have a totally different perspective of hurricanes…

Me and my family went to the beach to watch the storm, and it was packed… it was about 7:00 on a Thursday night and there were multiple people surfing there… In Florida, hurricanes are less of a natural disaster and more of a spectator sport… Its happened so many times, nobody get particularly worried about them
Adjoran
August 28th, 2011 @ 3:06 am

That was no streaker! – more like a flasher . . . or trow-dropper . . . with any luck he went surfing after that to help clean the gene pool . . .
Adjoran
August 28th, 2011 @ 3:10 am

Watching the storm pass by is one thing; surfing the waves from it is quite another. Rip tides can suck even the strongest swimmer out, they can be extremely strong and the natural tendency is to struggle against it and swim toward shore. But it would take a Michael Phelps or Johnny Weissmuller to succeed; even a strong swimmer gets tired out quickly.

The best plan is to swim parallel to the shoreline a bit, usually you will get out of the riptide soon enough and can swim in normally.
Adjoran
August 28th, 2011 @ 3:13 am

Say, did anybody see Obama “running” the hurricane control room? He had his sleeves rolled up like he was going to help load sandbags or something, jacket off, and they even had a nameplate for him at his chair at the big table.

“Barack Obama
President of the United States”

Like somebody might not know who the dumb black guy getting in everyone’s way is . . .
Roxeanne de Luca
August 28th, 2011 @ 3:19 am

Um, Callawyn? What do you think surfers should do, stick with their bathtubs, or maybe a backyard pool? You surf on waves.
Anonymous
August 28th, 2011 @ 4:18 am

Four reported dead in NC, one man had a heart attack boarding up his windows. Don’t know that I’d blame that on Irene but I wouldn’t say that it was preventable at least not in the short term sense. A 21 yr old kid died in one of the eastern counties when his car hydroplaned and hit a tree, wonder how important that errand was. A woman died in an accident in Goldsboro due to traffic lights disabled for lack of power. A man died in Nash county when a tree limb fell on him as he “was checking out his yard.” There are lots of ways to get killed without helping a hurricane do it. None of the above more or less pointless than that surfer.
William Quick
August 28th, 2011 @ 4:42 am

Stacy, you missed the biggest tragedy of all: The Obamas were forced to cut short their his-n-hers matching jets vacation spree by a few hours.

The inhumanity of it all!
Anonymous
August 28th, 2011 @ 5:01 am

I’ll be commenting on “Storm Commander” first thing in the a.m.
Anonymous
August 28th, 2011 @ 5:19 am

The endeavor to promote the global-warming fear is WHY storm coverage gets hyped so ridiculously out of proportion. It’s political.

Me, I laugh at all kinds of weather hype: Hurricanes, tornados, snowstorms. It doesn’t impress me at all, because I see it as nothing but a TV show. The bottom line, it’s only weather. Human beings have been surviving weather for millennia, and I refuse to freak out about it.

You know who gets scared by all this weather hype on TV? Women. My wif’es tornado-phobic or something, and frets something awful whenever there’s so much as a “severe thunderstorm warning.” I’m just glad we live up in the hills and not near the ocean, or that round-the-clock hurricane hype would drive her nuts.
Hurricane Irene Update 8-28-11: New York is next, CH 2.0 Bunker is Soggy » Conservative Hideout 2.0
August 28th, 2011 @ 2:29 am

[…] Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest … […]
WyBlog - Hurricane Irene slams Chez WyBlog, massive cleanup underway...
August 28th, 2011 @ 12:38 pm

Hurricane Irene slams Chez WyBlog, massive cleanup underway……

How do you spell “hype?” Because I spell it I-R-E-N-E….
Anonymous
August 28th, 2011 @ 5:08 pm

I certainly don’t mind, rob; it’s behavior like that which makes evolution a working proposition.

If Leftards (not necessarily rob) actually believed in evolution they’d let it take its’ nasty course of weeding out of the gene pool traits that are contra-survival: voting Democrat, for instance.
Bob Belvedere
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:13 pm

Surf Pirate!
Bob Belvedere
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:15 pm

There’s something in the American Psyche that makes us take such risks. I applaud the spirit. But I don’t want any of our rescue people risking their lives for these folks.
Bob Belvedere
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:19 pm

Sure, in this day and Leftist Age, it’s part political, but it also sells. It’s a time for tabloid-thinking. ‘Headless Body In Topless Bar’ and ‘Storm Of The Century’ are all standing heads, as it were.
Bob Belvedere
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

Idiots frolicking in bad weather is hits!
Anonymous
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:28 pm

Well, maybe… perhaps more of an American male psyche thing though? Women, more often than not, tend to stay away from danger when given a choice, at least that’s what I’ve noticed.
The Spot-On Quote Of The Day… « The Camp Of The Saints
August 28th, 2011 @ 4:45 pm

[…] awarded to Adjoran, frequent commentator over at The Other McCain, for this pithy and accurate description of our glorious Storm-Center-Commander In Chief [Stacy McCain's phrase]: […]
Bob Belvedere
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:46 pm

I am please to announce that you have been awarded the THE SPOT-ON QUOTE OF THE DAY at: The Camp Of The Saints
Snarky Headline of the Day!! « Freedom Is Just Another Word…
August 28th, 2011 @ 4:54 pm

[…] Headline of the Day!! August 28, 2011 by Kevin H B Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest … Share this:ShareFacebookTwitterDiggRedditStumbleUponLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
ThePaganTemple
August 29th, 2011 @ 2:48 am

He had his sleeves rolled up like he was going to help load sandbags or
something, jacket off, and they even had a nameplate for him at his
chair at the big table.

I don’t know about loading sandbags, but the “jacket off” part sounds like a pretty good description of the most work he’s probably done at any one time that didn’t have a detrimental impact on anybody besides himself.