Daft Claim: Louisiana Flooding Caused by ‘Weather Weapon’

It is perhaps inevitable that whenever something dramatic happens, up pops some nut with a truly weird explanation that attempts to explain it all as a conspiracy by “them”, where “them” is quite often some arm of government. Today’s example of that is the well-known grifter Jim Bakker who uses religion as a means of conning people.

Mr Baker has a TV show that he uses to flog stuff, but in order to get you to buy, he has guests on to sell you whacky ideas that motivate a purchase.

A recent guest on Mr Bakker’s show was end times radio show host Steve Quayle who proceeded to whip up a dose of paranoia that then permits Mr Bakker to cash in.

So here is the relevant clip …

As highlighted by RightWingWatch, we have utter nonsense being promoted as religious “truth” in order to scare you …

America is experiencing a “generated famine” but that government elites are stockpiling food in their “underground bases.”

The government knows that “if you control the weather, you control the food; you control the food, you control the people,” he said.

He then suggested that the recent deadly flooding in Louisiana was the work of a government “weather weapon”: “This is what’s going on in Louisiana: There was a standing wave in Louisiana, that’s a weather weapon and weather weapons are real. And people, they knew it was going to come but they still stayed and that’s what’s tragic because weather weapons are real.”

“What you’re watching is a nation under siege,” he said.

My favourite comment under the YouTube clip is this …

So biological evolution and the fact the universe is expanding from a temporal boundary is bullshit to them but a weather control device that physics can confirm to be bullshit is real to them?

Once you buy into the fear mongering, up pops Mr Bakker to sell you one year’s supply of food for just $400. It is basically a cheap bucket of rice, oats, and instant crap with an huge markup.

But Mr Bakker is a fine upstanding Christian, he would not con anybody

You might wish to put that thought on hold for a moment and remember that this fine upstanding Christian was sentenced to 45 years in jail for fraud back in 1989. His sentence was later reduced to 8 years, and he was finally granted parole in July 1994.

He was at the time in 1989 a TV evangelist who was revealed to be using religion on TV to simply personally enrich himself. Once out of jail, he got back into the same game of utilising religion to grift a living. It is the only profession he knows, but this time he is being a lot more careful about it all.

But his Survival food buckets are yummy … right?

Nope, NPR took a look at this stuff last year …

We got our hands on a version of this bucket, which contains a variety of hearty dishes, including buttermilk pancakes, vegetable chicken soup, creamy stroganoff, black bean burgers, fettucine alfredo and mashed potatoes.

If you’re an outdoor aficionado, you’re probably familiar with freeze-dried food. That’s what this stuff is, except all the packages have an expiration date of 2035. In addition to ample preservatives, each item is either nitrogen flushed or contains oxygen absorbers, reputedly to keep the food fresh.

… Save for the pudding, the dishes were extremely salty and had odd, lingering aftertastes. We couldn’t agree on which was worse — the thick potato soup that felt like eating wet cement, the strong chemical overtones in the chocolate pudding or the disturbing radioactive orange of the macaroni and cheese.

…They taste, he says, like, “paper-mache,” “a bathroom at a bar at the end of the night in a college town,” and, simply, “one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

I’m not really sure which aspect is the most astonishing about all of this, it really is a toss-up between the observation that he whips up fear and then rides that wave to sell this gunk, or that there are people out there who, despite Mr Bakkers well-documented past as a fraudster, still quite happily buy this stuff. It is all perhaps the ultimate tax on stupidity.

What really Caused the floods?

The word “Climate Change” immediately springs to mind, so is that really the root cause?

The best answer is “perhaps” because tagging one specific event to climate change often will raise a few eyebrows amongst climatologists. Those floods are not just a “no”, it really is “perhaps”, because as explained by Mr Fountain in the New York Times … 

Using historical records of rainfall and computer models that simulate climate, the researchers, including several from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that global warming increased the chances of such intense rains in the region by at least 40 percent.

“But it’s probably much closer to a doubling of the probability” of such an event, or a 100 percent increase, said Heidi Cullen, chief scientist for Climate Central, the research organization that coordinated the study. “Climate change played a very clear and quantifiable role,” she added.

It makes a lot of sense, and so it works like this. More warming means not only more evaporation, but it also enables warmer air to hold and carry more moisture. That in turn will lead to an increase in rainstorm frequency and also intensity, so attributing it to climate change is indeed a very strong probability. No “weather weapons” are required to explain it.