Guest article by – H. Sterling Burnett
Dishonesty seems to have become the hallmark of reporting on climate research. In 2020, dishonesty reached new heights when several studies that actually presented (or could have presented) good news were portrayed by the researchers involved and media hacks covered them as if showing that man-made climate change caused various disasters . The truth is that the data – often also data from the studies – repeatedly refute the alleged climate catastrophe and instead show that the environment is getting better. Below, I’ll deconstruct some examples of this scare-mongering habit.
Recently, The Guardian and other media outlets claimed an updated bird habitat atlas shows that global warming is “pushing” birds further north. The Guardian’s story would lead one to believe that climate change is forcing birds en masse to shrink natural habitats to unsuitable locations. That is not true. As the President of the Heartland Institute, James Taylor, wrote in a post on climate realism in response to the Guardian’s article, the atlas itself tells a very different story.
“Rather than“ pushing ”birds out of their normal ranges and forcing them north, birds benefit from a warming climate by expanding their overall range – they thrive in new northern regions and also thrive in southern regions. The result of climate change is not a negative “expulsion” of birds from their habitat, but birds that enjoy larger areas of habitat while increasing biodiversity in their new areas. “
Despite the misleading, alarming title of the story: “Atlas Reveals Birds Forced Further North in the Climate Crisis,” The Guardian admitted to the Atlas records: “Overall, 35 percent of the birds took 25 percent and reduced their breeding area Rest showed no change or the trend is unknown. “This is good news because, as the newspaper confirmed, according to Atlas,” a species found in more areas is generally less likely to become extinct “.
Another scary, but demonstrably untrue, Climate Alert narrative published this year consisted of dozens, if not hundreds, of stories claiming that climate change (allegedly of human origin) was responsible for an increase in both number and severity Hurricanes as well as hurricanes are responsible for forest fires. An example of this combination of flawed analysis and poor reporting can be seen in a story published by Bloomberg entitled “Climate Change Led To Record Payouts For Insurance In 2020.”
Bloomberg writes, “Christian Aid, the charity of 41 churches in the UK and Ireland, has ranked the 15 most devastating climatic disasters of the year due to insurance damage.” Christian Aid’s study, which The Guardian also treated as if inspired by God , revealed the truth. The ten most costly weather disasters in the world in 2020 alone caused damage amounting to 150 billion US dollars, with the total number of all disasters related to climate change setting new records in 2020. In Christian Aid’s study, forest fires and hurricanes, which were exacerbated by climate change, were particularly responsible for the increased damage and higher insurance benefits. Lo and behold, real data on forest fires and hurricanes tell a different story, but the good news has been ignored.
When it comes to forest fires, long-term data shows that the number and acreage of forest fires has decreased dramatically over the past century. Looking ahead to 2020, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reports: “2020 was one of the lowest years for active fires worldwide.”
In fact, NASA reports a recent study in science that found: “[g]Overall, the total area burned annually by fires fell by 24 percent between 1998 and 2015. Overall, the global annual cremation area has decreased by more than 540,000 square miles from 1.9 million square miles at the beginning of the last century to 1.4 million square miles today. “
In the USA, too, forest fires have declined sharply over the past century. As reported in Climate at a Glance: Forest Fires, long-term data from the US National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) shows that forest fires have declined in number and severity since the beginning of the 20th century. NIFC evaluates data on forest fires in the United States from 1926 and reports that the number of acres burned is far fewer today than it was in the early 20th century. The hectares currently burned make up only a quarter to a fifth of the amount of land that typically burned in the 1930s.
The hurricane data is equally clear and compelling: despite the busy 2020 hurricane season, contrary to claims by The Guardian – and as reported in a previous article on climate realism – it is entirely possible that 2020 did not set a record for Atlantic hurricanes. Prior to 1950, hurricane tracking was relatively primitive and sparse, and it was uncommon to name a storm unless it landed somewhere.
In addition, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that “there is little confidence in the mapping of detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences”. And data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), such as Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes notes, shows that “The United States recently spent more than a decade (2005 to 2017) without a major Category 3 or higher hurricane, the longest of such Period in Recorded History. The United States also recently experienced the lowest number of hurricane strikes in an eight-year period (2009 to 2017) in recorded history. “
The Christian Aid study focuses on the potentially record breaking cost of weather-related natural disasters in 2020, ignoring what Björn Lomborg refers to in his book False Alarm, as the “expanding bulls-eye effect”. The increased cost of natural disasters in recent decades can be attributed to the fact that communities are increasingly expanding into areas that are historically prone to natural disasters – such as floodplains, forests and coastal areas – and building increasingly expensive structures and infrastructure there. As a result, more and more expensive property is destroyed in extreme weather events. Accordingly, the rising cost of natural disasters is not due to man-made climate change, but rather to a directly measurable anthropogenic factor: the increase in the number and value of assets that, due to demographic change, are related to the place and place of residence of people in The lifestyles that they pursue are laid out in the porthole.
Another important “good news” that climate alarmists tried to portray as tragedy in 2020 comes from the numerous pieces of news that include a World Bank report claiming that water shortages in the area caused by man-made climate change are being reported East threatened crop production. Once again, the authors of the World Bank report and the left media that promoted it could not bother checking the actual data. Had they done so, they would have found that crop production in the Middle Eastern countries discussed in the report is booming, in large part due to the carbon dioxide fertilization effect.
The World Bank claims that water scarcity caused by climate change will reduce agricultural production, particularly in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. Indeed, data shows that despite significant political turbulence and ongoing conflict in the region, the natural and arid Middle East has seen growing crop production as the earth warmed slightly.
Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows in the period of modest warming since 1989:
Grain production in Iraq increased 91 percent, although the acreage fell 5 percent.
· Grain production in Iran increased by 187 percent, while the harvested area increased by only 2.6 percent.
· Grain production in Jordan increased by 15 percent, although the harvested area decreased by 30 percent.
· Grain production in Lebanon increased by 115 percent, while the acreage rose by 30 percent.
· Grain production in Syria increased by 22 percent, although the harvested area decreased by 66 percent.
· Grain production in Turkey increased by 46 percent, although the area under cultivation decreased by 19 percent.
That the countries of the Middle East have increased crop production – even if many of them have been embroiled in internal political conflicts, direct civil wars, and external conflicts – is clearly good news. It is not an indication of a climate crisis.
Global warming extends the growing seasons, reduces frost events and makes more land suitable for plant production. Carbon dioxide is also an air fertilizer for plant life. In addition, plants use water more efficiently under conditions with higher carbon dioxide levels and lose less water through transpiration. The latter fact should have allayed the World Bank’s concerns about climate change-induced water scarcity, which should lead to crop failure.
Unfortunately, power-hungry bureaucrats and mainstream left media organizations welcome unfounded speculation about various climate disasters – ignoring facts that suggest that no such climate disasters are in sight. I can only speculate that they are doing this because good news is not fueling a rush for authoritarian climate change policies that put elites in control of the lives of businesses and people.
SOURCES: Climate Realism; The guard; Phys.org; Climate realism; World bank; Bloomberg; Food and Agriculture Organization
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