In this newsletter:
1) Global lockdown needed every two years to meet Paris CO2 targets, climate scientists claim
The Guardian, 3 March 2021
2) Not gonna happen: 600% rise in carbon prices needed to meet Paris Agreement
Bloomberg, 4 March 2021
3) Not gonna happen: Global CO2 emissions need to decrease tenfold to meet Paris climate goals, scientists warn
Daily Mail, 3 March 2021
4) China turns the screws on ‘unreliables’
Bloomberg, 3 March 2021
The Guardian, 3 March 2021
2) Not gonna happen: 600% rise in carbon prices needed to meet Paris Agreement
Bloomberg, 4 March 2021
3) Not gonna happen: Global CO2 emissions need to decrease tenfold to meet Paris climate goals, scientists warn
Daily Mail, 3 March 2021
4) China turns the screws on ‘unreliables’
Bloomberg, 3 March 2021
5) Wind power was thriving in Texas. Then came the freeze
The Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2021
6) Report: Polar bear numbers continued to grow in 2020 despite climate fear
Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, 3 March 2021
The Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2021
6) Report: Polar bear numbers continued to grow in 2020 despite climate fear
Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, 3 March 2021
7) Stephen Moore: Climate Change Alarmism Takes Another Big Hit
CNS News, 3 March 2021
CNS News, 3 March 2021
Full details:
1) Global lockdown needed every two years to meet Paris CO2 targets, climate scientists claim
The Guardian, 3 March 2021
Carbon dioxide emissions must fall by the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating, research has shown.
Lockdowns around the world led to an unprecedented fall in emissions of about 7% in 2020, or about 2.6bn tonnes of CO2, but reductions of between 1bn and 2bn tonnes are needed every year of the next decade to have a good chance of holding temperature rises to within 1.5C or 2C of pre-industrial levels, as required by the Paris agreement.
Research published on Wednesday shows that countries were beginning to slow their rates of greenhouse gas emissions before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but not to the levels needed to avert climate breakdown. Since lockdowns were eased in many countries last year, there have been strong signs that emissions will rise again to above 2019 levels, severely damaging the prospects of fulfilling the Paris goals.
Corinne Le Quéré, lead author of the study, said the world stood at a crucial point as governments poured money into the global economy to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. “We need a cut in emissions of about the size of the fall [from the lockdowns] every two years, but by completely different methods,” she said.
Governments must prioritise climate action in their efforts to recover from the pandemic, she said. “We have failed to understand in the past that we can’t have tackling climate change as a side issue. It can’t be about one law or policy, it has to be put at the heart of all policy,” she said. “Every strategy and every plan from every government must be consistent with tackling climate change.”
Full story
2) Not gonna happen: 600% rise in carbon prices needed to meet Paris Agreement
Bloomberg, 4 March 2021
The world’s governments will need to significantly increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide in order to keep global warming at bay.
That’s according to energy consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. To stop global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, carbon prices must surge to $160 per ton of CO2 by 2030, up from a global average of $22 at the end of last year, it said in a report Thursday.
The industrialized world has been spewing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases faster than they can be contained for centuries. To rein in temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius -- as pledged by countries in the Paris Agreement -- governments have been trying to cut emissions through what’s known as carbon pricing, an approach that imposes a tax on carbon dioxide emitted or creates a market to trade permits to pollute.
While fossil fuel CO2 emissions dropped 7% last year due to the pandemic, the world must replicate similar declines every year throughout the 2020s and beyond or else face increasingly dire environmental consequences, according to an analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Full story
3) Not gonna happen: Global CO2 emissions need to decrease tenfold to meet Paris climate goals, scientists warn
Daily Mail, 3 March 2021
Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions still need to decrease tenfold to avoid a climate emergency (sic), scientists warn, despite a global fall in 2020 due to Covid-19.
An international team of experts has performed a 'global stocktake' of humanity's progress towards the Paris Agreement – which aims to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 3.6ºF (2°C), compared to pre-industrial levels.
They found global CO2 emissions fell by around 2.6 billion tonnes in 2020, a decrease of about 7 per cent from 2019 levels.
This fall – the largest decrease observed to date – was due to reduced human activity under the lockdowns intended to curb the spread of coronavirus.
While 2020 has been an effective 'pause button' as far as CO2 emissions are concerned, Covid-19 alone would not result in the required long-term emission reductions, even if lockdowns lasted the rest of the decade.
Strategies such as the large scale deployment of renewable energy and completely phasing coal and other fossil fuels worldwide will be necessary, the authors say.
Full story
4) China turns the screws on ‘unreliables’
Bloomberg, 3 March 2021
After shortchanging renewable energy developers for years to the point where it owes billions of dollars in unpaid subsidies, the Chinese government is now proposing that those companies may have to cancel part of the debt if they want to keep building new projects.
Under a draft plan by the country’s National Energy Administration, provinces would auction off grid capacity for new wind and solar projects, with at least one third of the contracts going to developers who were prepared to give up money owed to them by the government, according to people familiar with the proposal. The winning bidders would get a guaranteed rate for their power.
The NEA is seeking opinions on the plan and it remains subject to change, said the people, who asked not to be identified because it isn’t public. The NEA didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.
Chinese renewable developers slumped on the news, with China Longyuan Power Group Corp. falling 14% in Hong Kong on Wednesday, the most in seven years. The NEA proposal underscores how President Xi Jinping’s push to boost clean energy and make the country carbon neutral by 2060 is constrained by a simultaneous desire to end the expensive subsidies that were designed to help wind and solar power become economically competitive with coal.
“The policy setting is too aggressive in our view, and may actually hurt renewable development instead of nurturing it,” said Tony Fei, an analyst with BOCI Research Ltd. “We expect the market to react negatively.”
The problem with China’s renewable subsidies dates back to the mid-2010s, when new developments started growing faster than the pool of money the government set aside every year to pay the fees it promised them. By the end of 2019, the deficit had reached 469 billion yuan ($66 billion) and was set to widen to almost 2 trillion yuan by 2034, before gradually falling to zero by 2049, according to BloombergNEF.
Full story
The Guardian, 3 March 2021
Carbon dioxide emissions must fall by the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating, research has shown.
Lockdowns around the world led to an unprecedented fall in emissions of about 7% in 2020, or about 2.6bn tonnes of CO2, but reductions of between 1bn and 2bn tonnes are needed every year of the next decade to have a good chance of holding temperature rises to within 1.5C or 2C of pre-industrial levels, as required by the Paris agreement.
Research published on Wednesday shows that countries were beginning to slow their rates of greenhouse gas emissions before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but not to the levels needed to avert climate breakdown. Since lockdowns were eased in many countries last year, there have been strong signs that emissions will rise again to above 2019 levels, severely damaging the prospects of fulfilling the Paris goals.
Corinne Le Quéré, lead author of the study, said the world stood at a crucial point as governments poured money into the global economy to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. “We need a cut in emissions of about the size of the fall [from the lockdowns] every two years, but by completely different methods,” she said.
Governments must prioritise climate action in their efforts to recover from the pandemic, she said. “We have failed to understand in the past that we can’t have tackling climate change as a side issue. It can’t be about one law or policy, it has to be put at the heart of all policy,” she said. “Every strategy and every plan from every government must be consistent with tackling climate change.”
Full story
2) Not gonna happen: 600% rise in carbon prices needed to meet Paris Agreement
Bloomberg, 4 March 2021
The world’s governments will need to significantly increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide in order to keep global warming at bay.
That’s according to energy consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. To stop global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, carbon prices must surge to $160 per ton of CO2 by 2030, up from a global average of $22 at the end of last year, it said in a report Thursday.
The industrialized world has been spewing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases faster than they can be contained for centuries. To rein in temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius -- as pledged by countries in the Paris Agreement -- governments have been trying to cut emissions through what’s known as carbon pricing, an approach that imposes a tax on carbon dioxide emitted or creates a market to trade permits to pollute.
While fossil fuel CO2 emissions dropped 7% last year due to the pandemic, the world must replicate similar declines every year throughout the 2020s and beyond or else face increasingly dire environmental consequences, according to an analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Full story
3) Not gonna happen: Global CO2 emissions need to decrease tenfold to meet Paris climate goals, scientists warn
Daily Mail, 3 March 2021
Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions still need to decrease tenfold to avoid a climate emergency (sic), scientists warn, despite a global fall in 2020 due to Covid-19.
An international team of experts has performed a 'global stocktake' of humanity's progress towards the Paris Agreement – which aims to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 3.6ºF (2°C), compared to pre-industrial levels.
They found global CO2 emissions fell by around 2.6 billion tonnes in 2020, a decrease of about 7 per cent from 2019 levels.
This fall – the largest decrease observed to date – was due to reduced human activity under the lockdowns intended to curb the spread of coronavirus.
While 2020 has been an effective 'pause button' as far as CO2 emissions are concerned, Covid-19 alone would not result in the required long-term emission reductions, even if lockdowns lasted the rest of the decade.
Strategies such as the large scale deployment of renewable energy and completely phasing coal and other fossil fuels worldwide will be necessary, the authors say.
Full story
4) China turns the screws on ‘unreliables’
Bloomberg, 3 March 2021
After shortchanging renewable energy developers for years to the point where it owes billions of dollars in unpaid subsidies, the Chinese government is now proposing that those companies may have to cancel part of the debt if they want to keep building new projects.
Under a draft plan by the country’s National Energy Administration, provinces would auction off grid capacity for new wind and solar projects, with at least one third of the contracts going to developers who were prepared to give up money owed to them by the government, according to people familiar with the proposal. The winning bidders would get a guaranteed rate for their power.
The NEA is seeking opinions on the plan and it remains subject to change, said the people, who asked not to be identified because it isn’t public. The NEA didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.
Chinese renewable developers slumped on the news, with China Longyuan Power Group Corp. falling 14% in Hong Kong on Wednesday, the most in seven years. The NEA proposal underscores how President Xi Jinping’s push to boost clean energy and make the country carbon neutral by 2060 is constrained by a simultaneous desire to end the expensive subsidies that were designed to help wind and solar power become economically competitive with coal.
“The policy setting is too aggressive in our view, and may actually hurt renewable development instead of nurturing it,” said Tony Fei, an analyst with BOCI Research Ltd. “We expect the market to react negatively.”
The problem with China’s renewable subsidies dates back to the mid-2010s, when new developments started growing faster than the pool of money the government set aside every year to pay the fees it promised them. By the end of 2019, the deficit had reached 469 billion yuan ($66 billion) and was set to widen to almost 2 trillion yuan by 2034, before gradually falling to zero by 2049, according to BloombergNEF.
Full story
5) Wind power was thriving in Texas. Then came the freeze
The Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2021
AUSTIN, Texas—The Texas wind industry suffered a devastating financial blow during last month’s electricity crisis, which hit roughly half of the state’s wind farms and may force some to seek bankruptcy protection or relinquish control to Wall Street.
With ample breezes and open spaces, the Lone Star State has become the biggest producer of wind power in the U.S. It now derives roughly 23% of its power on an annual basis from the renewable energy source.
But a financial arrangement that helped wind companies thrive in Texas now threatens to crush many operators, after an unusually strong winter storm led officials to drastically raise wholesale prices in the state’s deregulated power market and caused blackouts that left millions in the dark for days.
Many wind farms in Texas, to get construction financing, enter into long-term hedged contracts with financial institutions in which the wind farm operator agrees to provide a steady stream of electricity to the counterparty.
If it cannot deliver electricity—because the wind isn’t blowing—the operator agrees to pay to purchase electricity on the wholesale market, or agrees to pay the counterparty to purchase it on its behalf.
In return, the financial institution, often a Wall Street bank, agrees to pay a set price for the electricity. The bank can then resell the electricity on the state’s wholesale power market, potentially clearing a profit.
When the wind is still and operators need to purchase power to fulfill their obligations, it typically costs somewhere between $0 and $50 per megawatt hour. But during the February blackouts, when some wind farms stopped running after ice built up on their fan blades, operators were forced to pay $9,000 a megawatt hour. (The average price in 2020 was $22.18.)
Over a four-day span at such prices, a midsize wind farm could easily end up owing $50 million or more for electricity.
Wind farms that owe their counterparties more than they can pay may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection or work out an arrangement.
Alternatively, the Wall Street banks could go after the only asset available for repayment: the wind farm itself. The gallows-humor joke in the wind industry this week was that Wall Street could soon become the biggest wind player in Texas.
Power prices skyrocketed in the state after the Texas Public Utility Commission, a three-member panel appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, set them at $9,000 per megawatt hour to try to spur power plants to make more electricity.
The move didn’t result in generators producing more, however, as dozens of power plants and wind farms were down due to the freeze and a corresponding shortage of natural gas.
Full story
6) Report: Polar bear numbers continued to grow in 2020 despite climate fear
Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, 3 March 2021
Ever since Al Gore claimed in his movie An Inconvenient Truth that climate change threatens polar bears, polar bears have become the go-to animal for climate scares, documentaries, and most importantly, fund-raising in the name of “saving the Earth.” But, looking at real-world data, we should celebrate the good news that polar bears had yet another good year in 2020.
In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published February 27 on International Polar Bear Day by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.
Crockford clarifies that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows that bears in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.
Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest of the polar bear populations were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As of 2020, the global polar bear population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015.
Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, even though summer sea ice declined to the second-lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the reduced-ice season.
As Crockford’s report reveals, plankton growth – the critical health measure of marine life in the Arctic – reached record highs in August 2020. More plankton (‘primary productivity’) due to less summer ice means more fodder for the entire food chain, including polar bears. This explains why bears are thriving in areas such as the Barents Sea, which have experienced reduced levels of sea ice.
Dr. Crockford notes that, ironically, polar bears in western Hudson Bay experienced excellent ice conditions for the fourth year in a row in 2020. Bears were fat and healthy when they arrived on shore for the summer.
It seems that polar bears are more flexible in their habitat requirements than experts assumed and less summer ice has so far been beneficial rather than detrimental, despite “expert” claims that sea ice loss will hurt them.
Crockford explains, “Polar bears continue to be described as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the effects of human-caused climate change, but the evidence shows they are far from being a highly-sensitive indicator species. It’s not a myth: 2020 appears to have been another good year for polar bears.”
The ‘State of the Polar Bear Report 2020’ is free to download and read.
Download the report here.
But a financial arrangement that helped wind companies thrive in Texas now threatens to crush many operators, after an unusually strong winter storm led officials to drastically raise wholesale prices in the state’s deregulated power market and caused blackouts that left millions in the dark for days.
Many wind farms in Texas, to get construction financing, enter into long-term hedged contracts with financial institutions in which the wind farm operator agrees to provide a steady stream of electricity to the counterparty.
If it cannot deliver electricity—because the wind isn’t blowing—the operator agrees to pay to purchase electricity on the wholesale market, or agrees to pay the counterparty to purchase it on its behalf.
In return, the financial institution, often a Wall Street bank, agrees to pay a set price for the electricity. The bank can then resell the electricity on the state’s wholesale power market, potentially clearing a profit.
When the wind is still and operators need to purchase power to fulfill their obligations, it typically costs somewhere between $0 and $50 per megawatt hour. But during the February blackouts, when some wind farms stopped running after ice built up on their fan blades, operators were forced to pay $9,000 a megawatt hour. (The average price in 2020 was $22.18.)
Over a four-day span at such prices, a midsize wind farm could easily end up owing $50 million or more for electricity.
Wind farms that owe their counterparties more than they can pay may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection or work out an arrangement.
Alternatively, the Wall Street banks could go after the only asset available for repayment: the wind farm itself. The gallows-humor joke in the wind industry this week was that Wall Street could soon become the biggest wind player in Texas.
Power prices skyrocketed in the state after the Texas Public Utility Commission, a three-member panel appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, set them at $9,000 per megawatt hour to try to spur power plants to make more electricity.
The move didn’t result in generators producing more, however, as dozens of power plants and wind farms were down due to the freeze and a corresponding shortage of natural gas.
Full story
6) Report: Polar bear numbers continued to grow in 2020 despite climate fear
Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, 3 March 2021
Ever since Al Gore claimed in his movie An Inconvenient Truth that climate change threatens polar bears, polar bears have become the go-to animal for climate scares, documentaries, and most importantly, fund-raising in the name of “saving the Earth.” But, looking at real-world data, we should celebrate the good news that polar bears had yet another good year in 2020.
In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published February 27 on International Polar Bear Day by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.
Crockford clarifies that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows that bears in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.
Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest of the polar bear populations were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As of 2020, the global polar bear population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015.
Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, even though summer sea ice declined to the second-lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the reduced-ice season.
As Crockford’s report reveals, plankton growth – the critical health measure of marine life in the Arctic – reached record highs in August 2020. More plankton (‘primary productivity’) due to less summer ice means more fodder for the entire food chain, including polar bears. This explains why bears are thriving in areas such as the Barents Sea, which have experienced reduced levels of sea ice.
Dr. Crockford notes that, ironically, polar bears in western Hudson Bay experienced excellent ice conditions for the fourth year in a row in 2020. Bears were fat and healthy when they arrived on shore for the summer.
It seems that polar bears are more flexible in their habitat requirements than experts assumed and less summer ice has so far been beneficial rather than detrimental, despite “expert” claims that sea ice loss will hurt them.
Crockford explains, “Polar bears continue to be described as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the effects of human-caused climate change, but the evidence shows they are far from being a highly-sensitive indicator species. It’s not a myth: 2020 appears to have been another good year for polar bears.”
The ‘State of the Polar Bear Report 2020’ is free to download and read.
Download the report here.
7) Stephen Moore: Climate Change Alarmism Takes Another Big Hit
CNS News, 3 March 2021
Throughout the midsection of the United States in February, record frigid temperatures were inconvenient for those politicians who call global warming an "existential threat."
Global warming is already here, we are told. However, it didn't feel like it if you lived in Bismarck, North Dakota, where temperatures fell to decades-low numbers, or in Chicago, Oklahoma City, Dallas, or Houston. San Antonio had snow for the first time in recent memory.
The environmental apocalyptics say this doesn't prove anything about what is happening with the planet's climate. And you know what? They are 100% correct.
But last summer, when hundreds of thousands of acres burned in California, that event was prima-facie evidence of global warming, and if you challenged that premise, you faced ridicule as a "denier."
About 10 years ago, when Barack Obama was president, his scientists put out a silly report on climate change, showing that the Great Lakes' ice coverage had fallen to its lowest level in several decades. It was evidence of a warming planet. But the year after the report came out, we had a frigid winter in the Midwest, and the ice cover was abnormally high. This year, we are again experiencing high ice levels on the Great Lakes with the polar vortex.
Whoops. Again, this proves nothing, but the environmentalists made the point in the first place. OK, what's the following argument?
One of the climate change movement's ironies is that it talks obsessively about science and the "scientific consensus." Still, collectively, the adherents suffer from one of the most common scientific reasoning flaws: confirmation bias. This happens when you point to anything supporting a hypothesis as evidence and discount anything contradicting the theory as an outlier. Ice melting means global warming. Ice forming is a natural, expected winter occurrence.
Here is a classic example from The New York Times, which tries to ridicule anyone who would point to the cold weather as a contradiction to the global apocalypse narrative: "Those who deny climate science love to declare that there's no such thing as climate change whenever the weather turns cold."
Wrong. The left declares that there is climate change anytime the weather turns warm or there are forest fires such as those last summer.
Here's another non sequitur from the big green movement, also reported by The New York Times: "In the United States, we're seeing longer wildfire seasons because of hotter, drier conditions, and our hurricanes are becoming more destructive in several ways, including flooding and storm surge....We've always had floods, fires, and storms, but climate change adds oomph to many weather events."
Is there more "oomph" from severe weather events now than in the past? Generally, no. The historical evidence shows 1) there are no more severe events than there were 50 years ago or 100 years ago (the period for which we have reliable data) and 2) the percentage of people in the world who die from extreme weather events, such as monsoons, forest fires, high temperatures, frigid winters, hurricanes, and tornadoes, has been consistently falling for at least a century and is lower today than any time in human history.
There are many reasons for this. First, we have better warning systems for severe weather events. Second, we are better prepared with superior building codes and more weather-resistant materials. And third, technology and human know-how make us better prepared to deal with the "fires next time." We learn and we adapt from the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.
It explains why, even though storms may be getting more destructive and we hear constant warnings of rising sea levels, people are paying higher prices than ever before for beachfront properties in states such as Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and California.
Full post
CNS News, 3 March 2021
Throughout the midsection of the United States in February, record frigid temperatures were inconvenient for those politicians who call global warming an "existential threat."
Global warming is already here, we are told. However, it didn't feel like it if you lived in Bismarck, North Dakota, where temperatures fell to decades-low numbers, or in Chicago, Oklahoma City, Dallas, or Houston. San Antonio had snow for the first time in recent memory.
The environmental apocalyptics say this doesn't prove anything about what is happening with the planet's climate. And you know what? They are 100% correct.
But last summer, when hundreds of thousands of acres burned in California, that event was prima-facie evidence of global warming, and if you challenged that premise, you faced ridicule as a "denier."
About 10 years ago, when Barack Obama was president, his scientists put out a silly report on climate change, showing that the Great Lakes' ice coverage had fallen to its lowest level in several decades. It was evidence of a warming planet. But the year after the report came out, we had a frigid winter in the Midwest, and the ice cover was abnormally high. This year, we are again experiencing high ice levels on the Great Lakes with the polar vortex.
Whoops. Again, this proves nothing, but the environmentalists made the point in the first place. OK, what's the following argument?
One of the climate change movement's ironies is that it talks obsessively about science and the "scientific consensus." Still, collectively, the adherents suffer from one of the most common scientific reasoning flaws: confirmation bias. This happens when you point to anything supporting a hypothesis as evidence and discount anything contradicting the theory as an outlier. Ice melting means global warming. Ice forming is a natural, expected winter occurrence.
Here is a classic example from The New York Times, which tries to ridicule anyone who would point to the cold weather as a contradiction to the global apocalypse narrative: "Those who deny climate science love to declare that there's no such thing as climate change whenever the weather turns cold."
Wrong. The left declares that there is climate change anytime the weather turns warm or there are forest fires such as those last summer.
Here's another non sequitur from the big green movement, also reported by The New York Times: "In the United States, we're seeing longer wildfire seasons because of hotter, drier conditions, and our hurricanes are becoming more destructive in several ways, including flooding and storm surge....We've always had floods, fires, and storms, but climate change adds oomph to many weather events."
Is there more "oomph" from severe weather events now than in the past? Generally, no. The historical evidence shows 1) there are no more severe events than there were 50 years ago or 100 years ago (the period for which we have reliable data) and 2) the percentage of people in the world who die from extreme weather events, such as monsoons, forest fires, high temperatures, frigid winters, hurricanes, and tornadoes, has been consistently falling for at least a century and is lower today than any time in human history.
There are many reasons for this. First, we have better warning systems for severe weather events. Second, we are better prepared with superior building codes and more weather-resistant materials. And third, technology and human know-how make us better prepared to deal with the "fires next time." We learn and we adapt from the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.
It explains why, even though storms may be getting more destructive and we hear constant warnings of rising sea levels, people are paying higher prices than ever before for beachfront properties in states such as Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and California.
Full post
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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