Are they driven primarily by global climate change? Want to know whether this summer’s heat waves in the United States are extraordinary—nay, even unprecedented—due to manmade global warming? Where should you go for solid, objective data? Obviously, to the authoritative source, the Environmental Protection Agency. So you go to its page titled “Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves.” Immediately when the page opens up, this is what you see: There you have it: decade by decade, … [Read more...]
Mainstream Media Ignores Good News, Cries “Wolf” Over Climate Change
On a given morning the individual who happens to subscribe to a local newspaper likely may wake up over coffee greeted by a headline reading “Global Warming (or Climate Change, or Climate Crisis) Is Causing Increasing Deaths,” with latest estimates reaching into the multi-millions. Is this otherwise implausible statement credible? It may seem entirely plausible in the eyes of “the woke” segment of 21st Century US society. Recently the Heartland Institute’s Dr. H. Sterling Burnett examined … [Read more...]
The “Proof” that Isn’t
Politicians, media, and environmentalists all over America are pointing to the record-breaking heat wave in America's northwest and Canada's southwest as proof of human-induced global warming. Unfortunately, localized weather and global climate aren't the same. (The affected region, very roughly 1.5 million square miles, is under 1 percent of Earth's total surface.) One cannot infer the latter from the former. As Science and Environmental Policy Project President Ken Haapala wrote in last week's … [Read more...]
The Uninhabited Mind of David Wallace-Wells
David Wallace-Wells shook up a lot of people with a "horrifying 2017 essay in New York magazine about climate change. It was an attempt to paint a very real picture of our not-too-distant future, a future filled with famines, political chaos, economic collapse, fierce resource competition, and a sun that 'cooks us.'" Now he's got a book out that builds on that article, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, which Vox describes as "a brutal read," "more terrifying" than the "terrifying … [Read more...]
Global Warming Reduces Human Death Rates
No contest on this one. Cold weather leads directly or indirectly to 17 times as many excess human deaths as hot weather. What's surprising is that even the New York Times reported this, and prominently. In the December 19, 2016, issue, Jane Brody wrote: Most of the Northern Hemisphere is now in the throes of the deadliest time of the year. Cold kills, and I don’t mean just extreme cold and crippling blizzards. I mean ordinary winter cold, like that typically experienced, chronically or … [Read more...]