The New Hotness: Lying About ‘Climate Change’

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/18/the-new-hotness-lying-about-climate-change/

There’s a summer heat wave going on, which gives journalists the opportunity to fill up their stories with climate change boilerplate. It no longer matters whether any of it is true. Just the opposite, in fact. If you point out the truth, you’re accused of being a denier.

Sure, the data doesn’t show an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes or tornadoes or wildfires. Yet every time one or the other strikes, the press robotically connects that event to “climate change.”

Every tornado season, we hear about how climate change is making them more frequent and more deadly. Except the narrative doesn’t align with the facts.

ustornadoes.com

Here’s what National Geographic said about tornadoes: “There is no real evidence that tornadoes are happening more often. A lot more are being recorded now than in 1950, but a closer look at the data shows the increase is only in the weakest category, EF0. There’s been no increase in stronger twisters, and maybe even a slight decrease in EF4s and EF5s.”

The fact that there’s no discernible trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes – see the chart below from the Environmental Protection Agency – won’t stop the propagandists in the media from saying that there is. (Note also that the EPA is the biggest propagandist of them all for the “climate crisis” hysteria.)

Environmental Protection Agency

And so, true to form, every story about the current heat wave says that climate change is to blame.

Axios, which is a bellwether for liberal conventional wisdom, claims that “climate change greatly increases the likelihood of heat waves, as well as their intensity and duration.

Except the page the story links to – GlobalChange.gov – includes this map, which breaks down the U.S. into seven regions and compares the number of days where the temperature exceeded 95 degrees from 2002-2021 to 1901-1960.

GlobalChange.org

Take a close look at the map.

If the globe is warming, you’d expect those hot days to go up everywhere. But of the 50 states in the country, only 10 saw an increase in 95-plus degree days over those periods. Most of the U.S. saw decreases.

And while the Southwest saw an increase of 5.5 days, the Southeast saw a drop of 9.7 days, and the Midwest a decline of 5.6 days.

Then look at the chart below which tracks the number of heat waves each year going back to 1895.

Notice anything? To our eye, there’s no discernible trend at all. Particularly when you consider that the truly terrible heat waves occurred in the 1930s, long before human activity could have had any meaningful effect on global climate.

Our World In Data

Then there’s this whopper of a lie in the Axios story:

“Why it matters: Extreme heat is the top weather-related killer in the U.S.”

The story links to this Weather.gov page, which says right there at the top of the page that “Extreme heat is the number one weather-related killer.”

But the very next sentence takes that back, saying “Extreme heat and humidity is one of the leading weather-related killers in the United States.”

The truth is that extreme cold, not heat, is more lethal, as data from the EPA make clear.

I&I Chart

But since that doesn’t fit the “climate crisis” narrative, why not lie about it?

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

Editor’s note: Google routinely blocks its AdSense ads from appearing next to content that challenges the climate change religion. If you don’t see an ad at the very bottom of the page, then they’ve done it to this one.

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