Forget climate deniers. 2022 was the year of climate alarmists. That’s according to a new report recently released by a consortium of conservative think tanks.
In their report, dubbed “Climate Fact Check 2022,” the groups argue that climate alarmists in the media have a vested interest in ensuring the outlook appears as dire as possible.
For example, the Associated Press accepted $8 million “from very large foundations who have been pushing climate alarmism for decades” to fund its climate “coverage.”
“Is this money funding actual journalism or just rank political activism?” the groups asked in the report.
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One reason to suggest it may be activism is that science rebuts the claims.
As the groups noted, “Climate alarmists and their media allies once again made a slew of claims about natural disasters being caused by manmade emissions in 2022. And once again, these claims clashed with reality and science.”
The report offered nine such examples.
Hurricane Ian was one event blamed on climate change. Yet the Fact Check report notes, “Hurricane Ian struck during hurricane season, after a historically quiet first few months of hurricane season and amid a season of less storm activity than predicted. Moreover, Atlantic basin hurricane activity is within natural variability.” That’s according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In another instance, the media pointed out that Europe went through the worst drought in 500 years. To that, the report responded, “The European megadrought of 1540 occurred before coal-fired power plants, SUVs and cheeseburgers. If emissions caused the drought, what caused it in 1540?”
Flooding in Yellowstone National Park this year didn’t quite get the climate-change label, but was considered by some activists as climate-change adjacent. Yet, as the report notes, the flooding was attributable to a higher-than-average winter snow pack that melted during rainy season. “Cold weather + bad luck ≠ ‘climate change,’” the report stated.
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In still another example, the report pointed out a Washington Post story in November that argued climate change created shorter winters that threatened World Cup skiing competitions. But as the groups’ answered, “First, winter doesn’t begin until December 21. Next, when World Cup skiing started in the 1960s, the season began in January. Now it begins in October, which is early- to mid-autumn. If the competition began in the winter everything would likely be okay because wintertime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since the 1960s.”
In their conclusion, the groups noted, “There is not a single natural disaster, nor trend in any type of natural disaster that can be credibly linked with emissions or whatever gradual ‘climate change’ may be occurring for whatever reason, including natural climate change.”
“Attributing natural disaster damages to emissions and climate change is without a factual or scientific basis. And that certainly goes for 2022. Regardless of one’s view of what passes as ‘climate science,’ the good news is that even researchers who believe that ‘climate change’ is a problem acknowledge that the number of weather-related deaths and the cost of weather-related damage are actually on the decline – despite ever-increasing emissions and whatever slight warming may be occurring.”
The Fact Check report was Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition
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