Climate Change Theorists Taking Heat for False Warnings
Dire predictions issued by 'experts' about climate change have mostly been wrong
I saw a map the other day that purported to show what the coastlines of South Carolina and Georgia will look like by 2100 because of climate change. It showed considerable portions of the current coastlines underwater.
I realized that this was basically the same map I’d seen 25 years ago of how climate change would affect those coasts by 2000. And by 2012. And by 2020. At least they’ve got smart enough to make those projections 75 years into the future so that nobody who’s alive today will remember that, once again, they didn’t get it right.
The people who have so assiduously warned us about the dangers of climate change for the past quarter century aren’t doing so well lately. None of the catastrophes they assured us would change our world have actually happened. Some have reversed course.
For example, arctic ice that was supposed to have completely disappeared by 2013 has actually been growing thicker in some areas over the past few years. Polar bears, who were supposed to be extinct by now because of this loss of ice, have increased their population. World food production, instead of decreasing because of heat and drought, reached an all-time high in 2023.
Well, sure, but what about last month, huh? People said it was a record for the warmest February. Obviously a sign of global warming, right?
In reality, it wasn’t as warm as in February 2017, and only marginally warmer than in February 1991. Temperatures in northern Illinois in 1921 and 1932 were in the 70s in mid-February. And in 1878 the Chicago Times reported about the "lost winter” when it was so warm it didn’t snow. The 2024 average February temperature in Minneapolis was basically the same as it was in 2017, 1987, 1976, 1954, 1931, 1882, 1878 and 1877.
I remember one January in northern Indiana, probably 1976, when my brothers and I went outside to play catch because it was so warm. (Two years later, after two devastatingly cold and snowy winters, the clarion call was about global cooling spiraling us into a new Ice Age.)
According to what we’re told, CO2 in the atmosphere is continually increasing because of emissions from cars, coal plants and cows. So how do we explain that the weather was basically the same nearly 150 years ago and many years in between?
Other Factors Lead to Warming
Climate scientists know that the El Nino effect, which we’ve had this past winter, greatly influences temperatures to be warmer over a wide swath of the United States. El Nino is a phenomenon where the Pacific Ocean warms and the wind pattern carries that warmer air across the country. El Nino was in effect in most or all of those previous warm periods as well.
But another big factor is that the reliability of our instruments is sketchy at best. One estimate claims that 96 percent of U.S. temperature measuring devices are not accurate to within 1 degree.
“Heat islands,” areas of population density covered in pavement, can add up to 10 degrees to a local temperature (drive into a forest on a hot day and look at how much the temperature drops to see how much difference pavement makes). Researchers discovered that a measuring device located near an airport will see a spike of several degrees if the wind blows across the paved runways toward the device.
In fact, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chart, the global temperature has been well below normal for most of the period since 2015. That’s despite heat islands and more carbon emissions.
The bottom line is that we now know, thanks to the pandemic, that most of what we believed from experts is more like science fiction than actual science. Still, climate change will undoubtedly be part of this year’s political campaigns.
But don’t worry – the only hot air we have to worry about is what’s coming out of the politicians’ mouths.