A search of Google news for the phrase “climate change,” today turned up a refreshing article in the Washington Examiner, chock full of data, demonstrating climate change does not pose an “existential threat.”

In the Washington Examiner article, titled “Climate change is not an ‘existential threat,’” the author, David Simon writes:

The Biden administration’s climate change policies have sharply increased oil prices, damaging the domestic economy and increasing the cost of nearly everything consumers buy. By increasing revenues for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, they also made Russia stronger and more dangerous at a critical time, thus damaging national security.  …

But worst of all, the Biden administration’s basis for these policies, the claim that global warming presents an “existential threat,” is fraudulent. It is not based on any scientific consensus, and in fact, it ignores evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm.

It is at this point Simon schools other journalists concerning how to examine the issue of climate change. He presents data and research which conclusively demonstrates temperature and climate related deaths have significantly declined during the period of modern warming. Climate Realism has also pointed this fact out on numerous occasions, refuting alarmists’ claims to the contrary.

Using readily available data, Simon then proceeds to dismantle various climate fictions about worsening natural disasters, writing:

The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century. Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.

Since 1920, Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.12 degrees and the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to almost eight billion. Even so, the number of people killed each year by natural disasters has declined by about 90 percent. That statistic, more than any other, puts the lie to claims of an existential crisis due to climate.

There is also the global air pollution death rate, which has declined by about 45 percent over the last three decades. Again, no “existential threat” here.

Simon is correct. Research published on Climate Realism has also refuted assertions about worsening wildfires and hurricanes on multiple occasions.

Not content to refute false climate change alarms, Simon also discusses research showing the positive side of climate change, to wit, “global warming has increased both agricultural yields and growth of forests, grasslands, and tree leaves.”

Because I couldn’t sum up his argument better myself, I’ll close with Simon’s conclusion:

Biden administration climate change policies are sensationalizing the threats while ignoring all the benefits. They rely on speculative “models” that supposedly project global temperatures and predict disasters. But these models are highly unreliable … unable even to reproduce the temperature changes of the 20th century.

The Biden administration’s campaign against U.S. oil production and pipelines is not just harmful — it is an environmental fraud.

H. Sterling Burnett

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

The post Hooray!, Washington Examiner, You’re Right, Climate Change Isn’t an ‘Existential Threat’ appeared first on ClimateRealism.

via ClimateRealism

March 15, 2022, By H. Sterling Burnett

Hooray! Washington Examiner, You’re Right, Climate Change Isn’t an ‘Existential Threat’