Tag: computer model projections

Wrong, USA Today, There’s No Evidence that Climate Change Will Cause Higher Water Bills

USA Today claims in “Your water bill could skyrocket due to climate change, study says” that hotter, drier conditions caused by global warming could double residentially water bills across parts of the western United States. This is highly misleading.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts


USA Today claims in “Your water bill could skyrocket due to climate change, study says” that hotter, drier conditions caused by global warming could double residentially water bills across parts of the western United States. This is highly misleading. The article is built almost entirely on computer model projections of future drought rather than on observed drought trends, and it presents speculative scenarios as though they were inevitable.

Climate Realism has used the word scaremongering many times. Perhaps it’s time for a new word: scare modeling.

Scaremodeling is what happens when speculative computer simulations are reported as established fact. A model predicts a future problem, another model estimates the economic consequences, and the media reports the worst-case outcome as though it is already unfolding. That is exactly what USA Today has done here.

The article opens by warning readers to “get ready to pay more for your water. A lot more.” It then cites a Stanford study claiming climate change could force expensive investments in desalination, recycled water systems, and water transfers that might double residentially water bills in some communities.

Notice the qualifiers could and might. Not will. Not is. Not has.

Everything that follows depends on climate models correctly predicting a hotter, drier future for specific regions decades in advance. Those projections are then fed into economic models that estimate future infrastructure costs. In other words, the article layers one model on top of another before arriving at its alarming headline.

Models built upon models are still models, they are not observations. They are speculative future scenarios. And, because climate and economic models are routinely wrong, and current models are known to be flawed, with incorrect assumptions about the atmosphere’s response to greenhouse gas emissions, this report, and the study it is premised on is quite likely to be a matter of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Even the article quietly admits that water costs have already been rising primarily because of aging infrastructure and decades of deferred maintenance. Those are real, measurable problems with well-documented causes. Climate change is introduced as an additional speculative pressure layered on top of existing issues.

The article never stops to ask whether the underlying assumption, that America is becoming progressively drier, is actually supported by observations, despite the fact that the evidence says otherwise.

Climate at a Glance documents that there has been no long-term increase in drought across the United States. Drought has always been a recurring feature of the American climate, varying from year to year and decade to decade. Some regions become drier while others become wetter, but nationwide observations do not show the inexorable march toward permanent drought portrayed in media reports.

In fact, the United States has generally become wetter in recent decades.

As the climate has modestly warmed, the United States has experienced more abundant precipitation overall, and 2017 and 2019 set records for the smallest percentage of U.S. land experiencing drought. Those observations are the opposite of the narrative presented by USA Today.

That should not be surprising, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. When conditions are favorable, that can translate into increased precipitation. The observational record reflects this complex reality far better than simplistic stories.

The article also focuses almost exclusively on Santa Cruz, California, using it as a case study for future water affordability. But Santa Cruz is hardly representative of the United States as a whole with all its varied landscapes and weather trends. Santa Cruz relies heavily on local surface water and limited storage capacity, making it uniquely vulnerable to periodic dry spells.

Local infrastructure decisions are not evidence of a national climate emergency.

Nor is it surprising that western states periodically experience drought. They always have. The American West is defined by highly variable precipitation driven by ocean cycles, atmospheric circulation, and mountain snowpack. Long before climate change became today’s explanation for every weather event, the region endured prolonged droughts, sometimes lasting hundreds of years, that shaped its history.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s remains one of the most devastating droughts ever experienced in the United States. Medieval megadroughts lasted decades and far exceeded anything observed during the modern instrumental record.

Those events occurred before SUVs, coal-fired power plants, or modern greenhouse gas emissions, yet USA Today never mentions them.

Instead, readers are presented with a future in which a slight increase in global average temperatures forces expensive infrastructure investments and soaring water bills. That may make for an attention-grabbing headline, but it is speculation, not settled science.

If water rates continue rising, the most immediate reasons will likely remain the same ones that utilities have been citing for years: the costs of replacing aging pipes, repairing reservoirs, modernizing treatment plants to meet stricter regulatory requirements, higher costs for updated parts, materials, and labor, in part due to inflation, all of this resulting from decades of deferred maintenance.

Those costs are real, as opposed to the speculative costs attributed to future climate change by models’ forecasts.

USA Today’s readers deserve better than speculative headlines built on hypothetical futures. They deserve reporting grounded in observed data, historical context, and the recognition that climate models are tools for exploring possibilities, not crystal balls predicting tomorrow’s water bill.

Wrong, Mainstream Media, People Are Not Going to Die from Inactivity Due to Global Warming

Several mainstream media outlets, including The Daily Mail, Economic Times, and The Washington Post released articles referencing a study that claims global warming will result in a decline in exercise and physical activity, leading to a large increase in premature deaths. This is nonsense. This study relies entirely on assumptions that can’t be proven and notably unrealistic computer model scenarios. The media should have shown a little justified skepticism and debunked this research, or ignored it entirely.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

Several mainstream media outlets, including The Daily Mail, Economic Times, and The Washington Post released articles referencing a study that claims global warming will result in a decline in exercise and physical activity, leading to a large increase in premature deaths. This is nonsense. This study relies entirely on assumptions that can’t be proven and notably unrealistic computer model scenarios. The media should have shown a little justified skepticism and debunked this research, or ignored it entirely.

The Daily Mail titled their article “Terrifying study predicts exactly how many people will DIE by 2050 if we don’t take urgent action to curb climate change.” The title is obviously hyperbolic, meant to frighten readers instead of informing them, demonstrating right away some problems with how the study was conducted. The Washington Post’s headline was only slightly less alarming, “Inactivity in a warming world could spur hundreds of thousands of deaths.”

According to The Daily Mail, the researchers “set out to understand how rising temperatures will affect physical activity – and as a result, premature deaths,” which calls into question whether this study is a case of finding data to fit a particular conclusion, especially since it depends on computer models the researchers had to program the conditions for.

The study concluded that “by 2050, each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8°C will increase physical inactivity by 1.5 per cent globally,” which “translates to a predicted 470,000 to 700,000 additional premature deaths every year – and up to $3.68 billion in productivity losses.”

The study admits that “global evidence on how sustained warming translates into physical inactivity remains scarce, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries.” Yet those low- to middle-income countries are also the ones, generally, that the study says are the most at risk of the impact of heat-induced sedentary lifestyles. So, it seems where data are absent or lacking, the idea is that it is legitimate to use computer model projections to make it up. No need to go about the hard scientific work of actually doing research and collecting real world data. Contrary to the impression given by various media outlets’ headlines, there is no real-world data indicating that people exercise less if temperature rises by one or two degrees.

The countries this study says are most at risk are places where hot temperatures are the norm, especially around the equator, like equatorial nations in Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, and the Pacific. In those countries, often lacking modern energy infrastructure, people have always gone about their business daily working and playing in the hot sun.

One of the many problems here is that climate change theory, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and data agree that the greatest amount of temperature change in a warming world is occurring and will occur at the poles. Countries around the equator experience little if any rise in temperatures and attendant climate impacts. Another problem is that most warming occurs at night—it’s not that daytime highs are becoming much higher, but nighttime lows are less low. That is not something one would expect to have an impact on physical exercise. People don’t typically exercise in the middle of the night, they are sleeping.

Another problem is that this study relies on the infamous and widely discredited SSP5-8.5, which is a very extreme, in fact, likely impossible, scenario compared to real world emission trends. The future warming and associated impacts predicted by SSP5-8.5 are simply not going to come to pass. Using bad science to promote policy is irresponsible. Climate Realism has addressed the failings acknowledged by climate scientists of the 8.5 climate change emissions scenario on a number of occasions.

The study presents layers and layers of computer simulations with assumptions built in every step of the way. As Climate Realism has often shown (here, here, and here, for example) computer models that produce outputs that don’t match real-world observations and data prove nothing other than the fact that the models are inadequate. What real-world data show is that cold kills far more people than heat each year, by a factor of 10 to one, and as the Earth has modestly warmed, deaths tied to non-optimum temperatures have fallen dramatically.

This study is not “terrifying” unless you assume that human beings are one-track, unadaptable automatons doomed to simply sit around and suffer from slightly warmer average temperatures. In reality, when the temperature outside bothers people, they simply move indoors to exercise or shift the times when they exercise, taking their walk or run in the evening or early morning rather than midday.

The study suggests that air conditioning (AC)  contributes to a sedentary “feedback loop,” where more AC makes people lazier. Yet the AC the authors and media outlets complain about is widely acknowledged to save tens of thousands of lives each year, as discussed at Climate Realism, and in studies published by the American Medical Association and the International Energy Agency. Indeed, air conditioning is common in gyms, recreation centers, and other places where people exercise.

The mainstream media, including The Daily Mail and others, are using this study to fearmonger but the connections are so tenuous it’s barely science at all. There are many factors that contribute to sedentary lifestyles, including culture, and there is no reason to think that increasing wealth and access to technology that can provide some respite from the heat won’t help mitigate any dangers from high temperatures.

WRONG, Chicago Tribune, Climate Change Isn’t Making Hailstorms Worse

The Chicago Tribune recently ran a story claiming that climate change is making storms in Illinois “more severe,” particularly with regard to hail and tornadoes. This is false. There is no evidence that hail is becoming larger or tornadoes more powerful, or that either has become more common.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

The Chicago Tribune recently ran a story claiming that climate change is making storms in Illinois “more severe,” particularly with regard to hail and tornadoes. This is false. There is no evidence that hail is becoming larger or tornadoes more powerful, or that either has become more common. The article relies entirely on computer model projections that it presents as fact, without reference to real world data. The article suggests that higher insurance claims are evidence that storms are more destructive, but this isn’t actually evidence of anything other than increased property values.

The article, titled “Gargantuan hail, destructive tornadoes: Climate change making Illinois storms more severe,” claims that as warming continues to raise average global temperatures, “hailstones larger than ping-pong or golf balls will become more frequent […] according to a study led by Gensini and published a couple of years ago in the scientific journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.”

The study is a few years old, but it comes up almost every time the media wants to tie a notable hail event to climate change. It is not based on real world observations, but on projections from computer modelling that assumes that global warming will result in more storms with stronger updrafts, which would allow for larger hailstorm formation before they drop to earth. This same assumption was behind an NBC News report from July 2025, which was refuted in Climate Realism by meteorologist Anthony Watts.

In that post, Watts points out:

Hail formation requires a very specific cocktail of atmospheric conditions, including strong updrafts and a freezing layer deep enough to support hail growth. Warmer temperatures tend to reduce the vertical depth of this freezing level, making it more difficult—not easier—for large hailstones to form and survive to ground level.

He also points to studies that actually did look at measured severe hail occurrence, which found a decrease in significant hail events in the United States in recent decades.

Looking at National Weather Service data for Illinois alone, from 1995 to 2025, there is no trend towards more hail.

Figure 1: Illinois hail reports, from 1995 to 2025, data from NWS Storm Prediction Center.

Computer model outputs are only as good as the assumptions and formulas built into them. In this case, the models are seriously flawed, as the long-term data demonstrate. There is no trend towards worse or more frequent hail.

While the article title also implies that tornadoes are also worsening due to climate change, tornadoes are hardly mentioned in the body of the article. That’s good for the Chicago Tribune, because the reality is that tornadoes are not becoming more extreme or common in Illinois. It is shameful to imply that correlation. Even though the story itself doesn’t get into it, it’s still worth presenting the data that debunk what is implied in the article’s title.

Looking at the overall tornado counts, there appears to be a slight upward trend, however this is an artifact of the introduction of better radar systems that had wider coverage introduced throughout the mid-1990s, capturing smaller, briefer tornados in locations the earlier system missed. The number of weak and short-lived tornados observed has increased greatly because they are now more easily spotted. Severe tornadoes, however, have not increased.

Most tornados occur in central and southeast Illinois, and most studies looking at Illinois storms focus there. But since this article talks about the Chicagoland area as well, Climate Realism presents data for all of Illinois.

Since 1995, here are the data from the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, grounded mostly in the modern detection technology. (See figures 2 and 3 below)

Figure 2: Tornado count from 1995 to 2025 in Illinois, data from NWS Storm Prediction Center.
Figure 3: Strong (EF2+) tornadoes in Illinois from 1995-2025.

Data show no consistent trend towards an increase in the number of tornadoes, powerful or otherwise, despite 2023-2025 being high count years.

What should be among the most embarrassing parts of the article for the Chicago Tribune, aside from than their lack of fact-checking data on hail and tornadoes, is when paper tries to tie rising insurance claims from hail damage as proof that climate change is making hail worse. What the Chicago Tribune fails to note, as covered by multiple Climate Realism posts on the subject of insurance (here, here, here, for example), is that this is a terrible metric for measuring weather severity. That’s because while weather has not become more extreme, property values have become higher and inflation, affecting both labor and materials, has resulted in dramatically more expensive replacement costs. That means the cost of insurance claims rises too. This is basic economic logic, reinforced by the weather data shared above.

The Chicago Tribune failed in its journalistic duty of producing a story grounded in facts. Instead of merely reporting on the danger and human interest aspects of the recent severe storms, they attempted to fearmonger people into believing extreme weather is getting worse due to climate change. It’s not, as historical observational weather data show that there is no sustained trend of worsening storms. The computer model projections the Chicago Tribune cited as showing climate change-worsened weather are not much better than the simulations produced by fantasy computer games.

True, Mother Jones, Polar Bears Are More Adaptable Than Alarmists Have Claimed

A recent article at Mother Jones, “Something Unexpected Is Happening With Norway’s Polar Bears,” expresses surprise that polar bear populations in Norway are actually getting healthier amid declining sea ice. This is true, though it is not truly “news,” in the sense of something newly discovered, and should not have been unexpected. Previous research, including annual polar bear counts, show that polar bear populations as a whole have increased amid modest global warming.

A group of four polar bears on a snowy landscape near icy water and rocks, with some bears interacting and one standing upright.

From Climate Realism

By Linnea Lueken

A polar bear walking across a snowy landscape, leaving paw prints in the snow.

A recent article at Mother Jones, “Something Unexpected Is Happening With Norway’s Polar Bears,” expresses surprise that polar bear populations in Norway are actually getting healthier amid declining sea ice. This is true, though it is not truly “news,” in the sense of something newly discovered, and should not have been unexpected. Previous research, including annual polar bear counts, show that polar bear populations as a whole have increased amid modest global warming.

Mother Jones says the message that polar bears would soon die out due to climate change “infiltrated the public psyche, perhaps more than any other about the scourge of global warming.” This is certainly true, polar bears became the poster children in many advertisements about climate change and were featured prominently in former Vice-President Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The polar bear extinction theory, however, is another one of the claims from that film that have long since been debunked, as Mother Jones admits, “the reality for these iconic bears is more complicated.”

Mother Jones references two studies showing that polar bears in multiple locations are doing very well. A 2022 study looking at southeastern Greenland and a recent study in Scientific Reports looking at Norway’s polar bear populations, show bears in those locations have actually become healthier, with their population “stable or growing.”

They do emphasize that Hudson Bay bears are struggling, claiming that “researchers have tied melting ice to lower bear survival and a shortage of food, finding that the population has roughly halved since the 1980s.” But overall, “there are 20 distinct polar bear populations around the world, and they all behave slightly differently. Warming is not uniformly killing them.”

Again, this is not new, despite what Mother Jones implies.

In 2021, polar bear scientist Susan Crockford published a State of the Polar Bear report, summarizing the findings of previous polar bear counts and research. Her survey of the literature found that of 19 polar bear subpopulations, three are “increasing” or “likely increasing,” four are “stable” or “likely stable,” and 11 are “presumed stable or increasing.”

Previous reports going back to 2017 came to similar conclusions that most polar bear regional subpopulations were stable if not increasing, and there is no doubt that the total number of polar bears has increased since the 1960s. The same studies also suggested the polar bears were healthy and producing multiple cubs that survive to adulthood.

A line graph depicting data from 1960 to 2020, with five points showing an upward trend. Each point is represented by a diamond shape and includes vertical error bars.
Figure 1: Estimates of global polar bear population, 1960-2023. From “The State of the Polar Bear Report 2023,” by Susan Crockford, The Global Warming Policy Foundation: https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/02/Crockford-State-of-Polar-Bears-2023.pdf

Concerning the Hudson Bay bear population, there is significant doubt about whether or not bear counts that claim lower numbers are being accurately portrayed by activist scientists and the media. The change in the number of polar bears there since the early 2000s is not statistically significant, and many of the catastrophic projections about Hudson Bay bears are based not on actual counts but on computer model projections of bear mortality. Recent counts do not consider the fact that bears migrate between regions. It is also notable that the West Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort bear populations are the only places where potentially negative trends associated with ice loss have been found. Despite the same sea ice trends, other bear populations are doing very well. This should suggest that if those populations are in decline, there is more at play than ice trends.

The new Scientific Reports study is especially interesting, as it found that bears where sea ice is thicker actually have worse body condition than those where it is warmer, which should cast even more doubts on any theory where sea ice extent or thickness is directly associated with polar bear health. In her studies, Crockford also noted thick ice could hinder Polar bear flourishing rather than benefitting them.

Mother Jones is one of the premier climate alarmist websites, so it is refreshing, even somewhat surprising, to see it publish any good news at all, even if the good news is framed as surprising with readers directed towards additional alarmist projections with little connection to reality. Any species’ relationship with its environment is going to be complex and dependent on a variety of factors, especially when it comes to intelligent animals like polar bears. They can easily migrate and adapt to changing conditions, substituting other food stocks for seals. The truth is that they are doing much better now than they were decades ago and Mother Jones serves their readers well by reporting this fact.

A polar bear standing on ice near water, looking down at its reflection.

Glaciermania Strikes Again–2025 International Year of Glaciers

How often do the climate alarmists tell us that few glaciers still exist because of (imaginary) global warming and those that remain are rapidly melting away? Not surprisingly, the alarmists, particularly those from the media and vested interest groups, always point to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model projections, referring to one in particular–the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5.)

A group of Emperor penguins on a snowy landscape with a glacier in the background under a clear blue sky.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Infographic illustrating global water distribution, showing that 2.1% of Earth's water is stored in ice caps and glaciers, along with percentages for atmosphere, lakes, rivers, and living plants and animals.

UN is sounding alarms about glaciers, and media is amplifying as usual.

Climate emergency: 2025 declared international year of glaciers, UN News

Climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever, AP

Glaciers Are Melting Twice as Fast as Predicted and We’re Not Ready,  Science News Today

1st glacier declared dead from climate change seen in before and after images, Live Science

Nearly 40% of the world’s glaciers are already doomed, CNN

Nearly Half of Earth’s Glaciers Are Already Doomed, Even Without Future Warming, SciTechDaily

World’s Melting Glaciers Threaten Food and Water Supply for 2 Billion People, Carbon Brief

Glaciers on the Brink: UN Calls for Bold Action, Climate Fact Checks

This short video puts this alarm into perspective. Additional detail is provided by Dr. John Happs in his article Glaciers And Ice Sheets: Here Today And Here Tomorrow.  Dr. Happs comments on many glaciers around the world, this post has only some excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

How often do the climate alarmists tell us that few glaciers still exist because of (imaginary) global warming and those that remain are rapidly melting away? Not surprisingly, the alarmists, particularly those from the media and vested interest groups, always point to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model projections, referring to one in particular–the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5.)

Even the political/ideological IPCC has sensibly branded RCP8.5 as “Highly Unlikely”

So, what are the glacier numbers?

  1. There are more than 200,000 alpine/valley (land-based) glaciers and many others stemming from the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.
  2. Glaciers have advanced, retreated and halted many times over the last 400,000 years being influenced not only by temperature but also by other factors, such as wind, precipitation, altitude, latitude, aspect, topography and slope angle.

Global temperature is often promoted, usually by naïve climate alarmists, as the only important input into glacier formation, growth and retreat yet, in very dry parts of Antarctica, where low temperatures are seemingly ideal for glacier growth, the small amount of net annual precipitation results in glaciers growing very slowly, or even diminishing in size.

Glaciers can also be influenced by sublimation or the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase. Glaciers can experience this process resulting in the “evaporation” of ice, exacerbated by wind action. Sublimation can be seen in the way that ice cubes left in the freezer will shrink over time.

Infographic illustrating the history of Eastern European alpine glaciers during the Holocene period, showing tree line movements, glacier extent in the Eastern Alps, and summer temperature variations over thousands of years.

More than 18,000 glaciers have been identified across 50 World Heritage sites but this represents less than 10% of the Earth’s glaciated area. The media, climate activists and vested interest groups like to argue that all glaciers are receding because global temperature is increasing. Not surprisingly, many glaciers have been retreating since we emerged from the Little Ice Age (1250-1850), a time when many farms and houses across Scandinavia were destroyed by advancing glaciers between the 14th and 19th centuries.

We might expect that glaciers and ice sheets would recede after the Little Ice Age yet we know that glaciers in many parts of the world are advancing, with glaciers growing in the Alps, North America, Patagonia, Antarctica, Alaska, the Himalayas, China, Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, Norway, Antarctica and Greenland.

Where glaciers reach the sea, the media, and some tour guides, like to promote the dramatic calving-glacier image as pointing to (imaginary) global warming but fail to point out (perhaps they don’t know) that a calving glacier is the sign of an advancing inland glacier and certainly not one that is about to disappear.

In his silly, but influential, 2005 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore said:

“Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Mount Kilimanjaro is still covered in snow.  See False Alarm over the Retreat of the Himalayan Glaciers

“The speed and consequences of Himalayan glacial retreat have been grossly exaggerated by the media and environmental activists.”

Bar chart illustrating glacier trends in the Himalayas from 2000 to 2010, showing the number of glaciers classified as stable, retreating, and advancing.

A significant proportion of Himalayan glaciers are advancing. In fact, 58% of glaciers examined in the westerly Karakoram range, a chain of snowy peaks along the border of India, Pakistan and China, were stable or advancing with annual snowfall increasing. A study of Himalayan glaciers, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported that cooler summers are failing to melt winter snows, which are themselves becoming more frequent, resulting in advancing glaciers. Source: Live Science

GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS IN ANTARCTICA

The Antarctic ice sheet is the world’s largest mass of ice covering around 14 million sq. km.

Ice sheets can be described as glaciers that cover very large areas and the most obvious examples are found in Greenland and Antarctica where around two-thirds of the Earth’s fresh water is stored.

Alarming reports that the Antarctic ice sheet is rapidly melting misrepresent the science of a very complex situation. Antarctica has been ice-covered for at least 30 million years. The ice sheet holds over 26 million gigatonnes of water (a gigatonne is a billion metric tons). If it were to melt completely, sea levels would rise 60 metres. Such a change is many millennia in the future, if it happens at all, although climate alarmists will always claim that such a response is just around the corner because of (imaginary) global warming.

Modest ice loss is normal in Antarctica.  Each year in summer, more than 2,000 gigatonnes of ice is discharged in the form of melt and icebergs, while snowfall additions keep the ice mass in equilibrium.

Summary

So it is a familiar story. A complex naturally fluctuating situation, in this case glaciers, is abused by activists to claim support for their agenda. I have a lot of respect for glaciologists; it is a deep, complex subject, and the field work is incredibly challenging. And since “glacial” describes any process where any movement is imperceptible, I can understand their excitement over something happening all of a sudden.

But I do not applaud those pandering to the global warming/climate change crowd. They seem not to realize they debase their own field of study by making exaggerated claims and by “jumping the shark.”
Meanwhile real scientists are doing the heavy lifting and showing restraint and wisdom about the limitations of their knowledge.

A cartoon depicting a news anchor discussing glaciers, highlighting that while the glacier in Greenland is receding, a glacier depicted in a driveway is advancing.

Resources:

Redressing Antarctic Glacier Porn
Greenland Ice Varies, Don’t Panic 2023 Update
Climatists’ Childish Reading of Polar Ice

The Independent is Wrong – Coffee, Chocolate, and Wine Are Thriving

The Independent’s recent article, “Engineering climate may not be enough to save coffee, chocolate, and wine,” warns that even extreme geoengineering might not preserve “luxury crops” in a warming world. The whole story is based on a false premise that some technological fix is necessary to prevent crops like cocoa, coffee, and wine grapes from declining. The writer’s mistake is to rely on flawed computer model projections rather than real-world agricultural data that show the crops the story claims are under threat are actually thriving in today’s slightly warmer world.

A luxurious setting featuring a glass of red wine, a bottle labeled 'Chocolate,' various chocolates on a platter, two cups of coffee, and a green grape bunch on a wooden table, surrounded by a cozy, elegant interior.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A news article from The Independent discusses the challenges of saving luxury crops like coffee, chocolate, and wine through climate engineering, with the word 'BOGUS' prominently displayed over an image of cacao beans drying outdoors.

The Independent’s recent article, “Engineering climate may not be enough to save coffee, chocolate, and wine,” warns that even extreme geoengineering might not preserve “luxury crops” in a warming world. The whole story is based on a false premise that some technological fix is necessary to prevent crops like cocoa, coffee, and wine grapes from declining. The writer’s mistake is to rely on flawed computer model projections rather than real-world agricultural data that show the crops the story claims are under threat are actually thriving in today’s slightly warmer world. An understanding of crop biology indicates crop yields and production should continue to improve in the future.

The study behind the article relied on simulations of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), a highly controversial technique that would spray reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight, cooling the Earth. SAI is increasingly promoted as a last-ditch tool to “fix” global warming, but the science and potential side effects make it a profoundly bad idea. The models used to justify SAI’s necessity already exaggerate warming by a wide margin, so any proposed “correction” risks overshooting reality. Studies have warned that SAI could severely disrupt global precipitation patterns, may impact global systems and human health outcomes, which could undermine food and water security far more than modest warming would. The cooling effects of volcanic eruptions — often cited as SAI’s natural analogue — also illustrate its dangers. After Mount Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption, global temperatures dropped briefly, but so did rainfall, crop yields, and sunlight reaching the surface. Moreover, research from the American Geophysical Union shows that stopping aerosol injections suddenly could trigger rapid rebound warming worse than the original problem. In short, SAI would amount to a global-scale experiment with unpredictable consequences, addressing symptoms rather than causes and risking climatic side effects no computer model can reliably forecast.

Researchers cited by the Independent concluded that while SAI might reduce global temperatures, it would not reliably protect coffee, cacao, or wine grapes from future climate shifts. What the article doesn’t mention is that such predictions come from models that have repeatedly exaggerated past warming trends. According to Climate at a Glance: Climate Model Fallibility, climate models “run hot,” overstating observed temperature changes by roughly a factor of two. If the models are off in their temperature projections,  any conclusions drawn about future agricultural impacts are equally suspect.

The problem is that the Independent’s reporter, Emily Beament, presents these simulations as if they reflect reality. They do not. Real-world crop data tell a very different story. In the actual world, the three crops supposedly in peril are thriving. Climate Realism has repeatedly demonstrated that global coffee output has been rising for several decades, setting new records and repeatedly debunking sporadic warnings of decline. Higher carbon dioxide concentrations act as plant fertilizer, enhancing photosynthesis and improving drought resistance—factors that have helped coffee plantations, not harmed them.

The same pattern holds for chocolate. West Africa, which provides about 70 percent of the world’s cacao, continues to produce robust harvests. Climate Realism has pointed out in Chocolate Shortages? Not in the Real World that production trends remain strong, and farmers are adapting successfully through irrigation improvements and hardier hybrid plants. There is no evidence of a climate-driven collapse, only the ongoing evolution of agricultural practice that has always defined farming.

Even wine grapes, the article’s third “endangered” crop, have prospered. A warmer world has actually expanded vineyard regions, especially in northern Europe. Climate Realism reported in Warmer Weather Is Expanding, Not Shrinking, Wine Regions that England now produces high-quality sparkling wines in areas once considered too cold for grape cultivation. Meanwhile, global grape yields continue rising, with improved quality linked to longer growing seasons and CO₂ enrichment.

Hard numbers confirm these assertions. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that since 2000:

  • global coffee yields have increased by approximately 30 percent;
  • cacao yields grew by nearly 10 percent;
  • and grape yields continue to hit or approach record levels, rising by more than 25 percent.

These are not the statistics of crops “under threat.” They are indicators of a more productive, resilient agricultural sector benefiting from modest warming and the fertilizing effects of carbon dioxide. (see the figure, below)

Line graph showing global yields of coffee, cacao, and wine grapes from 2000 to 2022, indicating an increase in yields over time.

The Independent’s article also fails to distinguish between natural climate variability and long-term trends, instead lumping all weather fluctuations, what they call “worsening weather extremes of climate change,” as another factor affecting crop yields. The facts say otherwise, showing severe weather is not increasing globally. Real-world data show no significant increase in extreme weather over the past 100 years. Nor does the Independent address the extensive body of satellite data from NASA showing that the planet has become significantly greener over the past four decades, a trend confirmed by multiple studies on CO₂ fertilization and vegetation growth. As a result, cropland productivity is up, not down, across much of the globe.

In the end, the Independent’s warning that your morning coffee, your chocolate bar, and your evening glass of wine are in jeopardy is falsified by actual data. The Independent’s hyperbolic, alarming claims about coffee, cocoa, and grapes are based on the outputs of notably flawed computer models, and quotes from a single researcher.

By omitting any reference to actual crop performance, the piece reads less like reporting and more like a climate advocacy handout. A sincere journalistic effort would have compared model predictions with field results, consulted agricultural experts, and reviewed FAO data before repeating unverified, patently false claims of climate-driven decline. The failure to do so is indicative of the seriously flawed and ideologically compromised way that the mainstream media covers climate change.

No, CBS Boston, Climate Isn’t Making “Extreme Heat the New Normal”

In the CBS Boston (CBS-B) article titled “Is extreme heat the new normal in Boston? What hitting 102 degrees tells us about climate change,” Jacob Wycoff claims that Boston’s recent heat wave is a symptom of climate change and the “new normal.” This is misleading. In fact, long-term temperature records do not support the notion that heat waves are becoming more intense or more frequent in Boston or across the United States.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

In the CBS Boston (CBS-B) article titled “Is extreme heat the new normal in Boston? What hitting 102 degrees tells us about climate change,” Jacob Wycoff claims that Boston’s recent heat wave is a symptom of climate change and the “new normal.” This is misleading. In fact, long-term temperature records do not support the notion that heat waves are becoming more intense or more frequent in Boston or across the United States. Historical weather data shows that extreme heat events in Boston are neither unprecedented nor evidence of a climate emergency. The notion that a few hot days in June are proof of a systemic climate shift is simply not supported by the broader climate record.

“What used to be ‘unusual’ is fast becoming our new normal,” Wycoff writes. “And if we don’t act to slow warming, this kind of heat won’t be the exception, it’ll be the expectation.

“If greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked, Boston’s average summer highs could rise by 9 degrees by 2100,” says Wycoff.

Wycoff’s story, as is usually the case in mainstream media stories about climate change, promotes speculative model projections, while ignoring real world data and trends to the contrary.

It’s a familiar tactic: choose the most aggressive, worst-case emissions scenario and present it as destiny. Climate Central, the source for much of the CBS-B story, uses computer model projections based on RCP 8.5, for example. Yet as noted on Climate Realism, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stepped back from emphasizing RCP 8.5 as a likely pathway, recognizing that is implausible if not impossible.

This climate alarmist framing glosses over essential context: heat waves like the one Boston just experienced have happened before, well before recent increase in carbon dioxide emissions, and are often the result of local urbanization effects—not global climate trends.

Let’s start with the basic fact that the recent heat in Boston, while certainly hot, is far from unprecedented. According to the National Weather Service data, Boston hit a record high of 102 degrees for June on June 24, 2025. But historical data shows that Boston has experienced significantly high temperatures long before modern climate anxieties took hold. Boston’s previous record June temperature of 100℉ was June 6. 1925, 100 years of global warming ago. The highest all time ever recorded temperature in Boston was 104°F in July 1911, followed by 103°F in July 1926. The city also saw 102°F temperatures in 1911, 1975, and 1977. You can see these highs in the graph below with the most recent one on the far right in the figure below.

Figure: Hottest annual temperatures recorded in Boston, Massachusetts for each year between 1893 and 2025.

So, if recently increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is responsible for this “new normal” as Wycoff claims, how did these even hotter events happen in the past when carbon dioxide levels were lower? His narrative falls apart in this context.

So, no—extreme heat is not the new normal in Boston. It’s part of a long-standing, intermittent pattern of hot weather events. In fact, the heat experienced in June 2025 didn’t even break Boston’s all-time record. It was simply the hottest June day since 1872, not the hottest day ever.

Nor are extended heatwaves new to Boston. In June 1872, Boston experienced eight days of temperatures above 90°F. Boston also had a multi-day stretch of 100-degree temperatures in July 1911, a heat wave that was deadlier and more extreme than what the city experienced in June 2025. That 1911 event resulted in numerous fatalities across the Northeast, a fact documented well before climate change became the default explanation for every summer hot spell.

The CBS-B article cites Climate Central’s claim that Boston’s overnight summer temperatures have increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years. But this trend is almost certainly influenced by the well-known Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which causes cities to retain more heat, especially overnight, due to heat-absorbing infrastructure like asphalt, concrete, and buildings. This is not a climate crisis; this is local urbanization.

The UHI effect is well-documented and accounts for much of the localized warming in urban centers. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) acknowledges that “cities tend to be warmer than rural areas, particularly at night, because buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorb heat during the day and release it slowly after the sun goes down.”

Boston, like most major metropolitan areas, has undergone significant growth over the last century. The city’s population has grown substantially over the past 70 years. With more people bringing with them the development of more houses, buildings, streets, bridges, concrete, blacktop, machinery, and denser development, all of which contribute to warmer temperatures. The temperature increase isn’t a global phenomenon playing out on a Boston street corner—it’s a localized, urbanized one.

Furthermore, the idea that climate change is singularly responsible for making hot days “six times more common” in Boston is based on computer model forecasting, not measured trends. CBS-B leans heavily on Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index, which is a modeled estimate—not direct measurement—of climate influence. These types of attributions rely on climate models that, as Climate Realism has repeatedly shown, consistently overstate future warming compared to observed reality. Research by Roy Spencer Ph.D., has demonstrated that most climate models overestimate warming by up to 50 percent compared to satellite data.

What CBS-B also fails to mention is that heat-related deaths in the U.S. have been declining, not increasing. Thanks to modern air conditioning, improved healthcare, and public awareness, society is far more resilient to heat than it was a century ago. According to a 2022 study published in The Lancet, cold weather still kills significantly more people than heat does.

The CBS-B story is a prime example of lazy climate reporting. It cherry-picks recent temperatures, ignores over a century of weather history, and repeats activist talking points without challenge. CBS-B’s failure to carry out basic fact checking resulted in a story that was alarmingly misleading. The story is an example of the type of “journalism” that is eroding the public’s trust in journalists and mainstream media outlets they report for.