Tag: Fortune magazine

AP and Fortune Magazine Ignore Population Trends To Blame Climate Change for Bear Encounters

A recent article in Fortune Magazine “Climate change pushes thirsty bears into Coloradans’ cars — one honked a horn for hours from 3am onward,” from The Associated Press (AP), blames climate change for bears breaking into cars and homes in Colorado. This is false.

Bears have gone in search of food and water amid a drought in Colorado, that much is true, but it’s not because of long term climate change.

A humorous illustration depicting a man speaking to a bear, addressing the issue of climate change and population growth. The background includes a populated suburban area and signs highlighting bear habitats and development. Various charts show U.S. population growth and the impact on bear populations.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A black bear walking along a dirt path surrounded by greenery and shrubs.

A recent article in Fortune Magazine “Climate change pushes thirsty bears into Coloradans’ cars — one honked a horn for hours from 3am onward,” from The Associated Press (AP), blames climate change for bears breaking into cars and homes in Colorado. This is false. Bears have gone in search of food and water amid a drought in Colorado, that much is true, but it’s not because of long term climate change.

“Millions of people live in or near bear habitat across the Rockies, where widespread drought has reduced supplies of nuts, berries and plants that bears eat,” the article explains this is “prompting the animals to roam far and wide for food.”

This is nothing unusual, except perhaps in the amount of bears that had dangerous contact with humans this year. The article blames climate change for the increase in bear encounters, but one of the most glaring issues with this AP piece is that it does not even once address the fact that there are significantly more bears than ever.

It is difficult to get exact counts of black bears, in large part because they live in dense wooded areas, but generally the bear population in Colorado is believed to have increased in recent decades. The same is even more true for parts of the country where bears were nearly eliminated, like in Pennsylvania, which has more than four times as many bears today as it did in the 1970s.

In addition to there being more bears, there are also more people living in what were once remote areas, so bear encounters will naturally increase. Food availability draws bears even when their natural sources are not suppressed. As land is developed, more contact with the wild animals that used to live and forage there should be expected.

The availability of human food sources from garbage bins probably disturbs the natural pattern of population booms and busts. When drought occurs that suppresses berry and acorn production in late summer, bears would normally have a harder time putting on weight for winter, and many would die off. Now, they have other sources of food, which sustains a larger population and exacerbates the issue of human-bear contact.

On the issue of climate change and drought, the article says that the Upper Colorado River Basin had a snowpack this year that was “the worst on record,” and that “[s]cientists say human-caused global warming made that far more likely.”

“Made that far more likely” is a couching statement, because the data show that despite more than 100 years of warming, Colorado has not seen an increase in drought.

It is true that snowpack hit a record low this year, which spelled trouble for water supplies since snow melt feeds the Colorado River and its tributaries. And long term data show that in general snow water equivalent in Colorado was higher in the 1970s than it is today, but it has been fairly stable since the late 90s and early 2000s.

In terms of precipitation-related drought, data show that there is no trend in worsening drought conditions, and in fact there were much more lengthy and severe droughts in pre-industrial Colorado.

The article adds that “vast areas of bear habitat” have been “scorched by record wildfires,” but it’s not clear that they mean Colorado. Colorado’s wildfires are not becoming more frequent or extreme, despite big fires in 2020 and 2018, which were outliers from a generally flat trend according to the available data from the National Interagency Fire Coordination Center.

Interestingly, the vast majority of the article was not about climate change, despite it getting the leading spot in the article headline. The majority of the article was discussing the bear-human interactions themselves, which certainly make for interesting news, but are not indicative of human-caused climate change.

The Associated Press and, by extension, Fortune Magazine by republishing their piece, seem more interested in promoting the catastrophe narrative of climate change in any way they can, regardless of nuances. The climate comments in the article were completely unnecessary to tell the story of increased human-bear encounters, and only serve to advance the outlets’ political climate slant.


Sorry, Fortune, Climate Change Is Hardly the Prime Influence on Sardine Fisheries

Fortune magazine published an article claiming that declining sardine fisheries and increased prices are due to climate change and the war in Iran. This is false. While warmer waters can drive sardine schools into cooler areas, this has always been the case and sardine stocks naturally fluctuate from year to year.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

Fortune magazine published an article claiming that declining sardine fisheries and increased prices are due to climate change and the war in Iran. This is false. While warmer waters can drive sardine schools into cooler areas, this has always been the case and sardine stocks naturally fluctuate from year to year. Recent ocean warming is also a multifaceted phenomena, and not just due to climate change. Also, overfishing, especially from countries that do not care about regulations and preservation of the fish stocks like China, is putting much greater pressure on fish stocks.

The article, “‘We’re facing a double whammy’: America’s hottest tinned fish snack is shrinking by nearly half thanks to climate change and war in Iran,” places climate change front and center to blame for the sardine fish catch dropping in recent years in places like Morocco.

An ocean fisheries researcher Fortune interviewed, Rashid Sumaila from the University of British Columbia, said that sardines “are very sensitive to climate change” and “follow the temperature.”

Blaming this on climate change is silly because of the way the media has primed the public to associate climate change with supposed human-caused long term global warming. “Climate change” does not impact ocean temperatures the same everywhere and hasn’t caused consistent yearly above-average sea temperatures either.

As explained in Climate at a Glance: Ocean Temperatures: It is true that global ocean temperature has, on average, increased since the early part of the 20th century, by just about 1.3°F, but multi-year patterns like ENSO drive ocean temperatures higher and lower depending on the phase, and even longer patterns like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) can shift temperatures over several decades. These are not human-caused, but rather natural patterns. Other shorter-term natural factors that are contributing to higher ocean temperatures and possibly impacting sardine stocks and movements are recent large El Nino cycles. In addition, evidence strongly suggests that regulations limiting emissions from ships has also played a role in recent ocean warming by letting more sunlight through to warm sea water – a human impact but not one tied to the long-term increase in human greenhouse gas emissions.

That sardines move with changing water temperatures doesn’t mean the fish are dying out, but rather moving away from the fishing zones of some countries. This is normal for sardines. Like birds, they migrate seasonally to stay in the temperature range they prefer, going north for the summer and moving south again when temperatures cool.

The article acknowledges that the fish are moving, not dying out, when they explain higher prices for sardines are exacerbated by higher fuel costs due to the war with Iran, and since fisherman “now have to travel farther to find [sardines], exactly as fuel becomes more expensive and the yield becomes less guaranteed.”

Fortune also correctly points out that “Government fuel subsidies make the underlying problem worse,” because “if you pay for fuel, that just makes people fish more than they would.”

Despite Portugal, Spain, and Morocco placing catch limits on sardines in order to protect fish stocks, illegal fishermen do not care.

A study from 2015 found that “overfishing exacerbates natural boom-and-bust cycles of the fish,” making it impossible for them to recover as quickly as they otherwise would. The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says that sardines, “which represented about 33 percent of the total landings, was classified as overfished in 2023.” It also explained that catches of Pacific sardines “are strongly influenced by interannual environmental variability, particularly El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events.”

Fortune’s article only briefly mentions illegal international overfishing, in the process failing to name the country most responsible: China.

China’s distant-water fishing fleet is the largest in the world, with more than 3,000 fishing vessels that fish aggressively just outside the territorial waters  of other countries. The Chinese government subsidizes these fishing fleets. The Chinese Communist Party’s response to countries complaining about declining fish stocks and China’s role in it is to blame climate change.

A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article reports that near Ghana, “Chinese ships have exhausted small, sardine-like fish vital to coastal communities, according to local officials and conservationists.” In the same article, the Chinese Foreign Ministry deflects blame for its overharvest of squid by saying “the Chinese fleet isn’t responsible for the decrease in squid catches, pointing out that Peru’s own government has attributed the decline to changing ocean temperatures.”

Articles like this one in Fortune give China more cover for their activities.

The market for canned sardines is growing, especially as health fads focusing on high protein and healthy fats have become more popular. Their populations are dictated by natural boom-and-bust cycles, as nearly all small fish species demonstrate. Also, like other oceangoing migrating fish stocks, they are subject to and often harmed by overfishing especially during those bust cycles. Water temperature impacts where the fish are, and unfortunately when shallow coastal waters warm, sardines may be driven into the international waters that are famously overfished by the Chinese deep ocean commercial fishing fleet.

There is no justification for Fortune to attribute the up and down cycles and recent declines in sardine stocks to climate change, downplaying natural cycles, and more importantly, giving China’s illicit and uncontrolled fishing activity a pass in the process.

Right, Fortune, Europe’s Heat Crisis Is of Its Own Making

Fortune magazine published an article explaining that Europe’s own policies have created the overheating problems being faced during the present heatwave, noting that by comparison the United States has dealt with similar heat easily over the decades. Fortune is right.

From ClimateRealism


By H. Sterling Burnett

Fortune magazine published an article explaining that Europe’s own policies have created the overheating problems being faced during the present heatwave, noting that by comparison the United States has dealt with similar heat easily over the decades. Fortune is right, Europe’s persistent rejection and America’s widespread adoption of air conditioning, not climate change, is the difference between the suffering many Europeans are experiencing during the present heat wave as compared to the relative comfort most Americans experience every summer. Air conditioning doesn’t cause climate change but it does save lives.

In the article “Top climate tech exec: Europe is sweating through a heat crisis America solved decades ago,” Taco Engelaar describes the different responses and outcomes between Europe and America during periods of extended extremely hot temperatures. Engelaar writes:

The heat is on this week. As Europe sizzles amid another record-breaking heatwave, many American states are preparing for a similar event. A double whammy of heat and humidity is set to drive temperatures over 100°F.

But while both sides of the Atlantic face the heat, the reality for families and businesses could not be further apart.

The difference, once again, is air conditioning.

Find yourself in the U.S. this week and you’ll likely move seamlessly between air-conditioned offices, malls, and homes, barely registering the heat outside.

In Europe, that same week means hunting for a desk fan or racing to one of the few public spaces with real cooling.

European governments blame U.S. air conditioning use for climate change, in some cases going so far as to actively remove air conditioners from homes. In their ill-considered pursuit of net zero to fight climate change, European elites stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the life saving benefits of air conditioning. Evidently, Europe’s elites, who by and large have air conditioning installed in their own homes and the public buildings they find important, would rather use heat related deaths as a talking point to further the “climate change causes everything bad” narrative than prevent such deaths by adopting air conditioning if that might marginally increase global carbon dioxide emissions. European elites’ hypocrisy on the matter of air conditioning, “air conditioning for we, but not for thee,” shares much in common with the Chinese Communist Party’s recent harangue about the use of air conditioning, as discussed in a previous Climate Realism post.

Air conditioning use contributes an extremely miniscule amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and thus, even if one thinks carbon dioxide is driving global warming, a marginal amount of temperature. A recent study in Nature, for example, found that “if all low‑income regions gained the same access to air-conditioning as rich regions, related global emissions would jump dramatically—adding up to 0.05°C extra warming even in the most climate‑friendly scenario.” In fact, what the researchers found was that should hundreds of millions of poor people gain access to air conditioning it could, under some climate model scenarios, add 0.003–0.05 °C of warming by 2050. But, leaving aside the flawed nature of climate models, even if accurate, that amount of warming, over the next 24 years, is so small no one is going to feel change, and no weather dynamics are going to be impacted by that minor variance.

That modeled, virtually unmeasurable increase in future temperatures should be weighed against the tens of thousands of lives that research published in the Journal of American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine and by the International Energy Agency (IEA) show could be saved by expanding access to air conditioning. During periodic heatwaves in countries that naturally experience high temperatures, the adoption of widespread air conditioning use is rapidly becoming the most effective life saving measure.

“Lack of access to indoor cooling puts much of the global population at high risk for heat stress, adversely affecting thermal comfort, labour productivity, and human health,” the IEA report said. “[A]ccess to effective cooling has saved tens of thousands of lives . . . the average annual number of heat-related deaths averted by AC increase[d] 3-fold, reaching an estimated 190 000 lives saved per year during 2019-2021.”

Accordingly, any effort to limit the expansion of air conditioning use is logically going to lead to more sickness and probably death, especially in vulnerable populations like the elderly. With this truth in evidence, how can Europe’s leaders actively prevent wider adoption and use of air conditioning? It’s unconscionable!

To be fair, Engelaar notes that much of the infrastructure and housing stock in Europe was built before air conditioning exited or became widely available, making retrofitting expensive. Costly, but if lives saved and GDP growth matter, worthwhile. Indeed, in the United States, most houses and public buildings built before air conditioning was invented had air conditioning installed decades ago.

One hurdle to Europe expanding air conditioning use its outdated electric power infrastructure. Europe’s power grid, as currently constituted, is ill-suited to handle additional demand for electricity needed for widespread air conditioning adoption. This is true, pointing to the need for expanded and improved reliable electric power infrastructure and generating sources, rather than allowing people to die unnecessarily from heat. One step to improving Europe’s electric power supply is to end its net zero ambitions, which have lead to the premature closure of baseload power plants fueled by coal.

Engelaar, by contrast, offers as a solution, expanded use of solar, writing “. . . accelerate solar connections — solar flourishes in the heat and could sustainably power energy-hungry AC systems.” More solar, however, will not solve the problem. Heat comes on cloudy humid days in the summer as well, when solar energy production might be low. Also, solar doesn’t work at night – especially on hot summer nights when demand for home air conditioning use often peaks. In addition, solar panels lose efficiency during heatwaves, with the power they supply dropping off just when it is needed most. Solar panels lose 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent of their efficiency for every 1.8°F above 77°F. Thus, during a heatwave like Europe is currently experiencing, the expected electricity from solar installations could be substantially lower than the grid might require. For instance, on a 100°F day, because actual panel temperatures might reach up to 149° F, the power solar provides would be 12 percent to 20 percent less than expected.

Fortune should be applauded for publishing Engelaar’s piece acknowledging that Europe’s leaders’ energy policies, not climate change, are to blame for the deaths and lost economic activity caused by extreme heat. If Europe’s leaders keep their heads in the sand on this matter, changes in government might be necessary. Greater mainstream and social media attention to this matter is warranted. Indeed, it is literally a matter of life and death for some people.