Tag: New York Times (NYT)

Climate Retreat Documented in the New York Times

“Democrats and environmentalists are shifting their approach to climate change…. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines.”

– Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, New York Times

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Democrats and environmentalists are shifting their approach to climate change…. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines.”

– Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, New York Times (below)

It was “all of the above” on the way up, and it is “all of the above” on the way down. Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer’s “Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure” (New York Times, June 11, 2026) is worth revisiting to document the sea change that has occurred in the Democrat party away from climate alarmism and forced energy transformation.

“As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change,” the article begins.

Democrats and environmentalists are shifting their approach to climate change, as the economic fallout from war in the Middle East has reshuffled the politics of energy. With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some of the party’s leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines.

Continuing:

The most recent example came in California, where Tom Steyer, a champion of fighting global warming, was edged out of this month’s gubernatorial primary by Xavier Becerra. Mr. Becerra, a moderate Democrat, questioned the state’s most stringent climate goals, like ending sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, and received donations from oil and gas companies.

Across the Northeast, Democratic governors have started to consider gas pipeline expansions, once unthinkable in the most climate-conscious states in the country. Even climate hawks in Congress have shifted their tactics, lawmakers said in recent interviews. And though the co-sponsors of the Green New Deal in 2019, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, still rail against the fossil fuel industry, they rarely emphasize their once-influential plan to mobilize the U.S. economy to fight climate change.

“The result could be a less ambitious climate agenda if the party returns to power in Washington,” Friedman and Plumer state.

Now many Democrats argue that the path back to power means abandoning some of their most aggressive stances on climate change. When they do promote renewable energy, they frame it as a way to lower electric bills and avoid the gas pump, not because of the effects on the planet.

Some environmental activists are muting their demands to keep fossil fuels “in the ground,” a rallying cry that had defined the climate movement for more than a decade. “It’s something we are struggling with,” acknowledged Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group that wants to rapidly end the use of coal, oil and gas. “We are still committed as a movement to the ideas of keeping it in the ground, but as a campaign message, it’s more effective to talk about building clean energy.”

What an about-face, “a far cry from 2020, when activists pressured Democratic presidential candidates to forswear oil and gas donations, blackball anyone with a fossil fuel past from cabinet positions, and commit to eliminating the nation’s planet-warming emissions in just a few decades.”

Democrats are trying to figure out how to talk about a problem that many voters still say they want to see the government tackle, but without opening candidates to attacks from Republicans calling them out of touch. Mr. Markey said he isn’t abandoning the Green New Deal and legislation he has sponsored to prohibit new federal oil and gas leasing. But these days, he said, “I talk about the positive vision for what clean energy represents as a solution to the affordability crisis.”

The public is on the side of the climate skeptics, whose arguments against climate exaggeration have broken through the constituencies of the Climate Industrial Complex.

A recent Economist/YouGov Poll showed that just 5 percent of Americans say climate change is their top voting issue. By contrast, 29 percent say their top priority is inflation and prices, and 13 percent cite jobs and the economy. A number of strategists have urged Democrats to stop talking about the issues that excite already-committed voters and broaden their appeal….

Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer continue:

Rather than pushing green solutions only, many Democrats say they have a better way to bridge the gap: Be the party of yes to all forms of energy. After all, they argue, wind and solar power are often the cheapest forms of electricity and the fastest to deploy. On an even playing field, they say, renewables would beat fossil fuels. “We shouldn’t be against the domestic oil and gas industry, but we have to be for the energy transition,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats should be running toward that instead of away from it.”

Call that bluff. If renewables are really cheaper and naturally better than fossil fuels, it is time for “an even playing field.” Repeal the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit, and ditch what is left of the (misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act.

The new political reality was evident in the last election, Friedman and Plumer note.

Almost immediately after the 2024 election, some strategists argued that Democrats should stop talking about the threat of global warming altogether. A growing number of Democratic politicians agree. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said recently he and many others aren’t discussing climate change during the midterm election season because “we want to win.” Rahm Emanuel … who is exploring a 2028 White House run, said Democrats need to focus on household budgets, specifically electric and gas bills.

“I’m not against talking about climate policy, but you’ve got to talk about it as energy and energy prices,” Mr. Emanuel said, “and you talk about it as it relates to protecting ratepayers.” He argued that Democrats “were talking to the faculty lounge and to another Aspen conference on climate change,” and added, “That’s not how you win political arguments.”

There are holdouts.

… many Democrats said they are still firmly committed to raising alarm about a planet that has already warmed by about 1.3 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has criticized “climate hushing” — downplaying the changing climate to avoid perceived political backlash, a tactic he says leads to a self-reinforcing cycle. “When leaders don’t talk about something, enthusiasm falls among voters,” Mr. Whitehouse warned on social media recently.

Anger has set in.

Saad Amer, a climate activist and founder of the consultancy Justice Environment, said he believes voters still want to know how politicians will tackle the crisis. “The folks who are saying we shouldn’t talk about climate change are unimaginative hypocrites who don’t have any vision of what a future should look like,” Mr. Amer said.

Reality bats last, it has been said. Energy affordability, reliability, and plenty trump unsustainable politically correct, economically incorrect wind, solar, and batteries. It is time for a real free market with politics demoted.

Flipping Out in a Warming World

An article published in Nature Communications (“Rapid Flips Between Warm and Cold Extremes in a Warming World”) has been making its rounds recently in several climate forums on social media even though it was published a year ago (see link below). In the article the authors claim that flips between warm and cold extremes are becoming more frequent and intense in a warming world.

From Watts Up With That?

Robert Vislocky, Ph.D.

An article published in Nature Communications (“Rapid Flips Between Warm and Cold Extremes in a Warming World”) has been making its rounds recently in several climate forums on social media even though it was published a year ago (see link below). In the article the authors claim that flips between warm and cold extremes are becoming more frequent and intense in a warming world.
According to the authors, rapid extreme temperature flips “allow a very short time for human and ecosystem preparedness to respond and adapt” and “can increase the risk of severe and even irreversible impacts on human health, infrastructure, air quality, and plant phenology.”

Of course, the news media swarmed all over the article like a fly to honey and pimped up the scare. Check out some of the dire headlines below:


“Sweating to Shivering: Study Finds Rapid Swings in Temperature Have Increased”

Sweating to Shivering: Study Finds Rapid Swings in Temperature Have Increased – The New York Times

“Study Finds Sudden Weather Whiplash Events on the Rise”

Study Finds Sudden Weather Whiplash Events on the Rise

“From boiling hot to freezing cold: Climate crisis sparks sudden temperature changes”

https://nation.africa/kenya/health/from-boiling-hot-to-freezing-cold-climate-crisis-sparks- sudden-temperature-changes-5051276

Now it’s time for the reality check. Figure 1 below from the article shows the trends in the frequency (a, b), intensity (c, d) and transition duration (e, f) of extreme warm-to-cold and cold-to-warm flips for the period 1961 to 2023. The global trend is shown in the smaller embedded charts while the regional trends are shown as shaded areas on the maps. Extreme flips are defined as going from at least one standard deviation above normal to at least one standard deviation below normal (or vice-versa).

Figure 1. Trends in the frequency (a, b), intensity (c, d) and transition duration (e, f) of extreme warm-to-cold and cold-to-warm flips. Wu, S., Luo, M., Lau, G.NC. et al. Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world. Nat Commun 16, 3543 (2025).

Now brace yourselves, according to their charts the number of extreme warm-to-cold flips increased from about 1.64 flips per year in 1961 to a whopping 1.82 flips per year sixty-two years later in 2023 (Fig 1a). That’s an increase of 0.29 extra extreme flip days per century! The number of extreme cold-to-warm flips increased from about 1.43 flips per year in 1961 to a colossal 1.51 flips per year in 2023 (Fig 1b). That’s an increase of 0.12 extreme flip days per century. With that kind of change I don’t know how life could possibly adjust (tongue-in-cheek humor).

While the authors may be able to show statistical significance of these frequency trends, in reality they are meteorologically and physically insignificant to the point where no human, animal, or plant would even notice the change (even if such change was real).

In addition to the flip frequency, the authors claim that the transition duration is decreasing too. This is the time it takes in days to go from a warm extreme to a cold extreme (or vice-versa). In the graphs it appears the average flip between extremes takes a little over four days or roughly 100 hours. After a whole century of warming the average flip between extremes would be about 2.5 hours less based on their trend lines (Figs 1e, 1f). Again, this change is entirely meaningless as is the intensity increase of 0.15 standard deviations per century (Figs 1c, 1d).

On top of the meaningless trends in observed extreme temperature flips, there are several questionable aspects of the study that raise red flags for concern. For starters, why did the authors begin their analyses in 1961? The temperature datasets that they used in the study all go back much further than 1961 (e.g., 1940 for the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis dataset, 1940 for the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset, and 1850 for Berkeley Earth). So why not start the trend in 1940, for example, in line with when the reanalysis data sets begin? Maybe it’s because the trends disappeared or reversed when longer datasets are utilized? Interestingly, although the 1961-2023 data shows a tiny increase in flip frequency, the data since 1980 shows absolutely no trend according to their charts in (Figs 1a and 1b). So it’s quite possible the 1961 start date was cherry picked to show a positive trend in flip frequency.

But wait, there’s more! The authors apply CMIP6 climate model simulations using four different emission scenarios out to 2100 (see Figure 2a to 2f below). Under SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 scenarios the authors show roughly a 7% increase in the frequency and intensity of flips between extreme warm and extreme cold temperatures (and vice-versa) by the end of this century. Accompanying those results is the usual appeal to emotions that these flips will disproportionately affect poorer nations. Nonetheless, both of those high emission scenarios have been recently declared unrealistic by the IPCC. Under more realistic emission scenarios that were tested by the authors, no meaningful trends in extreme flips are shown out to 2100. What’s even more interesting is that the historical climate model simulation from 1961 to 2023 that they use as a baseline actually shows a slightly declining frequency of extreme temperature flips during this period (Figs 2a, 2b, gray curve), which is contrary to their observational study in Figure 1 that showed a tiny increase.

Figure 2. Time series of the frequency (a, b), intensity (c, d) and transition duration (e, f) of extreme warm-to-cold and cold-to-warm flips based on CMIP6 simulations under various emission scenarios. Wu, S., Luo, M., Lau, G.NC. et al. Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world. Nat Commun 16, 3543 (2025).

The bottom line is this is a perfect example of another study from the climate community that presents very marginal results with significant red flags but is sensationalized by the news & social media who refuse to bat a critical eye at the study along with an apparently forgiving peer review.

NYT’s ‘Thirsty Atmosphere’ Claim Falls Flat: Real Data Debunks Drought Alarmism

The New York Times (NYT) claims in its recent article, by Rebecca Dzombak, “It’s Not Just Poor Rains Causing Drought. The Atmosphere Is ‘Thirstier,’” that global warming is intensifying droughts by creating a “thirstier atmosphere” that sucks more moisture from the land. This assertion is false, clearly debunked by real-world data. The idea that a warming atmosphere is increasingly “demanding” water anthropomorphizes a complex physical process, and worse, ignores major natural variables—like volcanic activity and regional climate drivers—that actually influence drought more directly.

ChatGPT

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

The New York Times (NYT) claims in its recent article, by Rebecca Dzombak, “It’s Not Just Poor Rains Causing Drought. The Atmosphere Is ‘Thirstier,’” that global warming is intensifying droughts by creating a “thirstier atmosphere” that sucks more moisture from the land. This assertion is false, clearly debunked by real-world data. The idea that a warming atmosphere is increasingly “demanding” water anthropomorphizes a complex physical process, and worse, ignores major natural variables—like volcanic activity and regional climate drivers—that actually influence drought more directly. Evidence suggests there is a record amount of water vapor in the atmosphere now, that droughts are regional, not global, and that “atmospheric thirst” is more rhetorical flourish than scientific fact.

Let’s begin with semantics. The atmosphere is not a sentient entity—it doesn’t get “thirstier.” That is a term more appropriate for a Gatorade commercial than climate science. What the researchers are referring to is an increase in potential evapotranspiration, a concept that has been well known for decades. Higher temperatures can increase the potential for evaporation—but that doesn’t mean evaporation always increases. Factors like humidity, cloud cover, soil moisture, ground cover, and wind speed all play major roles, and those often vary independently of global temperature.

Even more crucially, this narrative conveniently omits one of the most significant injections of water vapor into the atmosphere in recent history: the eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano in January 2022. According to a 2022 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, the eruption blasted approximately 146 teragrams (146 million metric tons) of water vapor into the stratosphere—enough to increase global stratospheric water vapor by 10%. It documented a massive, unprecedented increase in stratospheric water vapor from a natural volcanic event—an event that should absolutely be part of any honest discussion about current atmospheric moisture and so-called “thirstier” drought models.

That Hunga Tonga’s injection of water vapor clearly shows up in the data from Copernicus as seen in the figure below:

Figure: Annual anomalies in the average amount of total column water vapour over the 60°S–60°N domain relative to the average for the 1992–2020 reference period. The anomalies are expressed as a percentage of the 1992–2020 average. Data: ERA5. Credit: C3S/ECMWF.

That’s not a minor blip, and it blows the NYT idea of a “thirstier” atmosphere clear out of the water. Water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas, and this sudden influx significantly influences short-term atmospheric dynamics, including regional precipitation patterns and, yes, drought. Funny how the NYY fails to mention this natural event that throws a wrench in their narrative.

What’s more, the NYT article leans heavily on a model-based study that attempts to back-calculate “atmospheric thirst” going back to 1901. But here’s the catch: models are only as good as the assumptions and data you feed into them. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Chapter 12, clearly states that “there is low confidence in the human influence on observed changes in meteorological droughts globally” (IPCC AR6 Chapter 12, Section 12.3.2). The IPCC—the supposed gold standard of climate consensus—explicitly distances itself from attributing droughts to human-caused climate change. Yet the NYT conveniently skips that detail.

Rather than climate change causing a long-term trend of increasing droughts, the IPCC also reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, and the agency expresses “low confidence” about any negative trends globally. So the “thirstier” climate is dropping more precipitation back to Earth, resulting in less “thirsty” soil. You can’t have it both ways, if the Earth is getting more rain, it can’t be drying out – and years of drought data show that it is not.

Drought is a regional phenomenon driven by local weather patterns, ocean currents like ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation), and natural variability, not some imaginary global “drought machine.” As the Climate at a Glance summary from The Heartland Institute points out, data from the U.S. and global sources do not support the claim that droughts are becoming historically unprecedented. In fact, one peer-reviewed study found that the most intense global droughts of the last 120 years occurred in the early to mid-20th century, long before the recent increase in CO₂ emissions.

Although the NYT article that there has been a 74 percent increase in drought-affected area between 2018 and 2022, even if true, the statistic is nothing more than a a short-term snapshot influenced by factors like La Niña events, reduced solar activity, and, again, the Tonga eruption. Cherry-picking short timescales is a hallmark of climate alarmism. If they’d extended the dataset to include the Dust Bowl of the 1930s or severe droughts in the 1950s, or even data over the past 30 years, no increasing trend of areas affected by drought would show in the data.

The NYT also assumes that the purported increase in atmospheric water vapor will broadly negatively impact human life. But higher carbon dioxide concentrations and modest warming have resulted in longer growing seasons and enhanced carbon dioxide fertilization, which has dramatically boosted crop yields and improved drought resilience in crops. Any anthropogenic increase in water demand is not due to climate change, but population growth, accompanied by increased agricultural and urban water use. Rising water demand can be met by adaptation—not hysteria. As the NYT article mentions, some farmers are updating irrigation systems. That’s good. But blaming the need for irrigation upgrades on climate change is like blaming a new set of tires on the existence of roads.

Lastly, we’re told that “the trend is set to continue”—again based on model projections, that are untested and not based on observed trends. But history has shown us that nature often defies the climate models. In the early 2000s, scientists predicted permanent drought (so-called “climate aridification”) in California, only for the state to swing to record-breaking wet years just a decade later. Nature is variable, not linear.

In conclusion, the NYT article is a masterclass example of turning natural variability and questionable modeling into a headline-ready climate crisis story. By attributing regional droughts to global temperature trends and anthropomorphizing the atmosphere as “thirsty,” they abandon scientific rigor in favor of sensational storytelling. Compounding their error, the NYT ignores countervailing data on rainfall, long-term drought, and even the IPCC’s own cautious language on drought attribution.

When news outlets resort to metaphors about “thirsty skies” and glaringly omit factual explanations, they’re not informing—they’re indoctrinating. Honest climate reporting requires a lot less narrative and a lot more reference to the hallmarks of the scientific method: available data and testable propositions.

Wrong, New York Times, Climate Change Didn’t Cause Minnesota’s Wildfires

The New York Times (NYT) published a long piece describing recent destructive wildfires in Minnesota, claiming that they were “fueled by climate change” and more likely to happen again in the future because of ongoing global warming. The NYT’s claims are unfounded. The NYT’s own article admits that serious fires are not unprecedented for the region, and data show that wildfires and fire weather have not been getting worse in Minnesota.

ChatGPT

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

The New York Times (NYT) published a long piece describing recent destructive wildfires in Minnesota, claiming that they were “fueled by climate change” and more likely to happen again in the future because of ongoing global warming. The NYT’s claims are unfounded. The NYT’s own article admits that serious fires are not unprecedented for the region, and data show that wildfires and fire weather have not been getting worse in Minnesota.

Minnesota suffered from three significant wildfires this May, which the NYT reports “consumed more than 32,000 acres and destroyed an estimated 150 structures, serving as a kind of wake-up call for residents who often see their state as spared from the very worst of disasters fueled by climate change.”

The article explains that Duluth is considered “climate-proof” by Californians and other south westerners looking for reprieve from heatwaves and wildfires, which is completely absurd on its face. The climate always changes, everywhere, and extreme weather likewise happens everywhere, so whoever is leading people to believe that they will be safe from weather in any given state is being dangerously misleading. This same narrative drove people to Asheville, North Carolina, in the years leading up to the catastrophic and deadly flooding from Hurricane Helene. Climate Realism explained then that the region has a history of killer floods and other severe weather, but apparently real estate “experts” had told people it was some kind of haven from bad weather.

NYT claims that the recent wildfires in Minnesota “underscore that the warming climate is also making disasters more likely in Minnesota as wildfire season — a fact of life in the state — is becoming longer and more severe, experts say.” They claimed that Minnesota usually sees an average of 1,200 wildfires, impacting 12,600 acres, but this year has seen a spike; a thousand fires, which destroyed over 50,000 acres.

However, wildfire data for Minnesota from 2006 to 2024 is publicly available, and paints a different story. Accepting the NYT’s claim that this season so far has seen 1000 wildfires which have burned 50,000 acres, I was able to plot this chart.

Figure 1: Wildfires in Minnesota from 2006 – 2024, plus the season so far in 2025 according to the New York Times. Data from the National Interagency Coordination Center.

Even if by the end of this year Minnesota has a record breaking wildfire year, it is clear that there is no trend towards a greater number of fires, nor larger amounts of acreage burned in this dataset. If anything, the data indicate that the number of acres lost to wildfires annually has declined since the early 2000s, as have the total number of fires.

The warm season may become longer with modest warming, as spring arrives earlier, but that doesn’t mean that the fire season will become longer or more severe. The data in Minnesota just doesn’t bear that out.

One expert interviewed by the NYT, Sarah Strommen, head of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said that they “are trending toward hotter, drier weather[.]”

Data compiled by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) refutes this claim. According to the state climate report, although temperatures in the state have risen 2.5°F since 1900, annual precipitation has been increasing over that period, and days with temperatures of 90° or higher have declined since the 1930s peak.

Figure 2: Chart from the NCEI, text from NCEI report reads “Observed total annual precipitation for Minnesota from 1895 to 2020. Dots show annual values. Bars show averages over 5-year periods (last bar is a 6-year average). The horizontal black line shows the long-term (entire period) average of 26.4 inches.” https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/mn/

Springtime precipitation has also been increasing over time in Minnesota, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

Interestingly, the NYT admits that the forests of northern Minnesota and Canada “are designed to burn,” and the “second deadliest fire in U.S. history was in 1918 in this very part of Minnesota, and is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people.” The largest fire in Minnesota history was the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894, which burned 350,000 acres and killed 418 people. That one happened in September, but like in the recent fires, there was a weather inversion present, which the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources described as “hot air trapped by cooler air above it,” accompanied by “the temperature climbing to 90 degrees, strong winds, [and] lack of humidity[.]” These are the exact conditions described in the NYT article about the recent fires.

The types of wildfires Minnesota has recently experienced are not unprecedented and state weather data does not support the claim that climate change has had anything to do with them. A terrible combination of temporary weather conditions created the right environment for serious fires, yes, but such fires and the conditions that led to them are entirely natural, if historically relatively rare for the region. The New York Times should have exercised a little journalistic skepticism, and fact checked the information given to them by the “experts” they interviewed as sources. This would have improved the NYT’s flagging reputation for truth seeking and integrity and left its readers better informed.

Wrong, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Disrupting Blood Supplies

In “Climate Change Is Stressing the World’s Blood Supplies,” the New York Times (NYT) claims that global warming is now threatening the blood supply by causing extreme weather events that disrupt donations, transport, and safety. This is misleading at best. Since extreme weather events aren’t increasing or becoming more severe, it is unclear how climate change could be causing unusual disruptions in the blood supply.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

In “Climate Change Is Stressing the World’s Blood Supplies,” the New York Times (NYT) claims that global warming is now threatening the blood supply by causing extreme weather events that disrupt donations, transport, and safety. This is misleading at best. Since extreme weather events aren’t increasing or becoming more severe, it is unclear how climate change could be causing unusual disruptions in the blood supply.

The NYT article’s central thesis—that climate change is to blame for blood shortages during weather events—ignores a mountain of context and contradicts broader data on both weather trends and health system resiliency. Extreme weather has always existed and when it strikes it disrupts normal services, nothing has changed. Extreme weather does NOT equate to evidence of climate catastrophe. Also, there is no scientific evidence that CO₂-driven climate change is causing a new global blood crisis.

The assumption made by the writers in the NYT article that extreme weather events are increasing globally due to climate change is specifically refuted by widely available data. As this article from Climate Realism explains, there is no long-term trend showing increases in the number or severity of hurricanes, floods, or wildfires when corrected for improved detection and population growth in high-risk areas.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the United Nations’ body often cited as the climate authority—admits in its AR6 report that trends of most types of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tornadoes are low confidence or have not increased globally. Also, data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a flat or declining trend in U.S. hurricane landfalls over the last century.

The article references Hurricane Helene and California wildfires causing canceled blood drives. Blood drives get canceled during any large-scale disaster, regardless of cause. Earthquakes, power outages, cyberattacks, and even snowstorms can have the same effect. Weather-related disruptions have always occurred, and blaming every instance of logistical difficulty on “climate change” is not scientific; it’s opportunistic.

Attributing specific disasters or their effects to global climate trends involves significant uncertainty and usually relies on speculative models—not observed data. Most of these studies, like the one cited in The Lancet Planetary Health, suffer from selection bias, vague definitions of “extreme,” and worst-case emissions scenarios that do not reflect actual trends either emissions or weather.

The editorial also throws in another fear: that warming is causing a rise in blood-transmissible diseases like West Nile, Zika, and dengue. This conflates local outbreaks with global climate trends. Climate Realism has debunked this claim numerous times, pointing out that these diseases are far more influenced by land use, sanitation, and international travel than by temperature changes. Even the World Health Organization acknowledges that urbanization, deforestation, and global mobility play larger roles in disease spread than global climate change.

Linking disruptions in the blood supply to global warming is problematic for other reasons as well. For instance, it fails to rule out other factors which limit or expand the pool of eligible donors. Blood screening technologies continue to improve, and the pool of eligible donors adjusts based on public health guidelines. The article discusses the pandemic’s impact on blood donations, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with climate change so bringing it up in this article is simply misdirection and misplaced attribution to advance the popular but false mainstream media narrative that climate change is linked to everything bad.

The article closes with vague suggestions that AI might help us predict blood supply disruptions due to climate events. This techno-optimism is a smokescreen, conveniently ignoring that we already have predictive tools for weather, logistics planning, and blood supply management. There’s no new threat being introduced here—just the rebranding of ordinary healthcare system challenges as climate emergencies.

This article shows that the NYT continues to be wedded to promoting pseudoscientific climate alarmism. Rather than investigating the real causes complicating and limiting blood donation and delivery, ranging from donor apathy to poor planning, NYT chose to blame climate change: the convenient boogeyman for everything from crime, to immigration, to acne—now apparently, it’s coming for your blood. This NYT article is a perfect example of confirmation bias, cherry-picked anecdotes, and appeals to authority masquerading as science. This story lacks journalistic rigor. The story’s author uncritically parrots yet another flawed, agenda-driven study, without apparently investigating and confirming any of its assertions. Had she done even a modicum of research into the issue, and the writer were an honest broker, she would have been forced to conclude that because data shows that climate change isn’t causing more extreme weather, it can’t be creating new problems for the blood supply system.

The New York Times’ Claim That Climate Change Threatens the Global Economy Is False

In the recent New York Times (NYT) editorial “Climate Change Could Become a Global Economic Disaster,” author David Gelles paints a picture of impending economic collapse, driven by climate-induced destruction of real estate markets, insurance availability, and global GDP. Gelles’ claims are speculative, based on a faulty analysis of climate change and a flawed understanding of economics and history.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

In the recent New York Times (NYT) editorial “Climate Change Could Become a Global Economic Disaster,” author David Gelles paints a picture of impending economic collapse, driven by climate-induced destruction of real estate markets, insurance availability, and global GDP. Gelles’ claims are speculative, based on a faulty analysis of climate change and a flawed understanding of economics and history. The evidence suggests that these apocalyptic scenarios are not only built on worst-case modeling completely divorced from real-world empirical data, but also ignore humanity’s long record of adaptation, innovation, and resilience in the face of change.

Let’s start with the article’s centerpiece claim: that global temperatures are “all but certain” to exceed 2°C and may reach 3°C by century’s end. This assertion leans heavily on scenario-based climate models—not observations. As noted at Climate Realism, even the IPCC now quietly acknowledges that its previously touted high-emissions pathway, RCP8.5, is increasingly implausible. And yet this outdated scenario remains the go-to for media catastrophism. Real-world data shows warming trends more consistent with the lower-end projections, with no sign of the runaway feedback loops media outlets breathlessly parrot.

Moreover, models are routinely adjusted retroactively, and their forecasts rarely match actual climate observations. As Roy Spencer, Ph.D., has detailed, models overestimate warming compared to satellite data, a point conveniently omitted by the NYT.

The NYT parrots an old favorite: that cities like Miami and Osaka will be underwater. The implication is one of a biblical deluge, yet actual tide gauge records and satellite altimetry show no acceleration in sea-level rise. Sea levels continue to rise at a modest, linear rate of around 3mm per year—consistent with trends observed since the 19th century, and certainly nothing that improved infrastructure to prevent flooding can’t handle.

And what about that “$1.47 trillion in lost real estate value” forecasted by 2055? That claims is based on reports from First Street Foundation, whose track record includes exaggerated flood maps that frequently misrepresent actual local risk. These so-called models overlook local infrastructure improvements, stormwater management, and elevation protections. They are tools of advocacy, not science. In fact, population increases continue to this day in areas historically prone to natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, as is reflected in rising property values.

Gelles’ warning of declining crop yields under 3°C warming is flatly contradicted by global agricultural data. As  Climate Realism explains, yields for major crops—corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans—have continued to break records year after year as the Earth has modestly warmed. Carbon dioxide, the supposed villain in this narrative, is actually a plant nutrient. Increased atmospheric CO₂ boosts photosynthesis and water-use efficiency—facts that real farmers know even if climate bureaucrats pretend not to.

Yes, localized crop failures can occur from drought or heat—but global food systems are more diversified, mechanized, and resilient than at any time in human history. There is no impending famine due to climate change—only misleading headlines crafted to push policy agendas.

One of the more theatrical claims comes from Allianz SE board member Günther Thallinger, who warns that “entire regions are becoming uninsurable.” This narrative is increasingly deployed by activists hoping to push regulatory and financial compliance to extreme climate agendas. But as Climate Realism notes, the real drivers behind insurance withdrawal from certain areas are not climate-induced disasters, but political and regulatory pressures—price controls, legal liability risks, and zoning decisions.

Insurers adjust rates and coverage areas based on risk, profit margins, and policy interference. That’s capitalism, not climate collapse. Suggesting that the entire financial system is on the verge of implosion because of climate change is falsehood, built upon an ignorance of how insurance markets work in tandem with government regulations.

The final paragraph of the editorial warns that, due to climate risk, the financial sector may collapse, and “capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.” That’s not science—it’s propaganda. No credible economic historian or climatologist has made such a claim based on empirical evidence. This is the NYT at its most hyperbolic: throwing rhetorical grenades instead of engaging with facts. In fact, throughout the period of recent climate change, global and regional GDPs have continued to increase, more people have become wealthy and fewer are mired in poverty now than ever before.

The real risk to economic systems isn’t climate change—it’s climate policy overreach. From carbon taxes that cripple industry, to forced electrification without grid readiness, the rush to “fight” climate change results in skyrocketing energy costs, manufacturing decline, inflation, and lost consumer freedom.

It seems the NYT story is built on a fact-free “House of Cards,” emblematic of the mainstream media increasing tendency to write “Fake News,” and ignore facts, especially when the issue is climate change.

The New York Times has long since abandoned journalistic neutrality on climate issues. Instead of holding alarming, unverified climate claims up to scrutiny, the NYT print’s them as gospel truth. This piece isn’t journalism—it’s advocacy. Any systemic climate risk to the economy comes from the misreporting of climate facts and government policies enacted in response to the false climate claims, not climate change itself.

No, NYT, ‘Climate Tipping Points’ are Not in Our Near Future

The New York Times (NYT) recently published a special Sunday feature titled, “How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?”

The article, which is heavy on infographics and short on actual references or facts tackles several topics about Earth’s features that may be “in danger of collapse.”

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

The New York Times (NYT) recently published a special Sunday feature titled, “How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?”

The article, which is heavy on infographics and short on actual references or facts tackles several topics about Earth’s features that may be “in danger of collapse.” The entire article is nothing more than speculation with pretty graphics and doesn’t offer any evidence whatsoever that Earth is close to these so-called “tipping points.” The article heavily hedges its bets with weasel-words such as, could, may, might, and possibly but doesn’t make a single solid prediction.

Here’s a summary of the NYT article claims, plus the prediction of “When it might happen,” which follows each topic.

For the past two decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing toward collapse. These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point.

Once we warm the planet beyond certain levels, this balance might be lost, scientists say. The effects would be sweeping and hard to reverse. Not like the turning of a dial, but the flipping of a switch. One that wouldn’t be easily flipped back.

Mass Death of Coral Reefs

In time, the reefs can bounce back. As the world gets warmer, though, occasional bleaching is becoming regular bleaching. Mild bleaching is becoming severe bleaching. When it might happen: It could already be underway.

Collapse of Greenland Ice and Breakup of West Antarctic Ice

The collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could become more likely at 1.5°C. When it might happen: The timing will vary place to place. The effects on global warming could accumulate over a century or more. Irreversible melting could begin this century and unfold over hundreds, even thousands, of years.

Abrupt Thawing of Permafrost

The localized thaw of permafrost could become more likely at 1.5°C. When it might happen: The timing will vary place to place. The effects on global warming could accumulate over a century or more.

Sudden Shift in the West African Monsoon

Monsoons may be disrupted. When it might happen: Hard to predict.

Loss of Amazon Rainforest

By 2050, as much as half of today’s Amazon forest could be at risk. When it might happen: Will depend on how rapidly people clear, or protect, the remaining forest.

Shutdown of Atlantic Currents

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC may slow down, changing the weather. When it might happen: Very hard to predict.

As you can see for yourself, the NYT didn’t have a single definitive answer for “When it might happen.” This is not at all surprising as every one of these predictions about tipping points is based on computerized climate models which we know to be faulty and have a tendency to be running overly hot with no scientific justification other than built-in bias.

Here is what we know based on actual data and measurements.

  • Coral Reefs are doing very well. Despite over hyped media claims, such as the poster child for this issue, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia it is actually doing quite well and has reached its largest range of expansion in 2024 ever recorded. It has been steadily improving.
  • The Abrupt Thawing of Permafrost is a summer phenomenon. While there is a few instances of this happening in winter, this is due to changes in weather patterns, not climate. Permafrost records are so short in duration, we don’t have any idea if this has also happened in the past. Arctic regions have high natural temperature variability. For example, in some regions of Siberia, average January temperatures are lower than -40 °C (-40 °F). In the summer, the long days of sunshine thaw the top layer of frozen ground and bring average temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F). At some weather stations in the interior, summer temperatures can reach 30 °C (86 °F) or more.
  • Greenland Ice is melting, but the melt is miniscule compared to the entire ice mass. It also refreezes every winter.
  • The breakup of West Antarctic Ice due to melting has been theorized for decades but hasn’t happened. Again, like Greenland Ice, the melt is minuscule compared to the total ice in Antarctica.
  • No shift in the West African Monsoon has been observed. Science shows us that the West African Summer Monsoon rainfall exhibits large variability at interannual and decadal timescales, causing droughts and floods in many years.
  • The loss of Amazon Rainforest is mostly about clearing of lands for agriculture and mining, not climate change. The NYT article even mentions this even though they still insist climate change will have a role.
  • There’s been no evidence of shutdown of Atlantic Currents like the AMOC. Science shows it not slowing at all. In fact climate science can’t actually decide from year to year whether it is speeding up or slowing down. The last sentence of the NYT section on Atlantic currents says, “When it might happen: Very hard to predict.” Is accurate, yet they still list it as a concern.

In summary, this NYT article is nothing but fear-mongering with a razor-thin veneer of science to back it up. Every one of the “predictions” is so open-ended that they have the same probability of a coin-toss. However, based on the physical evidence and data we have so far, which suggest none of these tipping points will occur, even 50-50 odds are unlikely to be representative of the future. The NYT did their readers a huge disservice with this article.

Wrong, New York Times, the Great Barrier Reef is Not in Danger

An August 7th article in The New York Times (NYT) titled, Heat Raises Fears of ‘Demise’ for Great Barrier Reef Within a Generation claims recent warm ocean temperatures could be catastrophic the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) within 30 years. While there may be a kernel of truth to the temperature data, the claims of the GBR’s demise are false and ignore temperature history and the GBR’s development going back thousands of years.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

An August 7th article in The New York Times (NYT) titled, Heat Raises Fears of ‘Demise’ for Great Barrier Reef Within a Generation claims recent warm ocean temperatures could be catastrophic the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) within 30 years. While there may be a kernel of truth to the temperature data, the claims of the GBR’s demise are false and ignore temperature history and the GBR’s development going back thousands of years.

The article claims:

This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, according to scientists in Australia who released new research on heat in the surrounding ocean.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and is often called the largest living structure on Earth. The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperatures in the Coral Sea are at their highest in at least 400 years, as far back as their analysis could reach.

It included modeling that showed what has been driving those extremes: Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans burning fossil fuels and destroying natural places that store carbon, like forests.

Claims of demise of the GBR due to climate change have been around for decades. Such claims usually invoke sea level rise (SLR), increasing temperature, or both. However, the truth of the matter is that corals thrive in warmer waters, and they deal with SLR effortlessly.

Australia’s GBR began forming in the early Holocene after 9,000 years ago, and the Holocene maximum sea level occurred around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. The GBR’s Holocene evolution has been influenced by several factors, including sea level rise, tectonic deformation, and accretion rates.

Sea levels rose rapidly then, flooding the continental shelf by about 6–7 meters per thousand years until around 7,000 years ago. The coral kept up with the rate of SLR which is significantly faster than what is measured today. NASA satellite instruments, with readings dating back to 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of merely 1.2 inches per decade, or 120 inches (3 meters per thousand years)

Coral evidence suggests that ocean temperatures at Heron Reef in the GBR were cooler than present around 5,200 and 7,000 years ago. However, other evidence suggests that a warm period known as the mid-Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred between 6,000 and 6,800 years ago, when the tropical ocean surface was about 1°C warmer than today. Figure1 below shows just how temperatures then compare with today.

Figure1: Temperature reconstruction from present day to 11,300 years ago showing the warmer than today period known as the Holocene Climate Optimum. Source: S.A. Marcott et al., Science, A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years, 8 Mar 2013.

As discussed in Climate at a Glance – Coral Reefs, coral has existed continuously for the past 60 million years, thriving amid and expanding their range in temperatures and carbon dioxide levels significantly higher than what the Earth is experiencing today, or any levels reasonably expected in the future. The primary reasons for coral bleaching events, which vary significantly depending on the time and location, include sediment and chemical pollution from nearby coastal lands, chemicals found in sunscreen (oxybenzone), fertilizer and nitrogen loading from agriculture, and cold temperature events. The argument that corals are being decimated by man-created carbon dioxide emissions is easily disproven by the available data.

Clearly corals in the GBR have survived temperatures and sea level situations far greater than what is being experienced today. The study referenced by the NYT article uses computer models to project the future of the GBR, but completely ignores the temperature and sea level history of the past.

But the final pushback against the claims of GBR demise come with the most current data. As pointed out here in Climate Realism just one month ago, despite what the media has been telling you the GBR is at its highest growth level ever, as seen in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 – Data from AIMS and Dr. Peter Ridd show the GRB reached a record high coverage in 2024.

To be clear, in recent decades, the GBR’s extent was lower, much lower, than at present when ocean temperatures were cooler, and it has grown considerably in the aftermath of bleaching events.

The worries of GBR demise don’t reflect actual data, the GBR’s history, and present experience at the reef. The threats exist only in the models, in the minds of the researchers, and the minds of the so-called journalists that push the idea. There is no evidence that climate change is worsening the health of the GBR. The resilience of the GBR serves as a reminder that nature is more adaptable and robust than we often assume. It was irresponsible for the NYT to publish this article, rife as it is with inaccuracies and misleading claims. But that seems to be par for the course in the media these days, ignoring history, context, and data to dogmatically push the climate catastrophe narrative.

The New York Times Conflates Weather with Climate Change (Again)

A recent article in the New York Times (NYT) claims that coastal cities are “bracing” for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false.

Sunset Storm at Frankfurt


By Linnea Lueken

A recent article in the New York Times (NYT) claims that coastal cities are “bracing” for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false. It is wise for coastal cities to improve their resilience in response to flooding and storms which have occurred throughout history. However, real-world data show climate change has not made atmospheric river events and other instances of extreme rainfall worse.

The article, titled “Coastal Cities Brace for Climate Change,” comes with the ominous subtitle “[t]his week’s atmospheric rivers may only be the beginning.” Writer Manuela Andreoni writes that flooding from recent storms has “battered cities in the South and East Coast,” and “Overlapping atmospheric rivers over the West Coast have brought heavy rains that are likely to come back in the next few days.”

Andreoni goes on to assert that climate change makes these kinds of events more likely, because warmer air “holds more moisture, which means storms in many parts of the world are getting wetter and more intense[.]”

Warm air does holds more moisture than cooler air does, and the modest warming of the past century has occurred alongside a similarly modest increase in overall precipitation in the northern hemisphere, but the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found is no direct correlation to flooding. The As pointed out in Climate at a Glance: Floods, the IPCC admits that there is low confidence in even the sign of any changes in the frequency or severity of flood events. Additionally, the cost of floods in the United States in relation to to GDP has dropped over time, despite the fact that infrastructure has increased in value.

U.S. flood damage as a proportion of U.S. gross domestic product. Data plotted by Bjorn Lomborg.

The factors that influence extreme precipitation events are more complex than the NYT leads one to believe.

In regards to atmospheric rivers in particular, again, these events are not new nor are they becoming worse due to climate change. As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains in the Climate Realism post “Wrong, Washington Post – History and Data Contradict Claims of Worsening ‘Atmospheric Rivers’;”

[…]a peer-reviewed paper published in 2020 used satellite and sounding data and found there has been no trend influencing tropical lower stratospheric water vapor, in the region these west coast atmospheric rivers originate.

Even more powerful than that, a data analysis of global relative humidity data over the land and oceans (where atmospheric rivers originate) and publicly available from the UK Met Office, shows relative humidity actually declining.

Atmospheric rivers and major flooding are historically common on the west coast. The worst known flood in California history occurred in 1862, in which an atmospheric river event dumped an equivalent of ten feet of water between rain and snow on California, resulting in massive flooding in the Sacramento Valley. Core drilling revealed similar and worse floods occurred in the same region in AD 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605.

The NYT also claims that coastal regions are “especially vulnerable to climate change, not just because of storms and floods, but from rising seas and erosion.” These claims have been thoroughly refuted in previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, and here, for example. Coastal areas are obviously vulnerable to sea level rise, but it’s not dangerously accelerating, and other factors such as overdevelopment, land compaction and subsidence, natural geography, and poor water infrastructure are larger factors in determining whether a coastal city is especially flood prone in the United States.

The rest of the article is relatively reasonable, detailing ways that cities are improving their infrastructure to improve storm resilience, such as restoring estuaries and other coastal ecosystems that buffer coastlines from storm surge. Hardening infrastructure is a good idea regardless of climate change. We made this point at Climate Realism, in response to similar previous articles published by the NYT.

The NYT and its writers should examine actual data available regarding flooding, atmospheric rivers, and heavy rainfall, before hyping climate change as a cause of problems with coastal cities.  Had they done so, they would find that there is no reason to blame naturally occurring, extreme weather events on climate change, and they would avoid misleading their readership.

The post The New York Times Conflates Weather with Climate Change (Again) appeared first on ClimateRealism.

Thanks, New York Times, For Finally Admitting Honey Bees Are Doing Great

From ClimateRealism

ByLinnea Lueken

A recent New York Times (NYT) article titled “The Beekeepers Who Don’t Want You to Buy More Bees,” explains that contrary to popular media narratives, honey bee populations are healthy and numerous. This is true. Colony collapse disorder, the main threat to bees, is largely a commercial bee problem and not necessarily a wild honey bee problem.

In the article, professional bee-keeper Gorazd Trusnovec explains to NYT writer David Segal that the well-intentioned growing popularity of beekeeping is actually misguided, because there are now actually too many honey bees in areas all around the world.

“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”

Segal goes on to describe colony collapse disorder, which is a phenomena seen in commercial beekeeping in which a large portion of a bee hive or colony dies or is wiped out. Segal writes that “experts tend to blame pesticides, an invasive parasite, a reduction in forageable habitat and climate change,” and this tracks with what Climate Realism has seen and combatted previously. However, climate change is not among the best explanations for the problem, as explained in “Tell the Truth, UPI News, Parasites and Pesticides, NOT Climate Change, Are Killing Honey Bee Colonies,” or in the June Climate Fact Check.

Extreme weather like heat waves and precipitation aren’t occurring more frequently as measured by any metric, so climate change can’t be implicated in  increasing numbers of commercial bee hives being damaged across large geographic regions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists the factors it believes are the most likely causes of the decline in bees and other pollinators:

  • Honey bee killing, invasive varroa mites;
  • New and emerging insect viruses;
  • Pesticide poisoning;
  • Habitat changes and lack of food sources;
  • Combinations of the above factors.

The alarm around colony collapse disorder (CCD) caused a huge spike in interest in beekeeping in order to “save the bees,” however as a another professional conservationist interviewed by  Segal explained, CCD is “an agriculture story, not a conservation story[.]” In fact, there are “more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history.” Segal writes that the number of hives in the world has risen 26 percent in just the last 10 years.

The New York Times itself has contributed to spreading fallacious claims about climate change and CCD, like in “Without Bees, We Are in Trouble,” and for bumblebees, “Climate Change: It’s a Buzzkill for Bumblebees, Study Finds,” in the past, so the present story is refreshing for its accuracy.

Beekeeping has become so popular in places like Slovenia, for example, that the NYT reports honey yields are dropping locally despite a huge increase in hives because there is not enough plant nectar for all the bees.

Honey bees are also not the only pollinators around, and an overabundance of them could negatively impact the populations of other bee species, like bumblebees, as well as non-bee pollinators. This is particularly true in places like North America, where honey bees are an introduced species brought over by European settlers as livestock for honey production. They are not native here, and are considered by conservationists to be invasive competitors to native species.

Honey bees are doing more than fine, regardless of climate change. According to this NYT investigation, they are almost doing too well, due to an increase in the number of beekeepers. Commercial beehives experiencing CCD are not indicative of the health of the entire species, and certainly climate change is not to blame for their problems. Thanks, NYT, for looking beyond the narrative that “climate change causes everything,” to get to the true root cause of the struggles of honey bees and other pollinators, at least in this one story.

Linnea Lueken

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”

Linnea Lueken