{"id":349914,"date":"2024-11-02T16:35:52","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T15:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349914"},"modified":"2024-11-02T16:35:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T15:35:54","slug":"wrong-grist-climate-change-isnt-causing-a-rise-in-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349914","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, Grist, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Causing a Rise in Authoritarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent Grist article, titled \u201cAuthoritarianism is on the rise. Is climate change to blame?\u201d<\/a> claims that climate change is creating conditions, like worse storms, droughts, and wildfires, that contribute to the rise of authoritarian governments around the world governments. This is silly from both scientific and historical perspectives. The conditions listed are not getting worse, so they cannot be contributing to any rise in authoritarianism. Likewise, authoritarian governments existed, and indeed were more common, long before any modern warming began. There are fewer unelected, dictatorial rulers now than at any time in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grist cites a few small studies to back up the idea that \u201cstrongmen\u201d like Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, former president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and most absurdly, former U.S. president Donald Trump, are becoming more common because global warming pushes people to seek security in authoritarian candidates. Grist claims that \u201cthey\u2019ve advanced at a time when climate change has become increasingly visible and harmful as worsening storms, droughts, and wildfires affect more and more people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset, it should be noted, each of the leaders Grist calls \u201cstrongmen,\u201d implying that they are authoritarians, were democratically elected. The people chose them, they did not assume power through violence, nor use violence to enforce their rule, or turn the military on the people cling to power when they were replaced during subsequent elections, thus it\u2019s hard to cite them as authoritarians, except perhaps in the minds of the article\u2019s author and Grist\u2019s editorial staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

False labelling aside, Grist cites one study, where \u201ceconomists in the United Kingdom and Australia devised a clever study<\/a> seeking to prove that storms like hurricanes actually cause<\/em> a slide toward authoritarianism,\u201d in which storm data was compared to a sociological \u201cdataset\u201d that gave \u201cdemocracy scores\u201d to island nations. It found that these democracy scores are lower by about 4.25 percent, on average, the year following major storms. This, like many similar political \u201cclever\u2019 studies, is pretty clearly a case of a conclusion in search of a hypothesis. Grist even quotes the lead author of the study as admitting that they \u201ctried to fill the void\u201d in research drawing a causal connection between authoritarianism and natural disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may sound like an alright or reasonable conclusion at a shallow level, it is true that uncertainty and instability can lead to the rise of corrupt leadership, but the idea that climate change is generating these conditions is false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hurricanes, for instance, are neither getting more extreme or more frequent over time, as data presented in previous Climate Realism<\/em> articles (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a> for a very small sample). That being the case, it is immediately obvious that an changes in hurricane behavior are not, in fact, leading to more authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, drought is not becoming more common or intense<\/a>, with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reporting that precipitation has increased over mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and has only \u201clow confidence\u201d of any negative trends globally. Particularly in the United States, where Grist claims climate chaos could have influenced popular support of Donald Trump, the percentage of the country experiencing \u201cvery dry\u201d conditions is much less in recent decades than it was in the middle of the 20th<\/sup> century. (See figure below)<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Data from NASA\u2019s Earth Observatory show that rather then getting worse,\u00a0wildfire<\/a>\u00a0numbers and size are declining, with 24 percent less global area burned between 1998 and 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 2. Historical and Satellite data on wildfire acreage burned. Blue curve, global wildfire area burned reconstruction. Orange curve, global wildfire area burned measured by satellites. Graph plotted by Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Its not just the data that disagree with Grist\u2019s hypothesis, anyone with a thinking mind knows that history does as well. To imply that today we are seeing more autocrats than previous centuries is\u00a0laughable<\/em>. According to Our World In Data, even most non-democracies are now electoral autocracies, and more than a third of democracies are liberal democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If anything, the world is freer now than at any time in the past, with fewer people ruled by autocrats, however they came to power, than at any time in history \u2013 and all during the period of recent modest climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One could just as easily point out another set of likely conditions that drive people into the arms of autocrats. Economic instability and lack of opportunity could do it, like grid instability that is caused by overregulation and the forced additions of renewables and the premature closure of traditional power plants. Banning of farming implements like fertilizers and pesticides, leading to mass famine, such as what happened in Sri Lanka, also causes chaos and uncertainty. It should also be noted that climate alarmists often support autocratic and authoritarian methods to remove individuals\u2019 freedoms to limit how they travel, what they drive, what they eat, how many vacations they can take, all in the name of decarbonization. Many climate alarmists have, for instance, praised China\u2019s autocratic<\/a> government in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grist, likeminded organizations, and the policies and world leaders that they support are far more of a threat to individual liberty than nebulous climate change, though it appears they do not often look in the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Grist article, titled \u201cAuthoritarianism is on the rise. Is climate change to blame?\u201d claims that climate change is creating conditions, like worse storms, droughts, and wildfires, that contribute to the rise of authoritarian governments around the world governments. This is silly from both scientific and historical perspectives. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":349915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691819743,691818087,691831276,691831278,691831277],"class_list":{"0":"post-349914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-propaganda","10":"tag-global-warming","11":"tag-grist-article","12":"tag-grists-hypothesis","13":"tag-united-nations-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0Authoritarianism-nope.jpg?fit=1583%2C881&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1t1M","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":435715,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=435715","url_meta":{"origin":349914,"position":0},"title":"Wrong, Chicago Sun Times, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Causing High Insurance Cost in Illinois","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"30\/03\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article at the Chicago Sun Times (CST) claims that \u201cClimate change is fueling a surge in Illinois home insurance premiums,\u201d via increases in severe weather. 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