{"id":372343,"date":"2025-03-27T18:58:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T17:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=372343"},"modified":"2025-03-27T18:58:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T17:58:46","slug":"wrong-associated-press-climate-change-is-not-triggering-more-extreme-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=372343","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, Associated Press, Climate Change is not Triggering More Extreme Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

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

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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

The Associated Press<\/em> (AP) recently published an article, titled \u201cFrom Deluges To Drought, Climate Change Speeds Up Water Cycle, Triggers More Extreme Weather<\/a>.\u201d The article is false. Evidence clearly indicates that no changes in extreme weather trends are found in the data and, as such, no changes can be tied to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScientists have warned for decades that rising global temperatures would juice the water cycle, leading to more intense storms, worse droughts, and more chaotic shifts between the two,\u201d says the AP\u2019s article. This tired trope assumes climate change drives individual weather events, a point factually refuted repeatedly in rebuttals at Climate Realism<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examining actual data blows down the AP\u2019s extreme weather \u201cjuicing\u201d fantasy faster than a house of cards in a windstorm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with floods. For example, the Climate Realism<\/em> piece \u201cNo, Reuters, Climate Change Is Not Increasing the Impact of Floods\u201d<\/a>, cites NOAA\u2019s historical flood records to prove these events have ebbed and flowed naturally for centuries\u2014long before SUVs roamed the earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s drought: Climate at a Glance: Drought <\/a> lays out the U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index, showing no long-term trend toward worsening conditions over the past 120 years, despite rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a>, often the go-to for climate alarmists, even admits low confidence in linking extreme weather shifts to human CO2 emissions<\/a>\u2014a nuance the Seattle Times<\/a><\/em>, which carried the AP\u2019s story, conveniently skips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it doesn\u2019t stop there. The AP\u2019s obsession with a \u201cjuiced\u201d water cycle glosses over natural climate drivers like El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which have dictated weather swings for millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strong evidence for this comes from the study \u201cVariability of El Ni\u00f1o\/Southern Oscillation activity at millennial timescales during the Holocene epoch\u201d<\/a>, published in Nature<\/em>. This research analyzed a 10,000-year sediment record to reconstruct variability over the Holocene (the last ~11,700 years). The study found that El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a (ENSO) events<\/a>\u2014marked by changes in precipitation and sediment deposition\u2014have occurred for at least 10,000 years, with their frequency and intensity fluctuating naturally over decades, centuries, and millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cENSO variability has been a persistent feature of the tropical Pacific climate system throughout the Holocene,\u201d state the authors of the study. They link these cycles to significant weather swings, such as flips from wetter to drier conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Seattle Times<\/em> uncritically republished the AP article. What about the Pacific Northwest\u2019s wet-to-dry cycles affecting Seattle? Historical records\u2014detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011, titled \u201cDrought variability in the Pacific Northwest from a 6,000-yr lake sediment record,\u201d<\/a> analyzed a sediment core from Castor Lake in Washington to reconstruct 6,000 years of deluge\/drought history in the Pacific Northwest. It found that wet and dry cycles have fluctuated naturally over millennia, with some dry periods lasting decades, driven largely by natural climate patterns like El Ni\u00f1o\/La Ni\u00f1a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting back to the AP\u2019s article, it also claims:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oceans absorb most of the planet\u2019s extra heat. That causes the water to expand and ice to melt at the poles, raising sea levels. The warmer water also provides fuel for larger hurricanes and cyclones that can dump massive amounts of water in a short time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those claims are easily refuted. Data presented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes <\/a> demonstrates definitively that global cyclone activity has remained stable, with no climate change fingerprint to be found. Also, Sea levels have been naturally and gradually rising<\/a> long before \u201cclimate change\u201d was ever a twinkle in the eye of the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other data reveal that wilder swings in extreme weather occurred during the early 20th century, and before, like during the 1930s Dust Bowl<\/a>, when CO2 levels much lower than at present. Floods in the past, like the devastating 1911 Green River Valley inundation<\/a>, or the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927<\/a>, dwarf many modern events, yet we\u2019re supposed to believe this is all new? The AP also ignores inconvenient truths, like how improved infrastructure, better forecasting, and improved warning systems have reduced weather-related deaths by more than 90 percent over the last century<\/a>. A 2021 World Health Organization<\/a> report confirms deaths from extreme weather have declined dramatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThanks to improved early warnings and disaster management, the number of deaths decreased almost three-fold,\u201d reported the WMO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above the AP\u2019s article<\/a>, next to a donate button, is the statement: \u201cAP SETS THE STANDARD FOR POLITICAL REPORTING. SUPPORT INDEPENDENT, FACT-BASED JOURNALISM.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the evidence is clear that while the AP is hyping claims of a \u2018juiced\u201d water cycle based on unsubstantiated, vague experts claims, the agency ignored government studies and peer reviewed reports that undermine such a conclusion. For example. NASA\u2019s Global Precipitation Climatology Project,<\/a> examined global precipitation trends and determined that current variability is well within historical norm; no water cycle juicing is in evidence. Also, Climate Realism<\/em> has published dozens of articles citing real-world data which demonstrate that neither wildfire nor hurricane nor tornado trends are worsening at all, much less worsening in response to purported climate change, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFact based?\u201d Hardly, since the agency routinely, as its \u201creporters\u201d did in this story, ignores mountains of easily found data that undermine claims the world faces a climate crisis. Shame on the Associated Press <\/em>for this journalistic malpractice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fourth Estate is supposed to inform, not indoctrinate. In this story, the AP gets an \u201cF\u201d for false reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0(AP) recently published an article, titled \u201cFrom Deluges To Drought, Climate Change Speeds Up Water Cycle, Triggers More Extreme Weather.\u201d The article is false. Evidence clearly indicates that no changes in extreme weather trends are found in the data and, as such, no changes can be tied to climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":372347,"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":[691829997,691818056,691818514,691819268,691833237,691827552],"class_list":{"0":"post-372343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-extreme-weather","11":"tag-global-temperatures","12":"tag-noaa-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration","13":"tag-the-associated-press-ap","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/0223_8-megadisasters-2020-2022_1600.webp?fit=1600%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1yRx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":400049,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400049","url_meta":{"origin":372343,"position":0},"title":"Stop Promoting Attribution Studies, Associated Press, Europe\u2019s Wildfires Aren\u2019t Worsening","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"04\/09\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Associated Press (AP), via ABC News, claims that climate change is responsible for the intensity of European wildfires in a story titled \u201cClimate change made deadly wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus more fierce, study finds.\u201d This is false. 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