WRONG AS USUAL!

2023 Continued the Lies of Climate Alarmists

By Tom Harris

Imagine if every time your doctor gave you advice or wrote you a prescription, it turned out to be dramatically wrong. Indeed so wrong that, had you followed his or her advice, and took the medication prescribed, you would now be sicker still or perhaps even dead. No one could fault you for trying to find another doctor.

And that is, in fact, the Achilles Heel of the climate scare: virtually everything climate activists and their friends in the media tell us about climatic conditions in the past, present and future is scientifically wrong—temperatures, sea level, polar bears, extreme weather, ocean pH, you name it, real world data shows that they are wildly off base on practically everything. In many cases, the trend is precisely the opposite of what climate alarmists tell us. Readers are encouraged to simply check real world data to see how wrong these prophets of doom actually are.

A good example is the NOAA extreme weather database which shows when state-wide records were set that still stand today. These records include record temperature (high and low), wind speed, snow fall, rain fall, hail stone size, and so on. As illustrated in the graph below, in 2023, only two records were set—a 5.25 inch diameter hailstone in Colorado in August and 11.28 inches of percipitation in 24 hours in Kentucky in July. In 2022, no records were set at all, in contrast to 27 in 1936. Clearly, neither the incidence, nor the severity of extreme weather is increasing.

Throughout 2023 the group I lead, the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), has published on our website entertaining, easy-to-understand monthly CLIMATE FACT CHECKS that reveal some of the many mistakes in the press about climate change. A group led by Steve Milloy, a widely recognized leader in the fight against junk science and the publisher of JunkScience.com, has been digging into the climate science facts that put the lie to the alarmism we see every day in mainstream media. Besides Mr. Milloy, who writes most of the fact checks, and ICSC, these brief but important documents are presented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, Energy & Environment Legal Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and Truth in Energy and Climate.

To read the climate facts the media got wrong in the previous month, just visit the ICSC website at any time and click on the fact check banner at the top of the page. Right now, for example, you will see the following image which links to the January 2024 fact check: 

But now Milloy has gone one step further and, with input from our team, prepared WRONG AGAIN: 2023 EDITION – Hottest Lying Ever which starts as follows: 

Last month, Fox News reported on WRONG AGAIN as well as The Climate Narrative Is Changing against Net-Zero, Electric Vehicles, Offshore wind, and ESG, a joint open letter to Rep. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives signed by myself on behalf of ICSC and the following allied groups:

• James Taylor, President of The Heartland Institute
• Steve Milloy, Senior Policy Fellow, Energy & Environment Legal Institute
• Jason Isaac, CEO of American Energy Institute (AEI)
• Craig Rucker, President of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
• Frank Lasee, President of Truth in Energy and Climate  

Here are the highlights of the open letter:

“At the forefront of the melting climate narrative [during 2023] was the public emergence of 2022 Nobel physics prize winner John Clauser who boldly declared: ‘There is no climate crisis.’ Clauser won his Nobel prize for proving Einstein wrong.”

“In addition to 2023’s climate science claims falling far short of reality and honesty, President Biden’s Green New Deal climate policy agenda is also in rapid meltdown and countdown to disaster:

“• Net zero. The US utility industry … concluded that no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get our economy to net zero by 2050. The Energy Information Administration came to same conclusion in 2023…

“• Electric vehicles. … EV’s are becoming a casebook study in the failure of government industrial policy. Taxpayers are subsidizing this disaster at the rate of $50,000 per EV over a 10-year period.

“• Offshore wind. … The 1973 ‘Save the Whales’ campaign has essentially been replaced by federally-permitted and taxpayer-subsidized “Kill the Whales” [by the construction and operation of wind turbines] profiteering for the benefit of mostly foreign and some domestic offshore wind companies.”

Here are excerpts from the first two entries in the WRONG AGAIN: 2023 EDITION – Hottest Lying Ever report to whet your appetite to read more:

“BOILING OCEANS? In January at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos Al Gore loudly raved: ‘We’re still putting 162 million tons [of greenhouse gases] into [the atmosphere] every single day and the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth. That’s what’s boiling the oceans…’”

“Wrong Again. The warmest ‘average ocean temperature estimate in 2023 was 21.1°C (~70° F) [see graph below], which occurred on August 24. And that estimate excluded much colder polar waters. Either way, that is way short of the boiling of water, 100°C (212°F) and within a mere 0.5°C (0.9°F) of the range of recent temperature estimates….”

“GLOBAL BOILING? United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said in July that: ‘The era of global warming is over; the era of global boiling has arrived.’

“Wrong Again. “Global temperature” is an imaginary concept [see my video explaining this] invented for global warming alarmism. It has no physical meaning. Yet estimates of it are made, nonetheless. At the time Guterres proclaimed “global boiling,” global temperature estimates ranged from about 57.5°F (14.2°C) to 62.5°F (16.9°C). Those estimates are clearly far away from the “boiling” temperature of 212°F (100°C). Even at Death Valley, California – reputed to be “the hottest place on Earth” – the highest temperature reached in 2023 was 128°F (53.3°C) on July 16. And that temperature was significantly below Death Valley’s all-time high of 134°F (56.7°C) reached on July 10, 1913.”

The Wrong Again report then goes on to refute alarmist statements about:

•  2023 as the “hottest year ever”
• The first week in July being the “hottest week in 120,000 years”
• Phoenix setting a heat wave record
• Humanity wiped out by 2023
• Climate change killing whales
• Maui wildfires caused by climate change
• Hurricane Hilary being “unprecedented”
• Record rain in New York City
• California’s 1,200-year drought, and
• Butterflies going extinct

Read the whole report and get a good laugh while learning the facts you need to thoroughly debunk the climate scare at your next city council meeting!

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition. Please share this article and support the International Climate Science Coalition through its GiveSendGo crowdfunding webpage at GiveSendGo - THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!: The Leader in Freedom Fundraising.