Climate Change Weekly #453: Climate Catastrophism Is Worse Than Climate Change
H. Sterling Burnett
November 17, 2022
Climate Catastrophism Is Worse Than Climate Change
Earlier this week I noticed an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette describing the harm being caused by “climate change catastrophism,” which I think of as climate alarmists’ equivalent of the Chinese water torture: mainstream media platforms’ daily drip, drip, drip of demonstrably false or grossly exaggerated claims about potential harms from climate change. My colleague Linnea Lueken, a research fellow with The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, wrote about the editorial for Climate Realism after I brought it to her attention.
Essentially the editorial and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article on which it is based make a critical point, as the Colorado Springs Gazette states: “Enough with climate-change scare tactics. They hurt people, possibly more than they will suffer from climate change.”
This truth echoes what we have said repeatedly at Climate Realism, Climate at a Glance, and Climate Change Weekly: the data does not support claims that extreme weather events are becoming more severe or more frequent. Policies to prevent a climate disaster that will never arrive are likely to produce worse harms than climate change itself. Prominent authors made the same points in three bestselling books released in the past couple of years: False Alarm, by Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D.; Unsettled, by Steven Koonin, Ph.D.; and Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/18/climate-change-weekly-453-climate-catastrophism-is-worse-than-climate-change/
