Summer: The Best of Times for Climate Alarmists
By Gregory Wrightstone
August and September are great months to be a professional climate alarmist like Dr. Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania.
You have hurricanes making landfall, wildfires seemingly everywhere, the odd F-4 tornado wreaking devastation, and you can pretend that these never happened before we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Plus, you have virtually all the media and a host of “environmental” groups parroting every seemingly scientific observation without question.
Yes, alarmists find it best to use their time during the hazy, hot days of summer linking every possible weather event to our use of fossil fuels and that demon molecule, CO2. They must do this in order to instill the fear required to impose economically crippling new taxes or restrict citizens’ freedom to choose what car, dishwasher, stove, shower head or washing machine to purchase.
Right now, with wildfires in Canada and Greece and the tragic fire in Lahaina, Maui, the focus is on linking supposed man-made warming to these events and characterizing them as unprecedented. Are they really extraordinary and increasing?
NASA reports that between 2003 and 2019, the global area burned has dropped by roughly 25 percent. In addition, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reports that, according to their satellite data, the year 2020 was one of the least active years since records begin in 2003.
Learn more about the Lahaina fire here.
NASA (2020) Building a Long-Term Record of Fire
Heat waves in Texas and Italy are also trumpeted as global and escalating due to increasing carbon emissions. Conveniently omitted are exceedingly cold temperatures in northern Europe and the northwest of the United States. The USHCN temperature data reveal that the number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8°Celsius) peaked in the 1930s and have been in an 80-year decline.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA; and author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know.