Assertions by the 4^th U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA4) that the American Midwest will suffer negative effects – some catastrophic – from climate change are scientifically invalid and contrary to reality. Highly qualified professionals of the CO2 Coalition arrived at this conclusion after a careful review of real-world data and NCA4’s research methodologies and findings.

Among the concerns raised by NCA4 are dangerously warming temperatures, a decline in the Midwest’s agricultural productivity and increasing droughts, flooding, tornadoes and heat-related deaths.

The CO2 Coalition has a new publication — American Midwest and Climate Change: Life in America’s breadbasket is good and getting better — that addresses, scientifically, these concerns.

This is the third in a planned series of state and regional studies by the CO2 Coalition on how climate change may affect various portions of the United States and the world. An outline of this report was submitted for review by Dr. Patrick Michaels shortly before his untimely death on July 15, 2022.

Previous regional and state reports:

     Pennsylvania’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Relies on Faulty Data – Why RGGI is a “solution in search of a problem” – July 2021

     Virginia and Climate Change – Separating fact from fiction – February 2022

This report is based principally on the work of the following:

Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow for the CO2 Coalition and Competitive Enterprise Institute, past Virginia State Climatologist; past President of the American Association of State Climatologists.

Gregory Wrightstone, geologist, CO2 Coalition Executive Director and Expert Reviewer for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Indur Goklany, Electrical Engineering and Systems Science. Worked with federal and state agencies, think tanks, and the private sector for over 45 years, including over 30 years working on climate and global change issues. Writings include over 150 papers, books and monographs along with two books.

John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville and Alabama’s State Climatologist. Awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991.

William Happer, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

These and other contributors to this evaluation represent the fields of climatology, meteorology, physics, geology, agronomy and more.