by Kevin Killough
While mainstream media coverage of climate change has declined in the Trump-era, some outlets continue to state that storms, floods and droughts are increasing.
Climatologist Judith Curry announced earlier this year she would no longer maintain her influential “Climate Etc.” blog.
“Climate stupidity” had lost, and it was time to move on, Curry, who has a doctorate in geophysical sciences, wrote in a final entry,
While the issue of whether climate change is indeed real, or to what extent it is, remains open to debate. Meanwhile, the news media has retreated from its previous focus on climate stories.
Studies show coverage of climate change has declined in frequency, and news organizations such as The Washington Post and NPR, have significantly downsized their climate desk.
Some outlets, however, appear to be continuing as if nothing changed. For example, the Associated Press on Monday published a lengthy article that follows the old “climate crisis” script.
“Scientists have long warned that the world will experience more intense extreme weather events like heat waves, storms, floods and droughts," wrote Peter Prengaman, the newswire service's global climate and environmental news director. "But what once seemed like the realm of fiction is now discussed as a possibility, even an inevitability.”
The narrative doesn't resonate with audiences like it used to, as evidenced by the declining coverage, which coincides with the changeover from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, and the claim that storms, floods and droughts are increasing is in direct contradiction to the findings of the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The group is an advisory body of the United Nations for assessing the science related to climate change. It was created to provide international policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change.
No detected change for most extremes
The IPCC’s assessment reports are full of dense, highly technical material that’s difficult for those outside the research community to digest, so most people are informed about trends in extreme weather by the mainstream media, which spent years claiming that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts are increasing all across the world.
A recent poll by the left-leaning nonprofit Data for Progress found that 61% of all likely voters, including 72% of Democrats, believe the number of extreme weather events has increased over the past five years.
In the U.S., according to the IPCC, there has been an increase in the frequency of heat waves. For flooding, drought, winter storms and hurricanes, there has been no detected change. There has also been a decrease in the frequency of cold extremes.
Globally, heatwaves have increased, according to the IPCC, and cold extremes have declined. For tropical cyclones, tornadoes, drought and flooding, there have been no detected changes. There has also been no detected change in storms, which includes tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, and severe convective storms.
One-stop resource
Climate researcher Roger Pielke Jr. published a website this month that attempts to present the global data on extreme weather trends in a format that's more accessible to a larger audience than the IPCC's assessment reports. It tracks 57 variables across eight types of extremes for every continent.
Last month, Pielke published a dashboard website that focuses on extreme weather trends in the U.S. The U.S. Extreme Weather and Climate Change Dashboard tracks 32 variables across seven types of extremes: heat waves, tornadoes, flooding, drought, winter storms, wildfire, and hurricanes.
“I am aiming to have a single place where people can get official data on trends in various metrics of extreme weather that have significant societal impacts. So the characteristic megafauna so-to-speak of extreme weather events,” Pielke told Just the News.
Pielke’s research has been cited by each of the IPCC’s three working groups, and he’s often been invited to testify before Congress to summarize IPCC research. In May 2024, he was invited to testify before the Senate Committee on the Budget on what the IPCC says about drought.
The Environmental Protection Agency had a Climate Change Indicators website, which, like Pielke’s dashboards, housed data on heat waves, coastal flooding, wildfires, snowfall, and droughts. The Trump administration removed it as part of a purge of 80 climate-related websites.
So, Pielke set out to build a website housing this data, which he said is much more comprehensive than the EPA’s Climate Change Indicators site was.
AI made the dashboards possible
Pielke’s been researching extreme weather and its impacts since he did his post-doctoral work at National Center for Atmospheric Research in the 1990s, and he said he’s always envisioned a resource like the dashboards. Thanks to artificial intelligence, he explained, he was able to create the site without a team of researchers and a lot of funding.
“It is truly amazing what is possible,” he said.
The dashboards provide only trend data measuring whether a change has occurred. They don’t undertake what’s called attribution, which looks at why the trends exist, such as contributions from human emissions. Pielke said everything on the dashboards is mainstream science.
“Everything on the site is widely used, consensus science and consistent with the most recent IPCC,” he said.
The dashboards also provide data on the area burned by wildfires in the U.S., which has also increased. Global data on wildfires doesn’t have a long enough history to draw any conclusions.
“The IPCC does not assess wildfire counts or area burned, but I included that because people are interested,” Pielke said.
Good response, Pielke says
He said the response to the dashboards was better than he expected, and he expected a lot of response.
“I get lots of traffic, and the sites (US and global) are being used and discussed around the world. People like data, and they like the truth. So I have a ready audience,” Pielke said.
The one group he’s yet seen any interest from, he said, is reporters working on the climate beat, whose reporting on trends in extreme weather often run contrary to the findings of the IPCC.
Pielke is not a contrarian, and he argues that climate change poses risks over time.
He’s also expressed support for efforts to decarbonize the economy. However, he has long criticized the media for its misrepresentations of extreme weather trends.
His efforts to present science and correct alarmist narratives have gotten him labeled a “climate denier.” The dashboards, Pelke said, are an extension of his ongoing effort to correct what he says is misinformation.
“I hope it can be used as a resource for people to get the facts, should they want them, and to hold others accountable when they misrepresent the evidence,” he said.
Pielke said the websites aren’t done, and he will continue to develop and improve them over time based on feedback and suggestions.
Kevin Killough
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/ap-article-follows-old-climate-crisis-script-contradicts-ipcc-science-trends
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