General

* In 1989, climatologist Stephen Schneider—the creator of the journal Climatic Change and one of the founding members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—told Discover magazine that in order to “reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change”:

we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Plant Life

* In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “global warming may be the greatest challenge facing humankind,” and “any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems” like “plant” life.

* A 2003 paper in the journal Science found that a principal measure of worldwide vegetation productivity increased by 6.2% between 1982 and 1999. The paper notes that this occurred during a period in which human population increased by 37%, the level of atmospheric CO2 increased by 9%, and the Earth “had two of the warmest decades in the instrumental record.”

* A 2004 paper in the journal BioScience attributes the rising vegetation productivity found in the 2003 Science paper to “higher temperatures, longer temperate growing seasons, more rainfall in some previously water-limited areas,” and more sunlight. The following map shows these productivity changes, with green signifying higher vegetation productivity and red lower:

(Reproduced with permission of the University of California Press)

* Based on projections published by the journal PLOS Biology, Time magazine claimed in 2015:

Add the hindering of plant growth to the long and growing list of the ways climate change may affect life on our planet. … Overall, climate change is expected to stunt plant growth. Declining plant growth would destroy forests and dramatically change the habitats that are necessary for many species to survive.

* A paper published by the journal Nature Climate Change in 2016 analyzed three long-term satellite datasets and found “a persistent and widespread increase” in “greening” or plant growth “over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area” from 1982 to 2014, “whereas less than 4% of the globe” had less greening over this period. Using “ten global ecosystem models,” the authors estimated that “70% of the observed greening trend” was due to more CO2 in the air.

* As of 2019, the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere is about 407 parts per million (ppm). Per an academic text that discusses increasing the productivity of commercial greenhouses:

Plants need water, light, warmth, nutrition and CO2 to grow. By increasing the CO2 level in the greenhouse atmosphere (typical to 600 ppm instead of normal 400 ppm value), the growth for some plants can be stimulated in an important way, with often yield increases up to 20%, especially for tomato, cucumber, strawberry, etc. but also for potted plants and cut flowers.

Forests & Tree Cover

* In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “forests would be adversely affected” by global warming.

* Per reports published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization from 2018 through 2020:

the annual net loss of global forest area slowed by 68% between the periods of 1990–2000 and 2010–2020.

the mass of above-ground organic plant materials in forests “has remained stable since the 1990s.”

most regions of the world are experiencing either positive or small-to-no changes in forest area or above-ground biomass.

* In 2018, the journal Nature published a study that:

analyzed satellite data to obtain “a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics” from 1982 to 2016.

found that tree cover increased by 7.1% during this period.

calculated that this best estimate of 7.1% varies from a 2.9% to 10.8% rise with 90% confidence.

determined that forest area losses in the tropics were outweighed by gains elsewhere.

Extinctions

* In 1989, Sandra Henderson, a biogeographer at EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratory, wrote in the EPA Journal that:

“scientists are warning of a possible loss of 20 percent of the earth’s species before the end of the century.”

“a major factor in this modern species extinction may be our alteration of the earth’s climate: global warming due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

* Roughly 1.2 million species have been cataloged. A loss of 20% of these would be 240,000 species.

* In and around the period covered by Henderson’s projections:

the International Union for Conservation of Nature recorded 27 confirmed species extinctions during 1984–2004.

a 2011 paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions reported six confirmed extinctions of continental birds and three confirmed extinctions of continental mammals since the year 1500.

a 2015 paper in the journal Science reported “15 global extinctions of marine animal species in the past 514 years” and “none in the past five decades.”

Agriculture

* In 1975, Newsweek claimed that the world was “cooling,” and:

this may cause “a drastic decline in food production.”

meteorologists “are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”

“climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change.”

“the longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

* Per a 2003 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, between the mid-1970s and late 1990s, food consumption per person increased by 15% worldwide, 25% in developing countries, and more than 36% in China. During this same period:

world population increased by 45%.

atmospheric CO2 increased by 10%.

the average global surface temperature (as calculated by NASA) increased by 1.0ºF (0.6ºC).

* Three decades after it reported that global cooling would reduce food production, Newsweek claimed:

in 2007 that China was undergoing “serious food shortages due to global warming….”

in 2008 that “the potential nightmares of global warming” include “starvation due to drought….”

* From 2000 to 2018, the portion of the population in China that was undernourished decreased from 16% to 9%, and the portion of the world population that was undernourished decreased from 15% to 11%:

* From 1992 to 2016, the average number of calories needed to lift undernourished people in China out of that condition decreased from 188 to 74 calories per person. In the same period, the average for all the undernourished people of the world decreased from 172 to 88 calories:

* In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “concern about climate change impacts has sent storm warning flags aloft in the United Nations” because global warming would “disrupt agriculture” and “adversely” affect “food supplies.”

* In 2017, the United Nations reported:

With the increases in food supply in recent decades, the world now produces more than enough food to satisfy the dietary needs of the entire global population.

Coastal Flooding

* Increased ocean temperatures cause average sea levels to rise because water expands as it becomes warmer. Per a 2006 paper in the journal Nature, this thermal expansion is calculated to have the largest current influence on average sea level changes. The second largest influence is calculated to be the melting of glaciers and mountain icecaps. Per a 2010 paper in Geophysical Research Letters, melting sea ice is responsible for less than 2% of current sea level changes.

* Sea level is not evenly distributed across the world like it is in small bodies of water like lakes. For instance, the sea level in the Indian Ocean is about 330 feet below the worldwide average, while the sea level in Ireland is about 200 feet above the average. Such variations are caused by gravity, winds, and currents, and the effects of these phenomena are dynamic. For example:

from 1992 to 2010, sea level rose by about 6 inches in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean while falling by about the same amount in San Francisco.

from 1961 to 2008, sea level “decreased substantially in the south tropical Indian Ocean” while increasing in other areas of the Indian Ocean.

* Scientists have estimated sea levels going back to the year 1700 using data from local tide gauges. These instruments measure the level of the sea relative to reference points on land. Per the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado, “Although the global network of tide gauges comprises of a poorly distributed sea level measurement system, it offers the only source of historical, precise, long-term sea level data.”

* According to tide gauge data, the average global sea level has been generally rising since 1860 or earlier. This is about 45 years before surface temperatures began to rise and 75 years before man-made emissions of CO2 reached 1% of natural emissions.

Sea Level Acceleration

* According to tide gauge data, the average worldwide sea level rose by about 7 inches (18 cm) during the 20th century. A 2019 IPCC report uses certain models that project an acceleration of this trend. These models predict sea level increases ranging from 17 to 33 inches (43–84 cm) from 1986–2005 to 2100.

* Using tide gauge data, a 2006 paper in Geophysical Research Letters found:

a significant acceleration of sea-level rise…. This acceleration is an important confirmation of climate change simulations which show an acceleration not previously observed.

* Using updated tide gauge data from two earlier studies (including the 2006 study cited above), a 2011 paper in the Journal of Coastal Research found “small decelerations” in global average sea level rises during the 20th century, which is “consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records.”

* Since late 1992, instruments on satellites have been collecting data that scientists use to calculate the mean global sea level. Averaging the eight available datasets, the global mean sea level increased by 2.0 inches (50 mm) between the 1990s and 2010s:

* Click here for an article from Just Facts that exposes how certain scientists and media outlets have misled the public about sea level acceleration.

Coral Reef Islands

* Coral reef islands are considered to be highly vulnerable to rising oceans because they sit slightly above sea level and are made of loosely bound sediments. These islands are typically located in the Pacific Ocean and are mainly comprised of gravel, silt, and sand that has accumulated on coral reefs. The habitable land of some nations, such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives, consists almost entirely of coral reef islands.

* At the 2009 United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Ian Fry of the government of Tuvalu addressed the conference and claimed:

The entire population of Tuvalu lives below two meters above sea level. The highest point above sea level in the entire nation of Tuvalu is only 4 meters. … It’s an irony of the modern world that the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. congress. … [T]he greatest threat to humanity that we have before us [is] climate change…. I woke this morning, and I was crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit. The fate of my country rests in your hands.

* In 2018, the journal Nature Communications published the “first comprehensive national-scale analysis” of Tuvalu’s land resources. The analysis found that the nation’s total land area increased by 2.9% from 1971 to 2014.

* The authors of a 2010 paper in the journal Global and Planetary Change used aerial and satellite photographs to conduct “the first quantitative analysis of physical changes” in 27 central Pacific coral reef islands over a 19- to 61-year period. They found that:

43% of these islands remained stable.

15% decreased in area with changes ranging from –3% to –14%.

43% increased in area with changes ranging from 3% to 30%.

the combined area of all the islands increased by 7%.

the “results of this study contradict widespread perceptions that all reef islands are eroding in response to recent sea level rise.”

* Click here for an article and video from Just Facts about how a media outlet misled the public about the effect of sea-level rise on the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.

Mainland Coasts

* In 1989, the Associated Press reported: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco- refugees,’ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program.”

* In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote:

“Sea-level rise as a consequence of global warming would immediately threaten that large fraction of the globe living at sea level.”

“Most of the world’s great seaport cities would be endangered: New Orleans, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Cairo.”

“Heavily populated coastal areas such as in Bangladesh and Egypt, where large populations occupy low-lying areas, would suffer extreme dislocation.”

* A study of satellite data published by the journal Nature Climate Change in 2016 found that from 1985 to 2015:

the net amount of land area on Earth grew by about 22,400 square miles (58,000 square km).

the net amount of coastal land area on Earth grew by about 5,200 square miles (13,600 square km).

* In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claimed:

About 10 million people in Bangladesh will lose their homes and means of sustenance because of the rising sea level, due to global warming, in the next few decades. Where will they go? Whom will they displace? What political conflicts will result? That is only one example. According to some predictions, not long after Bangladesh feels the impact, up to 60 percent of the present population of Florida may have to be relocated. Where will they go?

* In 2008, scientists with the Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services in Bangladesh announced that their study of satellite images and maps shows that Bangladesh gained about 1,000 square kilometers of land since 1973.

* From 1993 to 2020, the population of Bangladesh increased from 119 million to 163 million people, or by 37%.

* From 1990 to 2019, the coastal population of Florida increased from 10.1 million to 16.1 million people, or by 60%.

* An Inconvenient Truth is an Academy Award-winning documentary about Al Gore’s “commitment to expose the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and inspire actions to prevent it.” In this 2006 film, Gore shows the following computer simulation of what would happen to the shorelines of Florida and the San Francisco Bay if sea levels were to rise by twenty feet, while providing no timeframe for such an event to occur:

* A 20-foot rise in sea level equals 8 to 34 times the full range of 110-year projections for sea level rise in the 2007 IPCC report.

Hurricanes & Cyclones

* A “tropical cyclone” is a circular wind and low-pressure system that develops over warm oceans in the tropics. Cyclones with winds ranging from 39 to 73 miles per hour are called “tropical storms,” and those with winds exceeding 73 miles per hour are called “hurricanes.” Technically, there are different names for cyclones with hurricane-force winds in different areas of the world, but for the sake of simplicity, this research refers to them as hurricanes.

* In 2004, James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University, claimed: “As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones.”

* Since 1970, the annual frequencies of tropical storms and hurricanes have varied as follows:

* “Accumulated cyclone energy” is an index that “approximates the collective intensity and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes….” Since 1970, the accumulated cyclone energies of tropical storms and hurricanes have varied as follows:

* A scientific, nationally representative survey commissioned in 2019 by Just Facts found that 64% of voters believe the number and intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms have generally increased since the 1980s.

* Click here for an article from Just Facts about how media outlets have misled the public about trends in hurricanes and rainfall.

Rainfall

* In 1989, Dr. David Rind, an atmospheric scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies predicted that “rainfall patterns would likely be substantially altered” from global warming “by the year 2020.” He claimed that these changes would create the “threat of large-scale disruptions of agricultural and economic productivity, and water shortages in some areas.”

* In 2017, Politico published an article by meteorologist Eric Holthaus claiming that “climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse but particularly on the Gulf Coast.” As proof of this, he links to an article in the London Guardian by Professor John Abraham, who claims: “In the United States, there has been a marked increase in the most intense rainfall events across the country. This has resulted in more severe flooding throughout the country.”

* A 2011 paper in the Hydrological Sciences Journal examined rainfall-related U.S. flood trends from 200 water gauges with records extending from 85 to 127 years ago and found:

“no strong empirical evidence” for increased flood magnitudes across any of the four major regions of the United States.

a decrease in flooding in the Southwest.

results that are “suggestive” of increased flooding but not statistically significant in the Northeast.

* In contradiction to the findings of previous studies that used “climate models” to study “changes in areas under droughts,” a 2013 paper in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology used global satellite observations and found “no significant trend in the areas under drought over land in the past three decades.” The study, however, found increasing drought over land in the Southern Hemisphere. With regard to this:

the study noted there is “much more” drought variation in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere because land in the Southern Hemisphere is “less contiguous and more scattered

the Southern Hemisphere is 19% land, as compared to 39% in the Northern Hemisphere.

* In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported:

Since 1951 there have been statistically significant increases in the number of heavy precipitation events (e.g., above the 95th percentile) in more regions than there have been statistically significant decreases, but there are strong regional and sub-regional variations in the trends. In particular, many regions present statistically non-significant or negative trends, and, where seasonal changes have been assessed, there are also variations between seasons (e.g., more consistent trends in winter than in summer in Europe).

* Regarding drought, the same 2013 IPCC report stated that previous claims of “global increasing trends in drought” were “probably overstated” and:

there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century, owing to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice.

* A 2015 paper in the International Journal of Climatology studied extreme rainfall in England and Wales found that “contrary to previous results based on shorter periods, no significant trends of the most intense categories are found between 1931 and 2014.”

* A 2015 paper in the Journal of Hydrology examined rainfall measurements “made at nearly 1,000 stations located in 114 countries” and:

found “no significant global precipitation change from 1850 to present.”

discovered that areas with “low, moderate and heavy annual precipitation did not show very different precipitation trends,” indicating that “deserts/jungles are neither expanding nor shrinking due to changes in precipitation patterns.”

noted that previous studies had analyzed shorter timeframes and found rainfall changes that some people attributed to global warming, but those results were generally not statistically significant and “not entirely surprising given that precipitation varies considerably over time scales of decades.”

Tornadoes

* In 2011, Dr. Paul R. Epstein, a member of the IPCC and the associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, claimed that global warming was setting the stage for “even more punishing tornadoes.”

* In 2013, Michael Mann, a climatologist and the lead author of the IPCC’s hockey stick graph, predicted “greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.”

* In 2019, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders claimed the “science is clear” that “climate change is making extreme weather events, including tornadoes, worse.”

* Per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

“If a tornado occurs in a place with few or no people, it is not likely to be documented.”

“Improved tornado observation practices have led to an increase in the number of reported weaker tornadoes” over “the past several decades,” which “can create a misleading appearance of an increasing trend in tornado frequency.”

Strong-to-violent tornadoes are a more accurate indicator of tornado trends because they “would have likely been reported even during the decades before Doppler radar use became widespread and practices resulted in increasing tornado reports.”

Since the 1950s when NOAA began keeping tornado records, there has been “little trend in the frequency” of strong-to-violent tornadoes across the United States.

* Since the 1950s, the frequency of strong-to-violent tornadoes in the U.S. have varied as follows:

* A 2000 paper in the journal Weather and Forecasting studied economic damages from tornadoes in the U.S. during 1890–1999 and concluded:

“roughly the same number of high-damage tornadoes is found from 1970–1999 and prior to 1930.”

there is “nothing to suggest that damage from individual tornadoes has increased through time, except as a result of the increasing cost of goods and accumulation of wealth of the U.S.”

* A 2013 paper in the journal Environmental Hazards estimated the normalized economic damages from tornadoes in the U.S. during 1950–2011 and found “a sharp decline in tornado damage.” Per the paper, “normalization provides an estimate of the damage that would occur if past events occurred under a common base year’s societal conditions.”

Extreme Weather Fatalities

* In 2010, Environment America, a federation of environmental organizations, published a report entitled “Global Warming and Extreme Weather: The Science, the Forecast, and the Impacts on America.” The report uses the word “death” (or synonyms for it) 18 times and claims:

“Patterns of extreme weather are changing in the United States, and climate science predicts that further changes are in store.”

“Extreme weather events lead to billions of dollars in economic damage and loss of life each year.”

“To protect the nation … from changes in extreme weather patterns—as well as other consequences of global warming—the United States must move quickly to reduce emissions of global warming pollutants.”

* In 2011, Ph.D. biologist Richard Hilderman wrote an op-ed claiming:

Over the past few years we have seen an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather such as hurricanes, tornadoes, winters, massive floods, heat waves and droughts. So far this year we have witnessed in this country an increase in devastating tornadoes, snow and floods. This devastation causes loss of life, property and takes a tremendous emotional toll on people. All of this costs the taxpayer millions upon millions of dollars! The current global warming trend is responsible for some if not all of the extreme weather we have witnessed in recent years.

* The following graphs show the number of weather-related fatalities from various causes for as far back in time as the U.S. National Weather Service has records:





NOTE: Data on heat fatalities is subject to considerable uncertainty.

NOTE: Data on cold fatalities is subject to considerable uncertainty.

Vector-Borne Diseases

* Vector-borne diseases are illnesses that are usually transmitted by bloodsucking creatures like mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas.

* In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that global warming would harm “human health” and “could enlarge tropical climate bringing with it yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases.”

* In 2017, Politico alleged:

Warming global temperatures are changing the range and behavior of disease-carrying insects like mosquitos and ticks and extending the seasons in which they are active. As a result, incidence of the diseases they carry—including Lyme, spotted fever, West Nile and malaria—are all on the rise, despite yearly fluctuations.

* In 2012, The Lancet (a prestigious medical journal ) published research about vector-borne diseases that found the following:

A “persistent stream of reviews” have claimed that “climate change is a primary driving force” in the growth of vector-borne diseases.

Such beliefs have been fueled by “highly influential and visually arresting maps” rooted in flawed “mathematical models” and “speculative reports that describe the general coincidence of increased disease incidence with warming in recent decades.”

In “many cases climate has not consistently changed in the right way, at the right time, and in the right places to account for” changes in these diseases.

“Although several components of vector-borne disease systems … are highly sensitive to climate, evidence shows that climate change has been less important in the recent emergence of vector-borne diseases than have changes in land use, animal host communities, human living conditions, and societal factors….”

* In 2016, the journal Nature Communications published a study about the effects of human activities on mosquito populations in North America over the past century. Based on three long-term datasets, the authors reported:

Mosquito “populations have increased as much as tenfold” during “the last five decades.”

Many “studies have found positive correlations between temperature and insect populations,” but none of them used “continuous datasets pre-dating the 1960s,” and “nearly all” of them “ignored the influence” of land use and DDT, a widely used and highly effective pesticide.

DDT caused “drastic reductions in the abundance of many” types of insects “from the 1940s through the 1970s,” but it reduced populations of “birds of prey” and was banned by the EPA in 1972 at the behest of environmental activists.

“Despite the well-known devastating effects of DDT use on insect communities, most previous analyses of insect abundance and distribution have examined only temperature as a possible driver.”

“Across all three datasets, mosquito species richness and abundance decreased, often precipitously, during the period of DDT use and then increased afterward, as the concentration of DDT in the environment decreased.”

The residual effects of DDT sometimes lasted for decades after it was used, and in New York State, “it took mosquito communities nearly 40 years to reach pre-DDT levels.”

“Human population growth and resulting urbanization” correlate “with increased mosquito species richness and decreased relative abundance,” but these correlations are not as strong as those of DDT and insect populations.

“Surprisingly, we found little evidence that mosquito abundance or diversity responded to year-to-year variation or long-term warming trends in temperature, despite the presence of significant warming trends over time.”

* Decades after DDT was restricted and banned in the U.S. and around the world, the World Health Organization and some environmental organizations have endorsed using DDT inside of homes to combat malaria.

* Per a 2000 paper in the British Medical Journal:

Although hundreds of millions (and perhaps billions) of people have been exposed to raised concentrations of DDT through occupational or residential exposure from house spraying, the literature has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome. Researchers once thought they had discovered a statistically increased risk of breast cancer and attempted to replicate it, but every later published attempt (eight so far) has failed to confirm it. Even researchers who find DDT in breast milk and claim it leads to early weaning in children quietly confess a “lack of any detectable effect on children’s health.” Very few other chemicals have been given such extensive scrutiny, and there is still no epidemiological or human toxicological evidence to impugn DDT.

Economic Damages

* The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a database of “weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion.” Various environmental activists, scholars, and journalists have cited these data as evidence that global warming is causing economic damage, such as:

the Center for American Progress.

the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

a New York Times op-ed.

the Washington Post.

CBS News.

* NOAA’s database of billion-dollar-plus weather and climate disasters is adjusted for inflation but not for changes in population and economic development.

* In 2008, the journal Natural Hazards published a paper that studied U.S. economic damages from hurricanes from 1900 to 2005 and found:

growing damage over this period because “people continue to flock to the nation’s coasts and bring with them ever more personal wealth.”

“no long-term trend of increasing damage” after “normalizing” the data for population growth and economic development.

the economic damage from “Hurricane Katrina is not outside the range of normalized estimates for past storms.”

the flat trend in economic damages is “consistent with what one would expect to find given the lack of trends in hurricane frequency or intensity at landfall.”

* In 2018, the journal Nature Sustainability published a paper that studied U.S. economic damages from hurricanes from 1900 to 2015 and found: