New study: climate makes children born today experience 2-36x more climate catastrophes
Lot of media coverage
But study assumes everyone stays poor and do nothing to adapt
Not remotely true of real world
So, what's the point, except to scare?
🧵
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
To predict 2100, scary climate study assumes nobody does anything after 2005
– how does that inform real-life decisions?
They don’t even tell you this in main study – you have to read the supplementary material, almost as if they don't want you to know
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Predicting the world in 2021 with 1926 data is awful
Since 1926, sea levels risen 15-20cm so prediction: drowned significant parts of the world
But human ingenuity actually means that *more* land has been reclaimed than lost!
nature.com/articles/nclim…
Scary climate study cherry-picks events that they know will get worse
Not useful way to guide policy
but great way to scare
(they also introduce ref37, which describes all their data better
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…)
Scary climate study shows that fires burn more and more
In reality, global burned area has *declined*
But, of course, if you ignore societies controlling fire...
Not useful to guide policy
but great way to scare
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Scary climate study uses fire model that doesn’t really work
And acknowledges that human action could reverse ”any of the trends found here”
But while this is useless to guide policy
it is great for scaring
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…
Global fire history shows ever less area burns because of human fire suppression
Climate policy will make fire decline even more
This sort of information can help policy-makers
But, of course, pretty useless for scaring young people senseless
Refs here
Scary climate study claims much more fire (red line)
But 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 true if ignore CO₂ and fire suppression from society
If included, Nature study shows *completely* different outcome
Red line useless for policy, but great for scaring
nature.com/articles/nclim…
Scary study shows more flooding, but ignores social factors:
Not surprisingly, humans can avoid most flooding, if they are not poor
Ignoring obvious adaptation — like levees and dams — doesn’t inform but simply scares
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…
Compare the impact on coastal flooding from rising sea levels:
As humanity gets richer (SSP1 or SSP5), it will protect itself ever better, and ever fewer will get flooded
Informative, but not scary
pnas.org/content/111/9/…
Scary climate study finds more and more hurricanes
— although they *know* that ”most … models project fewer hurricanes in a warmer world”
While not informative, claiming more hurricanes obviously great for scare stories
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…
Scary climate study finds more and more hurricanes
— but the UN Climate Panel from 2021 finds that the frequency “will decrease or remain unchanged with increased global warming”
How is this not deeply problematic?
ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1…
Scary climate study expects more hurricanes and model that humanity will do nothing
— although we’ve always tackled hurricanes, and adaptation can ”reverse any such trend”
But great for scaring young people
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…
Scary climate study expects more crop failure and expects humanity will do nothing
— although changing cultivars, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation can reverse this
But narrative great for scaring young people
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…
Scary study predicts more and more crop failures because they ignore adaptation
WHO estimate for malnutrition: declines dramatically because of less poverty. Climate simply slows down the decline slightly
But scaring people is apparently much more fun
apps.who.int/iris/handle/10…
Scary article blatantly tells you (in supplementary material) that they only look at potentially bad stuff, but in reality, things might get better
Well, here are actual damages for global weather-related losses — declining
Scary climate article tells you: children of the future will experience many more climate disasters
But they ignore adaptation and many of their models are just plain bad
Demand policy-relevant information, not just scares
, sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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