FACT CHECK🧵

Hurricane Ida Isn’t the Whole Story on Climate by @BjornLomborg wsj.com/articles/hurri… via @WSJOpinion
In the @WSJ @BjornLomborg uses our analyses of hurricane landfalls to argue that "the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900"

Can that be true?

Yes it is

Figure below updated from: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/…
Well what about major US hurricanes. After all they cause >85% of all damage.
No they haven't increased either

Also updated from @philklotzbach et al 2018
But what about the entire North Atlantic basin, after all the US is not the only place in the world that gets hurricanes

Last year (still preliminary) was a record for landfalls, but since 1944, no overall trend

Updated from: doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D…
OK, but what about the world? After all the North Atlantic has only about 15% of landfalling TCs of hurricane strength

Here we see an increase from 1970 ... but if we look further back in time ...

Also updated from @JessicaWeinkle et al 2012 doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D…
There's not comprehensive records globally <1970 but we can go back in time for the North Atlantic & the Western North Pacific, which together have ~70% of all global landfalls

We see an overall decrease since 1945 & majors no trend

Also updated from @JessicaWeinkle et al 2012
OK, maybe landfalls aren't the place to look for increases, how about overall hurricane activity whether they landfall or not?

Again, hard to see any trends

Global TC activity via @RyanMaue 1970-2020
OK so is @BjornLomborg consistent w/ IPCC?

"A subset of the best-track data corresponding to hurricanes that have directly impacted the U.S. since 1900 is considered to be reliable, and shows no trend in the frequency of U.S. landfall events"
ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Yes, he is
Bottom line:
@BjornLomborg has accurately conveyed the peer-reviewed literature & IPCC conclusions on US hurricane landfalls

More broadly, the US is not an outlier, as similar trends can be found globally on climate time scales

FACT CHECK = 👍👍👍👍👍
PS. But what if you want to cherry pick the data to show more landfalls?

Some suggestions💡:
✅Start data in 1970 to 1980 (lowest activity period this century)
✅Use pre-1944 data in NA (even better, pre-1900)
✅Do some fancy stats on the actual data to create a trend

😎

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More from @RogerPielkeJr

12 Sep
This is so incredibly wrong

Storm surge is a function of a storm and the current sea level

Long-term sea level rise of course raises the level of the sea but has absolutely no effect on storm surge from a particular storm

🤷‍♂️
I increasingly see the claim that SLR makes storm surge worse

This is incorrect

It’s like saying a 6 ft man is 5,286 ft tall in Denver

SLR & storm surge are both important scientific concepts, purposely confusing them is a bad idea
Even as SLR has increased over the past century+ societal vulnerability to storm surges has decreased, there is no reason to expect that with dedicated effort this trend will not continue
Read 6 tweets
10 Sep
Another FACT CHECK 🧵

The World Is Getting Safer From Floods by @WSJOpinion @BjornLomborg wsj.com/articles/flood… via @WSJOpinion
Is this claim by @BjornLomborg in the @WSJ correct?
"the relative toll that floods take on the U.S.—in property and lives—has decreased over time"

Yes it is
Figure below is updated from Downton et al 2005 doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)…

The decline is huge (this data starts 1940)
In terms of flood deaths in the US death has decreased in term of both

Absolute numbers--> weather.gov/media/hazstat/…

And death rates (per capita)--> ourworldindata.org/natural-disast…

Similar to most disaster mortality trends
Read 8 tweets
8 Sep
It’s true, I’ve lived it⬇️

The Targeting of Scholars for Ideological Reasons from 2015 to Present

Scholars Under Fire – Full Text thefire.org/research/publi… via @TheFIREorg
I doubt I'm actually in @TheFIREorg database
My experiences highlighted below

We can add to those
➡️Targeted by the White House
➡️Investigated by Congress
➡️Investigated on campus
➡️Seen all four successful initiatives I created/led on campus shut down
➡️and more 🤓

I ❤️ tenure
I applaud @TheFIREorg for calling attention to these issues for scholars, which come from the right & from the left

They are incredibly difficult to experience & talk about

I'm stubborn/dumb/tenured & have made it thru the worst of it

But for many there are much worse outcomes
Read 4 tweets
7 Sep
How to trick a president with poor data practices

➡️Trump issued zero statewide disaster declarations for weather/climate events 2017-2020
➡️Biden has already issued 8 statewide declarations in 2021

Of course more people are covered by declarations in 2021
Did every single person in these states experience a disaster? Each of these states received a statewide disaster declaration in 2021

WA
MT
CA
WA
TN
MO
NY
NE

If not then this headline is wrong

Pro tip: Federal Disaster Declarations reflect presidential politics + disasters
A lie is born
1-"More than 32% of Americans live in a county or state that has been declared a disaster area by FEMA"
2-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past 3 months"
3-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer"
Read 7 tweets
6 Sep
An accurate relative risk assessment?

“The risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any single disease” ⁦@DrTedros⁩ ⁦@WHO

COVID-19* deaths in ~2 years = 15.3 million ⁦@TheEconomist
*much worse pandemics are possible
bmj.com/content/374/bm…
IPCC WG2 yet to report but any support for the claim that climate change could cause 7.5 million deaths per year, or 15m total?

Deaths from weather and climate have plummeted over many decades and now total <50,000 per year

Will they increase by 150x because climate change?
Let’s just take as true the @WHO estimate of “climate change deaths” - 5 million over 20 years

COVID-19 resulted in 15m deaths in 2 years

Efforts to maximalize climate change at the expense of minimizing pandemic threat seems both wrong & unnecessary

who.int/news-room/fact…
Read 7 tweets
2 Sep
Remarkable detail about NYC infrastructure:
Sewer system designed to accommodate a 5-year storm, one with a 20% chance of occurring in any year

Like the Texas freeze, events are exposing poor infrastructure & limited capacity to deal with rare events

www1.nyc.gov/assets/em/down… Image
Flooding in NYC is highly correlated with sewer infrastructure (look at Queens)
mdpi.com/2073-4441/9/10… Image
Honestly, if I am a NY politician, given these facts, all I'd be talking about is climate change
Read 12 tweets

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