Bjorn Lomborg Profile picture
Oct 12, 2021 12 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Untrue Washington Post front-page story today

Claims “disasters worsen”
Study shows 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴

One example: heart disease up with temperature
Reality 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲

How is this following science?

🧵

washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
archive.md/m4z4d
@SallyBuzbee
Washington Post story over and again claims study shows how climate made things worse:

“weather events made worse by climate change”, “harsher events” “disasters worsen”

Actual Nature study only shows impacts – not whether positive or negative

nature.com/articles/s4155…
Actual Nature study doesn't show climate making stuff worse

It simply uses machine learning to analyze 600K article abstracts to identify climate impacts and code *where* and *what*

Conclude 85% pop lives where temp and/or precip changed detectable and attributable to man
Take a look at the three studies the Nature study highlights as their goal to map all studies:

Ref32 is a standard climate article on West Africa showing more warm nights and days, fewer cold nights and days, and increased rainfall

(all as expected)

rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100…
Another reference (ref30) is slightly odd, as it is not about people:

It shows

a significant delay in hibernation emergence of adult females in a wild population of 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘀 in Canada

nature.com/articles/natur…
Third ref (ref31) is likely story ref by WashPost

Chinese article with English abstract, showing low temperature means higher ischemic heart disease mortality, with no observed effect from high temp

Entirely opposite story of WashPost

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27903363/
WashPost claims that "deaths from heart disease had risen in areas experiencing hotter conditions"

which is exactly the opposite of what the quoted paper found:

Low temp associated with increased heart IHD mortality risk, no risk of high temp

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27903363/
WashPost claims that "deaths from heart disease had risen in areas experiencing hotter conditions"

which is exactly the opposite of what the Global Burden of Disease shows for entire world:

low temperatures kill 10x more through cardiovascular diseases than do heat
WashPost also claims that the study "focused on events such as crop failures, floods and heat waves"

It did not

It actually almost exclusively looked at temperature and precipitation (*all* other things are the small red boxes, color-replaced for clarity, from their figure 3)
WashPost claims study makes solid link between escalating extremes and human activities

Triply incorrect

The study doesn't show extremes escalating, it doesn't link them, because of the simple point it doesn't look at extremes

Article even writes this just a bit further down
WashPost and @SallyBuzbee:

Climate change is a real problem that needs smart solutions

But incorrect, alarmist, and false climate stories are undesirable and unhelpful

they don't belong anywhere, least of all on your front-page

Pls fix/delete this story
[When looking at their coding (zenodo.org/record/5257271…), this article, which is not about climate, just temperature, is coded as showing temperature having a documented impact

This is true, but not from climate

Makes me wonder about all others?]

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More from @BjornLomborg

Apr 30
Two days ago, Spain lost 55% of its power, most from solar

Perception: Everyone wants to blame anything but renewables

Reality: With renewables, the grid gets vulnerable (missing inertia, mainly from fossil fuels) so we need more costly renewable management

So Reuters deceptively tells us, "don't blame renewables," blame "management of renewables"

reuters.com/business/energ…Image
"By continuously reducing inertia, Spain’s policymakers engineered a vulnerability."

"Spain’s electrical grid was operating with very little margin for error, a risky game that the Spanish government has been playing more aggressively each year since energy-transitionist ideologues took power two decades ago."

archive.ph/eonJRImage
Read 5 tweets
Jan 25
The myth that the green energy transition is inevitable and will make cheap electricity for everyone is one of the most dangerous self-delusions of the global elite

My piece for Sunday Telegraph

archive.ph/EufH0Image
Globally, fossil fuels supply 81% today (2022)

only marginally down from 81.2% in 2000

On current trends, fossil fuels are not on track to end in 2050
but in 4-9 centuries
iea.org/data-and-stati…Image
You are told that solar and wind are cheap

But cramming in more solar and wind just makes power more and more costly

because solar and wind are worthless when not sunny and windy

iea.org/data-and-stati…

x.com/i/web/status/1… Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 31, 2024
Spanish floods are tragic — as they are everywhere

But remember flood deaths down dramatically

Globally, floods now kill 5,400/year, down from 400,000/year in 1930s

Deaths from European floods down 7-fold to less than 100 per year today

nature.com/articles/s4146…Image
Despite breathless climate reporting,

not only are European floods causing fewer deaths (tweet above) but

Losses from floods in Europe are declining, not increasing

nature.com/articles/s4146…Image
Death from flooding declining (2nd row)

not only for rich countries but for poor countries

Deaths declining for almost all extreme weather for rich and poor

for flood, flash flood, coastal flood, cold and wind

and for all extreme weather

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…Image
Read 5 tweets
Sep 15, 2024
New study: Climate change saves 282,000 babies

Higher temperatures mean more heat, and more babies dying from heat

but it also means less cold, and many more babies not dying from cold

In total, higher temps saved 282,251 babies in 29 poorer countries from 2000-19

Did you read that anywhere?

nature.com/articles/s4146…Image
As we have come to expect from studies of heat and cold, they use unequal scales, which makes heat and cold look about the same

— they're not, as you can see on the right


nature.com/articles/s4146…

Image
The study is very explicit in pointing out that the change in extra heat deaths and fewer cold deaths is caused by climate change

nature.com/articles/s4146…
Image
Read 6 tweets
Sep 11, 2024
EU climate policy has enormous costs

Industry electricity prices have increased 70% in real terms since 2000

EU industries now pay 2.7x the electricity price in the US (and 1.9x in China)

EU households now pay 2x US electricity price (and 3.3x China)

iea.org/data-and-stati…Image
EU climate policy causes high electricity costs

Consequently, EU can afford much less electricity per person

In this century, the EU has managed to get access to almost as much electricity per person as the US got in 1968


iea.org/data-and-stati…
data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.P…Image
EU climate policy has enormous costs

Electricity prices for industry have increased 78% in real terms since 1978

EU industries now pay 2.5x the electricity price in the US (and 1.9x in China)

EU households pay 2x US electricity price (and 3.3x China)

iea.org/data-and-stati…Image
Read 5 tweets
Aug 30, 2024
Outrageously misleading climate scare from the UN

Today, 85% more old people die from heat

What they don't tell you:

There are now 86% more old people



un.org/sg/en/content/…
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
population.un.org/dataportal/
I write about this and many other heat scares from the UN in today's WSJ

wsj.com/opinion/united…
Here is UNICEF misinforming on heat
Image
Read 5 tweets

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