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?]

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Bjorn Lomborg

Bjorn Lomborg Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @BjornLomborg

3 Oct
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…
Read 17 tweets
11 Sep
Global inequality is lower today than last 140 years

Ineq increase hugely in 1800s bc industrialized world pulls away

Ineq decline as poor world (China, India) starts gaining

Gini: 0=no ineq, 1= total ineq

New, amazing data from @PikettyLeMonde & co
wid.world/document/longr… Image
Income development 1820-2020:

In China, per person income dropped from 82% of world average in 1820 down to 20% in 1980, before rising to 109% in 2020

In Indonesia, it dropped from 57% in 1820 to 16% in 1950, up to 68% in 2020

wid.world/document/longr… Image
What drives global inequality?

Blue line shows domestic inequality: high, but lower in 1950s-80s

Orange line shows inequality between nations: increase dramatically after rich world industrialization, decline after 1980 as poor world is gaining again

wid.world/document/longr… Image
Read 7 tweets
6 Sep
The world’s top medical editors argue for climate action with core argument: Global heat deaths for 65+ increased 50+%

But don’t tell you that the number of 65+ has increased almost as much

Oops

bmj.com/content/374/bm…, bmj.com/content/374/bm…, thelancet.com/journals/lance…
The world’s top medical editors argue for climate action

With amateur mistake: they forget to adjust for more old people

They should correct their paper (but of course, it would also neuter it)

bmj.com/content/374/bm…, bmj.com/content/374/bm…, thelancet.com/journals/lance…
The world’s top medical editors for climate action

Vastly overstating heat deaths
And entirely ignoring dramatic reduction in cold deaths

How are we well informed by this?

bmj.com/content/374/bm…, bmj.com/content/374/bm…, thelancet.com/journals/lance… ihmeuw.org/5k7m
Read 6 tweets
1 Sep
You're being lied to:

Report claims disasters 5x over past 50 years

But because of better reporting

How do we know?

Take well-measured US tornados:

WMO thinks they've 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝟭𝟯𝘅
In reality, 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱
library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?ex…
bbc.com/news/science-e…
Incompetent WMO report tells you that disasters 5x over past 50 years

But because of better reporting

How do we know?

Take well-measured US hurricanes:

WMO thinks they've 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝟰𝘅
They haven't increased at all

library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?ex…
bbc.com/news/science-e…
You're being lied to:

Report claims disasters 5x over past 50 years

But because of better reporting

How do we know?

Take well-measured US tornados:

WMO thinks they've 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝟭𝟯𝘅
In reality, 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱
library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?ex…
bbc.com/news/science-e…
Read 8 tweets
28 Aug
New Nature study shows net-zero will cost each American more than $11,000 every year by 2050

That's ~100x more expensive than what Americans are willing to pay

Current, super-expensive climate policy simply won't get net-zero past voters

nature.com/articles/s4155…
New Nature study shows net-zero will cost the US more than 12% of its GDP every year by 2050

For comparison, Social Security today costs 5% of US GDP and Medicare/Medicaid 6.4%

Implausible voters will accept such cost of net-zero

cbo.gov/system/files/2…
nature.com/articles/s4155…
New Nature study shows net-zero will cost the US more than $4 trillion every year by 2050

For comparison, Social Security today costs $1.1tr and Medicare/Medicaid $1.4tr

Implausible voters will accept such cost of net-zero

cbo.gov/system/files/2…
nature.com/articles/s4155…
Read 7 tweets
26 Aug
It seems truth often matters little when pushing climate crisis

Claim in media around world that ‘climate crisis’ makes more heat deaths

No: for constant population, both heat and cold deaths down

Thread

edition.cnn.com/2021/08/19/hea…
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
ihmeuw.org/5d6x
We only see more cold and heat deaths if we don’t adjust for population:

because more and especially many more older people

We are badly informed when media claims that this is because of climate

edition.cnn.com/2021/08/19/hea…
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
ihmeuw.org/5d6x
In general, all age groups die less of cold
Of 95+ year olds, 1.5% die each year from cold (29% die of all causes each year)

Heat deaths up, but from very low base, of 95+ year olds, 0.06% die each year

edition.cnn.com/2021/08/19/hea…
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
ihmeuw.org/5d6x
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(