Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 6, 2022 28 tweets 12 min read Read on X
Many people think climate change is increasing the frequency of natural disasters but they actually declined by 10% over the last two decades, the best-available data show
“The period since 2000 is viewed as the most reliable for data reliability, but it is safe to say that even since 2000, coverage has improved. So the 10% decline is possibly an underestimate.“ @RogerPielkeJr

rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/global-weath…
Much of what people think about climate change is wrong

Deaths from natural disasters have declined dramatically but more people think they increased than think they decreased
The cost of natural disasters has declined as a share of GDP but more people think their cost went up than down
Neither the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor any other scientific body predicts climate change will reverse the declining disaster death toll and yet 3x more people believe it will than believe it won’t
US CO2 emissions declined 14% over the last decade but 3x more people believe they rose
Carbon emissions *globally* *declined* over the the last decade and yet 62% of Americans surveyed said they went up and just 10% said they didn’t
Climate change has been one of the most-discussed and most-covered news stories of the last two decades and so much of the responsibility for the public believing things that simply aren’t true comes not from lack of information but rather the constant barrage misinformation.
It is common to hear journalists lament declining overall trust in the news media, particularly among Republicans, but the massive gulf between basic climate facts and what people believe suggests such distrust is warranted & indeed should have declined not risen among Democrats.
This is particularly true because Dems are more likely than Rs to believe false information about many aspects of climate change, as the Google surveys show. (I was a Democrat until April when I changed my party affiliation to “No party preference)

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/democrats-mo…
Forty-two percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement, “More people are dying from natural disasters.”
Seventy-one percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement, “Climate change is increasing the cost of natural disasters as a percent of GDP.”
76 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans agreed that “Deaths from natural disasters will rise in the future due to climate change.”
67 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans agreed that “Carbon emissions have risen in the United States over the last 10 years.”

In reality, carbon emissions declined by 14 percent between 2011 and 2020.
But haven’t disasters hammered banks? Nope. “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” asks the title of a recent report by three NY Fed economists. “Not very,” they answer in the first sentence of the abstract.

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-real-thr…
The reason is because “weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance.” The study looked at FEMA-level disasters between 1995 and 2018, at county-level property damage estimates, and the impact on banking revenue.
While scientists expect hurricanes to become 5% more intense they also expect them to become 25% less frequent
What about floods? It’s true that more people are being exposed to them but that’s because cities along rivers are growing. Flood deaths & damages are declining
What about droughts? They’re not increasing in US or globally
What about fires? Warmer temperatures dry out the wood but they don’t increase fuel load, and fuel load determines fire intensity. Forest management not climate change thus determines whether you have high-intensity, crown-burning, forest-destroying fires.
What about shrubland fires in places like Malibu in Southern California? “Ignitions explain more than temperature … One hundred percent were human caused, … powerline failures have been the dominant cause”

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
What about food production? Technology (eg fertilizer, irrigation, & tractors) will continue to outweigh temperature increases. We produce food in many climates around the world, including very hot and dry ones.
What about sea level rise? We can handle it
How does climate change rank compared to wars, disease, asteroids, super-volcanoes, and tsunamis? Much lower. There’s no *scientific* scenario for climate change posing an existential risk. By contrast, consider an asteroid.
Is there some place you can see an overview of the best-available science, complete with references? There is!

environmentalprogress.org/the-case-again…
Is there some easy-to-read book you can read that lays out the science on climate change, plastics, meat, species, energy, and food told through fun stories? There is!

amazon.com/Apocalypse-Nev…
Climate alarmism is harmful to mental health and is increasingly used as an excuse by politicians. They blame climate change for bad disaster preparedness and management. We see that with fires, flooding, and hurricanes. That’s bad for many reasons:

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-real-rea…
Q: If apocalyptic thinking is so easily debunked, why is it so powerful?

A:

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More from @shellenberger

Nov 12
The US and Australia have had a strong relationship for decades. Why, then, is Australia's Prime Minister @AlboMP attacking our relationship by pursuing mass global censorship, overtly aimed @elonmusk & X, which under previous management had banned @realDonaldTrump ? Image
Do the people of Australia know that their Prime Minister is undermining their nation's historically special relationship with the United States? Why would @AlboMP be doing this just days after the election of @realDonaldTrump, which was made possible by free speech on X?
@AlboMP @realDonaldTrump Is @AlboMP aware that Twitter, before it was purchased by @elonmusk , banned @realDonaldTrump, even though Twitter's own "Trust and Safety" Staff had determined that he had *not* violated its terms of service?

Here's what happened:

Read 16 tweets
Nov 9
They call it the “Democratic” party, but it’s not. They rigged 2016 for Hillary to beat Bernie. They got Klobuchar & Buttigieg to quit for Biden in 2020. They got Biden to quit for Kamala in 2024. Now they’re trying to get Sotomayor to quit for Kamala. It’s an authoritarian party Image
😳 Image
Kamala waited three whole days before getting the knives out Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 7
Many Democrats say they want to understand what happened. Few genuinely do. That's because, at some level, they know they're guilty of having participated in a witch hunt in which they falsely accused their fellow Americans, and even their friends & family, of fascism & racism.
Red Scare's @annakhachiyan is right: many of the people who loudly declared their fellow Americans racists and fascists are covert narcissists who now feel wounded and exposed by Kamala's defeat. At some level, they know they're guilty of witch-hunting and, per usual, are projecting.

People who spent years calling patriotic Americans brown shirts and worse are now saying it's time to be kind. This guy is not kind. Not at all. I'm for reconciliation; it's the higher road. But that can't happen until there's some acknowledgment of the deranged and psychopathic witch hunt the Woke carried out against innocent people for over a decade.Image
Read 6 tweets
Nov 6
Pure, perfect projection. The lack of self-awareness is awe-inspiring. Image
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FWIW, I don’t think the cope will continue. The loss of the popular vote, the rightward movement of every state, and the threat of long term dominance by a nonracial working class party will force a significant correction in message in 2026. Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 4
NBC last night aired a Trump message after a NASCAR race in an apparent effort to comply with the "equal time" rule after sparking controversy when it put Kamala Harris on SNL.

"A source familiar with the matter told the [Hill] Reporter the appearance was related to providing Trump with equal time."

It's a big victory that NBC acted. It shows that the public pressure we all brought to bear worked. X is game-changing. It's also further proof that NBC knew it was guilty.

But NBC still knowingly broke the law and interfered in the election, and it is still not in compliance with the law. That's because NBC promoted Harris and Kaine within seven days of election, the time was not comparable, and the other candidates, including Senator Tim Kaine's opponent, did not get comparable time.

There is no way that the time was comparable. The SNL skit was funny and humanizing and created by the best minds in television. The Trump campaign had to cobble something together at the last minute.

And, as of now, over 9 million people have watched the clip on YouTube. There's no way that 9 million people will see the Trump message that NBC put on after NASCAR.

As @BrendanCarrFCC notes, "The FCC adopted the seven-day rule to avoid gamesmanship by candidates (usually gamesmanship by the candidate seeking the Equal Time in the exemplar case) and for orderly planning (usually for the broadcaster)."

And, he notes, "NBC structured the SNL candidate appearance (just hours before an election) in a way that denies all other candidates their one week procedural right."

Finally, by law, NBC was required to give equal time to @HungCao_VA @RobertKennedyJr & @DrJillStein and it didn't.

NBC continues to act as though it is above the law. We should accept it as a victory that it felt the need to give Trump some time after NASCAR, but we should not let up the pressure.

Please, share this post to send a message to Congress and the FCC to hold @NBCUniversal accountable!

✊❤️Image
Over the last week, we have seen the news media engage in disinformation, election interference, and dirty tricks:

— The media made unsubstantiated claims that Trump admired Hitler, which was always ridiculous;

— The media, en masse, falsely claimed that the Trump rally in New York was "fascist" and that a comedian told a "racist" joke about about Puerto Rico;

— The media claimed that the Trump team had "fully embraced" vaccine skepticism;

— And the media falsely claimed that Trump had called for the assassination of @Liz_Cheney

For seven years, the media has demanded mass censorship, by it and the US government, of social media, including X. They are still demanding it.

They have justified their demands for censorship by citing alleged "election misinformation," "vaccine misinformation," and "election interference.

And yet now, just in the last week, the media have engaged in all three.

It's only thanks to @elonmusk's purchase of X that the public has achieved, for the first time, true freedom of speech on the Internet.

It has allowed independent journalists to expose media disinformation in real-time.

For that reason, the media are obsessed with shutting down X. If @KamalaHarris is elected president, that's a real possibility.

I reached out to multiple people at CNN and NBC yesterday to request comment on their disinformation and election interference. None have responded.

It's clear that they believe they are not only above the law, they don't have to comply with their own demands for honesty and accuracy.

x.com/shellenberger/…
Join us tomorrow night for the antidote to legacy media disinformation!

Read 4 tweets
Nov 3
The producer of Saturday Night Live said neither Harris nor Trump would appear on the show "because of election laws." Last night, about 60 hours before polls open, he put Harris on the show in a warm & humanizing sketch. He and NBC violated the equal time provision of the law.Image
On October 1, 2024, Hollywood Reporter published this article. It said, "In a recent interview ahead of the show’s 50th season, SNL creator and long-running maestro Lorne Michaels revealed that he hadn’t reached out to the real-life candidates, and he didn’t intend to before the 2024 election. 'You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions.'"Image
That article linked to a September 19 interview between Michaels and SNL cast members, Colin Jost and Michael Che.

Weirdly, however, the September 19 does not contain the Lorne Michaels quote referred to in the October 1 Hollywood Reporter article.

hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features…

Even more weirdly, neither does the WayBack Machine's first capture of the article on September 19.

web.archive.org/web/2024091913…Image
Read 9 tweets

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