Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Oct 2, 2022 23 tweets 12 min read Read on X
Over the last week, the mainstream news media claimed that hurricanes are becoming more frequent & intense, but they’re not, as the data clearly show. What’s more, it’s clear that the media are engaging in *deliberate* misinformation. These aren’t innocent mistakes. ImageImage
Consider this article in @FT claiming that “hurricane frequency is on the rise,” based on NOAA data.

But NOAA says “After adjusting for a likely under-count of hurricanes in the pre-satellite era there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts.” ImageImageImage
In fact, NOAA writes, “The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s.” ImageImage
In other words, the graphic @FT chose to show of apparently rising hurricane frequency is, in reality, a graphic showing improved hurricane detection thanks to satellites.

What are the chances that FT reporter @Aime_Williams didn’t know this? I would guess close to zero.
It’s possible that @Aime_Williams was careless but I doubt it. I would bet good money that she read NOAA’s web site, which clearly warns that “there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts,” and chose to ignore it in order to sensationalize.

gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming…
What about intensity? Same story. Writes NOAA, “after adjusting for changes in observing capabilities (limited ship observations) in the pre-satellite era, there is no significant long-term trend (since the 1880s) in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.“
Bottom line? “We conclude that the data do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in:  frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.”
Against the best-available science, the news media unleashed a hurricane of misinformation using the exact same manipulation of data as @Aime_Williams. @FT

The quantity of pseudoscience & journalistic irresponsibility is breathtaking. ImageImageImageImage
And now it’s clear that activist scientists at the UN are working with Google to control the information available on climate change.

This is dark, chilling stuff.
To the extent the cost of hurricanes is rising it’s due entirely to greater wealth in harm’s way. Consider how much more developed Miami Beach is today compared to a century ago. Once you adjust for rising wealth, there is no trend of rising costs. ImageImage
Is it possible that hurricane intensity will rise in the future? Yes. NOAA predicts a 5% increase in hurricane intensity. But it also predicts a 25% decline in hurricane frequency.

I have not seen a single mainstream news media outlet mention any of this. Image
This is not complicated. The information is not hidden away somewhere. NOAA even boldfaces its key conclusion.

Journalists know this. They’ve been covering this for decades. It’s clear that they are actively trying to mislead the public.

gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming… Image
I have made a complete debunking of environmental alarmism available on-line. All slides have references to the best-available science or primary data.

environmentalprogress.org/the-case-again…
These are they key take-aways:

- weather-related disasters are declining not increasing

- rising human resilience massively outweighs climate change

- every major environmental trend is headed in the right direction ImageImageImage
I pushed back against misinformation on hurricanes and climate change in Congress last month at a hearing on… climate change misinformation
Final note: August had no hurricanes for the first time in 25 years. Hardly anybody wrote about it. Compare that to the wall of misinformation about a single hurricane last week.

The media have an agenda. They are peddling pseudoscience. They can’t be trusted. Image
Egregious misinformation by the @nytimes ImageImage

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More from @shellenberger

Sep 18
“The White House issued a rare rebuke of Brazil Tuesday for banning the country’s residents from accessing X in a free-speech struggle with the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.”

Finally! Image
Yes, this is real

“When it comes to social media, we have been very clear that we think that folks should have access to social media. It’s a form of freedom of speech,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to a press-briefing question from reporter Raquel Krähenbühl of Brazil’s TV Globo.

nypost.com/2024/09/17/us-…
Also today, members of Congress introduced anti-censorship legislation aimed at Brazil. LFG!!!
Read 4 tweets
Sep 16
Wow — massive free speech victory! Europe’s top censor has quit. This comes a few weeks after he got in trouble for sending an open letter to Elon Musk claiming his upcoming interview with Donald Trump might violate Europe’s censorship laws.
Here’s the backstory, including media coverage about how @ThierryBreton got in trouble with his colleagues in Brussels. I don’t know that he quit because of this but it may be that @vonderleyen and others felt he had become a liability in their crusade to censor the Internet:
@ThierryBreton @vonderleyen In his letter, @ThierryBreton says that @vonderleyen asked France to withdraw Breton’s name as a nominee to serve five more years for “personal reasons.” 🤔 Image
Read 4 tweets
Sep 7
Brazilian President Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes say they must block X to protect Brazil’s independence. X is a platform for dangerous, false, and hateful words, they say, and many of those words violate Brazil’s laws and Constitution.

But their censorship goes far beyond what Brazil’s constitution allows. The government demanded that X and other social media networks censor and ban individual people, including journalists and politicians. Such bans are immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional. They constitute election interference and undermine democracy by preventing candidates from getting the word out.

I agree that lying is wrong, hate speech is ugly, and there are limits to freedom of speech. We must not allow people to use words that directly result in physical violence.

But everybody lies, everybody engages in hate speech, and the limits to free speech must never include elections. Imagine what would happen if it were illegal to lie: everyone should go to prison starting with the journalists and politicians. As for hate speech, did Lula express hatred when he praised Adolf Hitler? Does he not express hatred every time he speaks of Elon Musk and Jair Bolsonaro?

People blame speech for the chaos of January 6 in the United States and January 8 in Brazil. But the events of those days resulted from inadequate security, not anything anyone said online. And if the government can censor disfavored election information, how would anyone ever know if the government stole an election? 

Democracy and secure elections depend on freedom of speech. The idea that we must censor speech to protect democracy ranks with other Orwellian ideas like “War is peace” and “Slavery is freedom.” For thousands of years, democracy and freedom walk hand in hand, as do censorship and dictatorship.

Everybody knows in their heart that censorship is wrong. We all know that we are imperfect and do not know everything. We know that we rely on others to discover the truth. Why, then, do so many people want censorship?Image
Please subscribe now to support our fight for free speech And to read the rest of the article!
The crowd was absolutely enormous. Without a doubt one of the largest free speech protests in history.
Read 7 tweets
Sep 5
The Washington Post has been attacking @elonmusk for years for not censoring more. Now, amazingly, it is praising him for standing up Brazil’s dictator. Image
“Whatever the threat to democracy that the accounts Mr. Moraes wanted gone might have posed, the threat from one government official limiting the speech of 220 million people is greater.”
“Taken together with Mr. Moraes’s choice to freeze the assets of internet-provider Starlink, a separate company of Mr. Musk’s, this move aligns Brazil not with the free world but with the likes of China and Russia.”
Read 11 tweets
Sep 2
Thousands of Brazilians are resisting the order by the Dictators Moraes and Lula. They include journalists and Senators from Left, Right, and center. And people in the federal capital, Brasilia, are able to access X without VPN. Moraes’ immoral censorship crusade is doomed.
Read 12 tweets
Aug 31
Unbelievable. President Lula’s own party, the PT, is breaking the law and posting on X. They are like the pig rulers from Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” The laws don’t apply to them. This is a what totalitarianism looks like.
The biggest media company in Brazil, Globo, which has been demanding censorship, is also breaking the law and posting on X. Globo is a state-funded propaganda network. Lula increased government funding for Globo by 60%. This is grotesque. Brazil’s elites are lawless.
George Orwell was a prescient genius Image
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Read 5 tweets

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