Climate researchers show we’re actually “safer than ever from climate” catastrophes

The climate safety denial movement

I and others have documented that we’re safer than ever from climate. Catastrophists can’t refute us, so they’re now saying that disaster deaths don’t matter!

For decades climate catastrophists have portrayed climate disasters as getting deadlier and deadlier.

Now that I and others have documented that we’re safer than ever from climate, catastrophists are saying that disaster deaths don’t matter!

Reuters says “Drop in climate-related disaster deaths not evidence against climate emergency.”
But a drop in deaths from something—here, a 98% drop—is obvious evidence against it being an emergency.

Would Reuters say: “98% drop in flu deaths not evidence against flu emergency”?¹

Why is Reuters, along with The New York Times, PolitiFact, and USA Today, claiming that a 98% drop in climate disaster deaths doesn’t contradict their climate emergency narrative? Because it obviously does, and they can only save their narrative by intimidating us into denying the obvious.²

The central narrative of climate catastrophists is that fossil fuels and their CO2 emissions are killing more and more people via climate disasters.

This narrative has always had a fatal weakness: it totally contradicts the data, which show plummeting climate disaster deaths.³

Why are climate disaster deaths plummeting as fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions rise?
Because the enormous ability uniquely cost-effective and scalable fossil fuel energy gives us to master climate danger far outweighs any new climate challenges from CO2 emissions.

An example of fossil-fueled climate mastery overwhelming CO2 impacts is drought.

Any contribution of rising CO2 to drought has been overwhelmed by fossil-fueled irrigation and crop transport, which have helped reduce drought deaths by over 100 times over 100 years as CO2 levels have risen.⁴

Over the last decade, I and a number of others, including Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, have challenged catastrophism by pointing to declining climate disaster deaths.

Catastrophists couldn’t refute our argument. So instead they pretended it didn’t exist.

Until last year.⁵

In 2023, climate catastrophists finally felt compelled to address the fact that climate disaster deaths have plummeted (driven by fossil-fueled climate mastery).
Because of honesty? No—because Presidential candidates started bringing it up and persuading people with it.

Here is Vivek Ramaswamy during his Presidential campaign referring to a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths—and, crucially, giving fossil fuel energy credit.

Here is Ron DeSantis during his Presidential campaign referring to a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths—and, crucially, giving fossil fuel energy credit.

The 98% decline in climate disaster deaths, driven by fossil fuels, is a blockbuster fact: it shows that we are experiencing not fossil-fueled climate emergency but fossil-fueled climate safety.
But instead of being happy, catastrophists engage in climate safety denial.
Here are 3 recent instances of climate safety denial—from Reuters, PolitiFact, and USA Today. All have long portrayed climate deaths as a fast-increasing problem. But now they claim deaths don’t matter.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/drop-climate-related-disaster-deaths-not-evidence-against-climate-emergency-2023-09-19/
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/aug/24/vivek-ramaswamy/vivek-ramsaswamys-misleading-gop-debate-claim-abou/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/11/27/false-claim-disaster-deaths-show-climate-change-not-real-fact-check/71249882007/
Climate safety denial utilizes 5 main myths to evade the decline in disaster deaths:
1. Fossil fuels don’t deserve credit
2. Weather forecasting deserves the credit
3. 100 years is a misleading period
4. Damages are drastically increasing
5. There’s a major increase in reported disasters

Myth 1: Fossil fuels don’t deserve much credit for plummeting climate disaster deaths; it’s “resilience.”

Truth: Uniquely cost-effective and scalable fossil fuel energy makes us resilient through plentiful infrastructure-building, heating and cooling, irrigation, transportation, etc.⁶

Myth 2: Storm warning systems deserve the credit for plummeting climate disaster deaths.

Truth: Drought, not storm, deaths are the leading source of reduced climate deaths. And fossil fuels power storm warning and evacuation systems (and more resilient infrastructure).⁷

Myth 3: 100 years is a misleading period to measure plummeting climate disaster deaths.

Truth: 100 years is a standard, very meaningful period to look at. While we have data going back an additional two decades, those tend to underreport due to less global communication.⁸

Contrary to the claim that starting analysis of climate disaster deaths in the 1920s overestimates the decline, it actually likely underestimates the decline due to insufficient past reporting; data before WWII extremely likely underreport deaths compared to data after 2000.

Myth 4: There is an alarming increase in reported disasters, revealing an underlying climate emergency.

Truth: The increase in reported disasters over time is due overwhelmingly to increased global communication. Changes in fundamentals, such as storms, are extremely modest.⁹

The claim that more reported disasters show an increasingly dangerous climate is absurd in light of the fact that underlying data show massive increases in reporting before significant human climate impacts and the reporting trend also massively goes up for non-climate causes!

Other biases might inflate the number of reported disasters. E.g., governments of poor countries have an incentive to declare more disasters with increasing international relief.¹⁰

Using obviously problematic disaster frequency reporting instead of direct climatological evidence to try and show increasing climate danger is a revealing choice by catastrophists. They are making it because the climate change we’ve experienced has been very modest—and masterable.

Do Not Declare a “Climate Emergency”

ALEX EPSTEIN

AUGUST 17, 2023

Read full story

An example of unalarming climate fundamentals: neither the frequency nor the energy in global hurricanes has changed significantly relative to the noisy average. There is also little evidence for more landfalling hurricanes.¹¹

The catastrophist attempt to undermine the 98% decrease in disaster deaths by pointing to the increased reporting of disasters is actually self-defeating.
If disaster deaths are plummeting despite incomplete past reporting, that means they’ve declined by even more than 98%.

Myth 5: Climate damages are drastically increasing, revealing an underlying climate emergency.

Truth: Even though there are many incentives for climate damages to go up—preferences for riskier areas, government bailouts—GDP-adjusted damages are flat.¹²

We often hear that “billion-dollar disasters” have increased significantly. But this is a bogus metric. Of course, as GDP grows we’ll have more billion-dollar disasters because there is more wealth for disasters to strike. But when we adjust for GDP there’s no increase in damage.¹³

A Reuters “fact check” alarmingly claims a 151% growth in disaster damages from a period starting in 1978 to a period ending in 2017.

But they evade that the global economy grew by over 200% during that period!

(And they evade that disaster and damage reporting increased.)¹⁴

The stupidest climate safety denial myth (used by The New York Times): 2 million people died from extreme weather in the last 50 years; that’s obviously an emergency.

Truth: 2 million in 50 years is a rate of 40,000 per year—far, far less than 100 years ago, thus confirming today’s climate safety.¹⁵

The last-gasp climate safety denial myth: Okay, we’re safer than ever from climate disasters, and it is driven by cheap energy from fossil fuels, but we can easily replace fossil fuels with solar and wind.

Truth: For the foreseeable future there is no cheap global energy without fossil fuels.

The ultimate debunking of “solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.”

ALEX EPSTEIN

JULY 19, 2023

Read full story

Observe that all these seemingly scientific outlets, such as The New York Times, Reuters, and PolitiFact are totally unable to refute the death-blow to their “climate emergency” narrative that is the drastic decline in climate disaster deaths.

Science requires that they admit defeat.

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Reuters – Fact Check: Drop in climate-related disaster deaths not evidence against climate ‘emergency’

NYT – Fact-Checking Vivek Ramaswamy on the Campaign Trail

PolitiFact – More deaths from climate policies than climate change? Scientists say Ramaswamy’s claim is baseless

USA Today – Video wrongly claims past disaster deaths show climate change isn’t real | Fact check

UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 per year during the 2010s.

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data

Related Topics:#AlexEpstein #ClimateCatastrophes #ClimateDisasters

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Debunking the myth of the ‘new economy’

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Debunking the myth of the ‘new economy’

Published on January 22, 2025

Todayville

From Resource Works

Where the money comes from isn’t hard to see – if you look at the facts

In British Columbia, the economy is sometimes discussed through the lens of a “new economy” focused on urbanization, high-tech innovation, and creative industries. However, this perspective frequently overlooks the foundational role that the province’s natural resource industries play in generating the income that fuels public services, infrastructure, and daily life.

The Economic Reality

British Columbia’s economy is highly urbanized, with 85% of the population living in urban areas as of the 2021 Census, concentrated primarily in the Lower Mainland and the Capital Regional District.
These metropolitan regions contribute significantly to economic activity, particularly in population-serving sectors like retail, healthcare, and education. However, much of the province’s income—what we call the “first dollar”—originates in the non-metropolitan resource regions.

Natural resources remain the backbone of British Columbia’s economy. Industries such as forestry, mining, energy, and agriculture generate export revenue that flows into the provincial economy, supporting urban and rural communities alike. These sectors are not only vital for direct employment but also underpin metropolitan economic activities through the export income they generate.

They also pay taxes, fees, royalties, and more to governments, thus supporting public services and programs.

Exports: The Tap Filling the Economic Bathtub

The analogy of a bathtub aptly describes the provincial economy:

Exports are the water entering the tub, representing income from goods and services sold outside the province.
Imports are the water draining out, as money leaves the province to purchase external goods and services.
The population-serving sector circulates water within the tub, but it depends entirely on the level of water maintained by exports.

In British Columbia, international exports have historically played a critical role. In 2022, the province exported $56 billion worth of goods internationally, led by forestry products, energy, and minerals. While metropolitan areas may handle the logistics and administration of these exports, the resources themselves—and the wealth they generate—are predominantly extracted and processed in rural and resource-rich regions.

Metropolitan Contributions and Limitations

Although metropolitan regions like Vancouver and Victoria are often seen as economic powerhouses, they are not self-sustaining engines of growth. These cities rely heavily on income generated by resource exports, which enable the public services and infrastructure that support urban living. Without the wealth generated in resource regions, the urban economy would struggle to maintain its standard of living.

For instance, while tech and creative industries are growing in prominence, they remain a smaller fraction of the provincial economy compared to traditional resource industries. The resource sectors accounted for nearly 9% of provincial GDP in 2022, while the tech sector contributed approximately 7%.

Moreover, resource exports are critical for maintaining a positive trade balance, ensuring that the “economic bathtub” remains full.

A Call for Balanced Economic Policy

Policymakers and urban leaders must recognize the disproportionate contribution of British Columbia’s resource regions to the provincial economy. While urban areas drive innovation and service-based activities, these rely on the income generated by resource exports. Efforts to increase taxation or regulatory burdens on resource industries risk undermining the very foundation of provincial prosperity.

Furthermore, metropolitan regions should actively support resource-based industries through partnerships, infrastructure development, and advocacy. A balanced economic strategy—rooted in both urban and resource region contributions—is essential to ensure long-term sustainability and equitable growth across British Columbia.

At least B.C. Premier David Eby has begun to promise that “a new responsible, sustainable development of natural resources will be a core focus of our government,” and has told resource leaders that “Our government will work with you to eliminate unnecessary red tape and bureaucratic processes.” Those leaders await the results.

Conclusion

British Columbia’s prosperity is deeply interconnected, with urban centres and resource regions playing complementary roles. However, the evidence is clear: the resource sectors, particularly in the northern half of the province, remain the primary engines of economic growth. Acknowledging and supporting these industries is not only fair but also critical to sustaining the provincial economy and the public services that benefit all British Columbians.

Sources:

Statistics Canada: Census 2021 Population and Dwelling Counts.
BC Stats: Economic Accounts and Export Data (2022).
Natural Resources Canada: Forestry, Mining, and Energy Sector Reports.
Trade Data Online: Government of Canada Export and Import Statistics.

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Undemocratic tax hike will kill hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs

Published on January 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Devin Drover

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is demanding the Canada Revenue Agency immediately halt enforcement of the proposed capital gains tax hike which is now estimated to kill over 400,000 Canadian jobs, according to the CD Howe Institute.

“Enforcing the capital gains tax hike before it’s even law is not only undemocratic overreach by the CRA, but new data reveals it could also destroy over 400,000 Canadian jobs,” said Devin Drover, CTF General Counsel and Atlantic Director. “The solution is simple: the CRA shouldn’t enforce this proposed tax hike that hasn’t been passed into law.”

A new report from the CD Howe Institute reveals that the proposed capital gains tax hike could slash 414,000 jobs and shrink Canada’s GDP by nearly $90 billion, with most of the damage occurring within five years.

This report was completed in response to the Trudeau government’s plan to raise the capital gains inclusion rate for the first time in 25 years. While a ways and means motion for the hike passed last year, the necessary legislation has yet to be introduced, debated, or passed into law.

With Parliament prorogued until March 24, 2025, and all opposition parties pledging to topple the Liberal government, there’s no reasonable probability the legislation will pass before the next federal election.

Despite this, the CRA is pushing ahead with enforcement of the tax hike.

“It’s Parliament’s job to approve tax increases before they’re implemented, not the unelected tax collectors,” said Drover. “Canadians deserve better than having their elected representatives treated like a rubberstamp by the prime minister and the CRA.

“The CRA must immediately halt its plans to enforce this unapproved tax hike, which threatens to undemocratically take billions from Canadians and cripple our economy.”