Economy
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!
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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!
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- 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/ - 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”
·AUGUST 17, 2023Read 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.”
·JULY 19, 2023Read 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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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
MxM News
Quick Hit:
President Trump said the 145% tariff rate on Chinese imports will drop significantly once a deal is struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping, expressing confidence that a new agreement is on the horizon.
Key Details:
- Trump said the current 145% tariff rate on China “won’t be anywhere near that high” after negotiations.
- He pointed to his relationship with Xi Jinping as a reason for optimism.
- The White House said it is preparing the groundwork for a deal, and Treasury officials expect a “de-escalation” of the trade war.
Diving Deeper:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters that the steep tariff rate currently imposed on Chinese imports will come down substantially after his administration finalizes a new trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While the current level stands at 145%, Trump made clear that number was temporary and would be adjusted following talks with Beijing.
“145 percent is very high. It won’t be that high, it’s not going to be that high … it won’t be anywhere near that high,” Trump said from the Oval Office, signaling a shift once a bilateral agreement is reached. “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”
The tariff, which Trump previously described as “reciprocal,” was maintained on China even after he delayed similar penalties on other trading partners. Those were cut to 10% and paused for 90 days to allow room for further negotiation.
“We’re going to be very nice. They’re going to be very nice, and we’ll see what happens. But ultimately, they have to make a deal because otherwise they’re not going to be able to deal in the United States,” Trump said, reinforcing his view that the U.S. holds the leverage.
Trump’s remarks come as markets remain wary of ongoing trade tensions, though the White House signaled progress, saying it is “setting the stage for a deal with China.” The president cited his personal rapport with Xi Jinping as a key factor in his confidence that an agreement can be reached.
“China was taking us for a ride, and it’s not going to happen,” Trump said. “They would make billions a year off us and build up their military with our money. That’s over. But we’ll still be good to China, and I think we’ll work together.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said Tuesday that he expects a cooling of trade hostilities between the two nations, according to several reports from a private meeting with investors.
As the 90-day pause on other reciprocal tariffs nears its end, Trump emphasized that his team is prepared to finalize deals quickly. “We’ve been in talks with many, many world leaders,” he said, expressing confidence that talks will “go pretty quickly.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added that the administration has received 18 formal proposals from other countries engaged in trade negotiations, another sign that momentum is building behind Trump’s broader push to restructure global trade in favor of American workers and businesses.
(Li Xueren/Xinhua via AP)
From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill and Jake Fuss
Corporate welfare simply shifts jobs and investment away from other firms and industries—which are more productive, as they don’t require government funding to be economically viable—to the governments’ preferred industries and firms, circumventing the preferences of consumers and investors. And since politicians spend other people’s money, they have little incentive to be careful investors.
General Motors recently announced the temporary closure of its electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing plant in Ontario, laying off 500 people because its new EV isn’t selling. The plant will shut down for six months despite hundreds of millions in government subsides financed by taxpayers. This is just one more example of corporate welfare—when governments subsidize favoured industries and companies—and it’s time for the provinces and the next federal government to eliminate it.
Between the federal government and Ontario government, GM received about $500 million to help fund its EV transition. But this is just one example of corporate welfare in the auto sector. Stellantis and Volkswagen will receive about $28 billion in government subsidies while Honda is promised $5 billion.
More broadly, from 2007 to 2019, the last pre-COVID year of data, the federal government spent an estimated $84.6 billion (adjusted for inflation) on corporate welfare while provincial and local governments spent another $302.9 billion. And crucially, these numbers exclude other forms of government support such as loan guarantees, direct investments and regulatory privileges, so the actual cost of corporate welfare during this period was much higher.
Of course, politicians claim that corporate welfare benefits workers. Yet according to a significant body of research, corporate welfare fails to generate widespread economic benefit. Think of it this way—if the businesses that received subsidies were viable to begin with, they wouldn’t need government support. So unprofitable companies are kept in business through governments’ support, which can prevent resources, including investment and workers, from moving to profitable companies, hurting overall economic growth.
Put differently, rather than fuelling economic growth, corporate welfare simply shifts jobs and investment away from other firms and industries—which are more productive, as they don’t require government funding to be economically viable—to the governments’ preferred industries and firms, circumventing the preferences of consumers and investors. And since politicians spend other people’s money, they have little incentive to be careful investors.
Governments also must impose higher tax rates on everyone else to pay for corporate welfare. In turn, higher tax rates discourage entrepreneurship and business investment—again, which fuels economic growth. And the higher the tax rates, the more economic activity they discourage.
GM’s EV plant shut down once again proves that when governments try to engineer the economy with corporate welfare, workers will ultimately lose. It’s time for the provinces and the next federal government—whoever it may be—to finally put an end to this costly and ineffective policy approach.
Tegan Hill
Jake Fuss
Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute
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