International
There’s no scientific evidence of ‘human-induced climate change’ causing stronger hurricanes
From LifeSiteNews
The scientific consensus on hurricanes, which isn’t covered by breathless climate reporting, is that humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. We must demand honesty and contextual complexity on climate reporting.
As Hurricane Beryl barreled its way across the Gulf of Mexico and into the U.S. mainland, the attention-getting headlines had beaten it there by a long shot – claims that it was a remarkable outlier were appearing in climate-frantic narratives more than a week earlier.
CBS News claimed it was “historic,” alongside headlines on “How to talk to your kids about climate anxiety.” The BBC reported that it was “the first hurricane to reach the category four level in June since NHC [National Hurricane Center] records began and the earliest to hit category five – the highest category – in July.” While technically true, and warranting some mention, the claims tend to misrepresent, by implication and association, the current scientific understanding of hurricanes and human impacts on climate change.
The scientific consensus on hurricanes, a consensus not covered by breathless reporting on climate, is that humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. The National Climate Assessment published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, for instance, in Appendix 3 reads:
There has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones nor has any trend been identified in the number of US land-falling hurricanes.
So what’s actually going on? Is Beryl’s historic early arrival an indication of something fundamentally different about hurricane activity? Does it or does it not represent the bitter fruit of humanity’s ecological sins? The answer is almost certainly not. Rather, the hype around Beryl’s early arrival represents a major misunderstanding, a mass-bias phenomenon which sees evidence where evidence doesn’t really exist.
Historically speaking, of course, hurricanes are commonplace in the Gulf. “Hurricane” derives from the prehistoric Taíno name for the god of evil winds, Jurucán. The Spanish quickly adopted the name to describe the violent storms which wreaked such havoc on their exploratory efforts in the New World. Both the 1527 Narváez and 1539 De Soto expeditions, for example, were pummeled by hurricanes that may well have reached category five, had the NHC been around to classify them as such. So while it is conceivable that Beryl is a major anomaly and portent of evil tidings, it is very unlikely to be.
Instead, its media portrayal as Exhibit A in the case for anthropogenic climate change is fundamentally inaccurate. Today’s dire headlines are a perfect example of what Steve Koonin, in his book Unsettled, calls “the long game of telephone that starts with the research literature and runs through the [scientific] assessment reports to the summaries of the assessment reports and on to the media coverage.”
The media, he says, often end up distributing a narrative that is directly counter to the actual evidence. They do this partly from misunderstanding the scientific and statistical significance of observations, but mostly because extreme headlines fit a generally understood narrative. Such reports are far more likely to be recognized and absorbed by the news-reading public. This selective attention pushes a bias toward extremism in climate reporting that significantly inflames the political climate, to our collective detriment.
Not widely reported, for instance, are counter-narrative facts such as that since 2011, major hurricane counts have dropped below their 170-year average. Or the fact that the Great Barrier Reef, once a poster-child of climate doom, has now hit record levels of coral cover. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to picture what the headlines would read if these positive facts were reversed: “Major Hurricanes: Highest Number in Centuries!” or “Barrier Reef Records Lowest Coverage in Recorded History.” These are headlines we can easily envision, but have not seen, because they are entirely backward.
Instead, what happens is that reports which are technically true (like Beryl’s record early arrival) make it into the common current only if they fit the general alarmist narrative. The BBC perfectly exemplifies this in its coverage, noting that “Hurricane Beryl’s record-breaking nature has put the role of climate change in the spotlight.” It then goes on to say, toward the end of an article most people will never fully read:
The causes of individual storms are complex, making it difficult to fully attribute specific cases to climate change. But exceptionally high sea surface temperatures are seen as a key reason why Hurricane Beryl has been so powerful.
This is how the slight-of-hand works: BBC reporters, no doubt in interviews with hurricane experts, were obliged to quibble somewhat about the implications of Beryl’s record-setting classification. They properly note that it is “difficult” (impossible, in fact) to attribute Beryl’s record to climate change as such. And they are correct that high sea surface temperatures are a major factor in Beryl’s extraordinary rise. But it is the way these technical truths are presented that leads to errors in association. Very few casual readers would be likely to read the article, headlined with “How record-breaking Hurricane Beryl is a sign of a warming world” and not make an inductive leap to the causal inference of human-induced warming. This is a problem, because such an inference is in fact not substantiated by any scientifically accepted observations.
Now, to be sure, this works both ways. This is not a claim that human emissions have no impacts, after all, only that we must be very careful about what the evidence actually says before channeling it into policy recommendations. Nor is my point that we can safely disregard all negative reports about the environment, since there are clearly issues that warrant our genuine collective attention. For instance, I’ve played a bit of sleight-of-hand myself: I correctly noted that major hurricanes are below the historical average, but I did not highlight the fact that overall hurricane count is up. Likewise with the Great Barrier Reef: while coral coverage is remarkably up, the kind of monoculture coral crop accounting for the rise still leaves room for ecological concern.
The real point is that we must demand honesty, including contextual complexity, on climate reporting. Especially since the stakes are so high (either in matters of our environment or individual liberty), we cannot afford to play games with half-truths and obfuscations. Intelligent free people deserve fuller, more comprehensive, less-activist reporting on climate change. Beryl has made a record of sorts, yes. What that record really means in the context of human-induced climate change is fundamentally, scientifically unknown. Maybe that would be a better headline.
Reprinted with permission from the American Institute for Economic Research.
From LifeSiteNews
Maggie Braun, the founder of Kicking International Council out of Local Environmental Initiatives, told LifeSiteNews that there are ‘small wins happening every day’ against globalism by pro-local Canadians.
A pro-freedom advocate told LifeSiteNews that many Canadians have already successfully stood up to the meddling of the United Nations’ globalist agenda, encouraging all citizens to know their rights under the law to protect their local communities.
During a November 20 discussion at the Rankin Culture and Recreation Centre in Pembroke, Ontario, about the ways in which the United Nations are breaking municipal laws and violating property rights in an effort to achieve their globalist goals, Maggie Braun, the founder of Kicking International Council out of Local Environmental Initiatives (KICLEI), shared just what Canadians have been doing to successfully stand up for their local communities.
“There’s small wins happening every day,” Braun told LifeSiteNews in an interview before the discussion.
“Counselors opening up and communicating with the community and our concerns and just bridging that gap and sharing and exchanging information with them and slowly watching them start to make moves to withdraw from the programs or shut down renewable energy projects that don’t make sense in their area,” she shared as an example of successful pushback.
KICLEI is an organization dedicated to empowering local governments to address the needs in their community, and not to blindly follow the direction of groups like the UN.
The group also works to ensure “every Canadian enjoys the right to privacy, property, and self-determination, while fostering respect for our cultural and regional diversity.”
According to Braun, her goal is to “advocate for local environmental stewardship programs over globally mandated climate action plans” by informing Canadians of their property rights, particularly with respect to the attempted implementation of the UN’s climate policies.
“We’ve discovered that these programs are coming in through an organization called ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who have brought certain programs down to the municipal level to drive climate action plans,” Braun explained.
Following this discovery, Braun has been working to bring awareness to the issue and persuade city and town councils to vote against UN recommendations which would undermine their citizens’ sovereignty. She revealed that her first victory was in Thorold, Ontario.
Braun explained that a group of four “saw that the environmental committee had openings,” and decided to send delegations to the meeting, start petitions and pack the council with support.
“We did four delegations in a row and by the end of it the staff recommended that they withdraw from the program,” Braun stated. “We just had to show up and do the basic work and it worked.”
“That was our first big win and now we’ve taken those strategies, developed tools that we can bring across the country” to help citizens “push back on the climate action plan.”
Earlier in November, Maggie Hope Braun told LifeSiteNews via email that the meeting will address how global agendas, “particularly UN climate initiatives,” are reshaping municipal priorities and policies across Canada.
Braun voiced concerned over local governments feeling pressured to adopt policies set by international organizations rather than responding to local priorities.
“Programs aligned with UN climate goals often come with strings attached, especially regarding federal funding, which can compel municipalities to follow UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to access resources,” she wrote. “This reliance can dilute local autonomy, making it difficult for municipalities to allocate budgets according to their own needs, as funding is often tied to specific climate-related expenditures—like electric fleets—that may not suit every community’s practical or economic realities.”
She added that these programs often introduce costly mandates, increase taxes, and, in some cases, affect privacy through the use of data-monitoring smart technologies, all of which can strain communities financially and socially.
“Canadians are beginning to feel these pressures, and many are questioning the long-term impacts on their rights, privacy, and economic well-being,” Braun stated.
Braun’s concerns are hardly unfounded as in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an “urgent” call for countries around the world to sign on to their sovereignty-undermining “Pandemic Accord” by May. However, as May came around, countries were still unable to agree on the treaty, with many refusing to sign away their sovereign rights.
As a result, the treaty was not signed into law, but critics have warned that the WHO will likely continues its efforts to coerce countries to sign the document.
Similarly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “pandemic prevention and preparedness” bill is set to become law despite concerns raised by Conservative senators that it gives sweeping powers to government, particularly over agriculture.
From LifeSiteNews
Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked about the motives of outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to escalate the NATO conflict with Russia. He responds by outlining genuine motives that political pundits in the U.S. pretend not to know.
During an appearance in Kazakhstan last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin had a press conference with Russian journalists who asked questions about the current conflict with Ukraine.
Before getting to the video, it is worth mentioning that our Western viewpoint of Russia respecting strength is not entirely accurate. There is something Russians respect more than strength: brutal honesty.
One of the things that separates Russians from their Eastern European counterparts is their keen ability to detect and dismiss b******t. If you watch Russian engagement, from either inside or outside of Russia, their non-pretending is truly an art form. Even the silent space between their words is something remarkable to watch.
In this first video segment, Russian President Putin is asked about the motives of outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to escalate the NATO conflict with Russia. President Putin responds by outlining genuine, factual, and honest motives that political pundits in the U.S. pretend not to know. It’s fascinating to watch:
Why the presser? Why the questions? Why the willingness? Look, I’m no Putin whisperer, but I can see a brutally obvious motive of Vladimir Putin speaking directly to President Trump, through the media. For a myriad of reasons, including the honesty of his responses and statements, this approach seems completely logical and practical.
This next segment is even more interesting.
In this segment, Vladimir Putin is describing his views on President Trump and the status of his perspective toward Donald Trump against the backdrop of what Putin witnessed. Of course, the opportunity for passive aggressive snark is available, and Putin would not be Russian if he did not take the opportunity troll the U.S. government at the same time. Watch:
Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.
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