We are continually being told that climate change is getting worse and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and intense. Neither is true.
Tropical hurricanes have battered the southeast for centuries, spanning the spectrum of severity. Category 4 and 5 storms, considered the worst of the worst, are nothing new; plenty occurred prior to the world’s so-called addiction to fossil fuels. The Labor Day Storm, considered one of Florida’s most powerful and destructive hurricanes, hit their shores in 1935. Governor DeSantis recently said, “This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history. It’s something it will continue to deal with.”
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) records don’t indicate a strong correlation between hurricane intensity and carbon dioxide levels. Quite a few of those tropical storms struck various parts of the U.S. well before global warming became a concern.
Nor does NOAA show that tornadoes have become more powerful. The 1925 Tri-State Tornado, with a 219-mile path across three states in just 3.5 hours, is considered among the most intense.
When last year’s Maui wildfire raged, and many were quick to point fingers at climate change, countless climatologists cautioned not to link the two. Experts had warned for years that the over-grown brush and ignoring recommended mitigation measures would likely lead to deadly infernos.
Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not detect a strong relationship between climate change and extreme weather events.
Yet the panic-stricken rhetoric is driving energy policy with the belief that enacting legislation and overhauling how we develop and use energy will somehow alter global temperatures. Such drastic measures are affecting consumer welfare through energy shortfalls and price hikes, leaving increasing numbers of households energy poor. It has driven inflation and increased federal deficits. Adding insult to injury, these actions are having very little (if any) impact on climate.
Some researchers even assert that a few degrees of warming will benefit plant life and agriculture, and growing seasons will be longer. Renowned Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg often shares the fact that rising temperatures save lives because cold weather is more deadly.
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Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.