Last September, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres claimed climate, weather and water-related disasters had increased by 500% over the last 50 years. According to the political and environmental science writer Professor Roger Pielke this is “pure misinformation“. He goes on to suggest that “you will never find a more obvious and egregious wrong claim in public discussions from a more important institution”. Matters were made even worse, in Pielke’s view, because the false notion was “legitimised” by none other than the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), one of the founding bodies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Pielke refers to the graph above based on figures from CRED EM-DAT, the same database the WMO and Guterres based their false claim on. Of course 2022 is not fully complete, but total disasters will be around the 330 mark, and this will be similar to the average for the last decade. Compared with the 2000s, the numbers are about 10% lower.
Based on these data, said by CRED to be reliable since 2000, Pielke notes there is no evidence that the number of global and climate disasters is increasing. “That means that – undeniably – there is no evidence to support another false claim by the UN that, ‘The number of disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 each day, statistically speaking – by 2030’.”
Preliminary estimates suggest that around 11,000 people lost their lives this year as a result of weather and climate-related disasters, a figure around the average for the last decade. The overall death rate was about 0.14 people per million, and was one of the five lowest annual death rates since data were compiled. Pielke ventures that the figure is the lowest in all recorded human history. Just two decades ago, the figure was 20 times greater at 2.9 per million. The diminishing human impact of disasters is a science and policy success that is “widely under-appreciated”.
In fact, as the Daily Sceptic has repeatedly shown, such inconvenient facts are largely ignored in most mainstream media, as individual weather events are relentlessly catastrophised in the interest of upending society, via the Net Zero political project. Weather catastrophisation is now the main climate propaganda tool since global warming went off the boil over two decades ago. Pielke noted that he had spent 30 years working to understand trends in disasters. “Along the way, I’ve observed a concerted and successful effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow the false information to spread unchecked – and sometimes they will even help to amplify it,” he wrote.
“I am curious. When are journalists going to start reporting the facts about disasters, and call out disinformation,” he asked.
Don’t hold your breath just yet Professor, might be the reply. On September 14th, the Daily Sceptic reported that four leading Italian scientists had undertaken a major review of historical climate trends, and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ was not supported by the data. Our report went viral, was viewed over 25,000 times, retweeted over 9,000 times, and eventually made its way into other media outlets.
It led to the inevitable ‘fact-check’. State-owned Agence France-Presse reported that “top climate experts” said the paper “cherry picked” data. One of the experts was Friederike Otto who works out of Imperial College London, and is at the forefront of the pseudoscientific ‘attribution’ of single weather events to humans allegedly causing the climate to change. She said that “of course” the authors were not writing the article in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should have never been published,” she said.
As a result of this pressure, the publisher of the paper Springer Nature made the following announcement: “Readers are alerted that the conclusions reported in this manuscript are currently under dispute. The journal is investigating the issue”. Of course all science is “under dispute” (except, it seems, the ‘settled’ science of climate change), but that is not the reason why this shameful announcement was made. It remains on the paper to this day.
Pielke concludes that planet Earth is a place of extremes. Hurricanes, floods, drought, heatwaves and other types of extreme weather are normal and always have been. The ability of societies to prepare and recover from extreme events is a remarkable story of policy success – deaths related to disasters have plummet from millions per year a century ago to thousands per year over the past decade.
“Unfortunately nowadays, every weather and climate disaster becomes enlisted as a sort of ‘poster child’ for climate advocacy. Every extreme event and associated human impact is quickly turned into a symbol of something else – such as failed energy policies, rapacious fossil fuel companies, evil politicians, or callous jet-setting billionaires. It is a simple and powerful narrative, and one that is also incredibly misleading,” he concluded.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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A person in his position should be sacked immediately for outright lies!
LOL. It’s how he got there.
Integrity and consequences disappeared from politics with 9/11.
Since then, they can do and do whatever they want.
Any big NGO develops a life of its own, fights to grow and survive, outlives its usefulness and becomes a parasite. Needing money, they cast around for things to tax. Bingo! Carbon taxes fit the bill.
The question is, how do we-the-people protect ourselves against these natural harms. One idea might be to write a clause into their founding documents requiring a ten year audit of fit for purpose-ness. Like a sunset clause for temporary legislation, which otherwise becomes permanent. Any others?
500%? Why not 5 Trillion %? A ‘weather event’ means what? Windy day = extreme never before seen. Not a windy day = extreme since we expect wind at this time of year. Blah blah blah.
Defund the UN and WHO. Leave immediately. 2 finger salute.
He’s a socialist, no such thing as a honest socialist!
They are making everything up on the fly and take the p*ss out of the plebs.
We are living Solshenitzyn’s ‘lies’ statement now in the West.
Who is this person? What’s his qualification? What is his role and responsibilities exactly? Who delegated or elected him? Who pays his salary? Who or what does he represent? Why he thinks he is in a position to claim something? Why does he think people need to pay attention to his utterance?
All of the fact checkers are corrupt. They are not independent. They are paid for and represent the interests of NGOs and governments. We could just ignore them, but that is dangerous, they are used to justify censoring dissenting voices.
It is time for a new fact checker, one which sticks rigidly to actual science in an unarguable way. If it was funded by public donations I would certainly subscribe.
Well this is fortunate:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-woman-who-could-cancel-net-zero/
This should wake a few up, although the initial impacts will probably be used to secure the 2030 Agenda.
That deserves a lot more publicity
I agree john. Posting on here might help but sadly too many come on here, quick browse and then leave.
Some of the members are genuinely digging elsewhere and posting relevant finds on here but most seem to be ignored, unfortunately.
We keep trying though.
Anything that helps debunk the stupid, harmful idea that co2 drives climate is a good thing in my book.
Try https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/2021-05-26_hgss-2021-1_latest-version-of-the-manuscript.pdf
I have sent links to Prof Richet’s essay to the great and the good. With a couple of honourable exceptions they don’t want to know.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cop27-understanding-climate-change-un-hidden-agenda-behind-catastrophic-global-warming/5802882
A cracking article which helps demolish the lies of such as Guterres.
“UN Secretary-General António Guterres Falsely Claims Weather Disasters Have Increased 500% in 50 Years”
No doubt reported as an indisputable fact across the world.
If anyone needs someone to talk to we meet every Sunday.
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Make friends & keep sane
From 1st January 2023
Elms Field (near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Most of the pronouncements from the Official Science Lectern are a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency. But when most people around the world are too busy with work and family life to investigate every issue, they simply get away with it. When people hear things repeated from what they think are reliable sources backed up by what would seem to them to be the whole of science, it is difficult to get people to listen to alternative points of view which they will tend to consider as “Conspiracy Theories”, because they have listened to mainstream media who they assume are investigative journalists.—————– People can become like a rabbit in the headlights when you present them with information that runs counter to what they have heard on the TV News. When you tell them eg that Polar Bears are growing in number and have increased 5-fold in the last 60 years, you get this blank stare. ———It is the kind of stare unlike any other. It is a stare caused by brain freeze as they try to process the information. It is like that Robot in the old series “Lost in Space”, where the robot goes into meltdown with shrieks of “Does not compute”. “Does not compute” before it grinds to a halt.—- Basically though climate officialdom can make all manner of claims with zero evidence to back it up, and then claim it is “science” because most ordinary people don’t realise that if something cannot be falsified then it ISN’T science. Science is not a dictatorship. Science is not decided by a show of hands from government funded data adjusters and bureaucrats seeking control of the world’s wealth and resources.————-People need to realise the extent to which this political agenda masquerading as science will affect every aspect of their life and their freedom and prosperity, because if they don’t then their freedom and prosperity will be GONE.
Excellent post.