Recent drought trends in the United States are increasing, decreasing or not changing. What is it? In fact all of the trends are correct depending on the time scale selected. From 1933 the trend is increasing, from 1981 it is decreasing, while over the longest period from 1895 it has not changed. The claims now backing the Net Zero madness are bad weather events and selected statistics such as the above. They are little more than junk sound bites and are incapable of providing any useful insight into a changing climate. Most of the scare stories spread constantly by activists masquerading as journalists are “cartoonish media caricatures of climate change” observes the distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. in a new series on his Honest Broker Substack.
For starters, Pielke takes issue with the term “climate change”, which he notes does not affect the weather. It is a statistical outcome of the aggregation of individual meteorological events, not the cause of bad weather, human or otherwise. Climate change, as the U.S. drought example shows, varies across all time scales. Determining that one weather event is attributed to human involvement is impossible, with Pielke adding that extreme events are actually among the worst places to look for changes in the climate. They occur rarely, long-term observations are limited, and detection of change takes time.
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