From ClimateREALISM
By Linnea Lueken
A new article on New York Post by Bjorn Lomborg, entitled “Shrinking islands, disappearing polar bears – climate horror stories that turn out to be false,” shows that many of the harms the mainstream media claim climate change is supposed to cause, for example, to polar bears. , the Great Barrier Reef, and Pacific island nations, has not happened. This is true. None of the disasters that climate alarmists say have happened.
Lomborg writes that two main themes can be seen in the past 20 years of coverage of climate change by the government and the media: “The reluctance of campaigners to acknowledge the inconvenient science, and the favorite story that constantly changes, first up and then down the road.”
He says what’s constant in these stories is a “fixation to scare the public, which in turn creates bad climate policy.”
This is true; is well illustrated by the changing narrative of global greening in particular. Years ago, the dominant narrative was that desertification, or the death of fertile ecosystems, was our future due to climate change. This is presented as a disaster in the media and schools. Now, decades of data show the opposite is happening, with leaf coverage slowing amid mild warming, alarmists say. greening dangerous, as discussed in detail Climate Realism post.
Lomborg explores various illustrative examples of climate crisis stories that are false, and sometimes left out or downplayed because they have been falsified by data that has emerged over time. One of the case studies Lomborg discussed was polar bear madness.
He wrote that “after years of misrepresentation, we finally can’t ignore the evidence that points to it global polar bear population has increased from about 12,000 in the 1960s to about 26,000 today.
The alarmist media is trying to claim that melting sea ice is causing more polar bear encounters and aggression towards humans. However, a simpler explanation is that there are more bears than ever before, and also more humans in the area living in the wild. This is another attempt by the media to spin a positive (a bear population recovering from previous overhunting) into a negative.
The second false alarm case study Lomborg discusses is the decline of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and other coral reefs.
Lomborg recalled that “scientists predicted the reef would be destroyed by 2022,” and “The Guardian even published an obituary.” They confirmed that the GBR will have more coral cover by 2024 than at any time since records began in 1985.
“Good news gets a fraction of the coverage that horror stories do,” Lomborg wrote.
Climate at a Glance and Climate Realism have repeatedly had to debunk false claims made in the media that the GBR and other barrier reefs are falling, so Lomborg’s point is accurate. It is rare for the media to report good news the way they do bad news about ecosystems such as the GBR, a shameful admission from their people after decades of disaster. Although he reports on reef records and data trends, both globally and in the GBR, he can’t help but remember that he can still reverse course and die.
Lomborg also disputed claims that islands like Tuvalu are sinking beneath the waves due to rising sea levels. He points out that “almost all the atolls are increasing,” which New York Times (NYT) only decided to share with readers earlier this year, which, if only relying on the NYT for knowledge of the issue, until now had the impression that it was the opposite.
Lomborg explains, “When sea level rise erodes the land, additional sand from old reefs is washed onto low-lying beaches,” Lomborg explains, and “studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-induced erosion, meaning Tuvalu’s land area is increasing.”
It’s not just that; scientists have known for decades that unique atoll islands change with sea level changes, scientists from over a hundred years ago such as Charles Darwin proposed that coral-based islands grow up to light even as sea levels change. In 2010, several studies reported that Tuvalu and other islands were increasing. Eight of Tuvalu’s nine coral atolls have grown, and 75 percent of the country’s smaller islands have also grown.
It’s heartening when a major news publication like that New York Post publish the work done by Lomborg and other climate realists, who bravely insist on relying on available real-world data to counter the onslaught of stories and reports that point to scary climate model scenarios. No doubt about it Post will get some hate mail, but this is a sign of a good news organization dedicated to serving the interests of the reader by following the facts wherever possible, even on controversial topics, to publish the truth, but not disturbing, instead of hyperbole and lies.
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