As reported by The Daily Caller, the AP’s angle on the story was that the severe storms 1) are caused by “climate change” that is tied to human activity; and 2) that is leading to storms that cause more damage and impose higher costs on communities and the country in general.
For the story, which can be seen here, the AP reporter, Seth Borenstein, only quoted one expert — Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University — and though he asked Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado a number of questions, none of his answers were included in the story’s published version.
Here’s the premise of Borenstein’s story:
[National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] climate scientist Adam Smith said 2017 is shaping up to be an unprecedented year. It is likely to tie or break the record for billion-dollar weather disasters that was set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina and other deadly storms.
NOAA hasn't calculated the costs from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, but an outside disaster risk company estimates the U.S. damage from the three hurricanes to be around $150 billion. The remaining disasters so far this year have cost more than $21.7 billion and killed 282 people, according to NOAA.
Mann’s response: “Climate change is impacting extreme weather in ways we hadn't anticipated.”
As The DC notes, however, Mann “is an ardent advocate for liberal policies to address global warming, and has even suggested the fossil fuel industry has launched a campaign to marginalize his work. Mann recently gave an academic freedom lecture at the University of Michigan, where he attacked his critics as ‘climate deniers’ shilling for energy companies.”
But Pielke, who has, for years, been researching this issue and has concluded there is no evidence that slightly warming temperatures are making weather more extreme, tweeted his answer to Borenstein’s question, “Does this NOAA analysis seem right?”
“NOAA performs a simple analysis of counting the number of disasters that exceed a billion. It’d be the same exercise if you went into a supermarket once per year and counted the number of items that cost more than $50.”
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/916443895386345473
In addition, Borenstein quoted a meteorologist who works at Munich Re, an insurance company, who said natural disaster costs are going up because more people are choosing to live in regions that can be victimized by extreme weather. (Related: UN official actually ADMITS that ‘global warming’ is a scam designed to ‘change world’s economic model’.)
As to whether the number of billion-dollar storms is increasing, Pielke said, “yes,” but then quantified his answer: “$1 billion is not what it used to be (in 2012 I explained that a billion $ disasters [sic] in 2012 was the same as a $170m disaster in 1980). That said, weather disasters as a proportion of global GDP have not increased since 1990.
“If you want to ask if hurricanes have increased — in the U.S., in the Atlantic, globally, all this data is readily available,” he said.
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/916667295715385345
For reliable data, Pielke said Borenstein could rely on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the auspices of the U.N.) and official data. But, he continued, if you want sensationalized statements, talk to Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth,” said Pielke, the latter of whom is with the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
It most definitely appears that, once again, another legacy Left-wing media outlet chose to perpetuate the human-caused climate change myth rather than report the truth.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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