A recent article at the New York Post by Bjorn Lomborg, titled “Shrinking island, vanishing polar bears — the climate scare stories that turn out to be false,” points out that many of the harms the mainstream media claims climate change is supposed to be causing, for example, to polar bears, the Great Barrier Reef, and Pacific island nations, have not happened. This is true. None of the catastrophes that climate alarmists crow about have come to pass.
Lomborg writes that two major themes can be seen in the last 20 years of climate change coverage from government and media: “stubborn unwillingness by campaigners to acknowledge any inconvenient science, and ever-shifting favorite stories, first elevated and then dropped by the wayside.”
He says the one constant throughout those shifting stories is “a fixation on scaring the public, which has in turn shaped bad climate policies.”
This is true; illustrated nicely by the shifting narratives surrounding global greening in particular. Years ago, the dominant narrative was that desertification, or the deaths of lush ecosystems, was our future due to climate change. This was presented as a looming catastrophe in the media and in schools. Now that decades of data show the reverse is happening, that leaf coverage is actually expanding over time amid modest warming, the alarmists say the greening is dangerous, as covered in detail in this Climate Realism post.
Lomborg explores a variety of examples illustrative of climate crisis stories that are false, and sometimes abandoned or downplayed as they have falsified by data that has emerged over time. One case study Lomborg discusses is the polar bear craze.
He writes that “after years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible for them to ignore a mountain of evidence showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially from around 12,000 in the 1960s to around 26,000 in the present day.”
The alarmist media has tried to claim that melting sea ice is causing more polar bear encounters and aggression towards humans. However, the simpler explanation is that there are so many more bears than there used to be, and also more human beings in areas where bears naturally live. This is another attempt for media to spin a positive (bear populations recovering from previous overhunting) into a negative.
The second false alarm case study that Lomborg discusses is the missing decline of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and other coral reefs.
Lomborg recalls that “scientists predicted the reef would be decimated by 2022,” and “The Guardian even published an obituary.” He points out that the GBR has more coral cover right now in 2024 than at any point in time since recordkeeping began in 1985.
“The good news gets a fraction of the coverage that the scare stories did,” Lomborg writes.
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 declining, so Lomborg’s point is accurate. It is rare that the media hypes any good news the way it does bad news about various ecosystems such as the GBR, a embarrassing admission from them after they spent decades catastrophizing about it. Even when they do begrudgingly report the record coral extent and data trends, both globally and in the GBR, they can’t help but try to warn that they still might suddenly reverse course and die off.
Lomborg’s also refutes claims that islands like Tuvalu are sinking below the waves because of rising sea levels. He points out that “almost all atoll islands are increasing in size,” which the New York Times (NYT) only just decided to share with their readership earlier this year, who, if they only relied the NYT for their knowledge of the issue, up to that point had likely been under the impression that the opposite was true.
“While rising sea levels do erode land, additional sand from old coral is washed up on low-lying shores,” Lomborg explains, and “studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-caused erosion, meaning the land area of Tuvalu is increasing.”
It’s not just that; scientists have known for decades that atoll islands uniquely change with changing sea levels, scientists from over a hundred years ago such as Charles Darwin proposed that reef-based islands grow upwards towards the light even as sea levels change. In 2010, multiple studies reported that Tuvalu and other islands were actually growing. Eight of the nine coral atolls in Tuvalu have grown, and 75 percent of the nation’s smaller islands have also grown.
It is heartening when major news publications like the New York Post publish work done by Lomborg and other climate realists, who bravely insist on relying on available real-world data in the face of an onslaught of stories and reports referencing scary climate model scenarios. No doubt the Post will get some hate mail for it, but it is a sign of a good news organization dedicated to serving its reader’s interests by following the facts where ever they lead, even on controversial topics, to publish the truth, however unalarming, rather than hyperbole and lies.
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Drought? NOAA’s Climate at a Glance shows USA48 precipitation has increased since 1895. The GWP numbers are a text book example of “Look here don’t Look there. The dramatic decrease in forest fires since the, ‘30s.The claim that summer melt water drains down to lubricate glaciers sliding into the sea. The claim that when glaciers disappear the river in the valley will dry up and communities in the valley will have no water.
Yep – warmer air can hold more moisture. It was supposed to bring us more and stronger hurricanes – another failed prediction.
I suspect it, combined with increased CO2 availability, will only bring us a more lush and greener world.
Bees are all dying too…NOT!
John Stossel on X: “About 20 years ago, some honeybees died from “colony collapse disorder.” The media went into a buzz. But beekeepers rebuilt lost colonies and the disorder soon diminished. Now, there are 31% MORE bees in America. Since the media won’t report on that, I will: https://t.co/JTYcvGXPIb” / X
But we’re all gonna die! Just you wait!!
“But we’re all gonna die! Just you wait !!”
On the cards since we took our first breath,
Just keep dodging the coffins !!
Worse, a change in bee abundance somewhere led to a ban on the very useful, very safe, very carefully designed agricultural chemical known here in Australia as “Confidor” (Imidacloprid).
Greens pressured retailers to stop stocking it. Green promoted instead, the ancient and comparatively ineffective natural extract known collectively as “pyrethrums”.
As a chemist, I am appalled by such degradation of the skills of professional chemists. It is hard work to earn the qualifications to synthesise new chemicals that can be ingested with foodstuffs or during spraying. The harm to bees has been explained. It did not involve Confidor, yet the product has not been resumed as its reputation was smashed by ignorant lay people with a cause.
This type of anti science activism is harmful and has to be stopped. Geoff S
This is how propaganda works. You drop a lie bomb that targets the maximum amount of people and sit back and watch the destruction. When called out you either deny you said that, double down on the lie, or ignore it. Alarmists are in the ignore class and they get away with it by dropping another lie bomb to cover for the last one (look, a squirrel!). Then you censor those who are opposing you to keep the truth under wraps. Truth is in scary times.
It works because many people are lazy shit who doesn’t verify what they read or hear, just swallow the swill and suffer for it.
“(look, a squirrel)” – squirrels are not the subject of fake alarmism that you suggest. Squirrels are seriously threatening animals that are not to be taken lightly:
Squirrels wreak havoc onboard Gatwick train causing cancellation
Jeremy Clarkson wove a brilliant article in The Times around these dastardly squirrels, but unfortunately it is paywalled. It seems two squirrels got on a train going to the airport, and the railway officials then cancelled the train to find and remove the squirrels (shades of coronavirus lockdown – first, panic). People missed their flights and everyone’s day was wrecked.
nuts!
Mike,
We needed a very weak radioactive source to help calibrate an airborne geophysical gamma detector. I bought a teaching source, a strip of plastic for children to handle and play with gamma counter instruments, then shipped it by air Melbourne to Perth. The lawfully required radioactive stickers and data were attached, with our office phone contact.
Next day I got a breathless phone call starting ” I have cleared the sorting room and called emergency services and and warned the airline of possible delays while we deal with this radioactivity.”
You cannot fix stupid. Geoff S
When it is dissected into its main elements, Science has no concept of “Truth”. If Science could generate an absolute Truth, there would be no impetus to research that particular topic any more because the end point of research had been reached.
However, Science is a never-ending quest for a better answer to every question. The global medical fraternity thought it was close to Truth that stress caused ulcers until two innovative scientists showed a bacterial cause and antibiotic cure.
We cannot express this as “a new Truth replacing an old Truth”, because these are Understandings, not Truths.
Geoff S
Good article, too bad the people who need to read it will never see it. Or maybe they are all starting to see the light, one by one?
Hundreds of years ago a fellow pointed out that people went mad in groups and only regained sanity one at a time.
Charles Mackay (27 March 1814 – 24 December 1889) was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
It took Germans 12 years, a lost war, between 70 & 85 million people killed & starvation, for most to realize they had been lied to, by their government.
I think you may be mistaken…
Most still haven’t figured out that their government is still lying to them.
Very nice Linnea. The mainstream media is a disgrace.
I wonder if Linnea is one student calling in to Rush; asking his advice about her plan to become a journalist.
“stubborn unwillingness by campaigners to acknowledge…”
A complete and total refusal. Either it complies with the narrative or it gets ‘the culture war treatment’.
I had Lomborg’s 2001 book ( The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge Univ. Press), now around somewhere. He also exposed that hypoxia had been long known in the Baltic, however much it was increased by human fertilization. It is a common phenomenon even in cold climates due to stratification.
This may be one of many appeals to authority criticizing his book. Conservation Biology is just one of most (nearly all?) journals advertising their “most cited,” as a measure of “Impact Factors.” This widespread failure, first heard as “publish or perish,” of science is becoming more and more widely known and hopefully will not produce an overreaction someday, premature as that seems. Maybe most important but just one of many misuses of statistics. Bini, L. M., et al., 2005. Lomborg and the litany of biodiversity crisis: What the peer-review literature says. Conservation Biology. 19(4):1301-1305.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00155.x
Last line of abstract– “Although the literature did not paint a picture of universal gloom, the empirical evidence clearly showed growing environmental crises.”
If you look for a crisis, you’ll find one, regardless of its existence.
If you DO find one, do not let it go to waste.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken
You don’t attract mouse clicks, ratings points, or Pulitzers for reporting “there’s nothing going on worth talking about”.
That will never change. Most real people are inured to the BS. Only the neurotics and suiciders get profiled in the media.
”News flash: nothing new is going on and nobody cares!”
That’s why it’s called “news”.
On polar bears: I visited Svalbard (78N) recently, and learned that there are two distinct polar bear populations there, one principally hunts seals on sea ice, the other smaller population principally hunts reindeer on land. No doubt this is how polar bears survived previous warmer periods – as the ice shrank the land-based polar bear population expanded.
Linnea,
Minor point.
Those researching catastrophe also have to understand apostrophe.
Third last line of the summary above, change ” … its reader’s interests …” To ” … its readers’ interests …” since it is all plural. Like confusing one polar bear’s home with several polar bears’ homes. Geoff S, pedant.
Ah.. but each person is a single reader…
ie.. I am reading it by myself.
… and as most here are not rabid leftists, it will not be a “group-read” 🙂 🙂
Oh Noes! https://www.fastcompany.com/91195800/un-climate-financing-world-us-election-trump-harris?
If you read this you realise it is ALL about the Grift and Trump is about to spoil their party!!
“Simon Stiell has estimated the annual need to be in the trillions in order to adequately help poorer countries shift to clean energy and prepare for the conditions of a warmer world.”
One problem with Lomborg is that he continues to insist that “Climate change is real. It is manmade. It is a challenge that needs sensible policies”. He is correct that climate change is real – it’s always changing and always will – and that we need sensible policies to address it but his stance on it being man made is simply wrong. Man, like everything else on this planet, has some impact on climate, but to claim that man alone is the cause of climate change is ridiculous. Continuing to claim that man is the cause of climate change will simply mean that our politicians will continue to pursue idiotic solutions in an attempt to modify our behavior.
Valid critique of Lomborg. But, he is infinitely better than the alarmists. If everyone paid attention to him, we’d all be better off with the “sensible policies” he promotes.
This is true Joseph, Lomborg an economist is a climate `luke-warmer’, but he knows the current policies will not work and we cannot afford to keep them going any longer, thus he favors adaption which is the only sensible solution to any climate hazards.
The fact that there is no climate crisis and certainly none that humans could cause, remains a mystery to most politicians and the media. Very sad really that this 40yr old scam keeps on giving to those making money out of it. What it really means is that we humans are not as smart as we think we are.
Lonborg tried to discuss this sort of thing on Bill Maher’s show, but that phony (and Democrat mouthpiece) interrupted him by raising first plastic pollution, and then other unrelated comments. The elites just want to continue to confuse the electorate, while they pillage the place.
Sorry…Lomborg…I don’t know why this occurs, but it seems impossible to control the out of control spell correct