In “Climate Change Is Stressing the World’s Blood Supplies,” the New York Times (NYT) claims that global warming is now threatening the blood supply by causing extreme weather events that disrupt donations, transport, and safety. This is misleading at best. Since extreme weather events aren’t increasing or becoming more severe, it is unclear how climate change could be causing unusual disruptions in the blood supply.
The NYT article’s central thesis—that climate change is to blame for blood shortages during weather events—ignores a mountain of context and contradicts broader data on both weather trends and health system resiliency. Extreme weather has always existed and when it strikes it disrupts normal services, nothing has changed. Extreme weather does NOT equate to evidence of climate catastrophe. Also, there is no scientific evidence that CO₂-driven climate change is causing a new global blood crisis.
The assumption made by the writers in the NYT article that extreme weather events are increasing globally due to climate change is specifically refuted by widely available data. As this article from Climate Realism explains, there is no long-term trend showing increases in the number or severity of hurricanes, floods, or wildfires when corrected for improved detection and population growth in high-risk areas.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the United Nations’ body often cited as the climate authority—admits in its AR6 report that trends of most types of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tornadoes are low confidence or have not increased globally. Also, data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a flat or declining trend in U.S. hurricane landfalls over the last century.
The article references Hurricane Helene and California wildfires causing canceled blood drives. Blood drives get canceled during any large-scale disaster, regardless of cause. Earthquakes, power outages, cyberattacks, and even snowstorms can have the same effect. Weather-related disruptions have always occurred, and blaming every instance of logistical difficulty on “climate change” is not scientific; it’s opportunistic.
Attributing specific disasters or their effects to global climate trends involves significant uncertainty and usually relies on speculative models—not observed data. Most of these studies, like the one cited in The Lancet Planetary Health, suffer from selection bias, vague definitions of “extreme,” and worst-case emissions scenarios that do not reflect actual trends either emissions or weather.
The editorial also throws in another fear: that warming is causing a rise in blood-transmissible diseases like West Nile, Zika, and dengue. This conflates local outbreaks with global climate trends. Climate Realism has debunked this claim numerous times, pointing out that these diseases are far more influenced by land use, sanitation, and international travel than by temperature changes. Even the World Health Organization acknowledges that urbanization, deforestation, and global mobility play larger roles in disease spread than global climate change.
Linking disruptions in the blood supply to global warming is problematic for other reasons as well. For instance, it fails to rule out other factors which limit or expand the pool of eligible donors. Blood screening technologies continue to improve, and the pool of eligible donors adjusts based on public health guidelines. The article discusses the pandemic’s impact on blood donations, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with climate change so bringing it up in this article is simply misdirection and misplaced attribution to advance the popular but false mainstream media narrative that climate change is linked to everything bad.
The article closes with vague suggestions that AI might help us predict blood supply disruptions due to climate events. This techno-optimism is a smokescreen, conveniently ignoring that we already have predictive tools for weather, logistics planning, and blood supply management. There’s no new threat being introduced here—just the rebranding of ordinary healthcare system challenges as climate emergencies.
This article shows that the NYT continues to be wedded to promoting pseudoscientific climate alarmism. Rather than investigating the real causes complicating and limiting blood donation and delivery, ranging from donor apathy to poor planning, NYT chose to blame climate change: the convenient boogeyman for everything from crime, to immigration, to acne—now apparently, it’s coming for your blood. This NYT article is a perfect example of confirmation bias, cherry-picked anecdotes, and appeals to authority masquerading as science. This story lacks journalistic rigor. The story’s author uncritically parrots yet another flawed, agenda-driven study, without apparently investigating and confirming any of its assertions. Had she done even a modicum of research into the issue, and the writer were an honest broker, she would have been forced to conclude that because data shows that climate change isn’t causing more extreme weather, it can’t be creating new problems for the blood supply system.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
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Climate change causes whatever the advocate wants to deplore, rather like the Red Queen’s approach to defining words. Does the writer pay climate change extra when she uses it that way?
Political views always seem to do exactly this.
For example, I’ve lost count of the bad things that have happened in the UK that have been directly attributed to Brexit. No doubt, anyone would have been able to attribute the exact same things to remaining in the EU, had we been unlucky enough to do so.
This is pure political posturing. Climate Change ™ is no different.
Adding climate change means bigger revenues when charging by the word.
NYT is not fit for purpose—even for lining bird cages, since mostly now on line. Climate change induced extreme weather affecting blood supply is an example.
Giving blood for most people is easy and mostly painless. I don’t mind being poked with a needle, so that’s easy for me to say. 😉
I suggest eating and hydrating (drinking) before going for the procedure because some folks get low blood pressure after. This happened to me once in about 25 times. Your health situation might suggest you not give; consult your medical team.
As for the NYT, these sorts of silly stories are propaganda — not news or legitimate information. I hope a link to this post is provided to the editors.
I miss the tea and biscuits we were given after donating blood
Well…. “poly-ticks”(many bloodsuckers ) is involved …
😉
Very nice Anthony, the New York Times is so pitiful I wouldn’t recommend it to line a bird cage.
NYT will publish ANYTHING they think will get a reaction from their far-left patrons..
Facts need not interfere.. even remotely
One wonders of there’s a disruption in blood donations because people who refused the Covid spike mRNA product are reluctant to possibly expose themselves or to contribute to a blood supply they consider already contaminated with spike protein.
It’s truly amazing what a 100 year, 1 degree average temperature anomaly can do to people.
Apparently, there is nothing that it can’t do and that we never realized it could do before the 21st century happened.
Waiting for the double blind controlled study.
It is clear that abortion affects the world’s blood supply far more than any other factor.
When the New York Times finally prints that worldwide, 73 million abortions per year is stressing the worlds blood supply, then perhaps people will rise up and say “enough”.
But I wouldn’t count on that.
“Since extreme weather events aren’t increasing or becoming more severe, it is unclear how climate change could be causing unusual disruptions in the blood supply.”
Every single problem can blamed on climate change. An ideal situation for lazy “journalists”.
And the quest to inflict economic slavery continues.
Having had a bit to do with blood donation professionally, I would suggest the most likely explanation is elderly donors retiring from the system, Strangely, younger donors are harder to find and keep. at least in my country.