Guest Post by: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This summary serves as a fact check on the top false claims made about climate change by the media in July 2025.
Debunking the Vanilla ice cream climate apocalypse – Countering claims of climate ‘supercharging’ wildfires – Texas floods are the ‘new normal’?! – Plus a reality check on claims ‘fossil fuels are sabotaging’ the economy.
Links: Frontiers for Plant Science study, media coverage, FAO stats, vanilla flavoring.
Links: Grist article, GFED link, land burned data, University of Melbourne study, European Space Agency data.
Links: NPR story, rainfall trend in Texas, UN IPCC, flooding trend.
Links: CBS Boston story, National Weather Service data.
Links: What a ‘100 year flood’ is, USGS river data.
Links: Associated Press story.
Links: NBC News report, IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, hail measurements.
Links: Guterres speech, GDP data.
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Does this mean it’s not worse than we thought?
Phew, I nearly wasted a good worry!
Hey not too much crazy dooming there chaps-
This climate study made a big error. One piece of data was to blame.
Tone it down or nobody will believe a word of it.
Except hotter and drier is not the theory of global warming. Hotter and wetter is. Ice melts which increases water vapor, which produces more clouds which then act as extra heat amplification factor due to their positive feedback which then causes the tropical tropospherical hotspot and then also causes the runaway climate catastrophe.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s how it was taught in colleges 40 years ago. Apparently, Grist doesn’t care that its reporters are ignorant and make stuff up.
Maybe the reporters are not ignorant and make stuff up.
Maybe. But applying Occam’s razor would make it appear so. Why else would anyone claim a “drier” world?
The claim seems to be that man’s magical CO2 “supercharges” the weather. It’s like the weather is on steroids now. It’s the modern day equivalent of blaming witches.
Witches did a lot of bad stuff. I had a great grandfather turned into a toad by a witch because he said her pointy hat looked too small.
Hence the witch hunts directed against those who ask awkward questions.
Claim: In a hotter, drier world, wildfires have become more frequent and more destructive.
Claim: Climate change is driving more extreme rainstorms.
So, it would seem that in a hotter, drier world, climate change is driving more extreme rainstorms.
The typical answer from climate alarmists is that dry areas are getting drier and wet areas are getting wetter. When you point out that desertification is decreasing and hurricanes are not getting more frequent the typical answer is that less aridification is purely a local phenomena and is not widespread and that the fewer hurricanes are causing more damage.
It’s *always* climate change even if there is no change in climate!
I thought it was all about averages/means. Drier should offset wetter on the global average.
About 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Has there been any climate change in the mid Pacific Ocean? What would be climate change out there and how would we ever know?
One of the problems of climate assessment is the lack of Met Stations in the Southern Hemisphere in 1850. Like none? So global temperature has shall we say two degree error bar?
One of the problems with climate assessment, is the near total lack of decent long term stable weather stations anywhere on the planet !! (not just the SH)
Surface data is totally swamped by data from sites that are totally unfit for the purpose, and data which has been “adjusted” or just fabricated from thin air..
Please go to the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page, page down to the end and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map”, click on a region or country and there will be displaced a list of the weather stations. Click on the station entry, and there will be displayed a chart with a plot of average annual temperature(s). To go back the list of stations, click on the back arrow.
Shown in the chart (See below) is plot of the annual average temperature for Adelaide from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 the concentration of CO2 in dry air was 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/cu. m.), and by1999, it had increased to ca. 370 ppmv (0.73 g CO2/cu. m.), but there was no increase in annual average temperature with increasing concentration of CO2 in the air. Instead, there was cooling. This empirical temperature data falsifies the claims (i.e., lies) by the IPCC that CO2 causes global warming and claim change. At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 currently is 429 ppmv (0.84 g CO2/cu. m.). Note that there is little CO2 in the air.
John Daly found over 200 weather stations located around the world that showed no global warming up to 2002. He obtained unadjusted temperature data from the GISS and CRU data bases. It be of interest to update the temperature charts especially those in Oz. However, most temperature data bases have recently undergone extensive “homogenization” and “adjustments”, can no longer be trusted, and could not be used to rescue Oz from the government’s draconian climate agenda.
Fortunately, the US EPA will soon rescind the 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding. When this occurs, all this nonsense about greenhouse gas- caused global warming and climate change will come to a rapid demise.
PS: Be sure check all the charts for Oz.
PS: If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return to comment text.
Which means that saying that global warming is 1.5C today is also saying you can know the unknowable.
Or you know the next Power Ball numbers.
Artificial vanilla is not the same as natural vanilla. Pastry chefs know the difference.
Thats all good today, but Climate Change is wiping out pastry chefs like smudges on a cat lady’s glasses. In 100 years we will not have any pastry chefs left to tell us what a vanilla beam looks like.
I like this post. If done routinely ongoing it could cause much of the b.s. stop. Said differently, bull shit propaganda when exposed may just go away. Well done.
This page, Anthony Watt’s Watts Up With That, was around before Al Gore narrated his famous movie about 20 years ago. Hundreds of people have read consistently since then, millions off-and-on. Regulars are familiar with both the standard issues and the standard retorts. At this point anyone who cares to look “gets it”.
When your narrative is in danger anything is fair game. For the AGW alarmists everything is fair game.
Witches!
Climate change worsens coffee stains on the lap area of tan pants?
The primary limiting factor on natural vanilla production is labor cost. The natural pollinators native to Central America where the vanilla orchid originated are apparently all extinct and no other natural pollinator has taken over the role. This means the vanilla flowers must be pollinated by hand within a very brief time window. Traditional methods of drying the beans are also labor intensive.
About 80% of the world’s natural vanilla is produced in Madagascar because it lies in the best growing zone within 20 degrees of the equator and labor is cheap. Because one relatively small region accounts for such a high percentage of annual production, yield is subject to significant weather-related fluctuations from year to year. In 2004 and 2017 crop damage from tropical cyclones hitting the island caused prices to spike to over $500/kg from a normal $20-40$ range.
The artificial vanilla flavor will satisfy most people at times when the cost of real vanilla becomes excessive.
We keep some vanilla beans in a bottle of rum to make our own extract. Every 6 months draw off a third of the liquid and refill with rum. Every year or so add another bean. You can keep this going for decades.
The response to the last item fails to challenge the lie that fossil fuels receive nine times the consumption subsidy. Major actual FF subsidies exist in only a few countries. In reality, unreliables receive far more subsidies per unit of energy delivered.