By Andy May
In a new paper by Gianluca Alimonti and Luigi Mariani, they argue that the public needs a proper definition of precisely what a climate crisis is to make rational decisions about how to address potential climate change threats (Alimonti & Mariani, 2025). They propose a set of measurable “Response Indicators” (RINDs) based on the IPCC AR6 Climate Impact drivers (IPCC, 2021, pp. 1851-1856).
Their intent is to switch from subjective perceptions of possible dangers to quantifiable metrics. Potentially this could put climate change debates on track and ensure that both sides are arguing about the same thing as opposed to talking past each other due to each of the debaters arguing from different definitions. It might also lead to real solutions to real problems, rather than flights of ideologically-based fancy.
The IPCC defines climate impact drivers (CIDs) as climate events that affect society. The impact on any affected society can be detrimental, beneficial, or neutral (IPCC, 2021, p. 1770). They define 33 categories of CIDs and have found that most of them have not emerged from the expected range of natural variability.
Alimonti and Mariani examined the EM-DAT disaster database, managed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters from the year 2000 to the present. In this period, they detected no trend in deaths due to weather-related disasters. Just as important, there were clear improvements in global health over the period, once the growth in population was accounted for.
Temperature-related mortality accounts for 8% of the total weather-related deaths, of these 91% were due to cold and 9% to excess heat. From 2000-03 to 2016-19 cold related deaths decreased by 0.5% and heat related deaths increased by 0.2%, very small changes.
As Alimonti and Mariani’s Table 1 indicates, most measures of their climate change response indicators show no change, including cyclones, drought, floods, and wildfires. They show global GDP is improving, as is food availability.
The paper emphasizes that the reduction in climate-related deaths can be partially attributed to improvements in civil protection systems (levees, seawalls, forest management, etc.) which demonstrates that adaptation to climate change often proves more effective than mitigation. Most objective measures of the human-welfare impact of climate changes show no change, and most of the rest show improvement or an ambiguous impact, rather than detrimental effects.
The paper is worth the time to read; it is time for less subjectivity and more harder objective measures of the impact of climate change.
We remember that Alimonti and Mariani were the first two authors of the shamefully retracted but excellent article (Alimonti, Mariani, Prodi, & Ricci, 2022). My assessment of that article was that it was excellent and no less an authority than Roger Pielke Jr. called the retraction “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing.” This retraction is the posterchild of the extreme bias in SpringerNature.
Works Cited
Alimonti, G., & Mariani, L. (2025). Quantifying the climate crisis: a data-driven framework using response indicators for evidence-based adaptation policies. Environmental Hazards. doi:10.1080/17477891.2025.2571708
Alimonti, G., Mariani, L., Prodi, F., & Ricci, R. A. (2022). A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming. The European Physical Journal Plus, 137(112). doi:10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, . . . B. Zhou (Ed.)., WG1. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
What is a “climate crisis?”
What the BBC, Guardian, Independent, I News, NYT, LAT etc say it is. An (non-existent) existential threat . You better believe it..
If 3IAtlas changed its direction, so it was heading towards Earth, that would be an existential threat. A few degrees difference in temperature isn’t. Anyone with half a brain understands that.
You should go to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/states/massachusetts/average-temp-by-year. The Tmax and Tmin data are displayed in long table from 1995 to 2024. Although there has been warming from 1995, it does not matter because there will always be winter.
You also check:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/boston/average-temperature-by-year.
To obtain data for other cities, click on “Select City” in the box. Enter the city name with a capital letter. If the temperature data is in NOAA’s data base, the city name will appear below the box. Click on it to get the data.
Be sure to check home page: http://www.extremewestherwatch.com.
Links in light blue allow acquisition of temperature data from many sites located around the world.
A great resource. Many of the maximums were set decades ago. Many places have downward or flat trends.
Cities in Europe have set maximums this century. I really wonder if that is the contribution of wind energy extractors reducing moisture advection. Or removing trees to install them.
Most all the cities show varying amounts of warming which most likely due to UHI effect. Nevertheless, there is always be in many region of the earth long cold and snowy winters like in Canada where I live.
Here is some data for Australia:
Year—-Tmax—-Tmin—-Tavg Temperatures are °C
2024—-29.7—–15.9—–22.8
1901—-28.6—–14.5—–21.6
Inc.——-+1.1—–+1.4—–+1.2
After 123 years, there has been only sightly increase in the temperature of the continent. Thus there is no need for the draconian climate agenda that Premier Anthony A. and the Canberra Climate Cartel have inflicted on the people, industry and the business community.
Go check the temperature data for Alice Springs. Note two sites were used for Tmax and Tmin data. From 1942 to 2024 Tavg was -0.3° C. This data shows that CO2 has no influence on air temperature.
When data collection starts cicra 1900, about 20 percent of record data should be recorded 2000-2025.
OooKaay… What is a Climate Event?
And remember Weather is NOT Climate.
Climate is a 30 year average of weather trends (because of the 30 year satellite records at the time).
So what is a 30 year weather event?
Furthermore, what “affects society”. Snow during the US super bowl halftime show would be an effect experienced by 100s of millions.
A glacier forming where there was once green grass in the summer, or the reverse, green grass in the summer where there was once ice in the summer.
I guess which way were the emergency would depend on which was preferred
Well, as most people living north of the 42nd parallel could tell you, ice being replaced by green grass is a ‘good thing’ (TM). I’m from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and while as a kid snow & ice were ‘fun’, I’ll take the green grass & warm weather any day of the week & twice on Sundays.
If either of those things come close to happening in the next 10 generations I’ll happily buy you a cookie and worship you as ‘god almighty’. And green grass, life of all type where there use to be nothing but death & stagnation is a ‘good thing'(TM), and needs no ‘mitigation’ or whatever is intended by ‘classifying the climate crises’.
Shouldn’t all parties first agree on the definition of what parameters, exactly, define “climate” before we try to define “climate crisis”?
That is, we need to define “climate” much better than the generally accepted, current definition fronted by NASA, NOAA and many others: “climate is weather averaged over thirty or more years over a specifically-defined geographical area.”
Some examples of the problem:
— Do changes in solar insolation at TOA as governed by Milankovitch cycles count as a “climate” parameter?
— Does the change in Earth’s albedo due to its CO2-facilitated “greening” over the last 30 or so years count as a “climate” parameter?
— Is global sea level rise a “climate” parameter?
— Is UHI skewing of average GLAT a “climate” parameter?
Add a point that determining the optimum climate variable should be defined so one can KNOW where you stand.
Standing on a hill and saying “I’m at the highest point in the world”, is meaningless.
Only a group fully wedded to the importance of “average temperature” would be foolish enough to define “climate” as “average weather” rather than “the range of weather events that could be expected to occur in a normal 30-year period.”
hardiness zones in the continental US have not changed significantly for at least 200 years. Washington state is still wet and cool, Texas is still dry and hot, Kansas is still dry and sometimes hot/sometimes cool, MA still has the same forests, etc. For me that is as good a definition of climate as any.
“Washington state is still wet and cool”
During the fall and winter, yes. Dry during the other seasons. And West of the cascades is drastically different than East. The wet part is a common myth. Seattle gets less annual rainfall than Dallas (last time I checked). And up where I am in Whidbey Island, we get about 10″ less annual rainfall than Seattle.
What is a temperate rainforest?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest
https://www.britannica.com/science/temperate-rainforest
An excuse to extract money from taxpayers.
You win the internet observation of truth award today.
Extracting money through force from a certain group of people and gifting it to a different group of people is a symptom of what philosophy?
Am excuse to steal money from taxpayers. You misspelled “steal”.
Excellent suggestion that there must be an agreement over definitions.
It is always hard to define something that does not exist.
And there won’t be an agreement as everything outside of the realm of models,adjusted data
and buzzwords proves that the crisis does not exist.
Any real definition would destroy the narrative.
The most accurate definition of a climate crisis (politics and agendas aside):
Standard weather anomalies being now sold as desasters.
It’s a like selling a Full Moon or a rising tide as sensation.
From a political perspective ;the crisis of climate is the WMD’s of Iraq.
And talking about Iraq – both presidents of those wars have publicly announced several times
the “New World Order ” (and such a thing needs a crisis, a reset on a world -scale)
The 1st time ever that this term was openly used was by Sr. in 1990 on
September 11 th.
Just one of those coincidences like the number of the carplate of Archduke Ferdinands vehicle he was shot in for no Principle reason.
All the available evidence says there is no CO2 climate crisis.
I should send this paper to my local City council.
They declared a “climate emergency” a few years ago, but when I told them that the 911 operators I called had no advice as to what we needed to do to keep ourselves alive & safe during this declared “emergency”, so I should ask the City what it means, the City called me a crank, and threatened to call the police on me for harassment.
(Maybe in response, the City will resort to a position that a “climate emergency” is not the same as a “climate crisis”, so therefore I’m still a crank?
Any advice from readers here who are more experienced / skilled in the ways of bureaucratic obfuscation (aka bullshit) would be greatly appreciated.)
Ask them how they define a “climate emergency” and how they measure the impact of changes in the climate. Do they use excess deaths, changes in GDP, employment, or some other measure? How much money are they spending on this emergency, who are they paying the climate emergency money to? What are the deliverables? I could go on, but you get the idea.
Andy, we all know that the “climate crisis / emergency” tenet is purely a manifestation of ideology.
Ideology requires the dismissal of rationality.
Ergo, any call for hard evidence, confirmed observations, data, etc – (ie RATIONALE) to support the tenet is a total waste of effort & time.
Like Fox Mulder in “X-Files” –
“they want to believe”
“Ask them how they define a “climate emergency” and how they measure the impact of changes in the climate.”
I suppose a Wampa would have considered the end of the Ice Age a “climate emergency”…
Well, my experience is that governmental bureaucracies from city level to the topmost tier are a good answer to the question of “Whatever happened to the bottom half of my classmates in college?” Act accordingly.
/sarc
I’ve always asked government bureaucrats if their job directly contributes to climate change or does their job directly contribute to a solution. Generally, they have to admit that their job overall contributes to climate change. Then ask if their job should be eliminated in order to solve the emergency.
“The IPCC defines climate impact drivers (CIDs) as climate events that affect society.”
How does the IPCC define a “Climate Event”? The alarmists use this term effusively and usually mean bad weather. If we would refuse to use this term until it has been defined we would all be better off. I think a climate event is something like the little ice age or the Younger Dryas. To talk about a single storm as a climate event is truly misapplication of facts.
Here is the definition of “climate event” from AR6, page 2222:
Climate extreme (extreme weather or climate event) The occurrence of a value of a weather or climate variable above (or below) a threshold value near the upper (or lower) ends of the range of observed values of the variable. By definition, the characteristics of what is called extreme weather may vary from place to place in an absolute sense. When a pattern of extreme weather persists for some time, such as a season, it may be classified as an extreme climate event, especially if it yields an average or total that is itself extreme (e.g., high temperature, drought, or heavy rainfall over a season). For simplicity, both extreme weather events and extreme climate events are referred to collectively as ‘climate extremes’.
In the detailed discussion of CIDs around page 1856 they discuss the threshold values for the various events. Basically, it is a very vague definition. Alimonti and Mariani do a better job by relating the “extreme” events back to human mortality and welfare. Who cares if a rainstorm is significantly above or below some threshold if it did not cause any problems for anyone?
And therein lies the problem. Do the observed values have any intrinsic value in determining good or bad? Are the observed values examined over decades, centuries, millennia, eons, etc.?
The most valuable criteria is what the optimum should be. Only then can you say with any confidence whether we are below, at, or above the best temperature (or other condition) for the world. One should notice that may include the extinction of humans as a consequence.
Thanks for this info Andy. This definition is so vague a to be useless and misleading. Who gets to decide the local limits to fit a certain condition into there category. In Held V Montana every plaintiff witness used “climate event” in their testimony. It was used to describe thunderstorms, smokey days, early thaws, etc. The witnesses clearly believed that any weather event they personally thought was unusual was a climate event. Some of them were teens. None of them presented any data. Nearly all of them said things like “You can just look out the window to tell we are changing the climate.” I maintain that the defense should have demanded a clear and concise set of definitions from the outset and any of these cases coming up should do the same.
“What is a “climate crisis?”
It’s a propaganda slogan intended to cause fear to override reason for the gullible.
Agreed, it is semantic propaganda.
There is a “crisis” that has to do with the “climate™”.
Many nations have adopted idiotic propaganda-driven anti-CO2 agendas, causing energy cost problems that are decimating those country’s manufacturing infrastructure.
This is becoming a major “crisis” in many of those countries.
The only “crisis” the world faces is growth, growth demands more of everything, which in turn puts pressure on society. Logic tells us you cannot have continual growth.
Look at Europe, closer to Germany and tell me more about growth.
😅
You can if you have counter-balancing decline in productivity.
Such as is happening in many western countries.
And it’s not good.
Also, countries afflicted with declining productivity have taken to including growth in the legions of their public servants in their GDP / GNP reportage.
(Gross Domestic Product / Gross National Product).
Public servants produce no consumable “products”.
In response to the above comments, I’d point out the “decline in productivity” in fact increases the growth in demand for it (what ever the it is) plus growth in unemployment and the ongoing growth in public unrest.
Growth in all it’s aspects must be curbed, until we do, the societal decline will continue.
So legions of us need to take up residency in the after-life asap?
Tell you what, you take the trip, do a recce, and put up a report on TripAdvisor.
You are very good at telling us what we must to, without any kind of supporting argument, except that ‘growth’ (an undefined concept) is ‘bad’ and apparently causes ‘societal decline’ (another undefined concept).
You do seem to have entirely missed the point of thus paper, in that it at least attempts to define what others have refused to define, and yet urge us to ‘fight against’ in some fashion.
Have you ever considered a career in Climate Scientology? You appear to be very qualified.
Just where have I told you “what you must do”?
What I have done is to point out growth is the problem, not fossil fuels and if you really think about it you know I’m right. The simple fact is “climate change” is a cover all, in fact a nonsense, we’d be in a worse position if the climate never changed.
“growth is the problem”
Will growth be a problem if the population is declining? It is, you know.
“we’d be in a worse position if the climate never changed.”
Are we in a “worse position” now?
I live in the United States and consider that I’m living in a better position. We got rid of our “worse position” when we booted the Radical Democrats out.
“Worse position” would apply to the rest of the Western world. They *are* in a bad position. All because of an unreasonable fear of CO2 and/or Greed.
The world’s population is the greatest in recorded history, as for your question “are we in a”worse position” now? It must be, that is why you are worried about climate change, isn’t it?
Regarding the claim “I’m living in a better position now” I can only say I’m sorry for the way you were living before.
“It must be, that is why you are worried about climate change, isn’t it?”
No, I’m not worried about climate change. I’m concerned about the state of science today. I’m concerned about the lies and distortions that pass as truth in science and politics. I’m concerned that too many people can’t figure out they are being lied to.
So what’s new, politics and the media rely on a gullible public?
I hope you have noticed that in most productive societies, the replacement birthrate has fallen precipitously. That alone will take care of the “demand” problem you reference.
The fact that there is a decline in the birthrate in some areas, hasn’t stopped the world’s population being the greatest in recorded history.
According to “The Population Bomb”, we should already dead or starving.
But we grew out of it.
That’s progress. (Not to be confused with “progressive”.)
The writers of “The Population Bomb” didn’t allow for the increased use of fossil fuels and like most predictions, even if their timing was out, their conclusion may still be correct. Time will tell, won’t it?
From the second paragraph of the above article:
“It might also lead to real solutions to real problems, rather than flights of ideologically-based fancy.”
True, it MIGHT. I put the odds of that happening at about 1 in 300,000, about the same as that of a comet or asteroid large enough to cause a global disruption to Earth’s current climate hitting us.
There is no such phenomena as climate change because most of the earth’s surface is water, rocks, sand, ice and snow uninhabited by humans and domestic animals. Activities of humans will have no effect on the vast Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans; the Andes, Alpes and Rocky mountains; or the Sahara, Gobi and Mojave deserts.
Activities of humans in cities can have an effect on local climate due to the UHI effect. In some countries, the stripping of the land of plants for food for humans and for feed for animals has led to desertification.
>> What is a “climate crisis?”
Oh, that’s just another word alarmists use instead of “anthropogenic contribution to global warming”.
They are very confused because there was little to no progress measuring/reducing the uncertainties of that phenomenon, so they make up I’ll defined words instead. That seems to be this years latest invention.
If you want to follow the alarmists idea of a manmade climate crisis, you would have to carry the resulting uncertainty of measurements and incomplete global models based on variable assumptions through a thorough mathematical analysis, short of that it is just an ill defined substitute for a poorly measured phenomenon (I mean in the real world, not in a lab or computer model).
I went and read the paper..it actually touches the idea of inventing new names/memes.
A. May is right, It is very interesting, great find!
I will forgive them for mentioning CMIP5 and RCP8.5, that is very outdated modeling, we know for sure that the low resolution and errors in the cloud physics impacted their results, they cannot be trusted!
Alimonti et. all.
“”highlights the need for localised, data-driven adaptation strategies rather than generalised alarm”””
Seems a very valid observation and unlike what “attribution experts” like F. Otto try to make you believe,
https://aeon.co/essays/todays-complex-climate-models-arent-equivalent-to-reality
“””Today’s complex climate models aren’t equivalent to reality. In fact, computer models of Earth are very different to reality – particularly on regional, national and local scales.””
So, what is needed is exactly where we don’t have working models…
Very nice.
Here is the definition of Climate Change from a verse in a song published in the 1870s:
“…And even the climate is changing,
For only ten years ago,
Strawberries got ripe in December,
Whilst now it brings four feet of snow.”
From the song variously called the “Wail of an Old Settler” or “Social Decline”, which was a sequel to the song, “The Old Settler,” by Francis Henry around 1874; published in the April 11, 1877 edition of the Washington [State] Standard; reprinted on pages 6 & 7 in “The Rainy Day Song Book” by Linda Allen © 1978; 2nd printing March 1980, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, 121 Prospect St., Bellingham, WA 98225. Printed by Fairhaven Communications.
https://laceyparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Number-10-December-2020.pdf
“Some say this country’s improving,
And boast of its commerce and trade,
But measured by social enjoyment
I find it has sadly decayed.
“In the pioneer days on the sound,
When the people had little to wear,
And subsisted on clams the year round,
We’d hearty good fellowship here.
“The thoughtful, industrious old settler,
Was so fond of obliging a friend,
That if any one wanted his tools,
He’d always quit working to lend.
“At our gatherings for pastoral pleasure,
Dance, picnic or social knock down,
One man was as good as another;
No kind of distinction was shown.
“But now when I go to a party
The people around me seem froze;
They dare not be social and hearty,
For fear they may spoil their store clothes.
“Not only our friendly relations
Are dropped for the worship of gold,
But the solid backbone of the country
Is recklessly bartered and sold.
“They’re slashing and selling our timber,
Not taking the slightest concern,
For what we shall do in the future,
Without any fuel to burn.
“And wasting the nat’ral resources
Our bountiful waters contain,
They’re canning our clams and our oysters
And shipping them off for mere gain.
“And even the climate is changing,
For only some ten years ago,
Strawberries got ripe in December,
Whilst now it brings four feet of
snow.”
When is the Climate Not Changing?
Never has been stable within 2°F or even 2°C for a long period of time
Though it has been relatively stable within a range of -10°C to +4°C over the last 800,000 years
It’s nothing more than a convenient term that the mainstream media and alarmists in general fall back on in their attempts to win support from governments and the public for some sort of environmental action; e.g, higher taxes, more laws and restrictions, and new mandates. So any time there’s some typical fluctuation in the weather, it’s conveniently explained as being another example of the mythical climate crisis we’re supposedly facing. In other words, it’s a convenient catch-all phrase.
Climate is the average of weather observations. The IPCC is obviously composed of ignorant and gullible pseudoscientists who think that adverse weather events (floods, hurricanes, droughts, etc,), are the result of “climate magic”, rather than physical laws.
They are even stupid enough to believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter!
It doesn’t. As John Tyndall and others have demonstrated by experiment, the complete opposite occurs.
“they detected no trend in deaths due to weather-related disasters”
Amazing. None at all?
I doubt IPCC and other slogan creators know who El CID was?
The paper by Alimonti and Mariani is an accurate and responsible account of climate crises – much ado about nothing – molehills into mountains. Their withdrawn paper is also available for download and perusal.
The globe should be celebrating 1.5 degrees of warming, if it has actually occurred.
Mark Twain was correct when he wrote: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
There are a couple of points worth underscoring.
“How dare you!”.
“Much ado about nothing” reminds this codger of the “Acid Rain Crisis” that first fueled the anti-coal movement. It’s all about the crisis de’jour.
I see you are at WUSTL. I am associated there through the Folding@Home research project by Greg Bowman. I highly recommend donating computer time to medical research to everyone here. Please join the Bowman Lab Team #1063131.
I think it’s fairly simple, Andy. A climate crisis is any weather that spoils a liberal socialist snowflake’s day.
Not meaning to bomb this thread but saw this about Ron Desantis on climate change https://twitchy.com/dougp/2025/11/22/ron-desantis-spots-another-example-of-medias-climate-change-alarmism-being-embarrassingly-wrong-n2421987?bcid=e9544acbb3bbcd70058160e11bd652b20b94a73af63cf933b2a98a0c31b8ac75&lctg=28419075
“Crisis” is an emotional or political term. It means exactly what the writer or speaker of the word wants it to mean, neither more or less, to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty.
It is a scam to steal money. There is nothing wrong with the Earth’s climate. Period. Full stop.
O boy, this is the type of thing that got us started down this horrendous path of things like Net Zero, replacing reliable cheap sources of energy with unreliable expensive sources. Its pure hubris to believe we can quantify anything as large as the overall impact of long term weather events much less try to control those global impacts.
Sure we have the best technology and knowledge that humankind has ever acquired…except in one respect, a total lack of self awareness. Humans are minuscule in the grand scheme of things, we are best suited to mitigate and address local impacts.
Attempting to ‘quantify the climate crises’ will simply lead to more overblown bureaucracies, it will give more power hungry greedy socialist even more of a reason to try to control us and lead to nothing good.
It is FAR better to reduce regulations to the bare minimum to foster free trade and let people deal with the impacts of weather locally, helping when and how we can for major events. Anything else is just an effort to pretend we have some control over the universe we live in.
A “crisis” has generally occurred when you find bodies in the debris.
Be careful when conflating crisis with disaster.
Based on the range of model predictions for climate change, should we expect to have seen many of the CIDs emerge by this time? I’m not sure what significance their lack of appearance has.
Sorry, but 25 years is way too short a time period to be analysing to say anything meaningful or useful about the climate. Why not 125 years?