The recent article in Yale Climate Connections, “Six photos show how climate change shaped our world in 2025,” by Samantha Harrington, presents a photo-driven narrative asserting that wildfires, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and droughts in 2025 were “made more devastating and deadly by climate change.” This is outright false. The piece relies on striking images and rapid-attribution claims to imply a climate causation, but offers no hard evidence to support such claims and measured trends refute such claims.
The article states that these images “show the consequences of our warming climate in action,” and repeatedly asserts that climate change “made” specific events more intense or likely, citing groups such as World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. The emotional power of the photographs is undeniable. But photographs are snapshots in time; they say nothing about the 30-year trends required to establish climate, nor do they substitute for long-term observational evidence. More importantly, climate is a statistical construct, an average of weather over 30 years, not a force of nature. Only weather is a force of nature, and weather events are what do the damage in these photos.
A single fire scar, a flooded living room, or a satellite image of storm damage cannot establish a climate trend any more than a single cold snap disproves warming. This basic standard is precisely why meteorological agencies use 30-year normals. By presenting six isolated events—each framed as “made worse” by climate change—Yale Climate Connections collapses weather into climate and invites readers to infer trends that the evidence does not demonstrate.
When you step away from photos and examine history and measurements, the story becomes far more nuanced. For hurricanes, long-term records summarized at Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes show no clear upward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or accumulated cyclone energy that would justify claims of steadily worsening storms.
For floods, Climate at a Glance: Floods documents the lack of a consistent global increase in flood frequency or magnitude, a conclusion echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).
For wildfires, Climate at a Glance: Wildfires explains that fire extent is heavily influenced by land management, ignition sources, and fuel loads, not temperature alone, with long-term trends varying widely by region. Heat waves and heavy rain events likewise show mixed regional behavior rather than a uniform global escalation, as summarized across the Climate at a Glance extreme-weather pages.
The article leans heavily on rapid-attribution claims—statements that climate change made a given event “two to four degrees hotter” or “700 times more likely.” These claims are derived from models comparing a simulated present world to a simulated counterfactual world without added greenhouse gases. They are not direct measurements. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) makes clear that attribution confidence varies widely by event type and region, and that uncertainties remain substantial. Later references to IPCC AR6 often disappear from media coverage.
Climate Realism has repeatedly debunked World Weather Attribution’s and Climate Central’s attribution claims, showing both that the factual claims of an impact between climate change and specified extreme weather events can’t be discovered in the data and that the methodology used to make such a connection is flawed, here, here, here, and here, for example.
Equally important is what the article ignores. Disasters are driven by exposure and vulnerability as much as by weather. Population growth in floodplains, development in fire-prone landscapes, inadequate drainage, poor forest management, and aging infrastructure all magnify damage. A flooded Texas home photographed in July reflects zoning decisions, river engineering, or warning systems—or lack thereof—that determine outcomes, not, in this case, a changed climate. A burned hillside in California says is indicative of fuel buildup after decades of fire suppression and inaction to prevent fuel buildup, not worsening drought or heat – neither of which are in evidence.
Here’s the key point: photos can capture damage, but they cannot diagnose causes.
Case in point, below is a photo from the year 1900:
By looking at it, you can’t determine the cause of that damage. It might be an earthquake, a tornado, hurricane, or some other high wind event. It might even be a demolition in progress. You just can’t tell.
Without the context of the event, any attribution of cause is purely speculative. That context is provided here: THE HISTORY OF GALVESTON AND THE 1900 STORM, which was a hurricane believed to be of Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
If the same storm happened today, rest assured that experts and media armed with rapid-response “attribution science” would rush to use those same pictures to assert that climate change was somehow responsible.
Climate Realism has repeatedly documented how photo-centric storytelling and rapid attribution are used to oversell certainty. Readers can see a catalog of critiques of wildfire, flood, hurricane, and heat-wave attribution claims at its coverage of extreme weather, where media assertions are compared against observational records and IPCC findings. Likewise, Climate Realism’s many analyses of so called “attribution science” shows how model-based probability statements are routinely presented as settled fact, even when underlying data are sparse or contradictory.
Perhaps most telling, the article never asks whether these kinds of images would have been possible in earlier decades. The answer is yes. History is filled with devastating floods, fires, storms, and droughts long before modern CO₂ emissions rose. What has changed most is not the existence of extremes, but the ubiquity of cameras, drones, satellites, and social media—ensuring that every disaster is now documented in high resolution but falsely and instantly framed as evidence of “climate change” by narrative driven media outlets.
By substituting photographs for trends and models for measurements, Yale Climate Connections misleads readers into believing that six images can “show how climate change shaped our world.” They cannot. Climate is measured over decades, not captured in a frame. Until media reporting consistently distinguishes weather from climate and imagery from evidence, readers will keep getting a powerful yet false visual narrative. Only long-term trends can suggest that climate change is making weather worse and photographs can’t capture trends.
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
It’s all part of the propaganda war. In this example, Sweden’s Vattenfall uses Samuel L. Jackson for a commercial in which he swears liberally and says that wind turbines give the middle finger to CO2.
Agreed. This is a war in which the MSM has vested what remains of its credibility. It cannot afford to lose what little remains. Hence it sees little alternative to taking extreme steps in rhetoric.
This desperate search for an audience should be no surprise. The MSM has been losing its audience and its advertising revenues for decades now.
“This is a war in which the MSM….”
_____________________________________________________________________
The Main Stream Media? Get with the program, they are re-branding themselves
as “The Legacy Press” surely their credibility will be golden with the name change.
He was the first great actor to completely sell out and play any role offered no matter how shitty it is
as long as you give him a suitcase with enough shiny in it.
No surprise he did this.
I’m just missing the part where he talks about windmill benefits for whales
(but I’m pretty sure he has a windmill and a 1000 solar panels on his property)
Excuse me, but Vattenfall didn’t “use” Samuel L. Jackson . . . I’m sure they paid him handsomely for his appearance and voice and, like so many actors, he either (a) didn’t have the knowledge to know exactly what he was saying and just recited a prepared script, or (b) placed his ethical standards below his income standards.
Yes, propaganda in the truest sense of the word.
Like Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor who joined the fear mongers.
What’s with the yellow and blue symbol, the colors of Ukraine?
Also the colours of Sweden…
oh! Interesting.
Yeah, and the Texas storm in February 2021 demonstrates we are all going to freeze.
I am very familiar with the Texas ‘Hill Country,’ a Cretaceous limestone karst subject to central Texas drought, floods, hailstorms, etc. that have been well known throughout history. The problem is simple, increased populations with lack of checking or being told how high the wrack in the cypress trees is.There was a similar flood on the much smaller drainage Blanco River several years ago which took out a newer bridge but the old water crossing still worked.
And, of course, all the crisis pushing from ‘scientists’ not taught proper use of statistics.
Ryu, J.-H., & Hayhoe, K. (2017). Observed and CMIP5 modeled influence of large-scale circulation on summer precipitation and drought in the South-Central United States. Climate Dynamics, 49(11-12), 4293–4310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3534-z
Last line of abstract. “ Overall, these results suggest that projected future decreases in summer precipitation over the South-Central region appear to be closely related to anomalous patterns of large-scale circulation already observed and modeled during historical dry years, patterns that are consistently reproduced by CMIP5 models.”
They must have missed the recent central Texas coast hailstorm that killed a bunch of pelicans whose populations are high.19th century one killed “wildcats.”
The MSM has lost all credibility. It’s even worse since the introduction of AI images. We’re living in a 1984 world and more people are figuring that out daily.
People have figured out long ago that propaganda sucks.
The “Main Stream Media” has funded itself using propaganda forever. It’s called advertising.
MSM = Misleadia
“History is filled with devastating floods, fires, storms, and droughts long before modern CO₂ emissions rose.”
True.
And modern models, in any case, demonstrate that dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation massively overwhelms the minor increase in IR absorbing power from incremental CO2.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1knv0YdUyIgyR9Mwk3jGJwccIGHv38J33/view?usp=drive_link
I encourage skeptics of climate alarm to more directly and effectively counter the core misconception that emissions of CO2 have anything at all to do with the “warming” trend – and most certainly nothing harmful.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.
“Only long-term trends can suggest that climate change is making weather worse and photographs can’t capture trends.”
Even Anthony slips in equating climate to the cause. Earlier he correctly describes climate as an average of the weather events that YCC is using. The causation arrow points from weather to climate but it is reversed so often that we sometimes fall into the trap. If YCC was trying to be truthful they would plot the 30 year running average for the area at each picture and let us see the inflection caused by this year’s event. That would not be very exciting I am afraid.
Climate may well be defined as 30 years weather average, but the reality is that as the climate changes so does the weather, and by averaging weather over 30 years we can work out what climate is doing. IOW:-
Although climate is defined as 30 years weather average, weather does not drive climate. It is the other way round: Climate drives weather. Weather averaging is used to measure climate.
Measurements show that as the climate has warmed over about the last three centuries the weather has, on average, improved.
Incidentally, I don’t agree with using just 30 years weather average to measure climate. 30 years might be OK for looking at short term climate changes, such as those driven by ocean oscillations. But for longer climate trends, it could be better to use longer weather averaging periods. I suggest that periods like 80, 200 and 1,000 years would be better for studies aiming to examine more of the Holocene.
Mike I agree with your wish to consider longer periods but a statistic cannot be a cause. The average height of all the second graders does not cause any one of them to grow faster or slower. The 30 year (50? 1000?) average of precipitation in Iowa has no effect on the snowfall in January. The anomaly of any weather event is not due to the change in the average it is a part of.
“Although climate is defined as 30 years weather average, weather does not drive climate. It is the other way round: Climate drives weather. Weather averaging is used to measure climate.”
Actually no. Climate does not drive weather. Climate is the result of weather.
If today’s weather is not exactly the same as it was 30 (or whatever) years ago, the 30 year average changes and when that average is different than the last average the result defines climate change.
How can a statistical calculation drive reality?
Propaganda doesn’t need any verification.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be propaganda.
Science is too complicated for propagandists.
Yet science should also be too basic for conspiracy theories as well.
Science is too tortured sometimes.
I think that’s on page 7 of the Climate Liar’s Handbook: How to Lie Using People’s Emotions.
There is no such phenomena as climate change because the earth’s surface is mostly uninhabited water, rocks, sand, soil, ice and snow. Activities of humans can have no effect on the vast Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, the Andes, Apes mountains, or the Sahara, Gobi and Mohave deserts. Activities of humans in cities can effect local climates due to the urban heat island effect. In some countries, the stripping of the land of plants for food and for feed for animals has caused desertification.
To determine if particular region of the earth has undergone a climate change, one needs to analyze not only at least 60 years of weather and climate data but also surveys of the flora and fauna.
Why are there so many claims of climate change flooding the media these days?
Say WHAT??? There was no “climate change” before humans (homo sapiens) first appeared on Earth some 300,000 years ago?
Who knew? /sarc
Please comment of the the following separate Ice Ages, which I do believe represent significant “climate change”:
— earliest well-established Ice Age, called the “Huronian”, dated to around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago,
— next well-documented Ice Age, and probably the most severe of the last billion years, occurred from 720 to 630 million years ago (the “Cryogenian” period) and which may have produced a Snowball Earth in which glacial ice sheets reached the equator,
— the “Andean-Saharan” which occurred from 460 to 420 million years ago,
— the “Karoo”, which occurred from 360 to 260 million years ago,
— the current “Quaternary”, which started about 2.6 million years ago.
Perhaps I should also mention that over the last million years or so, the Earth has cycled between relatively cold glacial periods and relatively warm interglacial periods at an average rate of about one cycle every 100,000 years, all without impact from mankind’s emissions of CO2.
In current usage, the green crowd is claiming that the CO2 released by the use of fossil fuels is causing harmful climate change. However, I stand by what I posted. I have not read any articles reporting on any climate change in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
In your lifetime have you experienced any climate change?
“In your lifetime have you experienced any climate change?”
Absolutely, YES . . . given that
(a) “climate” is defined scientifically as “weather” averaged over a period of 30 years or longer for a specified region of Earth’s surface,
(b) the best continuous science-based measurements of global lower atmosphere temperature change over the last 47 years—the UAH satellite-based database— shows an area-averaged linear temperature trend of +0.16 °C/decade [+0.22 °C/decade over land, +0.13 °C/decade over oceans], and
(c) I am over 30 years old and a continuous resident of Earth since birth.
Had you bothered to ask “In your lifetime have you perceived any climate change?”, you would have received a different answer.
Actually, the trends in the 30 years of temperature is a weather trend, not a climate change trend.\
To get a climate change trend one must do the 30 year average, move forward a year (or some agreed to interval), calculate the next 30 year average, step and repeat. The trendline of those 30 year averages gives you climate change trends.
You omitted anthropogenic.
Very nice Anthony. Crappy journalism is far more dangerous than misguided, dishonest climate scientists.
Yale University . . . a once-upon-a-time properly respected institute of higher education, now unable to admit the simple difference between weather and climate . . . and even stooping to the equivalent of “children picture books” to misinform the public about such.
Just despicable.
It’s all about drama, not science.
Drama Greens
I don’t always want climate or weather news but when I do my “go to” source is a journalist and graphic designer with a background in digital media and entrepreneurship.
That Yale Climate Connections site is horrible- one of the worst- because it carries the otherwise impress name of Yale- but most of its articles are garbage. I used to check it out to see what it said about my field, forestry- and it was all abysmal. I’ve got 50 years experience- I should be writing the forestry articles for them. 🙂 But I don’t have a PhD from an Ivy League play ground so I was a non person anytime I posted a comment there.
story tip
“Appeals Court Blocks Hawaii’s Climate Change Tourist Tax On Cruise Ships”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/appeals-court-blocks-hawaiis-climate-change-tourist-tax-cruise-ships#comment-stream
The law states that Hawaii “is experiencing a climate emergency” due to “the effects of climate change, such as rising temperatures,” and that the money garnered from the tax would go toward climate action. This is nothing but a money grabbing SCAM! Hawaii leadership should be ashamed, but since they are LEFTISTS they aren’t.
As a practical alternative, how about all Hawaiian natives-by-descent offer the sacrifice of current island bureaucrats to the volcano gods, particularly Pele, at a rate of about two per month to mitigate “climate change” on their long-revered islands.
They sure know how to put the “Con” in “Yale Climate Connections”.
Probably also the “Fun” in dysfunctional.
Samantha Harrington studied Journalism and Arab cultures. Now, that is who I go to, to get my science and climate “facts.” <sarc> if you couldn’t tell.
Climate change is happening. Always has and always will. It is the evolutionary process of Earth. It is undeniable.
The big factor for 2025 was the Sun as is usually the case and Earth’s relationship to it. The Sun was just past its peak for SC25. The Sun was just moving southward from its highest northern excursion since 1998. The Sun moved into the September to December Quadrant but still large distance from the SBC.
When is the next climate play, or were those grant funds cut off?
Where are the pictures of dead bodies of humans and animals caused by climate change events? Isn’t it odd that the planet’s population has quadrupled since 1900 when the industrialization driven by fossil fuels had just begun and has continued for 125 years and counting? Instead all we see is pictures of isolated events that the alarmists prove that the climate crisis is engulfing us and will get worse unless we drastically cut carbon emissions. This form of propaganda along with regular conferences that achieve nothing as well as a guarantee of higher living costs to combat a non-existent threat have done little else than undermine what limited credibility the climate activists ever had from the outset
Went to referenced article. Ctrl-F.
Unprecedented: “The fires, described as “unprecedented” by
Supercharged: “the storm was supercharged by….”
Then:
“fire conditions (high temperatures, low humidity, and high wind speeds) … twice as likely due to climate change”
Plus:
“a warmer atmosphere holds more water”
Equals having it both ways.
As far as Europe, Middle East and North Africa is concerned:
“99 % of forest fires are human induced (negligence or arson).”
Source: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130846
I really cannot see the link with climate here…
You could just as easily put up five photos of beautiful weather being enjoyed by smiling people having picnics or going on bike rides, and saying, “See? Everything’s fine!”