https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2026/05/26/the-sound-of-climate-silence-00936026
BY ARIANNA SKIBELL
Excerpt:
Call it the great “climate hushing.”
At least, that’s how Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, refers to the shift in Washington’s response to the planet’s increasingly dire outlook.
As President Donald Trump unravels U.S. climate policy, Democrats and environmental groups have grown strangely quiet about the flashing warning signs of an imperiled climate system, writes Zack Colman.
New research shows the planet is heating up more quickly than previously thought, which could worsen damage from a potentially historic El Niño, shrink Arctic ice cover to record lows and push a critical ocean current that regulates weather closer to collapse.
“You have to remember that these consequences, a lot of them are irreversible, effectively — certainly in a human lifetime — and you’re piling up debt,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor and contributing author to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “And we’re not going to be able to afford it later.”
Last year, Republicans eroded President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — the largest-ever U.S. action to confront climate change — in their megalaw to extend tax cuts and shrink social safety net programs. So as the midterms approach, Democrats have pivoted to energy affordability.
…
“A fair number of Democrats who have long been champions of climate action themselves have remained or have gone quiet,” Leiserowitz said. “I just don’t see any reason why they need to be scaredy cats.”
…
But experts worry the shift in Democrats’ rhetoric means they may not aggressively pursue climate action if they win back power in Washington. The road is already uphill: the Trump administration has terminated grants for climate research, brain-drained federal work on the issue and floated draconian cuts to satellites and other programs to monitor the Earth’s climate.
…
Related:
“New research shows the planet is heating up more quickly than previously thought…”
Oh no, not again! What will we DO!?! /sarc
What a glaring lack of self-awareness to keep pushing this sort of nonsense.
The reason is because everywhere is warming TWICE as fast as everywhere else.
“everywhere is warming TWICE as fast as everywhere else.”
You are out of date
Everywhere is warming FOUR TIMES as fast as everywhere else.
and three times as fast on Sundays.
Gregory,
This is not funny.
Here is a quick, real experiment that many people can do with Excel.
Download a few years of historic daily surface air temperature.
Add a column to show day of week, Mon, Tues, Wed, etc over and over.
Calculate and graph the average T for each day of the week.
Let the imagination run wild to explain why the average some days of the week is rather different to others. Then select another set of daily T data, analyse as before and wonder why other days of the week average higher or lower than other DOW.
Please report your results on WUWT.
Geoff S
Take all the data.
Find unique and ever more imaginative ways to subdivide the data.
When you find one that shows the data you want to see, proclaim that this is the only subset that matters.
At least until it no longer supports your position. Then dump it and find another subdivision that does.
Yes – Rahmsdorf et al 2026, uses CMIP6 and SSP 5.85
We’re now well into the first half century since Al Gore and James Hansen first turned the air conditioning off in the congressional conference room in order to emphasize the catastrophic global arming the earth was soon to encounter. Since then, the the catastrophic warming alarm bell has been rung millions of times by the CAGW alarmists. Yet, for half a century, there has been no Global Warming Catastrophe. The vast-vast majority of earth’s inhabitants have enjoyed more food, fewer hurricanes, fewer forest fires, cheaper energy as a percent of inflation, and vastly improved living conditions. Look outside, you’ll like what you see, and ignore that naging in the background.
Your facts are off. Al Gore wasn’t part of that meeting. And Hansen didn’t turn off the AC, that was purportedly one of the congressmen, Wirth, I think.
What they don’t mention is that this new research exists only inside computer models.
The real world, on the other hand, continues to climb out of the Little Ice Age much more slowly than the models have been predicting.
Maybe it’s just the mid terms causing the temporary quiet.
Trump has already stated publicly he’s not worried about the mid terms as Centcom controls Hormuz and environs to the extent nothing moves without the US military knowing and intercepting or destroying it. He’s flipped the script on the IRGC playing the long game with them as he strangles their hard currency and the Iran economy collapses. (He’s worked out gangsters and tyrants require power status and unearned standover bag money to pay goons and guess where he has the death cult right now?)
He promised Americans no long wars and brinigng the boots home but he forgot to mention after he’s settled the ME peaceably once and for all. He gave us a cryptic clue with ‘Wouldn’t Gaza make a nice Med resort’ way back as he rounded on the Arabs as to who and what was their common enemy and now it’s a case of remember the Abraham Accord chaps as I have the death cult on the ropes?
Here’s the sublime part with his ‘negotiations’ with a fracturing regime in a death spiral (they’re actually arming their women and kids and grandmas?) is the concomitant rise in oil and gas prices. The very thing the watermelons want with carbon taxing and just stop oil etc! Is it any wonder the world’s greatest Chessmaster and strategist has Marxists and Islamists heads exploding with Trump Derangement syndrome. Priceless!
Your comment is Senseless.
We got your opinion but you don’t specify which comment you have a problem with.
“He promised Americans no long wars and brinigng the boots home but he forgot to mention after he’s settled the ME peaceably once and for all.”
Trump has said for decades that the religious fanatics in Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, so it should not be a surprise that Trump attacks them when they are near to producing a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s execution of the war in Iran has been spectacular. Minimum American casualties while accomplishing the mission. Nobody has ever seen a more successful war effort. Trump reined in these maniacs in a matter of weeks! Unprecedented!!!
And the traitorous Democrats claim Trump is losing the war. No doubt the religious fanatics in Iran hang on every word of the traitorous American Democrats, hoping against hope that the Democrats can somehow undermine Trump’s war effort. And the fanatics can count on the Democrats to try to undermine Trump at every turn. Worthless, dangerous bastards!
Out of curiosity and boredom (mostly boredom) I searched the term “Climate Change Communication” and found this curiosity from the U.S. National Park Service:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/climatechange/toolkit.htm
Climate Change Communication Toolkit
Welcome to the Climate Change Communication Toolkit! The toolkit is intended to complement the NPS National Climate Change Interpretation and Education Strategy by providing support for climate change communicators. Within you will find some resources you need to get started in effectively communicating climate change to the public in your park or protected area.
I Hope Trump nips this in the bud ASAP.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is one of the biggest propaganda outlets for alarmism. Pseudoscience on steroids is what they promote.
A “climate communicator” is a climate industry propagandist. It’s someone with a degree in journalism or communications, or perhaps English or feminist film criticism, and often no STEM credentials at all. So they can’t tell the difference between science and pseudoscience, which makes them ideal for the job of disseminating misinformation, to sell the product.
I’ve never seen a website run by “climate communicators” which wasn’t absolute garbage, including big-budget, government-sponsored sites. JPL’s climate.nasa.gov “Earth Science Communication Team” is notorious for distorting science with political spin. Climate.gov (now climate.us) is just as bad.
Most “science journalists” couldn’t get high marks in a middle school science course, and most “science communicators” and “climate communicators” are even worse. Most of them routinely deceive their readers, not only through their own scientific ignorance, but often also by deliberately misrepresenting certainty.
“Science journalists” almost always get the science wrong. I’ve had a lifelong interest in the latest developments in all branches of science. Most every time I have looked deeper into an article about some new finding it has turned out to be highly misleading. Often the portrayal isn’t even close to what was discovered.
One of my best memories related to inconsistent messaging on climate change took place in Empire, a small town ln northwestern Michigan. The U.S. Forest Service g g. B maintains a small museum focussed on the Great Lakes. A ranger made a presentation on how the great lakes were formed by retreating glaciers as the ice age ended. A nine or ten year old kid stunned her by asking her whether they had global warming then.
Translation –
“Waaah! My gravy train income is being seized up. Not fair! Waaah!”
AGAIN? This ploy is getting old.
It never gets old to Climate Alarmists. They have to throw out a climate scare story every few days.
An indication of the general attention span of the climate faithful.
Once again the other side is using plain old language to try and scare the crap out of the average guy. They aren’t concerned with the truth. In the simplest language possible we have to explain that CAGW is a falsehood. That we are being asked to sacrifice a bunch and spend a bunch for no practical reason. We have sacrificed and paid hard dollars for decades and by their own accounting temperatures haven’t gone down and CO2 concentrations haven’t gone down so what is the point? They are lying to us by telling us we have a problem we don’t really have. It must stop.
In the United States alone, since 2010 we have wasted well over $1 trillion on wind, solar, and the EV debacle. For what? Nothing tangible besides higher inflation, high energy prices, an unreliable grid, ruined landscapes, wildlife destruction, and high rates of mental illness among our youth. Much more could be said. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is a moving full speed ahead on coal power development, liquid fuel powered vehicle and aircraft fleets, and natural gas-fired generation.
The climate industry’s problem is not that Democrats are scaredy cats. Their real problem is the wealth of scientific evidence showing that manmade climate change is modest & benign, and CO2 emissions are beneficial rather than harmful.
CO2’s alleged major harms are all merely hypothetical, and mostly implausible. CO2’s major benefits are proven, measured, and very large.
The scientific evidence does not support climate alarmism. Instead, it shows that Nobel Laureate and pioneer climatologist Svante Arrhenius was right, more than a century ago, when he predicted that CO2 emissions would be highly beneficial for both mankind and the Earth’s climate.
Here’s what has happened as CO2 levels have risen:
https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
NASA satellites measure the benefits of CO2 emissions on the Earth, from satellites. CO2 is greening the Earth!
https://sealevel.info/greening_earth_spatial_patterns_Myneni.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XI
As is the case for any politicized issue, if you want to understand climate change you need to seek out balanced information. I’m here to help:
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html
That’s my resource list with:
● accurate introductory climatology info
● in-depth science from BOTH skeptics & alarmists
● links to balanced debates between experts on BOTH sides
● info about climate impacts
● links to best blogs on BOTH sides
Dave, the peak in the 1940’s when USA had the “dust bowl” and nothing to spare, makes sense…
… but do you know the reason the 1960’s was so high?
I’m thinking African conflicts etc.
Don’t forget Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China.
Don’t ask why catastrophic famines used to be so common. Ask, instead, why, for the first time in human history, they are not common.
Famine used to be a scourge comparable to war and pandemic, the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
That’s how the Hebrews ended up in bondage, in Egypt. Throughout human history, catastrophic famine—usually caused by drought—was a Damoclean sword over humanity’s collective neck… but no longer!
That’s a very, Very Big Deal. If you doubt it, then consider:
● COVID-19 killed about 0.1% of the world’s human population.
● The catastrophic 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2% of world population.
● WWII, the most devastating war in history, killed 2.7% of world population.
● But the three-continent-wide drought and famine of 1876-78 is estimated to have killed 3% to 3.7% of the world’s population.
That doesn’t happen anymore. We still get droughts, but they no longer cause catastrophic famines, even though the world’s farmers now have six times as many mouths to feed.
One of the important reasons is that elevated CO2 levels reduce drought impacts, through reduced transpiration and improved water use efficiency by crops, thanks to reduced stomatal conductance.
That benefit is settled science among agronomists, yet most “climate scientists” seem to be unfamiliar with it. Here are some references:
1. Chun JA, et al. (2011). Effect of elevated carbon dioxide and water stress on gas exchange and water use efficiency in corn. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 151(3), pp 378–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.11.015
EXCERPT: “There have been many studies on the interaction of CO2 and water on plant growth. Under elevated CO2, less water is used to produce each unit of dry matter by reducing stomatal conductance.”
2. O’Leary GJ, et al. (2015). Response of wheat growth, grain yield and water use to elevated CO2 under a Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment and modelling in a semi-arid environment. Glob Chang Biol. 21(7):2670–2686. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12830
3. Fitzgerald GJ, et al. (2016) Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Glob Chang Biol. 22(6):2269-84. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13263
4. Uddin S, et al. (2018) Elevated [CO2] mitigates the effect of surface drought by stimulating root growth to access sub-soil water. PLoS One. 13(6):e0198928. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198928
5. Taylor, C & Schlenker, W (2021). Environmental Drivers of Agricultural Productivity Growth: CO2 Fertilization of US Field Crops. National Bureau of Economic Research, no. w29320. https://doi.org/10.3386/w29320
6. Chen, Xin et al (2024). The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000. Global Ecology and Conservation, Volume 49, 2024, e02791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02791
I thought the dust bowl was in the 30’s.
I am intrigued by the circumstance of being a ‘contributing author’. What does it mean? Has he scribbled a few words on a piece of paper?
Thousands of unpaid, volunteer scientists from around the world contribute to the reports of the IPPC. For example, the agency has appointed 664 experts from 111 countries to participate in the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) as Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors and Review Editors. Oppenheimer is a prominent figure in these efforts so his “words” likely are measured in the thousands, but still a small part of the many thousands.
Peter Ridd gets a well earned Award-
Peter Ridd wins a prize for science integrity. Donates to CHECK THE SCIENCE
Unfortunately the Award is somewhat of a no-brainer nowadays-
‘I’m lost for words’: Rita Panahi blasts Hugh de Kretser on his definition of a woman
Oh no! Trouble in Climate La-la Land?
That’s because Democrats have a new ‘existential threat’.
“Climate change is an existential threat”, and “the election of Donald Trump is an existential threat” didn’t work, but maybe “the existential threat of AI” will do the trick. 🙄
To Democrats, anything with any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is a threat. !
The only true existential threat are the Democrats themselves.
We can’t afford it now. 39 trillion already spent that doesn’t exist. Add that to the fact that ALL CO2 mitigation efforts attempted worldwide for the last 40 years have produced NOTHING.
“New research shows the planet is heating up more quickly than previously thought.”
Ha ha haaaa! What “new research”? Did Arianna Skibell miss the big news that the IPCC admitted that RCP8.5 is unrealistic? That the planet is heating up SLOWER than previously thought?
“But experts worry the shift in Democrats’ rhetoric means they may not aggressively pursue climate action if they win back power in Washington.”
What “experts”? Of course leftists (Democrats) will aggressively pursue feckless “climate action” when they take power. There is no evidence that they are moderating their policies. They’re just changing targets and deadlines because they’ve noticed that they’re nowhere close to meeting them. They are still doubling down on stupid, because they are zealots devoted to their delusions. They’re just not doing it fast enough for the leftists and their “experts.”