Guest Post by: The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, The Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This compilation serves as a fact check on the top false claims made about climate change by the media in May, 2026.
Debunking claims of climate causing ‘less healthy’ food – Melting ice will NOT ‘drown millions’ – Droughts NOT caused by fossil fuels – Earth is NOT spinning slower due to climate change!
Links: The Washington Post article, Leiden University analysis, examples of experiments, Free-Air carbon dioxide enrichment, crop yield increases.
Links: Committee animation, U.S. drought monitor, drought classification, NOAA climate definition.
Links: The Daily Mail post, Nature study, East Antarctica ice gains, IPCC AR6.
Links: IPCC abandoning high-end scenarios, The Washington Post article, The New Republic article, plausibility, coal consumption estimate, proven reserves.
Links: Climate Central report, UHI mapping, paper on UHI.
Links: BBC article, JGR Solid Earth study, frictional effects, El Niño–Southern Oscillation.
Until next month, enjoy these and other great climate fact checks at:
- Sorry, Health ‘Experts’ and The Guardian, Climate Change Isn’t Causing a ‘Public Health Emergency’
- The Media is Wrong, Tornadoes Are Not Getting More Frequent or Extreme
- Wrong, Guardian, Climate Change Hasn’t Taken New Orleans Beyond the ‘Point of No Return’
- POLITICO: ‘Climate hushing’ – ‘The sound of (climate) silence’ – ‘As Trump unravels U.S. climate policy, Dems & enviro groups have grown strangely quiet’
- Meet the new Greta…Eva Lighthiser! The 20-year-old airplane flying climate activist suing Trump for ‘violating constitutional rights’
- New Study: ‘LGB individuals live in warmer places.’ – Study ‘tests whether lesbian, gay, & bisexual (LGB) individuals inhabit systematically warmer locations than their heterosexual peers’
- Climate Change Weekly # 581— It’s Hurricane Season, and Nothing Is New
- Ocean “Acidification” — Another Fake Scare That Won’t Go Away
- SSP5-8.5: Garbage In, Doomcasting Out
The article “No, Climate Central, Summer Warming Isn’t Due to Climate Change,” posted here days ago, does not hold up against observations from USCRN. The USCRN is specifically designed to minimize urban heat island influences, yet its Jun-Aug temperature record shows a warming trend of approximately 0.36°C/ decade.
The CONUS-wide drought severity coverage time series obscures important regional differences in hydroclimate trends. The western US is becoming more arid and that’s driven by temperature-driven evapotranspiration (a very nasty positive feedback). Much of the east, OTOH, is experiencing increased precipitation.
If you get land hot, it sits where it is and feels hot.
If you get water hot, it expands and evaporates and blows around.
If you heat a giant sphere with surface 2/3 water and 1/3 land, then…
(The Pacific Ocean covers a large area West of California)
It warms?
I agree with that, but Anthony Watts thinks the summer warming is due to the UHI effect rather than climate change.
I would have thought that by 2026 he’d at least accept the evidence that global temperatures are rising.
Where has Anthony stated that temperatures have not risen since the Little Ice Age?
That recorded temperatures are rising isn’t in doubt.
What’s in doubt is the cause of the rise.
“Where has Anthony stated that temperatures have not risen since the Little Ice Age?”
It’s in the title:
“No, Climate Central, Summer Warming Isn’t Due to Climate Change”
The shift from the colder Little Ice Age to warmer temperatures is an example of climate change.
If you read the commentary, you will see the discussion on uhi and how the original article conflates uhi with rising temperatures
What the article doesn’t say is temperature has not risen since the lia
“The shift from the colder Little Ice Age to warmer temperatures is an example of climate change.”
Exactly *where* is this climate change occurring? It’s certainly not changing the climate anywhere in the continental US. In fact, some climate change, such as the greening of the Sahara Desert, is a POSITIVE climate change. Climate change is *not* a positive/negative metric.
TEMPERATURE IS NOT CLIMATE.
Climate is determined more by precipitation and growing season length than by temperature. Mid-range daily temperature, the usual metric climate science uses, is *NOT* a climate metric. Two entirely different climate zones can exhibit the exact same daily mid-range temperature on the very same day.
That’s not the metric they use.
They use temperature anomalies – differences from a long term average. WMO recommends last full three decades, currently 1991-2020.
They know that. However, statistically significant differences in temperature over time is an indication of a changing climate.
And its all measured at sites, the majority of which, are TOTALLY UNFIT for the purpose of measuring the change in surface temperatures over time.
Anomalies inherit the EXACT SAME VARIANCE as the parent components.
That means that anomalies can *NOT* increase resolution or accuracy of the data.
The baseline is based on MID-RANGE DAILY TEMPERATURES. And mid-range daily temperatures can *NOT* distinguish climates – meaning they cannot distinguish climate change either.
You can run from this truth but you can’t hide from it.
Pure and utter bullshite. That “statistically significant differences” REQUIRES the differences to be greater than the measurement uncertainty in order to statistically significant. If they aren’t greater than the measurement uncertainty, then you don’t really even know if the difference actually exists! YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW THE SIGN OF THE DIFFERENCE! And since climate science totally ignores measurement uncertainty by assuming it all cancels CLIMATE SCIENCE CAN’T TELL IF THE DIFFERENCE IS SIGNIFICANT OR NOT!
In addition to not knowing the sign of the difference you can’t even tell if any trend is a good thing or bad thing because it doesn’t actually tell you about CLIMATE change, only temperature change.
AND YOU JUST ADMITTED THAT TEMPERATURE IS NOT CLIMATE!
You miss the point, again.
Anomalies permit you to compare recent temperatures against prior temperatures in a straightforward way. That’s why every global and regional temperature producer uses them.
I must have missed that ‘admission’?
What I said was that a statistically significant increase in temperature, globally or regionally, over an extended period indicates a change in climatic conditions.
Hardly controversial.
ONLY if the comparison produces values that are greater than or equal to the measurement uncertainties involved. Otherwise you simply do not know if the differences are real or not.
MEASUREMENT UNCERTAINTY ADDS even when you do differences.
(5 +/- 1) – (7 +/- 2) = -2 +/- 2.2
In other words you don’t really know if the difference of 2 actually exists or not. It could actually be +1 (6 – 5).
You continue to use the climate science meme of “all measurement uncertainty is random, Gaussian, and cancels” so you can assume that the values of 5 and 7 are 100% accurate!
Malarky! They are used because it seems that most climate scientists simply do not understand metrology at all. I have yet to see a climate science paper on CAGW that even discusses the variance/standard deviation of the data sets being analyzed! Since the variance of the data set is a direct metric for the uncertainty of the average it is an IMPORTANT statistical descriptor that is needed for full analysis.
Can *YOU* give us the standard deviation for the data used to calculate the GAT for April, 2026? Not the standard deviation of the sample means but the standard deviation of the component elements.
If you can’t then justify your assumption that it must be 0 (zero)?
I said: “TEMPERATURE IS NOT CLIMATE.”
You said: “They know that.”
And then in the very next statement you said: “However, statistically significant differences in temperature over time is an indication of a changing climate.”
If temperature is not climate, then how can it be a metric indicating a changing climate?
You can’t even post two consecutive sentences while remaining consistent with your assertions!
How exactly does it “minimise” UHI? What is the calculation for UHI?
“How exactly does it “minimise” UHI?”
The stations in this network are placed in ideal, remote conditions:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/photos.html
Ah, so not in the cities. Goodo. 😉
There’s a feature on USCRN on the side panel of this site with links to the data
From that first link, WUWT itself describes USCRN as “… a properly sited (away from human influences and infrastructure) and state-of-the-art weather network...”
As Eldrosion points out, since it began in 2005, USCRN has warmed faster than nClimDiv (not just in summer, by the way), NOAA’s US surface data set that uses less-well sited stations that require adjustment for things such as UHI.
So the probity of all the Temps values from all measuring sources used to track “climate change” is abysmal.
I’ve been saying this for years.
Why do you think there’s so much dispute about Temps, “data”?
Not according to WUWT. According to this site, the USCRN stations represent:-
Really, you seem to be saying that all and any data that contradicts your opinion (which appears to be pretty much all of it) is “abysmal”.
And those properly site stations show no warming except at the 2016 El Nino event and some spike s at the 2023/4/5/ event.
Where has this warming trend in USCRN identified actual climate change? Temperature is a piss poor metric for climate, especially when using the daily mid-range temperature as the component. Two vastly different climates can exhibit the exact same mid-range daily temperature on the same day – thus the mid-range daily temperature cannot be used to identify climate.
Nebraska and points north *still* plant a different strain of wheat than Kansas and points south. Truck crops have not changed regionally at all due to “climate change”. California, Texas, and Florida are still considered to be the best regions for truck crops – the boundary for this have not changed at all over the past 50 years.
It’s quite revealing that most of the predicted impacts of “climate change” can never be confirmed in the real world. Those impacts that can be identified, such as longer growing seasons and greening, are POSITIVE changes, not negative. Yet “climate change” somehow is always portrayed as a negative impact!
The ‘response’ article above attempts to challenge the claims made in the Climate Central report about the impact of climate change on US temperatures by claiming that the observed warming trend is primarily the result of UHI on urban sites. It states:-
The point Eldrosion and I are making is that the USCRN data clearly demonstrate that not to be the case.
USCRN are all non-urban sites, “properly sited“, according to WUWT, yet they are warming slightly faster than the nClimDiv data, which includes data from all sites.
It follows that whatever the cause of the observed warming in the US over the past +21-years is, it ain’t UHI. If it was, the USCRN sites would be warming at a much slower rate than they are, or maybe not warming at all.
nClimDiv is a meaningless series which depends totally on how the adjustments were made.
USCRN sites are not warming except for an El Nino step around 2016.
I didn’t ask about UHI. I asked you where the so-called “climate change” caused by the supposed temperature trend is actually occurring.
Of course you deflected by trying to answer a different question.
First you have to establish that a change in climate is actually happening before moving on to establishing a cause. You are skipping the first step.
Again, temperature is *NOT* a metric for climate, especially if it is based on mid-range daily temperature. Since two locations in vastly different climates can have the very same mid-range daily temperature, the mid-range temperature can’t distinguish climate let alone climate *change*.
Second, you have *NOT* established that CRN isn’t affected by UHI. The term “UHI” is misleading. It is actually land use and population based microclimate changes that are being discussed. Just because a station is in a rural environment that does *NOT* establish that land use and population, i.e. microclimate change, has not affected it.
Oh, right. You want to change the subject, since you can’t explain rationally why sites in the US unaffected by UHI are warming faster than those that are.
Why didn’t you just say so?
No, it is *NOT* changing the subject. You are asserting that UHI is *not* affecting CRN – but you can’t even say where the change you think CRN is indicating is happening!
I explained this to you! Like so many supporting CAGW your reading comprehension skills are sadly lacking.
I gave you at least two references documenting the land use changes. They involve crop changes and windbreak changes. They are rational possible explanations for the warming shown by CRN. YET YOU JUST DISMISS THEM LIKE YOU DO WITH MEASUREMENT UNCERTAINTY!
Unfreakingbelievable!
This fact is the final nail in the back-and-forth over the usefulness of such inappropriate metrics for claims about the states of coupled, non-linear, chaotic climates systems.
It’s not me that’s making the claim. It’s every global temperature producer in the world, surface and satellite, including UAH.
so they all use the same piss-poor sources and techniques?
You make the point for us.
“It’s not me that’s making the claim. It’s every global temperature producer in the world, surface and satellite, including UAH.”
OMG! This is the typical kind of argument you get from climate science CAGW supporters.
IT’S NAMED: BANDWAGON FALLACY.
Even with CRN, microclimate changes such as land use and population are not identified on a station-by-station analysis of CRN temperature components, therefore there is no way to accurately attribute even CRN temperature trends to actual causes. CRN stations are typically rural – and rural crop production has changed significantly over just the past 20 years let alone over the past 50 years and up. Evapotranspiration impacts of corn and soybeans as examples are different and affect local and regional temperatures differently. Yet changing crop production from soybeans and milo to corn due to ethanol use seems to never be considered in CRN temperature data. The removal of windbreaks in rural country has progressed significantly over just the past decade in order to maximize production area yet this impact on rural temperatures doesn’t seem to be considered in any CRN temperature analyses that I have found. (note: the removal of these windbreaks may come to be regretted should Dust Bowl conditions ever emerge again) The removal of the windbreaks has a significant impact on the spread of heat from sources, both positively and negatively (e.g. heat from solar farms to humidity from streams/rivers/ponds/lakes).
It’s just more proof of Freeman Dyson’s criticism of climate science – it is not holistic in any way, shape, or form. There are so many inputs and outputs of the biosphere that are just totally ignored in climate science and its CGM’s that the outputs of the CGM’s are useless in projecting or predicting the future “climate”.
If you have any evidence that the quality of the USCRN sites has diminished over time, or that they have all collectively somehow become influenced by artificial heat sources, etc, then I’m sure Anthony and co would be pleased to hear from you.
So, do you have any such evidence, or is this just a wish?
There is no warming at USCRN sites apart from the effects of El Nino events.
I *have* just given you some of the evidence that should be considered. As usual, you just ignored it. Land use in rural America has changed significantly over the period considered to be so representative of “climate change”.
from: Revised Estimates of Total Crop Acres for the U.S. over 1998-2025 – farmdoc daily
This indicates that a major shift in rural land use has been occurring since 1998. Please show us where climate science has made ANY attempt to determine the impact this has had on CRN temperature data. I can’t find one.
From: Windbreak plantings decline on US farms, raising soil conservation concerns
———————————–
Expensive land: ….
Invasive cedar trees and a lack of alternatives: ….
Bigger machinery and bigger fields ….
Less livestock: …..
”
————————————-
So-called “climate scientists” seem to be mainly mathematicians and statisticians that live in a basement somewhere and have no idea of what is happening in the real world and its impact on “climate change”. They are like horses with blinders on that can only see the term “CO2” on the blackboard in front of them.
On the other hand, the climate change sceptics seem to be those who live in intimate contact with the real world. From measurement uncertainty to land use changes they see the climate as a holistic whole governed by a multiplicity of chaotic causes and effects that cycle over generational time intervals at a minimum – most of which climate science chooses to ignore because of their blinders.
That’s not ‘evidence’, that’s speculation.
One should only give consideration to evidence. You have provided none.
That’ll do perfectly well here on the WUWT blog comment section; but it won’t stand up so well against rigorous scientific examination.
ROFL! Changing crop profiles and windbreak profiles are “speculative” while CO2 controlling average global temperature is not!
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes incoming and outgoing radiative flux balance for the biosphere? Even when the incoming and outgoing radiative flux elements have different intensities and different time frames?
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes accurately parameterizing clouds over the entire globe?
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes assuming that all measurement uncertainty is random, Gaussian, and cancels?
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes assuming that the variance of the temperature data is not a needed statistical descriptor?
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes ignoring that data set components with different variances must be weighted when finding an average.
I suppose “rigorous scientific examination” includes assuming that intensive properties of different things can be averaged? That you can create a larger system by simply adding intensive values?
You are hoist on your own petard!
All warming in USCRN comes from the 2016 El Nino and the 2023/4/5 event.
Apart from that there is no warming.
Fact check
The “BALANCE”
GOZINTAZ positive, GOZOUTAZ negative.
TFK_bams09
1st 63 AWOL
+160 surface – 80 latent – 17 sensible – 0 (1st 63 AWOL) – 396 BB + 333 back – 2nd 63 LWIR = – 63
Does not balance.
Both 63s
+160 surface – 80 latent – 17 sensible – 1st 63 LWIR – 396 BB + 333 back – 2nd 63 LWIR = – 126
Does not balance.
No place at ToA for 2nd 63, must return to surface.
+160 surface – 80 latent – 17 sensible – 1st 63 LWIR – 396 BB + 333 back + 2nd 63 LWIR = 0
Balances: GOZINTAZ = GOZOUTAZ
1st 63 OLR at ToA.
80/17/63 reality from Sun
2nd 63 must return to surface.
-396 BB/+333”back”/+2nd 63 imaginary, zeros out and implodes.
No GHE or CAGW.
A death notice for GHE & all you can muster is a minus swipe.
You’ve been inhaling chemtrails.
I successfully persuaded a bunch of ‘educated’ greenies that the earth’s rotation was slowing because wind turbined were stealing its rotational energy. If you have a chance, try the argument out at an approvals hearing for wind turbines
This is what can be expected on a regular basis from the mainstream media. For them, accuracy is of secondary importance, and if their reporting is outright false, that’s no problem because they’ll simply exaggerate or distort some other piece of information even if it’s only an unproven theory. They’re simply hoping to sell fake news, not inform the public properly.