by Angela Wheeler
Rather than a serious assessment of the connection between extreme weather and climate change, a recent National Academies of Sciences (NAS) webinar presented a 253-page report engineered to reinforce the shopworn claim that emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) threaten a climate crisis.
The hour-long presentation was as thin on real science as the self-congratulations were effusive. The NAS committee reviewing the issue, we were told, had done “a great job,” improved on a 2016 report, and now needs more funding and theoretical modeling. There was no data-driven test of whether CO2 from human activity alters the frequency or severity of bad weather. The report simply assumes the link and builds on it.
Committee Chair James W. Hurrell offered no contrary evidence. The webinar ignored a drop in hurricane activity, record extreme heat of the 1930s, and forest-management practices that increase fuel loads, suppress natural fires, and lead to explosive infernos.
Lacking was historical perspective. Unconvincing was Hurrell’s insistence that the Bezos Earth Fund and other climate-aligned groups funding the committee had no influence.
The report’s text repeatedly invokes “the consensus” and the sharp rise in attribution studies that seek to connect weather extremes to climate change. However, the prevalence of research looks more like the product of grant availability than the revelations of stronger evidence, money being a key ingredient in manufacturing consensus.
The committee’s bias toward the popular narrative of a climate crisis is revealed in a recent article in The Conversation, where members celebrated “advances in weather and climate data, climate models and attribution methods” that let researchers compare today’s weather against a theoretical world “without increased greenhouse gases.” The presumption is that CO2 has worsened weather, and researchers only need to determine by how much.
In the tradition of so-called climate science, the committee’s membership and research team excluded independent voices such as William Happer, Richard Lindzen, Steve Koonin, Roger Pielke Jr., and Judith Curry. Representation tilted heavily toward the climate orthodoxy of academia with Columbia, Yale, and Oxford among the more prominent.
Missing was any reference to research such as that of NAS members Happer and Lindzen, whose 2025 paper details atmospheric physics underlying the relatively weak warming potential of CO2. So impotent is the gas, according to their research, that reducing emissions to levels envisioned by alarmists would result in temperature changes too small to measure or feel.
A century of observations confirms that heat waves, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires show no significant long-term trends linked to rising CO₂. Many of these phenomena peaked in the 1930s or have declined. On the other hand, doubling atmospheric CO₂ would increase the world’s food supply by about 40% because of its fertilization effect.
In short, Happer and Lindzen’s physics, grounded in data, renders the report’s confidence in attributing bad weather to a beneficial gas scientifically untenable.
Notwithstanding this and mountains of other evidence contradicting doomsayers, Chapter 5 of the report tries to quantify damages from “climate change,” even discussing legal applications. By stamping NAS authority on damage numbers and “counterfactual” model runs – imagining how mild weather might have been without human influence – the report hands climate litigators a ready citation for lawsuits and settlement demands.
Hurrell noted that this is the first NAS effort to both attribute extremes to climate change and assign dollar damages. The work clearly aims to rectify the failures of litigators to connect CO2 emissions to injuries and have energy companies pay dearly for them. This is pseudoscience to give plaintiffs the so-called proof of causation and the monetary claims that judges have repeatedly said were missing when they dismissed cases.
The NAS report could trigger a wave of costly new lawsuits and forced settlements based on theoretical assumptions rather than observable evidence, drain public and private resources, and further make a mockery of NAS’s pretense of scientific legitimacy.
Perhaps even more importantly, by assuming the role of legal advocate for a bogus climate emergency, the National Academies further erodes public trust in science.
Originally published in Washington Examiner on August 6, 2026.
Angela Wheeler is executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. She is a cum laude graduate of Emporia State University, Kansas, where she studied communication, with additional biology and pre-medicine coursework.
The NAS report problem is that observed weather extremes have NOT increased.
Hurricane ACE hasn’t.
EF 3-5 tornadoes haven’t. (EF1-2 have only because of the advent of Doppler radar better able to detect them.
Oregon’s 2021 heat dome ‘extreme’ was equivalent to 1985 and 1961 and even 1898.
Every ‘extreme weather event’ in Chapter 1 of the 2014 National Climate assessment was either provably false or disingenuously contrived. All discussed in essay ‘Credibility Conundrums’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
The bigger NAS problem is that ‘climate science’ isn’t science. Models do not become data just because ‘climate science’ says so. And failed predictions (accelerating sea level rise, disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice) DO falsify ‘climate science’ just as Feynman said real science should.
Some folks call themselves scientists but dont deserve the title because they do it for the money and produce pulp.
Others stand up and become the true scientist, based on real data, scientific interpretation, honesty and integrity.
An example is M Mann. He has still not released his hockey 🏑 data. That alone assigns him to the first definition.
Yes but given their method the extremes need not increase. It is all about comparing two models, one with and one without the CO2 increase. They claim the human contribution is the difference.
The primary difference between skeptics and alarmists is that the latter think models are science. Given these two fundamentally different views the two groups speak past each other.
They did. I hope they will not be able to in the future.
The models are science just the same as Fauci is science.
Here’s a couple of quotes about climate models.
— “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” – Professor Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
— “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” – Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University.
>> The NAS report problem is that observed weather extremes have NOT increased.
I would argue that the main problem is the key assumption that current and older global climate models are indeed good enough to allow to make such estimates.
There are good reasons to believe the uncertainty as presented in model results is not correct.
For example older models were tuned to show similar trends and results as current models, but we know for sure that their resolution and physics was poor. That knowledge is not present in their stated uncertainty, the results are wrong and we know it.
That should be the end of any legal argument.
(and as legal battles go, F. Otto is an unique expert witness, roughly 90% of her 217 publications using high co2-sensitive scenarios like the RCP 8.5, which the ipcc classifies as unrealistic, the first thing she should be asked if that really is the case and why she doesn’t correct or withdraw her faulty papers and then if z scientist with a handful of not misleading articles and 200 misleading ones really can be considered an expert)
The presumption is that CO2 has worsened weather,
and researchers only need to determine by how much
Pretty much the money quote
On the other hand, doubling atmospheric CO₂ would increase the
world’s food supply by about 40% because of its fertilization effect.
Needs a reference It’s way more than mere fertilizer it’s just as important as water.
Google AI isn’t a good one. It ignores all those graphs that come up on a Google Search on “World Food Supply Graphs [Images]”
The Lindzen and Happer June 7, 2025 paper here (on the CO2Coalition website) gives the 40% number with discussion and references.
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Lindzen-Happer-GHGs-and-Fossil-Fuels-Climate-Physics-2025-06-07.pdf
Thanks
SC, the ‘CO2 fertilizer’ effect actually is a bit of a misnomer. The main impact is on C3 plants (about 85% of all plant species—the other 15% are C4 [mainly ‘grasses’] all evolved in already relatively arid regions over the past about 20 million years). The main effect is more CO2 means they need to open their leaf stomata less to absorb it for photosynthesis. Less open stomata means they lose less water to evapotranspiration, so need less water for equivalent growth. That is why the relatively dry Sahel is among the most greening regions on earth thanks to increased CO2.
Thanks for that (-: There really isn’t a down side to increasing CO2.
Time for this one again:
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
The propagandists are being emboldened by the clueless shift to socialism by Democrats. Their useful idiots are increasing in number.
The now apparent DSA shift within the Democrats will NOT end well for them.
Kamala just proved she is too dumb to figure this out—endorsed DSA El-Sayed for Michigan Senator.
OTH, no less than Bernie Sanders apparently finally has—refused to endorse DSA Hong for Michigan governor.
Jeebus, when someone is too radical for the Bern to endorse, that’s saying something.
Correction. HONG for Wisconsin governor.
Kinda funny that when you correct the name the comment still applies. 🙂
The education system is graduating true believers every year and likely to continue for quite some time to come.
SC, just my opinion. But I (3x Harvard grad—yet no contributions for over a decade despite ‘major gifts’ multiple solicitations) and both my children have acted on your observation for the sake of the grandkids. The ‘education system’ is actually quite diverse. The Ivy Leagues have been fully captured—they indoctrinate rather than educate. But there are state colleges that have not (yet) been.
As one example, my Harvard educated daughter and her Harvard husband no longer give to Harvard at all, and enrolled both of their sons (my grandkids) in a Colorado included multistate state university sharing compact. Means they can pick any of 12 western state universities and still only pay ‘in state’ tuition. My grandsons choices include not just Colorado, but also New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Missouri, and even Hawaii. Not California.
As a second example, my Harvard plus HBS plus HBS wife no longer contribute. They do contribute to his wife’s beloved college alma mater where my granddaughter is already ‘headed’—Wake Forest.
The observation that the rise in atmospheric CO2 and the rise in global temperatures has been concurrent, and that there is abundant evidence to support the view that CO2 can absorb and re-emit LW radiation in the atmosphere, is considered to be strong evidence supporting the theory.
Others disagree. Mostly they are funded by fossil fuel interests, who stand to lose most from the public understanding of these basic facts.
The ironic thing is that the person demonstrating the least understanding of your so-called “basic facts” is you. And the only defense you have is an evidence-free, ad hom attack on people way smarter than you.
FN, some inconvenient (for you) IPCC approved information. The specifics are in a model ‘attribution’ claim from their AR4 WG1 SPM figure 4—you can look it up rather than not believing my umpteenth repost here. Or, you can look up my previous graphically illustrated posts on it here. Which you either never read, or deliberately ignored. Oh—I am also a self made millionaire with zero fossil fuel interests now or ever, so unfortunately also an exception to your ‘mostly’ aspersion.
What SPM fig 4 ‘inadvertently’ said was that the ‘GAST’ rise from roughly 1920-1945 (optically and statistically indistinguishable from roughly 1975-2000) could not have been caused by CO2. Not enough change in atmospheric concentration ‘forcing’. So they actually ‘proved’ natural variation back then is still a big deal. Problem for you and IPCC—Natural variation did not magically stop in 1975.
Concurrent is simply wrong. Leaving out timing? There is no place for agreement or disagreement that “correlation is NOT causation” – it is simply truth.
The long record, well before hominid beings emerged from the Horn of Africa, is that ocean temperature rises and falls BEFORE atmospheric carbon dioxide rises and falls and the ocean temperature changes coincide with various changes is insolation due to variations in earth planetary orbital changes and solar system planetary changes and solar variability. And, the lag time is measured in centuries.
“The long record, well before hominid beings emerged from the Horn of Africa, is that ocean temperature rises and falls BEFORE atmospheric carbon dioxide rises and falls”
Yes, that is indisputably correct.
A fact discovered by climate scientists.
Now, given that, why do you think that they say it is rising CO2 that is leading atmospheric temps now?
Because it is blindingly obvious the 2 positions are diametrically opposed?
Could it be that they know something you don’t?
Or they are they just stupid?
Of course the answer is that they know more than you.
Unless you are infected with a staggering DK syndrome.
And what they know is that the natural carbon cycle that acts over geological ages acts in retrospect to Earth temps, in/out of sources and sinks in balance. A feedback.
However mankind has introduced his own source of GHGs via the burning of fossil fuel for energy.
This source, though small in comparison with the natural CC has been enough to alter the balance between source/sink, such that its concentration has increased by ~ 50% since pre-industrial times.
Thus now CO2 has become a driver and not just principle componant of the feedback loop of the natural CC.
What an arrogant, offensive, self-righteous and self-absorbed post. The only blindingly obvious thing is that the climate scientists have been wrong on every single prediction that they’ve made for the last 30 years or more.
That is your opinion and wrong.
There I can say stuff via handwavium as well.
FYI: I do not post here for the likes of you, who are so far down the rabbit-hole as cannot be reached.
I post the science to contradict the bollocks posted here with the accepted science for the odd passer by.
That you do not accept it is a self-fulfilling prophecy here, that you are welcome to.
Now instead of ad homs, how about you give me what you think is the science of the natural CC vs antho carbon emissions?
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-false-only-around-3-of-all-co%E2%82%82-emissions-are-man-made/
Oh, and tell me:
which do you think it is then? …..
They know something you don’t?
Or are they just stupid?
Concurrent rise in CO2 and global temperatures does not prove that CO2 causes the modest measured temperature rise of about 1-ish ⁰C since 1850. Observations of paleoclimate records of previous interglacial periods seem to show warming increases atmospheric CO2. Chicken. Egg.
You want “concurrent” look at the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2…
It follows the UAH ocean temperatures very closely, so cannot be a driver.
“It follows the UAH ocean temperatures very closely, so cannot be a driver.”
Of course it does, as SSTs largely heat the atmosphere.
And of course CO2 can also be a driver at the same time.
There can be 2 processes acting together, that of the above and that of an increase in GHGs at play in driving atmospheric temps as well. They are not mutually exclusive.
There is never going to be to much of a disparity between atmospheric and sea temps, as the ocean is where 90 odd % of the Earth’s absorbed TSI is stored. It is in effect our storage radiator and as such it passes its heat to the atmosphere. They are coupled.
In short your metric cannot show that CO2 “cannot be a driver.”
In short.. if something follows after, or lags.. and event..
It CANNOT be the cause of the event.
“Observations of paleoclimate records of previous interglacial periods seem to show warming increases atmospheric CO2. Chicken. Egg.”
See above
“The observation that the rise in atmospheric CO2 and the rise in global temperatures has been concurrent, “
Is TOTALLY WRONG.
Atmospheric temperatures have been near zero trend for most of the last 47 years of UAH data, broken ONLY by El Nino spike+ step events.
There is no measured scientific evidence that supports the warming of the planet by atmospheric CO2.
I didn’t make it out to the mailbox today, but surely there is a check therein from a fossil fuel interest. A new one arrives about once a week.
Lucky you. They don’t send me squat.
NB : As other posters have already noted, one of the basic axioms of “The Science” is that “correlation does not equal causation”.
To a first approximation “atmospheric” CO2 concentrations are roughly proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions.
The IPCC had a whole sub-chapter on the subject, and how it related to their calculations of “Remaining Carbon Budgets” (section 5.5), in sub-section 5.5.1 — “Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions of Carbon Dioxide (TCRE)” — on pages 742 to 749 of the AR6 WG-I assessment report (the May 2022 “Final / Approved” version).
Figure 5.31 on page 750 may help you understand the gory details of how the TCRE concept goes from “target maximum GMST increases” to “carbon budgets”.
URL : https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-5/figure-5-31/
A couple of years ago I looked into just how “consistent with” the TCRE concept a GMST reconstruction / reanalysis actually was. In my case I used HadCRUT5 (which goes back to 1850, like NCEI / NOAA and BEST).
The results were uploaded to the WUWT server in October 2024 as an attachment to some (now unfindable) comment …
Notes
For 2 of the 4 periods I identified, 1850-1918 and 1937 to 1976, the trends didn’t even have the right sign.
For the 1904 to 1947 period the actual trend was (roughly) 3.3 times the one “predicted” by the TCRE concept … but at least they were both positive.
It is only from 2005/2010 that the HadCRUT5 dataset is even remotely “consistent with” what the TCRE conjecture “predicted”.
In my mind, at least, the TCRE concept has been “definitively dis-proven”.
.
It isn’t an “observation”.
It is either “wishful thinking on your part” or “a severe case of cherry-picking”.
“It is only from 2005/2010 that the HadCRUT5 dataset is even remotely “consistent with” what the TCRE conjecture “predicted”.”
Global temps have other elements besides anthro CO2 that can and do affect it.
Your above takes no account of aerosols (anthro) for a start.
When that is done your “In my mind, at least, the TCRE concept has been “definitively dis-proven”, is just that – in your mind – and erroneous, as you have not done a multivariate analysis taking in all componants.
Those different trends above are because of a slowly rising radiative forcing componant due rising atmospheric CO2, offset by -ve forcing from aerosols.
This is the RF history of CO2 ….
“Main chart shows effective radiative forcing (ERF) related to the climate drivers assessed in the AR6 report, with the total ERF indicated by the black line. Inset chart shows the rate of change in total anthropogenic ERF (total without solar and volcanic) for 30-year periods centred at each dot. Source: IPCC (2021) Figure 2.10.”
It wasn’t until the 1970’s that RF started to climb as GHGs oustripped the -ve forcing of anthro aerosols. Such that it was barely 0.5 W/m^2 in the 40’s (whilst aerosols were -ve 0.5 W/m^2) and didn’t reach 1 W/m^2 until ~ 1980.
It is now ~2.4 W/m^2.
Thus the warm period in the 30’s/40’s was due to NV (ENSO/AMO) and some +ve solar, CO2 forcing being neutralised by aerosols at that time.
Yes there are.
What does that have to do with the TCRE concept ?
Hint : Try entering “strawman logical fallacy” into your favourite Internet search engine.
.
Section 5.1.1 is only 7 and a half pages out of the 2300 pages or so of PDF files that constitute the AR6 WG-1 assessment report (from SPM to Appendix X).
You couldn’t even take the time to read the first 5 paragraphs.
From the last 2 lines of page 742 and page 743 :
The IPCC bases its entire “carbon budget” calculations on the TCRE concept.
The IPCC has looked into a wide range of confounding factors, and concluded that there is “increased confidence in the near-constancy of TCRE”.
The IPCC came up with “a simple proportional relationship between cumulative emissions of CO2 and change in global temperature”, not me, i.e. the IPCC claims that there is an empirical near-linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and GMST.
I used an empirical dataset to show that … drumroll please … there isn’t.
NB : The original phrase I objected to :
Both “cumulative CO2 emissions” and “12-month averaged atmospheric CO2 concentrations” since 1850 are monotonically increasing graphs with an “exponential-like” appearance.
They are basically scaled versions of each other.
Any “mathematical” relationships between TCRE and GMST also apply to CO2 concentrations and GMST.
If you have a problem with any of this, please take it up with the IPCC.
Just making stuff up. Perfect leftist.
Dresser published a paper recently claiming to show that the 1030s were not really hotter than the last decade. He is determined to erase that obvious issue for the CO2 as the climate control knob, along with the inconvenient MWP/ little ice age issues.
Dressler and colleagues claimed that raw temperature data (especially from the 1930s) was not reliable, but that homogenized and adjusted values were better. He also indicated that there has been a recent acceleration in warming (also discussed separately on WUWT).
Among other things, he did not address the role of changes in clouds, the reduction in atmospheric sulfur pollution, the large variability between the many models used in CMIP, nor the issue of errors ranges in temperature measurements that incorporated in the data he uses for his modeling. But Climate Deniers are not to be discussed by polite society, and he and his consensus colleagues should never be doubted.
1930s, not 1030s.
He (Dessler) also published in 2010 a paper (then amplified greatly by NASA) purporting to show a comparison of clear sky to all sky that said satellites showed there was a strong positive cloud feed back. His problem was his statistics. An almost perfect ‘shotgun’ with an R*2 of 0.02 as published! Means zero feedback. A ‘peer reviewed’ travesty that would have flunked stats 101 at my undergrad.
Clouds are probably linked to the slight warming…
The drop in cloud cover has allowed an increase in absorbed solar radiation…
… this feeds ocean warming especially in the Tropical regions..
What did you expect from the National Academy of Sorceries?
The NSN (National Society of Nincompoops) strikes again. But as long as they are gettin’ paid, that’s all that matters.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc–a language fallacy we should have learned in Philosophy 101.
The lies of the Climate/Energy Liars are getting worse. But fortunately, the Climate Pseudoscience/Religion is circling the drain.
“The Weather Isn’t Getting Worse.”
The weather here in New England has always sucked! It’s the norm. We get maybe a few days/month that everyone says, “oh, such a nice day”.
Has never been about climate, environment or weather. It has ALWAYS been about money and control.
“The Weather Isn’t Getting Worse. The Lawsuits Are”
Mann pointed the way to how “Science is Settled”. Use the courts.