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Believing is seeing

07 Sep 2022 | News Roundup

Over at CNSNews, which bills itself as “The right news. Right now”, Craig Bannister observed that “The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is off to its slowest start in 30 years, forcing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to slightly decrease its predicted likelihood of an above-normal season.” Just slightly, mind you. Meanwhile NBC’s “Climate in Crisis” executes a neat pirouette with “St. Louis, Death Valley and now Dallas: Why ‘1,000-year’ floods suddenly seem so common… climate researchers say a warmer atmosphere has juiced the potential for extreme rainfall and damaging flooding. Although it’s difficult for scientists to immediately interpret the link between a single weather event – or string of events – and climate change, human-caused warming has rapidly shifted the probability of extremes so much that some of them say these numbers are losing their relevance as benchmarks because they’re changing so fast.” Once again scientists can’t say for certain, but they’re certain. Journalists say.

So it is that here in Canada, a federal task force is proposing mandatory flood insurance even for homes that don’t need it because everyone needs it even if they don’t. Blacklock’s Reporter points out that “Eighty percent of cities have neighbourhoods built on flood plains, by official estimate.” Now according to the old rule about not asking your barber if you need a haircut, the government might have leaned less heavily on insurance industry participants (see Appendix A of the report) to determine whether the government should force people to buy insurance. But it’s also worth pointing out that the more we build on flood plains, and pave them so they are less able to absorb rain and more likely to generate runoff, the more we will hear claims like this one from former federal Commissioner of the Environment Scott Vaughan, also quoted in the Blacklock’s piece, in a separate report from the Council of Canadian Academies, that flood insurance should be mandatory on mortgage applications “to ensure adequate protections from climate-related hazards”.

As Matt Ridley has wisely commented, “Obsession with climate change blinds people to more serious man-made environmental issues.”

3 comments on “Believing is seeing”

  1. Please explain why NBC’s claim that global warming induced climate change is not being challenged when satellite and balloon data show that, while atmospheric CO2 is rising, apparently relentlessly, the global average temperature has not increased significantly since 1998. And why evidence of hottest year/month/week days appear mostly in 2016, the last major El Niño?

  2. Nineteen of the hottest years have occurred since 2000, with the exception of 1998. The year 2020 tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record since record keeping began in 1880, and that doesnt account for the summer of 2022 where temperature records were broken yet again over many parts of Europe, The UK, Africa and the Middle East. Many river across Europe have drastically reduced levels and many areas of farmland have been unable to produce crops.
    The constant rise in CO2 levels does not always manifest in a rise in temperature. There are many other factors to consider such as the increase in water content of the air and other weather related conditions. To say that the temperature of the earth is not rising is false because it is.
    It doesnt happen every day but the overall trend is up.

  3. Dale, Howard defined his data source while jumped to one that fits your narrative. You failed completely to address his points. Feel free to try again.

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