One great thing about being a climate alarmist is never having to say you’re sorry. Not about forcing schoolchildren to watch Al Gore’s error-riddled documentary, not about wrecking economies over weather trends that aren’t even happening, not over making an international heroine of some addled schoolchild in ways that arguably ruined her life as well as scientific debate. Or even about continuing to say something once it’s been shown to be clearly untrue, as when you praise the hair-raising British “Stern Review” on its 20th anniversary for predicting climate disasters that didn’t happen because his methodology was rubbish, as was exposed at the time (on which see below). Or when you insist that the current El Niño is worse than the worst thing ever and will deliver the apocalypse you’ve been rooting for in vain for decades. As we noted last week, it’s actually fizzling out with temperatures holding steady or falling rather than rising. Which didn’t stop the New York Post from offering us “Apocalyptic Super El Niño map shows where most people will die from record-breaking calamity” plus a video “’Behemoth’ El Niño to upend global weather, UN warns”. And if not, well, they’ll move on to the next false alarm.
Nature, meanwhile, celebrates the re-election of Brazilian socialist by telling us in an “anthropocene” newsletter that “The Amazon Breathes a Sight of Relief”, trees, apparently, being partial to workers’ control of the means of production, and uninformed about the historical record of socialist countries regarding environmental protection. We suppose it’s mere pedantry that the Nature newsletter in question mutters “However, even with improved protections, the forest remains threatened by drought and fires, both of which are being exacerbated by climate change and the record El Niño still strengthening in the Pacific," then links to two stories, one from Bloomberg and the other from Nature, neither of which actually mentions El Niño. Though in a sidebar, at least as of Oct. 30, Nature did offer us “A ‘super’ El Niño could transform the Amazon. Is the world’s biggest rainforest doomed?” Linking to a story from back in August that yaps on about how:
“The Amazon rainforest might be closer to a tipping point than scientists thought. Some fear that droughts and fire could nudge it into irreversible decline.”
Ah, that settled science again. The piece starts “El Niño is back with a vengeance” and adds:
“A mammoth patch of warm water is growing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is giving four-in-five odds that the disruptive climate phenomenon will turn into a “very strong” event by the end of the year. Some forecasters say this El Niño is on track to become the strongest in at least 150 years.”
Unless it doesn’t. But don’t expect the unsettled science to become unsettled the other way, or settled the other way, or any of that guff.
Thus elsewhere Bloomberg Green thunders on Oct. 11 that:
“A Rare ‘Super’ El Niño Is Looking More Likely. Here’s What to Expect”.
Ah yes, we thought. Hype. And we were not disappointed, at least in our prediction, as they leaned on an Oct. 8 projection from the US National Weather Service “Climate Prediction Center” that:
“El Niño continues to strengthen, with a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely through January-March 2027 (remaining greater than an 83% chance). El Niño strengthened further last month, with sea surface temperature anomalies exceeding +4.0°C in portions of the eastern equatorial Pacific. Most Niño indices increased in the past month, reaching +2.1°C in Niño-3.4, +3.0°C in Niño-3, and +3.9°C in Niño-1+2. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) was well above average, reflecting a deeper-than-average thermocline.”
And so on and so forth. Although since “climate” is by definition the state of weather somewhere over at least 30 years, these aren’t climate predictions, they’re weather forecasts. Which doesn’t sound quite so imposing, now does it? Especially as they were apparently wrong.
As for the Post story, it hypes something from the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab, complete with map of lurid dark red all over the place, especially “the Global South” so world ends, women and minorities hardest hit. And it’s all very mathy, with projected total deaths from “El Niño’s extreme heat” at “about 857,000” not just “about 850,000” or “about 800,000” as you might get if it involved a bunch of loose assumptions not great and terrible equations. Incidentally we deniers may have all the money, but this Climate Impact Lab has six people in “Leadership” (including “the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago” though it is extremely hard to imagine Milton Friedman buying into this kind of thing), and 25 staff. Must be nice. Also, it’s part of the “Energy Policy Institute” at the University of Chicago, modestly “EPIC”, and EPIC’s “Mission” is:
“To confront the global energy challenge by ensuring Energy Markets provide access to reliable, affordable energy needed for growth, while limiting emissions that cause Climate Change and damages to the Environment.”
So totally neutral and dispassionate. (Though a bit short on proofreaders who know “Environment” is not capitalized in English, though it would be in German.) Despite which, mysteriously, this map and report do not mention that even in hot countries, cold kills more people than heat, and so net deaths from an El Niño-driven increase in temperature should be a negative number. Nor did the media commentary.
Speaking of which, one alert reader wrote to ask why the mainstream media were not reporting on the weakening of El Niño. To which one possible answer is that they don’t do much research and if you just do a Google search you are barraged with state propaganda that it’s coming for us. If you search for news on whether it’s weakening, you get a handful of stale stories because they move on like cats on a hot stove when something doesn’t deliver climate doom, including the limp Atlantic hurricane season.
Or just keep on with what they had been saying even if it’s not true. So the CBC, apparently taking its audience for children of all ages, writes “This year will be a super-duper El Niño. Here’s what Canadians can expect this winter”. Namely milder conditions starting in late December. And we are all going to die:
“The bad news, particularly for the West, is that it tends to be drier, with reduced precipitation. That’s not great for the fire risk in some regions experiencing drought conditions, especially heading into 2027, which is expected to be the warmest year on record.”
Heatmap positively basks in the looming disaster that already hit, chuckling that:
“El Niño is giving us a taste of what the warming we have locked in as a species will feel like. Just look at the extreme weather that raged this summer in the form of storms and heat waves as the cyclical weather pattern drove up temperature averages past 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That’s the maximum warming benchmark set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, later reinforced in a landmark 2018 United Nations report. Now the latest data from the UN Environment Programme shows that we’re well on our way to making this year’s El Niño the new norm.”
What extreme weather? They don’t say. Everybody knows.
P.S. The San Bernardino Sun warns that “With El Niño looming, Inland Empire agencies prepare for more rain this winter/ Riverside and San Bernardino County water and emergency agencies are preparing for the worst, as the National Weather Service forecasts a higher chance of rainfall over the next couple of months.” When there’s less rain than usual, we’re told climate change is causing drought in California and dramatically increasing wildfire risks. But when there’s more, we’re told it’s “the worst”. Although another such item said there’d be 20 inches of sea level rise by 2050 which ought to be at least as worst. But on climate you can say just anything.
