“In fact,” MSNBC, Trump made the right choice for energy secretary, climate change does have benefits — does Watt agree?

from climaterealism

Author: Linny Luken

Chris Wright speaks at the American Conservation Alliance 2023 Summit. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, Arizona, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Recently, MSNBC published an article written by Ja'han Jones titled “Trump's Pick for Energy Secretary Actually Thinks Climate Change is a Good Thing,” claiming that Trump Trump’s choice for energy secretary, Chris Wright, has claimed that climate change is having a positive impact, which is the wrong change, not the looming disaster that the media claims. Wright is right, MSNBC's Jones is wrong.

Jones wrote that Wright “downplayed the risks of rising global temperatures and argued that climate change might actually be good for the world.” He went on to cite a Wall Street Journal article that quoted Wright in an interview with PragerU remarks, the Wall Street Journal reported:

“But he also said climate change is making the planet greener by promoting plant growth, increasing agricultural productivity and potentially reducing the number of temperature-related deaths each year. Last year, he spoke about climate change to a conservative media nonprofit Organization PragerU said: “There may be almost as many positive changes as negative ones. “Is this a crisis, the world's greatest challenge, or a huge threat to the next generation? No.”

Jones complained that “the positives that Wright lists for rising atmospheric carbon—such as more plant growth and increased ‘agricultural productivity’—do not always occur in climate change scenarios, and when they do, It’s not always a positive development.”

Jones conflated real-world observations of increased plant growth and crop productivity (to which Wright was referring) with climate computer model scenarios, which are not real and generally do not produce results consistent with reality, particularly but not exclusively their Various projections of crop yields under climate change. as climate realism For example, as discussed repeatedly here , here , and here , models are run too hot, so their predictions of various types of impacts are far off.

Global crop production has increased, in large part due to increased carbon dioxide and improved growing conditions. For example, cereal crops (wheat, rice, corn, etc.), which account for a large proportion of the staple food of people around the world, have increased significantly. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) show that between 1990 and 2022, cereal yields increased by about 52% and production increased by 57%.

World records are set frequently, most recently in 2022.

exist climate realismwe have written more than 200 articles examining yield and yield data for various crops around the world, both locally and globally. Data shows that yields of most crops, from fruits to tubers to vegetables, are on the rise. Yields and yields have increased, which is a good thing for reducing hunger and malnutrition rates.

It’s not just farmland, either. According to NASA, during the same period in which the most alarming warming is occurring, the Earth has turned green, deserts are being reclaimed, and wildlife habitats are expanding—without any catastrophes to life.

Another point Jones was trying to make was, “Contrary to Wright's claims about temperature-related deaths, the Environmental Protection Agency reported this year that 'the sharp increase in heat-related deaths is closely related to the occurrence of high temperatures and heat waves.'”

Jones is cheating. Wright pivoted to discussing only heat-related deaths when he said temperature The number of related deaths has declined. Once again, Wright sided with the truth.

As the Earth warms modestly, the number of deaths related to suboptimal cold temperatures drops significantly due to fewer cold days. A recent analysis published by The Lancet shows that the number of cold deaths is significantly greater than the number of hot deaths, with a ratio of nearly 10 to 1. More than 6 million people die from cold every year, while the number of deaths from heat is only slightly higher. to 600,000 people. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of deaths caused by heat increased by about 116,000, but this was offset by a decrease of about 283,000 deaths caused by cold. Cold deaths more than tripled, and heat-related deaths more than doubled. That means Wright was right, and there was a net decrease in temperature-related deaths.

To complete the article, Jones listed a host of other so-called catastrophic impacts of climate change, including wildfires, droughts, insect-borne diseases and other topics, all of which climate realism This has been discussed in detail before and nothing has gotten worse.

Contrary to claims by Jones and others, Wright is correct that climate change has produced enormous benefits over the past hundred years that are rarely discussed in the mainstream media. In contrast, contrary to the doomsday theories constantly promoted by the mainstream media, climate change has caused almost no proven concrete harm. Jones and MSNBC would generally do readers a service by actually investigating the topics discussed by Wright and similar proponents of climate realism, rather than uncritically forwarding predictions of climate-induced catastrophe fed to them by alarmists. Assume statement.