Here is what Biden said, and what follows is a Climate Depot point-by-point rebuttal to each of Biden’s claims.
Biden: "Mother Nature let her wrath be seen over the last 2 years. For example, I've traveled on helicopter over more forest area burned to the ground than the entire state of Md. … If we don’t keep the temperature from going above 1.5C, then … [a] whole generation is damned" pic.twitter.com/hUJ9QTKQ83
Book Excerpt: In 2007, Jones emailed, “The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air.”
“Two degrees is not a magical limit—it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
Professor Roger Pielke Jr. explained in 2017 that the 2-degree goal “is an arbitrary round number that was politically convenient. So it became a sort of scientific truth. However, it has little scientific basis but is a hard political reality.”
Biden Claim: “Mother Nature let her wrath be seen over the last 2 years.”
Reality Check:
Extreme Weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: “In a few words, extreme weather in 2022 in the U.S. has been — well, pretty normal. Some extreme weather phenomena occurred at a rate or intensity greater than historical averages, but many occurred less. There have been and there will again be many years with far more extreme weather than we’ve seen in 2022.
“There is increasing evidence that there is overall less fire in the landscape today than there has been centuries ago, although the magnitude of this reduction still needs to be examined in more detail.”…
“The ‘wildfire problem’ is essentially more a social than a natural one.” Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid found that “climate change” is not to blame for increased forest fires in the Mediterranean basin.”…
“In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees. In 2014, forestry professor David B. South of Auburn University testified to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “data suggest that extremely large megafires were four-times more common before 1940,” adding that “we cannot reasonably say that anthropogenic global warming causes extremely large wildfires.” As he explained, “To attribute this human-caused increase in fire risk to carbon dioxide emissions is simply unscientific.”
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Droughts:
Dr. Pielke Jr.: The graph below shows a much longer-term perspective for the continuous U.S. over the past 100 years. Under this metric (the PSDI) drought across the lower-48 has actually decreased a bit on that time scale, but the trend is small. Once again the 1930s heavily influence any longer-term trend analysis.
Again, there is little hint of strong trends in the data, but there is some reason to believe that 2022 saw less areas of extreme wetness than observed earlier this century and throughout the longer-term record.
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Tornadoes
One interesting fact about extreme weather in the U.S. is that much of the past decade has seen below average tornado activity. You can see that in the figure below.
If you take a close look at the table in the upper-left of the graph, you’ll see that 10 of the past 11 years have seen below average tornado activity (since 2005), with 2022 (in red) continuing that trend. The last really big tornado year was 2011.
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Updated from Simmons et al. 2013.
Source: NOAA NWS SPC
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Hurricanes:
The 2022 North Atlantic hurricane season underperformed compared to seasonal forecasts published earlier this year. You can see that in the graph of cumulative ACE below (via Colorado State University). ACE refers to Accumulated Cyclone Energy and integrates intensity and frequency of storm activity.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. & Dr. Ryan Maue: “In 2022 there were 18 total landfalling tropical cyclones of at least hurricane strength around the world, of which 5 were major hurricanes. Since 1970 the median values are 16 total hurricanes, with 5 of major hurricane strength. So 2022 was very close to the median of the past half century.” … “The figure below shows no long-term trends in hurricanes or major hurricanes.”
BBC: Millions face threat of flooding from glacial lakes – Excerpt: Up to 15 million people face risk of catastrophic flooding from glacial lakes which could burst their natural dams at any moment, a new study finds.
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But the very LAST SENTENCE OF BBC article concedes: “While scientists expect that glacial floods will increase as a result of human-induced climate change, there has as yet been no such increase.”
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Biden Claim: Biden says climate change could cause Colorado River to dry up during ritzy DNC dinner: ‘Not a joke’ – Biden made a number of off-the-cuff comments about climate change including one about the Colorado River drying up. “You’re not going to be able to drink out of the Colorado River,” Biden said to a crowd of about 60 people. He also likened climate change to nuclear war as a “truly existential threat” facing the country. “Not a joke,” the president added.
Reality Check:
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. cites peer-reviewed scientific studies and data to reveal the Colorado River basin has seen much worse drought in the past.
