Search
Close this search box.

Biden warns young people ‘damned’ if his green policies thwarted & makes wildly wrong climate claims – Point-by-point rebuttal by Climate Depot

Climate Depot Special Report 

Climate Depot Reality Check to Biden:

President Joe Biden made remarkably uninformed and inaccurate climate comments in a TV interview  on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” hosted by former Obama aide Kal Penn in March 2023 and invoked the hell and brimstone imagery of “a whole generation damned” if his climate policies are not implemented. Despite the fact that Biden’s policies would not even measurably impact global CO2 levels, See: Analysis by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: Biden’s 50% emissions reduction target for 2030 (if achieved) would have a ‘nearly unmeasurable’ impact on overall global CO2 emissions

Here is what Biden said, and what follows is a Climate Depot point-by-point rebuttal to each of Biden’s claims.

Biden Claim: “If we don’t keep the temperature from going above 1.5C, then … [a] whole generation is damned”

Reality Check:

Book reveals UN’s goal of ‘2 degree’ limit of ‘global warming’ has no scientific basis – ‘Pulled out of thin air’

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.

In addition, Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander summed up weather extremes in 2023: Mainstream Media Jump on ‘Mistaken Belief’ That Extreme Weather Caused by Climate Change – ‘Actual data reveals…downward’ trend

Biden: “We can do solar, we can do wind cheaper than we can do fossil fuels”

Reality Check:

$100 billion spent by U.S. to stop climate change called ‘the greatest ripoff in American history’ as CO2 emissions continue to rise – Analysis by Stephen Moore

Biden: “I’ve traveled on helicopter over more forest area burned to the ground than the entire state of Md.”

Reality Check:

Dr. Pielke Jr.: “For fire, 2022 was just about average since 2000 in terms of the number of fires, acres burned, and acres per fire.”

Source: NIFC#Bjorn Lomborg: ‘Despite breathless climate reporting about ever-increasing fires, US fires burn 5-10x less today’

#

Scientific evidence refutes media/politicians’ climate wildfire claims: ‘Less fire today than centuries ago’ – Wildfires are NOT due to ‘climate change’ – Morano Book ExcerptThe following is an excerpt from author Marc Morano’s new 2019 best-selling book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.

“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.”

#

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.

Source: NOAA

Another perspective can be found in the graph below, which shows the proportion of the U.S. that is abnormally dry or abnormally wet.

Source: NOAA

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.

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.

Source: NOAA SPC

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.

Updated from Simmons et al. 2013.

Source: NOAA NWS SPC

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.

Most metrics of North Atlantic hurricane activity were close to average or below average

Also see Pielke Jr.’s analyses:

What the media won’t tell you about . . .

#

Pielke Jr. & Maue: Just the Facts on Global Hurricanes: More storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No & No

#

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.

Via: https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/06/16/extreme-weather-expert-dr-roger-pielke-jr-shows-the-latest-data-showing-no-alarm-on-droughts/

Here is Colorado River Basin drought 1901-2015
via McCabe et al 2020

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/24/2/eiD200001.xml

And for a much longer perspective, here is Colorado River Basin drought over the past 1800 years
Also from McCabe et al 2020

TL;DR
Here are the conclusions of McCabe et al 2020
Well worth reading carefully

And here is what the US National Climate Assessment concluded on drought in 2018

https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/

 

Share: