Scathing summer heat has fueled incendiary headlines attributing record-breaking temperatures around the world to climate change. The presumption that individual weather events such as hurricanes, storms, or wildfires can be traced to greenhouse gas emissions displays the shoddy ideological fearmongering employed by climate alarmists in lieu of credible scientific fact. Noticeably omitted from assumptions that the current heat wave is attributable to climate change is a discussion of the better-understood warming impacts of the world’s recent El Niño event.
Claiming the current heat wave is caused by anthropogenic climate change is a double deception. It is scientifically impossible to precisely establish that any individual storm, heat wave, drought, or flood is conclusively linked to global warming, let alone to human action. Additionally, ignoring the recent El Niño cycle and its expected warming impact on oceans and summer weather is to act as if that elephant in the climate room were somehow extinct.
El Niño Cancel Culture?
El Niño is a long-studied natural climate pattern marked by warming influences on ocean temperatures. The world is supposedly in a “neutral phase” at present — between one of the strongest El Niños on record in 2023 and the cooling La Niña expected to follow this summer. CNN frankly explained the powerful impact of these patterns on world temperatures:
“La Niña summers following strong El Niño winters have historically been some of the hottest on record in the US. This summer could be no different, even before La Niña is entrenched.
“The loss of El Niño will also have major ramifications in the Atlantic Ocean and is one major reason experts are calling for a hyperactive hurricane season.
“The Atlantic Ocean’s record-breaking water temperatures could also act like food for storms, helping them to form, strengthen and survive … Over the past year, El Niño helped drive global average ocean temperatures to record-breaking levels … Most notably, El Niño helped push both air and ocean temperatures to record levels globally. Every month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, CNN previously reported.”
Compounding climate science with global warming ideology, CNN asserted the odd argument that the “transition to La Niña isn’t the only factor influencing temperatures during the hottest time of the year. They are always on the rise in a world warming due to fossil fuel pollution.” This logic must be reversed for histrionic a priori claims that fossil fuels cause every storm, flood, heat wave, or drought: “Fossil fuel pollution isn’t the only factor influencing temperatures. They are always on the rise (or fall) due to El Nino and La Nina and other natural influences.”
Heat Wave Mania
This clear science does not prevent climate alarmists from clouding the skies with fear. Climatologist Judith Curry, famed initially for her research suggesting hurricanes were increasing due to climate change, came to reconsider her work and challenge many of the science-abusing assumptions employed by biased alarmists who often lack relevant scientific credentials. Curry has become a leading voice not in so-called “climate denial” but common sense, claiming, “Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change.” Natural climate variability includes powerful gravitational and thermodynamic forces and measurable events such as El Niño and La Niña. Curry criticizes scientific assertions that ignore these other potent forces and argues that “climate models are not fit for the purpose of detection and attribution of climate change on decadal to multidecadal timescales.”
If models can’t reliably predict weather over decades, they cannot pinpoint the causes of specific droughts, storms, or floods. Yet recent headlines championing climate doom due to summer heat will be joined by a cacophony of cries of climate chaos when there are blizzards in winter and heavy rains in monsoon season. Wildfires lit by arsonists are blamed on climate change. Reuters recently reported:
“Climate change is driving dangerous heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere this week and will continue to deliver dangerous weather for decades to come, research shows.
“In New Mexico, officials are responding to multiple weather events, including a dust storm, flooding and two wildfires.”
Arsonists Fueling Ideological Fires
The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for lighting fires now labeled “weather events.” Any time an arsonist throws a match in the summer in New Mexico, the fiery event is linked to claims of global peril and end times disaster. To the extent New Mexico’s fires are a consequence of weather, is that climate change, an El Niño winter, or is it just especially hot this year in the desert? When a heat record is broken in Boston because it hits 98 degrees, was the 1923 record of 96 degrees attributable to El Niño, while the current spike was from car exhaust fumes? Where is the science?
Meanwhile, the observable positive benefits of global warming – whether human-caused or otherwise – are adroitly sidestepped. Russia, Canada, Rwanda, Central Madagascar, and Kenya are experiencing improved crop conditions with longer growing seasons and expanded areas of arable land. Regions of Africa will benefit from greatly increased rainfall. Deaths from winter cold will decline around the world. True science evaluates both pros and cons: Climate science is anthropogenically flawed.
It is hot this summer, that much is clear. Whether the heat wave is caused by El Niño, Americans driving gas-powered cars, or some combination of these and other natural factors is much less certain. Claims otherwise are simply cheap fakes of climate science.
