Government guesses on climate change and disasters 'flawed and misleading'

The annual report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that purports to assess the number of "billion-dollar" weather events in the nation each year is used by politicians to set environmental policy.

Scientists cite it in their claims that climate change, which was called global warming until the warming stopped, is impacting the world and people need to give up some elements of their lifestyle to counter it.

The media, of course, portray it as reality as part of the agenda that industry has, under the leadership of Joe Biden, to move toward electric cars that don't function in cold weather and renewable power sources that can't meet the nation's needs.

But that highly influential report, a scientist now has confirmed, is "flawed and misleading."

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In fact, Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has done extensive research for more than 30 years on the costs of disasters, charges that the trends are actually declining.

His review of the NOAA's current report, which claims there were 28 such weather events during 2023, a record, charges, "For more than two decades, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has popularized a count of weather-related disasters in the United States that it estimates have exceeded one billion dollars (inflation adjusted) in each calendar year starting in 1980. The dataset is widely cited and applied in research, assessment and invoked to justify policy in federal agencies, Congress and by the U.S. President."

He said he reviewed the "dataset under criteria of procedure and substance defined under NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity policies. The evaluation finds that the 'billion dollar disaster' dataset falls comprehensively short of meeting these criteria. Thus, public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and misleading. Specifically, NOAA incorrectly claims that for some types of extreme weather, the dataset demonstrates detection and attribution of changes on climate timescales. Similarly flawed are NOAA’s claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human caused climate change. NOAA’s claims to have achieved detection and attribution are not supported by any scientific analysis that it has performed. Given the importance and influence of the dataset in science and policy, NOAA should act quickly to address this scientific integrity shortfall."

A report at Just the News pointed out the findings about the NOAA failures.

It "lacks transparency that would allow the sources of the data to be verified. The cost figures are not adjusted for changes in wealth over time, which produces misleading results, and the agency is incorrectly attributing the trends to changes in climate."

The report pointed out the dangers of the disinformation being promoted by the government.

"The numbers receive a lot of media attention every year, and reporters present the numbers as evidence that extreme weather events are becoming more destructive as a result of climate change."

It explained Pielke normalized the disaster costs, "which means he adjusts for differences in wealth over time."

He explained that simply reflects that a category 3 hurricane hitting Miami Beach in 1926 would impact development far less than a storm of equal intensity today.

He warned that the NOAA's lack of transparency in its report, and its failure to follow its own guidelines for "scientific integrity," means the agency is "incorrectly attributing the trends to changes in climate over time."

That leads to more danger, he warned: "Reporters on the climate beat will uncritically parrot and amplify NOAA’s claims, and before long, the dataset will find itself cited in the peer-reviewed literature."

An NOAA spokesman told Just the News its reporting follows the agency's own "Information Quality and Scientific Integrity Policies," rules that are set up and controlled by the agency alone.

Pielke said climate change is "real" and "important," but disinformation that is promoted by the government can "lead to bad decisions that fail to limit risks."

At the basic level, he explains, NOAA refuses to include any transparency on its sources, input data or methodologies, so "no independent researcher can replicate the agency’s calculations to verify their accuracy."

He concluded: "“Any claim that the NOAA billion-dollar disaster dataset indicates worsening weather or worsening disasters is incomplete at best and misleading at worst."

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