CLIMATE FEAR MONGERING: BAD ANALYSES PRODUCE BAD REMEDIES

 This is the transcript to a presentation I am giving to a few local groups. The video seen at   

https://youtu.be/pZIlMwGIVCI

Thanks for having me here. First, I am not a climate scientist. I am an ecologist, and I humbly note ecology requires a higher degree of thinking to untangle the many contributing causes of complex problems.

While director of San Francisco State University's Sierra Nevada Field Campus, I was monitored 6 meadow systems in the Sierra Nevada for the Forest Service. One meadow began to dry, vegetation withered, and wildlife began disappearing. When I showed students and colleagues this meadow's deterioration, I was struck by their knee jerk response. Despite just a half-hour visit, most declared this was just what global warming theory predicted. Rising CO2 was making the land warmer, drier and causing animals to go extinct.

In contrast, as an ecologist I had to consider landscape changes, geological history, changes to hydrology, biological interactions, as well as weather and natural climate changes. And I had been observing those effects for 15 years.

Historical temperatures revealed maximum temperatures were warmer in the 1930s. I eventually determined it was the disruption of stream flows and the water table that caused all the problems.

We restored the streams, raised the water table and the meadow became more resilient during droughts and wildlife became more abundant. Lowering CO2 emissions would have had no impact.

In their defense, the misguided knee jerk response by students and colleagues is a function of the constant drone by the media that rising CO2 is heating and drying the land and threatening mass extinctions.

The media thrives on click bait stories that attract the public's attention. Fear sells and fires, floods, heatwaves, and droughts are scary. The media typically pushes only the scary scientific theories and ignores an abundance of more reasonable skeptical science.

I find it far more worrisome that we are generating hopelessness in our children with the constant ranting about a climate apocalypse and mass extinctions. There is a definite rise in depression among our kids that is certainly due in part to the media's end of the world stories.

It is even more scary that climate idiots like Bill Gates believes he can save the world, and that he is wealthy and powerful enough to fund foolish solutions like dimming the sunlight that reaches the earth by pumping more dust into the sky.

To reduce global warming, fear crazed politicians have pushed fertilizer restrictions that will dangerously reduce our food supply and raise our food costs. And inspired by reduced traffic during the covid lockdowns, there is an extreme group of fringe lunatics advocating climate lockdowns to save your life.

The media amplifies our fears by promoting unvetted scientific studies that argue climate change is linked to 5 million deaths a year. And it will cause 83 million excess deaths in 80 years.

But the data do not support such fear mongering. The International Disaster database reveals the climate related death risks per million people has dropped from about 250 to near zero since 1920.

When gross mortality is examined for each month, it is the cold months of December thru February with the greatest deaths, while the warmest months have the fewest.

And there has been no rising trend in the death rate since 1998. Us old farts battling diabetes and heart problems have the highest death rates (the pink line). So, I take comfort in knowing we are benefitting from slightly warmer temperatures.

Consider the fact that many elderlies flee the colder states of the north to settle in the warmer states of the south, for their health and longevity.

A person moving from New York to Florida will immediately experience a 20-degree Fahrenheit rise in average temperature. Yet the media and alarmist scientists claim just a 2.7-degree Fahrenheit rise over the last century due to climate change will cause millions of excess deaths. Such claims are simply dishonest fearmongering.

In contrast to climate crisis narratives, heat waves are typically balanced by cooler temperatures elsewhere. The common wavy jet stream pattern across the United States brings above average warming to the west and simultaneously cooling to the east.

Beneath a jet stream's ridge, high pressure systems form. The dry descending air in a high-pressure system promotes cloudless conditions and greater solar heating.

The descending air warms adiabatically and creates a heat dome by trapping heat at the surface. And the clockwise motion draws warm air up from the south. All these factors cause heat waves far more than greenhouse gases can.

A jet stream's trough creates a low-pressure system which causes air to rise and clouds to form and reducing solar heating. Its counterclockwise spin combines with the flow on the eastern side of an adjacent high-pressure to draw cold air down from the north. Such offsetting dynamics of warming and cooling are common outside the tropics.

Yet media outlets that want to scare you about climate change will cherry-pick just the regions experiencing the heat wave, as many did during the June 19, 2022, European heat wave.

In contrast, honest weather people interested in truly educating the public about weather will provide the bigger picture, that also shows the cooling to the east. It is impossible to blame global warming and a climate crisis for both a heat wave and simultaneous adjacent cold wave.

People get duped by climate change alarmists who constantly claim heat waves are getting worse. But again, EPA data does not support such claims. Heatwave frequency peaked in the 1930s, and the heat wave index today is like the 1900s.

Because weather causes temperatures to vary by several degrees just within a city's limits, a record high temperature may be observed in one city but not its neighboring cities. So, examining record high temperatures for the whole state is much more informative about how the global climate is changing.

California's record high was 134F measured on July 10, 1913. It is also the record high for the world.

Alarmists claim global warming will cause higher record temperatures. Yet despite being the USA’s warmest state, Florida’s record high is only 108F and set in 1931. The highest record temperatures are usually a function of dryness and atmospheric circulation patterns.

For example, much further north, states like Montana and North Dakota experienced much higher record temperatures of 117F and 120F, which were set in 1937 and 1936 respectively. Those higher temperatures in northern states are a function of the migrating jet stream's ridges that produce dry heat domes. Despite a period of much lower greenhouse gas emissions, 31 of the lower 48 states set their record high temperatures before 1940.

Cities amplify natural heating by reducing vegetation and drying out the land and rapidly shunting rainfall into sewer systems. Since 1950, the world's population increased by about 5 billion people. Many moved into flood plains, reclaiming wetlands, and expanding urban heat islands. People moving from the country to the city can experience a 5F to 6F increase in average temperature. Making urban populations more vulnerable to fearmongering about a warming climate crisis.

California's state climatologist published a study correlating each county's population with temperature change. Counties with over a million people experienced a rising temperature trend. While counties with under 100,000 experienced no trend, just the natural oscillations expected from El Nino/La Nina cycles.

NOAA's former director of the National Centers for Environmental Information published a 1996 study correlating temperatures with a city's population

For example, a city of 200,000 will increase weather station minimum temperatures by 0.87C (1.5F) compared to towns with only 2,000 people. Despite small drops in maximum temperatures, the rising minimum increased the average temperature by 0.75F, which gives the misleading impression that we are overheating.

The best solution for urban populations is to increase urban greenery and moisture. Reducing fossil fuels will never reduce oppressive urban heat island effects.

To add to the climate complexities, despite a homogenous blanket of increasing carbon dioxide, 34% of all the American weather stations with 70 + years of data have experienced cooling trends (colored blue). Cooling trends adjacent to neighboring warming trends suggest landscape differences that cause such opposite temperature trends.

The heavily populated regions of the east and west coasts show very few stations with cooling trends, just as urban heat islands would predict. In contrast, climate scientists designate the southeastern USA as a "warming hole" because cooling trends overwhelmingly dominate.

It's true, if you average all the weather stations, the average American temperature is warming. But such averaging mis-guides policy. Remedies to stop warming can never benefit regions that have been cooling. More likely, such policies will worsen the negative impacts of colder temperatures on human health and agriculture.

Using global averages totally misleads analyses of natural weather tragedies. For instance, politicians told us that the 2022 flooding in Kentucky (located in red circle) was intensified by global warming. Alarmist scientists inappropriately used the irrelevant factoid that warmer air can hold more moisture, so they could blame fossil fuel burning for amplifying the floods.

But it is dishonest, not scientific, to apply that factoid to a region experiencing a cooling trend.

Kentucky's location and topography make it prone to flooding. Steep slopes concentrate rainfall, flooding valley’s where people have unwisely built in natural flood plains.

Five of Louisville, Kentucky’s 10 worst floods happened before 1950. The worse flood was January 1937. Furthermore, nearly all the worse floods happened during the coldest months, when science tells us the atmosphere holds the least moisture. Alarmists ignore the fact that when moist air collides with colder air, it is the cold that forces more rain.

Still, to push a climate crisis agenda, President Biden, not known for his scientific prowess, blamed global warming for intensifying Kentucky’s flooding as did NPR, which now more commonly is called "national propaganda radio" for its biased reporting.

Recent California wildfires are dishonestly blamed on dryness attributed to global warming. But recent dryness is the result of another natural, sea-saw climate. La Ninas increase droughts in California but increase the monsoons and floods in Asia. Since 1999 the Pacific Ocean has primarily been in a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation which makes La Ninas more common.

In contrast El Ninos amplify flood risks in California but droughts in southeast Asia. During a positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation there are more El Ninos, and it appears that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will soon revert to a more El Nino like condition suggesting a coming reversal of California dryness. El Nino-like conditions frequently occurred during the Little Ice Age turning California’s Central Valley into a swamp land.

Instrumental data detect no trend in droughts across the USA. The most extreme dryness is concentrated in the 1930s contributing to the worst heatwaves.

Studies of California’s tree ring response to droughts find no trends in California. Severe drought, worse than 2014, have occurred about 4 times a century since 1300 AD.

It is more akin to criminal misinformation than science to suggest recent wildfires in California are due to CO2 warming and drying. In their attempt to scare the public, click bait media, politicians, and scientists with no integrity, focus public attention on trends starting in the 1970s when fire suppression policies were ending.

However, more honest scientist seeking connections between climate and wildfires understand they must examine fire frequencies and area burnt over the past centuries. In Oregon fire experts determined fires were much more frequent and burnt more area in the early 1900s before fire suppression policies were enacted.

Similarly, researcher found that fires were far more common during the cooler Little Ice Age throughout the American southwest.

Unfortunately, the public is easily duped when they do not understand the basics of wildfires. For instance, most people do not know what is meant by 1-hour fuels. Experts always consider the amount of one-hour fuels when determining fire danger. Consider that to start a campfire, people must first use paper or fine dead twigs, then add slightly larger kindling before adding larger logs.

One-hour fuels have a very thin diameter like paper and can dry out in just a matter of hours. One-hour fuels are the key ingredient for wildfires ignitions and become highly flammable on any sunny day no matter how the climate changes. In America’s northeast, public service warnings constantly tell people that dead grasses and leaf litter can impose a serious fire danger even if dead grass was just recently exposed from melting snow, or a yesterday’s rainfall.

No matter how the concentrations of CO2 change, it will not affect wildfires. Both preventing catastrophic forest fires and protecting your home require maintaining a mosaic of habitat and defensible spaces.

Large areas of shrubs and grassy ground cover and leaf litter that contain abundant 1- and 10-hour fuels, can carry fires to your house and across widespread forest habitats.

Minimizing ground fuels, maintaining well-spaced shrubs, and eliminating undergrowth that can carry fire into the treetops promoting far reaching embers helps maintain a home's defensible space as well as a resilient forest.

In neighborhoods with closely spaced houses, the whole neighborhood requires a defensible boundary that eliminates ground fuels. Once one house catches fire, it radiates enough heat to readily burn neighboring homes. I observed rows of homes demolished in the Paradise fire, yet the leaves and needles of the surrounding trees were unaffected.

Still the fear mongering media blamed climate change. However, like all northern California, maximum temperatures were higher in the 1930s. Climate change had no impact on a fire caused by a faulty electrical grid and the unnatural accumulation of ground fuels due to decades of fire suppression.

To see past all the media misinformation and build truly resilient environments we must embrace renowned scientist Thomas Huxley’s advice: 

 skepticism is the highest of duties blind faith the one unpardonable sin

 For those who are interested in the peer review papers from which the evidence from this presentation was gathered, just email me a specific request jsteele@sfsu.du and I’ll send you a pdf. 

 Thank you

ARE PAKISTAN’S FLOODS YOUR FAULT AND YOU SHOULD PAY?

ARE PAKISTAN’S FLOODS YOUR FAULT AND YOU SHOULD PAY?

below is the transcript to the video at https://youtu.be/uMBY1-ceo6Y

Today I want to separate the science of Pakistan’s devastating floods from the shamefully manipulative narratives by politicians and the media.

The worst is MSNBC’s attempt at public shaming by calling the catastrophe "climate racism”.

Pakistan’s government is in dire need of world bank bailouts due to past corruption and ineptitude. So it is not surprising that Foreign Minister Zardari blames a climate crisis and scape goats industrialized countries, stating “the citizens of Pakistan, are paying the price in their lives, their livelihoods for the industrialization of rich countries that has resulted in this climate change"

In contrast, honest scientists have stated what has been known for centuries, and I quote "the rivers of the Himalaya are susceptible to extreme floods on many timescales and future floods can be expected with or without significant human-induced climate change.”

First consider that Pakistanis have blamed their own government for many of their problems.

Critical of flood control policies, the adviser to chief minister of Baluchistan, Kaisar Bengali, reported: “dams create floods, dams don’t prevent floods…in 2010 the water that passed through the Indus was less than in 1976. Yet, it created more flooding because the river had risen 6-7 feet” due to the accumulation of sediments behind the dams.

Many accuse that flood control projects have favored wealthy landowners who benefit from developing certain floodplains while diverting waters to the floodplains inhabited by the nation’s poorest.

Environmental sciences professor Shafiqur Rehman said, “first we build dykes and spend millions of rupees on them & then we blow them up and drown people to save cities or other areas,”

And of course, there are widespread complaints about government corruption. Hashim Nisar Hashmi, at Pakistan’s university of engineering and technology said, “if maintenance of flood embankments had been adequately maintained by provinces, major losses would have been averted”

Now consider that Pakistan’s unique location has made it vulnerable to natural swings of dramatic weather between major droughts and major floods long before rising CO2 has had any impact. Since 1850 Pakistan has experienced 7 major droughts and 6 major floods. And it is common local knowledge that summer monsoons always cause flooding in some rivers somewhere in Pakistan.

The 2010 floods have been extremely well studied and those studies provide guidance in understanding the very similar 2022 floods.

As Khandekar (2010) published, “a rapid transition from El Niño to La Niña between spring and summer of 2010 appears to be the key element in triggering a vigorous monsoon of 2010 over the Indian subcontinent.”

Khandekar concluded, “the 2010 Pakistan floods, although seemingly unprecedented, were well within natural variability of the monsoonal climate over the Indian subcontinent. I have suggested before, there is an urgent need for an improved understanding of the many complex features associated with the Indian/Asian monsoon system”

So, to that end, this video intends to provide the public with an introduction to those complex dynamics driving Pakistan’s monsoon floods and droughts. The following information will provide the public with facts and a few critical thinking tools needed to decide if Pakistan’s floods were the result of your carbon-rich lifestyles, or just natural events long endured in Pakistan.

Indeed, natural La Nina / El Nino cycles have been demonstrated to contribute about 50% of monsoon variability.

During La Nina-like conditions the Bay of Bengal experiences heightened convection, and thus contributes greater quantities of water vapor to the region.

During El Nino conditions the center of convection migrates to the eastern pacific, thus reducing the water vapor that can be transported over India and Pakistan.

Additionally, the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation makes La Nina-like conditions more frequent for 20 to 30 years, as has been the case since 1999.

So, consider that Pakistan’s heavy flooding in both 2010 and in 2022 happened during La Nina years.

Also consider that, since 1880 there is no trend in excess rainfall or drought conditions over the greater Indian region. There has been no unusual increase in recent decades in expected excessive rains either from la Nina or due to rising CO2.

So how does science explain recent floods?

Climate alarmists always frame every weather event in terms of warming from added CO2. Alarmists throw out a simple factoid that warmer air holds more water vapor. Thus, it should follow that increased rainfall must be due to rising CO2 warming. But that dynamic is often totally irrelevant for most weather catastrophes. Just consider that the warmest deserts hold the least water vapor.

In contrast most scientists understand there are many other factors affecting these complex weather events. Honest scientists will tell you that “increases in atmospheric water vapor content alone cannot explain changes in intense rain events due to rainfall's strong dependence on vertical motions”

So first consider that the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ, marks where moisture laden trade winds concentrate their water vapor while their convergence forces that air to rise, where it then cools, condenses, and precipitates.

Due to that dynamic, the world's narrow ITCZ band accounts for 32% of all global precipitation.

When the ITCZ follows the sun's seasonal path northward. It brings the wet season to India and Pakistan.

When the ITCZ retreats southward in the winter, they experience their dry season.

Research has also demonstrated that due to changes in the earth's orbit and axis tilt, the earth has been steadily cooling for the past 8 thousand years and accordingly the ITCZ’s northern limits have progressively moved towards the equator.

During the Holocene Optimum when the ITCZ was furthest north, monsoon intensity was the greatest in 100 thousand years.

The furthest southward migration of the ITCZ culminated during the little ice age, reducing monsoon rainfall and coinciding with devastating droughts across southern Asia. A combination of an extreme southward ITCZ and El Nino-like conditions produced the drought and great famine of 1876-1878 resulting in over 7 million deaths, with India being hit hardest.

Rainfall does not fall equally across the Indian sub-continent. The so-called monsoon zone" parallels the ITCZ’s current orientation. But the winds lose moisture as they travel westward from the Bay of Bengal and move inland towards Pakistan.

Winds over the Arabian Sea from the southwest typically bring the greatest rainfall to India’s west coast and sometimes into Pakistan when the winds curl to the northwest.

As reported by Kumar (2010) rainfall over India does not provide any evidence of a global warming trend. 3 major regions of India have declining rainfall while 2 others have increasing trends. And when all the sub-divisions of those regions are examined, the majority show neither increasing nor decreasing trends.

To be fair, CO2 global warming is not expected to increase rainfall everywhere or evenly, simply due to natural variations. This is especially true for the Indian Pakistan regions that experience huge natural extremes.

The Himalayan ranges will always prevent monsoon moisture from reaching further north. So heavy rains fall on the Himalayan southside, while north of the Himalaya is extremely dry.

Because the southwest winds bring abundant moisture across Bangladesh and into northeast India, and the intercepting mountains provide the needed vertical uplift, Mawsynram is the wettest city in the world, marked here by the red triangle, Mawsynram receives about 467 inches of rain per year, 20 times India’s average.

In contrast, the southwest winds only bring rain to Pakistan occasionally. The lack of moisture transport into Pakistan has created 5 different desert regions. And while beneath the tropic of cancer, clear skies and the sun's direct rays produce Asia’s hottest recorded temperatures.

Jacobabad in Pakistan’s southern Sindh region, marked by a red triangle, experiences temperatures as high as 125°F (51.7 °C) nearly every year during the month of May before the monsoons start to cool the region.

The nearby archeological site of Moen-Jo-Daro holds Asia’s record for highest recorded temperature with 128.3°F (53.5°C)).

Climate crisis barkers commonly suggest rising CO2 will simply make this natural variability worse. Often arguing wet regions will get wetter and dry regions drier. But Pakistan’s floods contradicted such climate crisis claims.

In summer 2022, the wettest regions of northeast India were the driest, as illustrated by reds and yellow. There was no change in the green regions, but India’s west coast received excessive rains.

That pattern suggests global warming did not add more water vapor to the atmosphere, but instead atmospheric circulation simply shifted moisture transport from eastern India into western India and Pakistan.

In the heavily 2022 flooded Sindh region, the desert city of Moen-Jo-Daro is the site of Asia’s record highest temperature. It was first built about 5000 years ago. Then abandoned after being buried in mud from heavy flooding. Exemplifying the region's erratic extreme weather, archeologists believe Moen-Jo-Daro was reclaimed and then abandoned at least 6 times over the past 3 thousand years until finally being buried by mud for the last time.

Unfortunately, the Sindh region's natural hot zone also provides fodder for global warming fear mongering. Despite Jacobabad temperatures reaching 125°f (51.7 °c) most years, the uardian fear mongered that 51°c in 2022 was “record-breaking”. But that is a total falsehood if monthly or yearly records are being considered.

Scientists expect severe weather when they observe a weather pattern known as a dry line. Frequent dry line formation in southern Pakistan and the Sindh region makes the region vulnerable to extreme thunderstorms and flooding whenever moisture transport from the Arabian sea increases.

When moist air from the Arabian sea moves northwestward and collides with denser dry air flowing eastward from Afghanistan and the Baluchistan highlands, a dry line forms and flooding can be expected.

Pakistan's summer 2022 heavy rainfall was a regional event. Despite the low average rainfall (illustrated in orange) in Pakistan’s Sindh region, the region experienced a 500% increase in rainfall (illustrated in green). A similar increase was observed in the dry highlands of Baluchistan further west.

In contrast, the normally high rainfall in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, was the same as it usually is.

Observations of shifting atmospheric circulation have recorded that More water vapor from Arabian sea (blue line) has been most recently transported into southern Pakistan while less water vapor is being transported from Bay of Bengal into northern Pakistan (green)

Accordingly, it is southern Pakistan that is experiencing the worst flooding and infrastructure destruction (marked in brown)

Still some climate alarmists argue that global warming is melting glaciers and increasing regional snow melt. They claim that melting is adding to the river flows and thus downstream flooding in the Sindh region.

To orient you, here we see the snowmelt from the Himalaya region (marked in green) forms the headwaters for all Asia’s major rivers, Indus, Ganges, the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers. Nearly a third of Pakistan’s Indus River, flows westward through the Himalaya Then turns southward and flows to Pakistan’s Sindh region and into the Arabian sea.

It is also argued that changes in mountain snow alters the atmospheric pressure gradient that drives the monsoon water vapor from the cooler ocean onto the warmer land. More snow reduces summertime warming and thus reduces the pressure gradient and reduces the monsoonal flow.

In contrast, bare ground heats faster. That increases the pressure gradient and pulls more moisture inland. However, this dynamic is again irrelevant for the Indus River.

Despite measurable glacier retreat in the eastern Himalaya, the Indus flows through the Karakorum range of the western Himalaya. It is home to what scientists have labeled the "Karakorum anomaly".

Several studies report that glaciers in the Karakorum are not melting, but stable and even advancing, and that should reduce monsoon rains over Pakistan.

Peak flows of the Indus River and its tributaries have been carefully measured since 1921 to monitor flood threats and irrigation needs. Those measurements further contradict claims that melting glaciers have increased monsoon flooding.

The Indus River flows are illustrated by blue bars and reveal a declining trend in stream flow. The data also illustrates that flow volumes can vary by 2 to 3 times, again illustrating the highly variable Pakistan climate.

The Karakorum also has a unique temperature history. Tree ring studies determined Karakorum temperatures were warmer in the 1600s than temperatures today, adding to the list of regions not experiencing a warming crisis.

Other natural weather dynamics affect the pressure gradient between the ocean and the land that controls the monsoon strength and location.

In the simplest of terms, the Madden Julian Oscillation's 30-to-60-day migrations across the Indian ocean throughout the year alters the monsoon pressure gradient by altering the Indian ocean's pressure systems on a weekly timescale.

The Madden Julia Oscillation contributes to the alternating monsoon pattern of active phases with heavy rains and suppressed phases with little to no rain.

Jet stream meanderings also generate alternating regions of high and low-pressure systems. This causes regions of increased convection alternating with regions of suppressed convection, as well as regions where the winds pull warm moist air northwards versus regions where cool drier air is pushed southwards.

Deep convection from the Madden Julia Oscillation can also initiate a global wave train of rising and sinking air that creates alternating low- and high-pressure systems. These wave trains interact with the jet stream which enable a pathway, or wave guide, for the wave train to follow.

A common wave train pattern that affects Pakistan and India, is called the " Silk Road Pattern " and it can have a significant impact on monsoonal flows. Again in the simplest of terms, the wave train alters the monsoon pressure gradient by altering pressure systems over land.

Furthermore, the latitude of this pattern varies over decades which alters the wave trains impacts. It has moved southward (negative values) in recent decades associated with more shifts in monsoon rainfall from eastern India to western India.

And to illustrate one final example of how the earth's natural oscillations have all conspired to produce Pakistan’s floods, consider how the North Atlantic Oscillation impacts the Silk Road wave train. When the North Atlantic Oscillation is in its positive phase, the jet stream remains further to the north, and monsoon rainfall in eastern India is strong.

However, when the North Atlantic Oscillation is negative, the jet stream and Silk Road Pattern dips southward. That weakens the monsoons in eastern India while promoting greater monsoon rains in Pakistan and northern china.

When CO2 warming predictions are contradicted by both observations and science, alarmist simply default to arguing CO2 warming is just making the climate go crazy. But again, science does not support such fanciful fear mongering.

Studies by Chen 2010 concluded “climate instability is above normal during cold periods”. “There is overwhelming evidence for increased climatic instability during the Little Ice Age over the past 1000 years in northwestern china"

And it seems to be the consensus that colder periods make climate more unstable or, dare I say, crazy. Leading climate alarmist, Michael Mann likewise wrote, "the Little Ice Age may have been more significant in terms of increased variability of the climate, rather than changes in the average climate itself."

Most people don’t have the time or background to take a deep dive into climate science and uncover its truths. But there are several catch phrases that should alert everyone that it is not the science, manipulative catastrophic narratives that are preying on your sincere concerns.

So, beware when you hear or read

You are guilty of climate racism

You are guilty of promoting climate inequities

You are guilty of eating meat because cow farts are bad for the climate

You are guilty of driving a gasoline powered vehicle because they cause more wildfires & heatwaves

You are guilty of creating a climate crisis So, just give us your money!

To be clear, I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t voluntarily donate to humanitarian aid for flood victims.

I am simply arguing, when you are being falsely shamed and berated with any of the above arguments suggesting it is your fault for Pakistan’s flood, it is very likely that the media and politicians are obscuring the true science of natural climate change and trying to manipulate you.

Science and our democracy depend on interactions within a diverse array of good critical thinkers, and from such interactions the best solutions will emerge. So, please shun mindless group think.

Instead embrace renowned scientist, Thomas Huxley's advice Skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Thank you