Select Page

Climate Fact Check 2022 Report Debunks Mainstream Media’s Tall Tales

 

By Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute 

 

Climate Fact Check 2022, a report issued this week by CEI and several other nonprofit groups, debunks claims made in the mainstream media this year about the disastrous impacts of climate change. Major weather events blamed on climate change by the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and other outlets include: floods in Pakistan, Hurricane Ian, droughts in Europe and China, African famine, Yellowstone River floods, low water levels at Lake Mead, and lack of snow for World Cup skiing.

To take perhaps the most egregious example of climate hype in the past year: “In this World Cup season, climate change is winning,” blared a Washington Post headline in November. Shorter winters were blamed for it being cold enough to hold only one of eight races as of mid-November.

Here’s the Climate Fact Check:

First, winter doesn’t begin until December 21. Next, when World Cup skiing started in the 1960s, the season began in January. Now it begins in October, which is early-to mid-autumn. If the competition began in the winter everything would likely be okay because wintertime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since the 1960s.

Seth Borenstein in an AP story summed up the estimated costs of damages due to climate change in 2022 at $268 billion. Climate Fact Check 2022 simply notes that:

The Associated Press, a long-time major newswire service, now accepts donations specifically to fund its climate coverage. In 2022, in fact, the Associated Press admitted to receiving $8 million in donations to cover climate. The money came from very large foundations which have been pushing climate alarmism for decades, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

As Steve Milloy, principal author of the report, told Fox News: “It’s hard to claim it’s news when you’re being paid to report only one side of the climate discourse.”

Climate Fact Check 2022 was produced by CEI, the Heartland Institute, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition.

 


Myron Ebell is director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment.