This post, authored by Chris Morrison, is republished with permission from The Daily Sceptic

Something rather odd is happening to the weather. Millions, nay billions, are on the move fleeing droughts, floods, wildfires, runaway temperatures, rising sea levels (see any mainstream media page climate page to fill in rest of sentence).

Armageddon will only be put on pause when hard-Left elites take control of the climate and corral us all into their fantasy world of Net Zero. But hold on a minute – news just in. The first half of 2025 has seen the smallest number of deaths related to extreme weather since records began. And more weird weather news – despite boiling seas, all four northern hemisphere ocean basins in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific are running below average on accumulated cyclone energy. The North Atlantic has seen very little activity with the ACE energy measurement from January 1st to July 21st running at only 41% of the 1991-2020 average.

The cyclone news is natural variation of course, but don’t let on to climate fanatics. The news on deaths from extreme weather is not. It is a long-term trend that has seen weather fatalities plunge by over 99% during the last 100 years. As hydrocarbon use pulls billions out of grinding poverty, so fortunate humans can use the extra wealth to protect themselves against all that Nature throws at life on Earth.

.rounded { border-radius: 12px; } .rounded img { border-radius: 12px;}

Roger Pielke Jnr has compiled the weather and climate related deaths over the last 25 years and his graph above shows that just 2,200 deaths from a world population of over 8 billion can be attributed to the weather in the first six months of the year. Past number spikes are invariably caused by one-off disasters such as the 138,00 fatalities attributed to Cyclone Nargis in the Indian Ocean during 2008. Pielke concludes that it is likely that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any half year “in recorded history”.

The slump in the extreme weather death in the hydrocarbon age is truly astonishing as the graph below illustrates.

.rounded { border-radius: 12px; } .rounded img { border-radius: 12px;}

“In contrast to apocalyptic sermons, at no point in human history have humans had less risk of death related to extreme weather and climate”, concludes Pielke. 

In fact, the risks of extreme weather are the number one weapon used by activists to scare populations into accepting Net Zero. Just look at the twaddle below recently published by the part Green Blob-funded Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), or perhaps that should be the Union of Scientists you should be Concerned About.

Certainly this does not appear to be a Union that cares much for unbiased science and the rigours of the scientific process. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order telling all federal scientists to stop pissing about with propaganda piffle and reconnect with Popperian scientific principles. It was a tricky order to complain about since it laid down perfectly reasonable rules and procedures for employees paid by the taxpayer. “It all sounds very non-objectional, but it’s extremely dangerous in its details and subtext”, observed Gretchen Goldman, President of the UCS. Danger is a word much favoured by these Armageddonites – it seems that 169 million Americans are in extreme danger this summer, particularly if they don’t use sunscreen lotion.

In fact, desperation stalks the halls of activism, politics, media and science. Forty years of hysterical climate alarms, predicated on the unproven opinion that humans control the climate by adding the trace gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, is coming to an end. Opinion polls asking unloaded questions are starting to show that interest in climate cry-baby catastrophising is waning. The Swedish Doom Goblin has moved onto more fashionable causes. Promised tipping points don’t tip, the corals don’t disappear – ditto the polar bears – and the ocean currents don’t stop. Eventually, the vox populi shrugs – nice try, but no cigar. The climate, in fact, is in a relatively benign phase. A little (largely natural) extra warmth and a CO₂ top-up from previously denuded levels has greened the planet, and crop yields have soared, leading to reduced levels of global famine. Despite all the Net Zero blather and unworkable mandates, hydrocarbon use across the world still provides over 80% of total energy – a prospect that holds out hope for further action against grinding poverty in the developing world.

For decades, elites have managed to shut down scientific debate by dishonestly claiming the science is somehow ‘settled’. As a result, most climate activists have lost the ability to debate the underlying science backing Net Zero. When public scientific discussion is encouraged on broadcast forums such as Britain’s Talk and GB News, the fact that almost the only person willing to debate against known critics is the climate comedy turn Jim Dale says it all.

The inability to stand up arguments in the face of increasing public scepticism will count heavily against the activists when the settled science barrier crumbles away. Needless to say, it started to fall some time ago on social media. On genuine free speech platforms such as X, the activists have long fled to the safer spaces offered by echo chambers such as Bluesky. Hiding behind the settled science comfort zone and backed by the pseudoscience offered by weather attribution guesses and computer model predictions, the activists are woefully unprepared to engage in genuine scientific discussion about the little understood complexities of the atmosphere and climate. The notorious letter published by the Guardian in 2018, when a group of activists including BBC regular Professor Mark Maslin said they would no longer “lend their credibility” in debating human-caused climate change, was a notable low point in the decades-long campaign to quash dissent.

Put simply, the activists are terrified to enter into genuine dialogue. The more intelligent ones are probably aware that if they reveal an obvious inability to counter all the alternative views around natural climate variation, this will greatly reduce public support for the Net Zero project. They are aware that CO2 levels have been much higher in the past without a provable link to runaway temperatures. Propping up this hard-Left controlling political fantasy with an unproven claim that humans somehow control the climate by releasing a trace gas into the complex atmosphere will likely be seen by future historians as the centrepiece of one of the greatest science swindles of all time.

And of course the dosh is starting to dry up. Some of the most fanatical Net Zero cash incontinent countries are running out of money, or rather other people’s money that they are borrowing to destroy the financial prospects of future generations. In the United States, the entire Net Zero scam is dead in the water with President Trump taking all the toys away. Delegates to the upcoming COP 30 Belem meeting in Brazil, travelling through the Amazon on the special road carved out of the rain forest to speed their virtuous journeys, will find the magic money tree has also been chopped down. There will be no more financial freebies from the US, which accounts for almost 60% of the GDP of the G7 group of guilt-tripped industrialised countries. China is not interested in handing out no-strings attached cash and India only plays lip service to the aims of Net Zero. Grifting nations likely to be disappointed include all those Pacific Islands growing in size but apparently destined to soon disappear beneath the waves. Bad news also for all those political chancers inventing nonsense tales for gullible woke westerners of climate justice and colonial climate oppression.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Related

Discover more from modernity

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.