"We are ending the practice of burning tax dollars on pet projects that do nothing to help this agency achieve our mission of protecting human health and the environment."
via CFACT
April 7, 2025 at 11:28AM
Linnea Lueken explains in her Climate Realism article Liberals May Be Suffering from Climate Anxiety, but if So, It’s The Media’s Fault. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
A recent article at the Washington Free Beacon, titled “Great News for Humanity: Depressed Liberals Are Increasingly Suicidal Due to ‘Climate Anxiety,’ Study Finds,” takes a humorous approach (black humor, to be sure) to discussing a study that found liberals are increasingly suffering from climate anxiety and depression, leading the climate-anxious to refrain from having children and even contemplating and, in some cases, committing suicide. The article makes light of it, but it is a widely reported trend. Since climate change does not threaten human existence or flourishing, and extreme weather is not worsening, their fears and anxiety are unjustified by the actual state of the climate. Unfortunately, climate alarm has been foisted upon people, especially on children and mentally unwell adults, despite evidence indicating climate change is not anything to be alarmed about.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
“Negative psychological responses related to the observed and anticipated impacts of climate change, such as climate anxiety, eco-anxiety and climate-related guilt have … emerged as a potential risk factor for poor mental health and suicide-related behaviors,” the authors wrote last month in Nature Medicine. “International surveys show that concern about climate change is associated with feelings of despair, hopelessness, anger, frustration and guilt, especially among younger populations.”
The findings of this study, published in Nature, are not unique. Other research has come to similar conclusions: a study conducted by Save the Children found that 70 percent of kids they surveyed struggle with what they dubbed “climate anxiety,” as discussed in this Climate Realism post. Other surveys show similarly sad results.
Each time these results are presented, the media and the researchers involved frame the story as climate change and its impacts are causing fear and anxiety, and the lack of action is causing deep feelings of hopelessness and despair for people worried about climate change. Yet it is the false tales that the media, politicians, and green interest groups are telling about climate change motivating anxiety and mental distress, not the actual conditions of the planet.
For instance, in the media coverage of the Save the Children survey, the UK website Future Net Zero implies that without immediate societal scale action, the present generation of children “stand to inherit a deeply unequal world,” and that their terror is “warranted.”
Likewise, articles from The Hill and The Conversation discussing a study attributing adult PTSD to climate change assert that climate change is impacting people through increased wildfires and other disasters. This is false, the framing of their research is built on falsehoods.
Climate change is not causing worsening weather disasters. Data show that not only are events like wildfires not increasing, but the number of all climate-related deaths are declining because of improvements to infrastructure, healthcare, technology, and yes, better climatic conditions. (See figure below)
The real reason so many impressionable people are depressed and anxious about climate change is because the media and governments relentlessly push and promote false and alarming misinformation and fake news about extreme weather and climate change. It is no wonder that children are afraid, when their teachers are telling them that the world will end in short order unless dramatic global reforms are made. When people don’t see the supposedly climate saving reforms being made, they are left hopeless and despondent. But it is an unnecessary misery – there has never been a safer time period for humans to live in.
The Washington Free Beacon made light of the situation, but it is no laughing matter. Children in particular are being traumatized by adults in their lives over the climate issue. Climate change is not harming mental health, but climate alarmism, built on falsehoods, hysteria, and hyperbole, certainly is.
via Science Matters
April 7, 2025 at 10:25AM
From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
The Seattle Times ClimateLab stories are often sloppy and incorrect, with the article in today’s paper a good example of poor journalism, with politicized, error-filled claims.
The headline on a front page story today asks whether “this story is a goodbye to the National Weather Service…”?
Then it describes a last visit to the National Weather Service before Trump and MAGA
Haven’t got the point yet? Then read into the story.
So the claim is that the Trump folks are closely following the Project 2025 document, which calls for ending NOAA and sending NWS forecast functions to the private sector.
Want it even clearer? The Seattle Times article then quotes an article in the Atlantic discussing “the MAGA plan to end free weather reports”
The Big Problem with the Seattle Times Story
The essential problem with the story is that NONE OF IT IS TRUE.
False, unsupported claims, that are overtly pushing a partisan viewpoint.
Stronger words would be appropriate, but I will leave those to others.
Fact 1: No National Weather Service office has been terminated.
Fact 2: No change in National Weather Service (NWS) products has been made or proposed.
Fact 3: President Trump explicitly denied that he follows Project 2020 plans and has explicitly rejected it.
Let me say this again….President Trump has explicitly stated he does not support Project 2025. He said it presents thoughts of the far right. NOT HIS.
Fact 4: The new head of the Department of Commerce (Howard Lutnick), the department to which NOAA and the NWS belong, has explicitly stated that he will not eliminate NOAA or the NWS.
Don’t believe me? Check out this AXIOS article.
Lutnick stated he would maintain the NWS in his testimony in the U.S. Senate.
Fact 5: I have talked to folks in the new administration. They have made it clear that there is no agenda to get rid of NOAA or the NWS.
Disappointing “Journalism”
The author of this story, Erik Lacitis, called me up when he was writing the article. I told him the facts. I have a deep knowledge of the situation in the NOAA and the NWS, having served on several advisory committees and having written several papers on the situation.
Yet, even given the facts, the author produced this clearly incorrect article. Very disappointing.
The Trump Administration Has Not Done Well So Far with NOAA/NWS
Finally, let me be clear.
The Trump administration has made several serious mistakes, such as firing probationary NOAA/NWS employees and then having to rehire them. The Trump folks don’t seem to have a logical game plan for understanding what needs to be fixed in NOAA and then doing something about it.
NOAA has deep flaws that need to be addressed. This administration needs to reach out to those who understand the issues and have ideas about how to fix them.
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April 7, 2025 at 08:08AM
