Climate Change Impacts
The New York Times claims the “vast majority of scientists agree that climate change” will cause “average global temperatures to rise” 2.7ºF “above preindustrial levels within the next decade, unleashing dire impacts that include more deadly heat waves, coastal floods, water shortages and crop failures.”
IN FACT, no scientific survey shows what the Times alleges, and scientists who make such predictions have been consistently wrong for decades. Here are the specifics:
- The Times article doesn’t cite or link to any evidence to support the claim that the “vast majority of scientists” believe climate change will cause “dire impacts,” much less “within the next decade.”
- Surveys that purportedly measure the scientific consensus on climate change don’t actually ask whether scientists think the impacts will be dire and/or don’t use scientific survey methods but convenience samples that are “biased in favor of those with strong opinions or with time on their hands.”
- Predictions about the future effects of climate change are based on models, a class of studies that is notoriously unreliable and has been criticized in a scientific journal for creating a “perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory and can fool policymakers into thinking that the forecasts the models generate have some kind of scientific legitimacy.”
- In 1989, Sandra Henderson, a biogeographer at the EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratory, wrote that “scientists are warning of a possible loss of 20 percent of the earth’s species before the end of the century” due to “global warming.” This equals about 240,000 species. The actual loss was well under 100, or less than 0.04% of her projection.
- In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “global warming may be the greatest challenge facing humankind,” and “any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems” like “plant” life. Since then, earth’s natural vegetation productivity and tree cover have increased.
- In 1989, Mansfield wrote that “sea-level rise as a consequence of global warming would immediately threaten that large fraction of the globe living at sea level.” Since then, Earth’s coastal land area grew by about 5,200 square miles.
- In 1989, Noel Brown, a senior U.N. environmental official, stated that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” Since then, Earth’s land area grew by about 22,400 square miles.
- In 1995, the New York Times reported, “At the most likely rate of [sea level] rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years.” More than 30 years later, none of them have disappeared.
- In 2004, James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University, claimed, “As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones.” Since then (and for decades prior), global hurricane frequency and intensity have been roughly level.
- In 2007, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally stated, “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” Since then, summer Arctic sea ice has remained roughly level and was higher in 2025 than 2007.
Frequent claims that such measures are worsening suffer from four fatal flaws:
- They cherry pick short-term trends caused by natural variability while ignoring long-term comprehensive data.
- They use deficient datasets that become increasingly incomplete as they extend back in time.
- They fail to account for factors like population growth and economic development.
- They are blatant falsehoods.
