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December 2, 2023

It has become all too common in the media, especially every time another United Nations climate conference like COP28 takes place, to blame every problem on climate change. The media and their go-to climate pundits reach far and wide to connect whatever tragic event is trending in the news to the modest warming of the past hundred or so years, and they do it no matter how tenuous the connection.

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Some claims immediately stand out as ridiculous to even the casual observer, like the claim that the oceans are boiling, which is so stupid only someone who has blind trust in favored authorities bordering on pathological would believe it.

Other claims have the appearance of plausibility, at least at first glance, because the logic is relatively straightforward. Even then, existing data often contradicts the climate attribution. Taking a hypothesis, testing it, and then revising it based on the results used to be a thing called the “scientific method,” but apparently many in the media find that too boring and choose to spread unverified claims instead.

One of the common claims made by climate hucksters recently is that climate change is increasingly harming human health.

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On the surface this might sound true. One of the examples often cited is that an increase in pollen will torment allergy sufferers. It is true that more plants due to carbon dioxide fertilization and longer stretches of plant-friendly weather certainly results in more pollen from some species. However, alarmism regarding this claim misses the broader point; better growing conditions means a lusher planet that better sustains human and animal life. Allergies are a misery, true, but they are manageable. Starvation is not so easily managed.

Voice of America (VOA) posted an article that pushes several other common claims about the supposed threat that climate change poses to human health, including extreme heat, air pollution, infectious diseases, and mental-health issues.

VOA reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared climate change the “single biggest health threat facing humanity.”

The first category highlighted is extreme heat.

Again, on the surface, this sounds possible. VOA writes that this year is “expected to be the hottest on record,” and cites a study that claims by 2050 five times more people will die of heat each year if 2°C warming occurs.

However, some of the data used to make the “hottest month/year” claim is suspect, due in part to the urban heat island effect, and a variety of natural factors, like increased water vapor from a massive volcanic eruption, the onset of a powerful El Niño, and increased solar activity.