Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made his presidential candidacy official on May 24, first with a glitch-delayed livestream on Twitter Spaces, followed by an interview on Fox News.

Making his pitch for the Republican nomination, DeSantis leaned heavily into his record as governor of the Sunshine State, and criticism of President Joe Biden. But we found that in some instances, DeSantis presented a distorted or incomplete picture.

• DeSantis said that Florida “eliminated critical race theory,” even though there is little or no evidence that it was being taught in public schools.

• DeSantis blamed “woke ideology” for recent military recruitment struggles, but the Army secretary said a 2022 survey found that “wokeness” was “relatively low on the list of barriers to service.”

• The governor described “global warming” as “not central to the mission” of the military, but Pentagon leaders have warned for years that climate change poses a national security threat.

• DeSantis repeatedly boasted that “Florida’s crime rate is at a 50-year low.” The rate has been declining for decades, and crime experts have cautioned that the 2021 data cannot be compared to prior years while the state transitions to a new method of crime reporting.

• DeSantis suggested that California wants “abortion all the way up till birth” and already allows it “post-birth.” But infanticide is illegal in the state, and a voter-approved ballot measure that guarantees access to abortion doesn’t mention abortions after fetal viability.

• He labeled claims of Florida book bans a “hoax” because “there’s not been a single book banned” in the state. But a nonprofit counted hundreds of books that were removed from Florida schools and libraries to comply with bills DeSantis signed into law.

• DeSantis misleadingly portrayed the risks of climate change by narrowly focusing only on the frequency of hurricanes, ignoring that it will make hurricanes wetter and more intense.

• He boasted that Florida “recently ranked number one in education” — a ranking that DeSantis inherited and is based on both elementary and higher education. The state’s K-12 schools ranked 14th.

DeSantis’ 2024 kickoff got off to a rough start when the Twitter Spaces livestream event crashed, and was delayed nearly a half hour. But the event, hosted by owner Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks, eventually got back on track. “I’m here,” DeSantis announced after a restart.

“Well, I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said.

The Twitter event was followed by a live interview on Fox News with host Trey Gowdy, a former Republican member of Congress from South Carolina. Below are some of the statements we fact-checked from both public appearances.

On Critical Race Theory

DeSantis said in his Twitter Space announcement that Florida “eliminated critical race theory,” even though there is little or no evidence that it was being taught in public schools.

DeSantis, May 24: On the racial history, we eliminated critical race theory from our K through 12 schools. That was the right thing to do. In other words, we’re not going to take a kid who comes in at six years old and say they’re an oppressor or oppressed based on what their race is. That’s divisive. That’s wrong.

DeSantis is referring to the Individual Freedom Act, which he signed last year. The law doesn’t mention the phrase “critical race theory.” Instead, it bans public school teachers and Florida College System instructors from teaching that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

What is critical race theory? It started as an advanced legal theory taught at Harvard University in the 1980s by law professor Derrick Bell. It accepts that institutional racism exists and needs to be better understood in order to address racial inequality. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Harvard law student at the time who is now a law professor at Columbia University, has been credited with coining the phrase “critical race theory.”

In an opinion piece for the American Bar Association in January 2021, Janel George, a civil rights attorney, described CTR as “a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship.” A year later, at her Senate confirmation hearings, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson defined it as “an academic theory that’s at the law school level.”

Most teachers say critical race theory isn’t being taught in K-12 schools. In 2021, the Association of American Educators surveyed more than 1,000 educators and 96% of those surveyed said they were not required to teach critical race theory.

In a 2022 report on state efforts to ban critical race theory in public schools, UCLA education researchers wrote that critical race theory isn’t being taught in K-12 schools. They said the term “critical race theory” has been co-opted by conservative activists who seek “to restrict or ‘ban’ curriculum, lessons, professional development, and district equity and diversity efforts addressing … race, racism, diversity, and inclusion.”

UCLA researchers found that the debate over CRT has played out in nearly 900 school districts with an enrollment of more than 17.7 million students, or 35% of all public school students in the U.S.

Effect of ‘Wokeness’ on Military Recruiting

DeSantis rightly noted that military recruitment has struggled in recent years, but he was wrong to lay blame on concerns about “woke ideology” in the armed services. An Army study of young people in 2022 found the main reason people didn’t want to serve in the military was fear of injury or death.

Concerns about “wokeness in the military” ranked “relatively low on the list of barriers to service,” according to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.

“We will never surrender to the woke mob and we will leave woke ideology in the dust bin of history,” DeSantis said in his Twitter announcement. “Biden’s also politicized the military and caused recruiting to plummet. We will eliminate ideological agendas from our military, focus the military on the core mission, and we will reverse the poor recruiting trends.”

DeSantis echoed those comments in his Fox interview later that night.

“There’ll be a new sheriff in town as commander in chief,” DeSantis said of taking over the presidency. “And I think you’ll see recruiting start to get back to where it needs to be, because people don’t want to join a woke military. And I think it’s been really, really problematic.”

Military recruiters have been feeling the pinch for years. The Army missed its Fiscal Year 2022 recruiting goals by 25% or 15,000 soldiers, and military leaders said in April they did not expect to reach their recruiting targets in 2023 either.

“The difficult recruiting landscape we face didn’t happen in a year, and it’s going to take us more than a year to turn this around,” Wormuth said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in April.

For one thing, they are drawing on a smaller pool of eligible applicants. A 2020 Pentagon study found that without a waiver 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service due to obesity, drug abuse, physical and mental health problems and other issues. That’s 6% higher than in 2017.

“To put it bluntly, I am worried we are now in the early days of a long-term threat to the all-volunteer force. [There is] a small and declining number of Americans who are eligible and interested in military service,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2022. Tillis said “every single metric tracking the military recruiting environment is going in the wrong direction.”

In her congressional testimony in April, Wormuth said the Army surveyed 2,400 people between the ages of 16 and 28 to try to identify obstacles to service. “There was, sometimes, a fear of psychological harm, or a fear of leaving friends and family, and then after that it was, sort of, a fear of the Army, somehow putting your life on hold,” Wormuth said.

Culture war issues did not register as significant obstacles to recruitment.

“Concerns about, for example, you know, wokeness in the military or the COVID vaccine mandate, for example, those were relatively low on the list of barriers to service,” Wormuth said.

Global Warming and the Military

DeSantis went on to say that “global warming” and other “matters not central to the mission” are hurting military morale and recruiting.

DeSantis, May 24: But when revered institutions like those in our military are more concerned with matters not central to the mission, whether it’s global warming or gender ideology and pronouns, morale declines and recruiting suffers.

But contrary to DeSantis’ assessment that global warming is not a central mission of the military, Pentagon leaders have warned for years that climate change poses a national security threat.

In a report released in October 2014, the Pentagon wrote that “Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security,” and that it “will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions.”

“Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict,” the report stated. “They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”

The report calls climate change a “threat multiplier,” meaning it “has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism.”

In written testimony obtained by Pro Publica and provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, James Mattis, said: “Climate change can be a driver of instability and the Department of Defense must pay attention to potential adverse impacts generated by this phenomenon.”

“I agree that the effects of a changing climate — such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others — impact our security situation,” Mattis said. “I will ensure that the department continues to be prepared to conduct operations today and in the future, and that we are prepared to address the effects of a changing climate on our threat assessments, resources, and readiness.”

Mark Esper, a Trump nominee who succeeded Mattis as secretary of defense, testified before a House committee in February 2020 that he did not believe climate change was “a threat to our national security as I’ve traditionally defined it.” But, he said, “I do believe it is a challenge for our military installations that are confronted with the impact of climate change.”

At that same hearing, Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s selection as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that climate change “is probably going to result in destabilization, with resource depletion, water and things like that. You’re gonna see things like increases in diseases. There are a lot of second and third order effects. And does it impact on U.S. national security? Yes it does.”

Florida Crime Rate

During his Twitter and Fox interviews, DeSantis repeatedly boasted that “Florida’s crime rate is at a 50-year low.” But experts caution not to read too much into the 2021 data, because there was a significant switch that year in the way data was reported, and much of Florida’s law enforcement community had not switched to the new reporting method.

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida’s overall crime rate — which includes violent and property crimes — was 1,952.3 crimes per 100,000 residents, a roughly 9.5% drop from the rate in 2020. (DeSantis took office in January 2019.)

That 2021 rate was the lowest going back to 1971, which is as far back as the state reports the statistic. So that makes it the lowest total crime rate in at least the last 50 years, as DeSantis said.

But the rate has been steadily declining for three decades. In fact, the state has achieved the lowest crime rate on record in every year since 2008, including DeSantis’ first two years in office.

Data experts also caution there is a large caveat with the 2021 data that makes comparisons to previous years precarious. For 2021, the FBI switched to a new method of crime data reporting, using an “incident-based” system instead of a “summary-based” one in which only the most egregious offenses in an incident are reported, even when multiple crimes may have been committed.

In Florida, 239 law enforcement agencies representing 57.5% of the state’s population submitted data using the old, summary-based crime statistics in 2021. In addition, 29 law enforcement agencies had transitioned to incident-based crime reporting, and another 140 were in the process of transitioning.

FDLE says the new incident-based reporting method will provide “more robust and dynamic crime reporting.” But until data is collected uniformly, comparisons to previous years may be skewed.

“I would say these are provisional data and should be treated with some caution,” Richard B. Rosenfeld, a criminologist and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told the Tampa Bay Times in December.

“The drastic differences in numbers of agencies reporting, and the different way that crime data is recorded, means that comparing 2021 data to earlier years is problematic,” Lyndsay Boggess, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida, told PolitiFact. “Even 2020 is challenging and potentially unreliable given the pandemic, quarantine, and shifts in peoples’ behaviors.

Abortion

In the Gowdy interview, DeSantis said he is concerned about a “Democratic administration, with a trifecta, trying to nationalize abortion all the way up until birth,” which he called “a violation of what states like Florida have done to protect life.”

As we’ve written, House Democrats did pass the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021, which would prevent state prohibitions on abortion after fetal viability in cases where the life or health of the patient is at risk. Some Republicans have claimed or suggested the bill would allow abortion at any point in a pregnancy and for any reason — but some Democrats have countered that is not what they support nor the intent of the bill.

It’s already very rare for abortions to be performed late into a pregnancy. The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that 93.1% of abortions were performed at or before 13 weeks of gestation and less than 1% were performed at or after 21 weeks.

DeSantis later called out California specifically, saying: “They want to have abortion all the way up till birth. I think they actually allow it post-birth, if you can believe that, which I think is truly horrific.”

To start, California does not allow abortions “post-birth,” which is known as infanticide. “That’s just not true,” Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, said of the claim. “That’s homicide in California,” she told us in a phone interview.

In addition, the California Health and Safety Code, which contains relevant state statutes, clearly states, “The rights to medical treatment of an infant prematurely born alive in the course of an abortion shall be the same as the rights of an infant of similar medical status prematurely born spontaneously.”

In 2022, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 2223, legislation that protects parents from being investigated or prosecuted if they lose or choose to end a pregnancy. As we’ve also written, there was some concern about the original language of the bill, which said: “Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.”

The state’s Assembly Judiciary Committee later suggested revising the language to make it clear that the reference to “perinatal death” — which can refer to fetal deaths that occur during a pregnancy or deaths within days or weeks of a birth — “is intended to be the consequence of a pregnancy complication.” Without that clarification, the committee said, “the bill could be interpreted to immunize a pregnant person from all criminal penalties for all pregnancy outcomes, including the death of a newborn for any reason during the ‘perinatal’ period after birth, including a cause of death which is not attributable to pregnancy complications, which clearly is not the author’s intent.”

The line was changed to read “perinatal death due to causes that occurred in utero,” which is the version that became law. After the change, the California Catholic Conference, which had objected to the original language, removed its opposition to the measure and remained neutral on the bill.

Also, California law already places restrictions on abortions that occur after fetal viability — contrary to the DeSantis claim that the state wants abortion “way up till birth.”

In 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, California voters approved Proposition 1, an amendment to the state constitution that guarantees access to abortion procedures and contraceptives.

But the language of the amendment doesn’t specify when abortions may occur, Ziegler told us. “It’s silent on the subject” of viability, she said, explaining that constitutional amendments “tend to be broad and abstract,” rather than going into specific details.

It “doesn’t mean you can or cannot have a post-viability abortion,” she said of the amendment. That would have to be “tested in court,” which she noted has not happened.

Book Bans

DeSantis played down the fact that hundreds of books have been removed from Florida schools and libraries to comply with legislation that he has signed into law as governor.

“So the whole book ban thing is a hoax,” he told his Twitter audience. “There’s not been a single book banned in the state of Florida. You can go buy or use whatever book you want.”

But PEN America, a nonprofit promoting “free expression” that has been tracking book removals across the country, has documented hundreds of bans by Florida school districts between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2022.

In an April report, PEN America wrote: “In Florida, for example, a trio of laws enacted this school year bar instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade (HB 1557), prohibit educators from discussing advantages or disadvantages based on race (HB 7), and mandate that schools must catalog every book on their shelves, including those found in classroom libraries (HB 1467). Due to the lack of clear guidance, these three laws have each led teachers, media specialists, and school administrators to proactively remove books from shelves, in the absence of any specific challenges. In October 2022, the Florida Board of Education also passed new rules that go beyond the language in the laws, to stipulate that teachers found in violation of these bills could have their professional teaching certification revoked.”

The group said it counted at least 357 book bans throughout the state.

In a March press release purportedly “exposing the book ban hoax,” the governor’s office even acknowledged that “[s]chool districts are required to report the number of books removed from schools based on legislation passed in 2022,” and noted that about two dozen districts had “reported removing materials” so far.

Climate Change

In his first interview following his announcement, DeSantis misleadingly denied the very real risks of climate change by narrowly focusing on a single metric: hurricane frequency.

“They have not increased in number,” DeSantis said of hurricanes, when Fox News host Trey Gowdy asked DeSantis about his “view” on climate change, and the government’s role in addressing it.  “People try to say when we had Ian that it was because of climate change. But if you look at the first 60 years, from 1900 to 1960, we had more major hurricanes hit Florida than in the 60 years since then.”

“This is something that’s a fact of life in the Sunshine State,” he continued. “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”

Exactly how climate change affects hurricanes is complicated, but scientists generally agree that hotter temperatures will make hurricanes wetter and more intense.

“Further warming will likely lead to an increased proportion of [tropical cyclones] of higher severity (category 4 & 5) with more damaging wind speeds, higher storm inundation, and more extreme rainfall rates,” a 2021 review concluded. 

Hurricanes are tropical cyclones that occur in the Atlantic Ocean, among other bodies of water.

Whether a warming world will lead to more or fewer hurricanes is less clear — the bulk of the evidence points to fewer total hurricanes, although this remains uncertain.

Regardless of any specific effects on the storms, climate change-caused sea level rise means the hurricanes that do hit will be more likely to have higher storm surges.

As for DeSantis’ straw man claim about last year’s Hurricane Ian, he’s right that it’s incorrect to say that the hurricane was caused by climate change. But rather than causing events, climate change can make them more likely or worse.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab climate scientist Michael Wehner and colleagues performed a rapid attribution analysis at the time of Hurricane Ian, concluding that climate change increased rainfall “by over 10%.” Wehner has since updated the estimate, he said during a lecture in March, and his group now estimates that climate change increased Hurricane Ian’s extreme rainfall by nearly 18%.

Of course, hurricanes are not the only concern when it comes to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, released in March, human-caused climate change “​​is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe,” leading to “widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.”

Florida’s Education Ranking

During his Twitter Spaces event, DeSantis said Florida “recently ranked number one in education” — a ranking that requires some context.

It’s true that U.S. News & World Report earlier this month ranked Florida No. 1 in overall education, which is based on both elementary and higher education. Florida has held the top spot for seven years — so it predates DeSantis, who took office in 2019.

Also, while Florida ranked No. 1 in higher education and overall education, the state’s K-12 schools ranked 14th.

The Sunshine State’s eighth-grade students ranked 32nd in math proficiency and 21st in reading proficiency, the news magazine said, citing the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores.

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Quick Take

Oil is formed in a process that takes millions of years, and there is a finite amount on the planet, scientists say. But a TikTok video shared on Instagram falsely claims that there is an “unlimited” supply of oil, and people are being “taught” otherwise to keep them “in a fear state.”

Full Story

Oil is a finite resource that takes millions of years to form, according to scientists, and it can’t be replenished at anywhere near the rate at which it is being used.

“There is a finite amount of oil in the world,” Andrew Kleit, professor of energy and environmental economics at Pennsylvania State University, told us in a phone interview.

“Oil is created through a geologic process that takes millions of years,” he said. “Any new oil that’s created is created very slowly, whereas we consume it fairly rapidly” in comparison, he added.

“The scarcity value of oil is reflected in the market price,” Kleit said.

Oil companies, including BP and Shell, are studying how to produce alternative fuels. They are addressing concerns that burning fossil fuels harm the environment, and they know that once the oil that exists runs out, there will be no way to replace it.

Yet, a TikTok video shared April 30 and May 1 on Instagram falsely claims there’s an endless supply of oil available on the Earth.

“There is an unlimited amount of oil,” the video says. It also misleadingly claims water is unlimited, too.

The claims on the video, which has received more than 10,000 likes, are similar to false claims made on a 2021 Facebook video that said John D. Rockefeller coined the term “fossil fuel” to “induce the idea of scarcity” and drive up oil prices.

The TikTok video also references Rockefeller. “When the Rockefellers bought out the educational system, they taught us a scarcity mindset to put us into a fear state,” says the video, posted by a TikTok account called Cultivate Elevate, which sells health-related products on its website.

The video also says workers on oil rigs have described being sent back to wells that had “supposedly” gone dry and then finding oil in them.

Crude oil and petroleum are known as fossil fuels because they were formed from the remains of ancient plants and animals into a hydrocarbon mixture.

“Oil, like natural gas and coal, is a fuel that was literally made from fossils, the dead remains of once-living things that have been slowly, through a combination of pressure and temperature, been converted into solid [coal], liquid [oil], and gas,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told us in an email on May 9.

Mann noted that renowned scientist Carl Sagan referred to oil’s origin in pointing out the “absurdity” of our dependence on fossil fuels: “Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene,” Sagan said. “Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives.”

The video’s claim that oil is unlimited is “silly,” Mann said.

“Crude oil is the result of geological processes beneath Earth’s surface that play out over hundreds of millions of years,” he said. “We’re extracting it over a time frame of decades, more than a million times as fast as nature could in principle replace it.”

Addressing the video’s claim that oil workers were called back to rigs previously deemed dry, Mann said: “Which is more likely, that oil is magically being generated a million times faster than known geological processes can generate it? Or that some workers on oil rigs missed a spot the first time they searched it?”

Climate change, Mann said, provides a “compelling argument” against finding new ways of extracting fossil fuel, further decreasing the supply of oil.

As we’ve written before, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that climate change is occurring, largely caused by human activity, including the burning of oil, gas and coal. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed how nations around the world are working to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels in its April 2022 report.

The video’s claim that water is unlimited is likewise wrong, Mann said. While there is a large amount of water on the planet, most of it is salt water in the oceans — and desalination is an expensive, energy-intensive process that isn’t practical, he said. Fresh water is similarly “tied up” in glaciers, leaving only about 1% of total water accessible for human use, Mann said.

Water is already in limited supply. In a 2022 report, the World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations, estimated that “3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least a month per year” — a figure that is expected to rise to “more than 5 billion by 2050.”

“Human beings require fresh water,” said Penn State’s Kleit. “And in many parts of the world, including the Western United States, fresh water is very scarce.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

National Geographic. “Petroleum.” Accessed 11 May 2023.

Miller, Richard G. and Steven R. Sorrell. “The Future of Oil Supply.” National Library of Medicine. 13 Jan 2014.

Andrew Kleit. Professor of energy and environmental economics, Pennsylvania State University. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 11 May 2023.

Clifford, Catherine. “BP Says Demand for Oil and Gas Will Drop Dramatically by 2050 in ‘Decisive Shift.’” CNBC. 30 Jan 2023.

Bousso, Ron and Shadia Nasralla. “With Oil Past Peak, Shell Sharpens 2050 Zero Emissions Goal.” Reuters. 11 Feb 2021.

Thelin, John and Richard W. Trollinger. “Effective Altruism Isn’t as Newfangled as It Seems.” Washington Post. 6 Feb 2023.

Energy Information Administration. “Oil and Petroleum Products Explained.” Accessed 10 May 2023.

Kelety, Josh. “Video Spreads False Notion of Unlimited Oil Supply.” Associated Press. 3 May 2023.

Petersen, Kate. “Fact check: False claim Earth can produce infinite supply of clean water.” USA Today. 31 Oct 2022.

Reuters Fact Check. “Fact Check-The Term ‘Fossil Fuel’ Was Not Coined by John D. Rockefeller to Trick People Into Thinking Oil is a Scarce Commodity.” 24 Sep 2001.

Michael E Mann. Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, University of Pennsylvania. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 May 2023.

Keefe, Eliza. “‘Unequivocal’ Evidence that Humans Cause Climate Change, Contrary to Posts of Old Video.” FactCheck.org. 2 Aug 2022.

Fichera, Angelo. “No, Climate Change Isn’t ‘Made Up.'” FactCheck.org. 8 May 2019.

McGrath, Matt. “Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Emissions From Electricity Set to Fall – Report.” BBC. 12 Apr 2023.

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” Accessed 15 May 2023.

Brittanica.com. “World Distribution of Oil.” Accessed 12 May 2023.

World Meteorolgical Organization. “State of Global Water Resources report informs on rivers, land water storage and glaciers.” 29 Nov 2022.

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It’s increasingly likely that the planet will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming, probably within the next two decades. But while that level of warming comes with a variety of dangerous effects, it’s not a point of no return, scientists say, and it doesn’t mean “we’re done,” as President Joe Biden has claimed. 

Carbon dioxide and other gasses that trap heat, known as greenhouse gases, emitted by human activity have “unequivocally caused global warming,” according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The average global temperature has already increased by 1.1 C, or 2 F, since 1850-1900, the latest IPCC report published in March says. And even in a very low greenhouse gas emission scenario “global warming is more likely than not” to reach 1.5 C between now and 2040, the report says.

Every increment of global warming intensifies the adverse impacts of climate change. Effective climate action, however, can limit and reduce losses and damages, scientists agree. Warming also “could gradually be reduced again by achieving and sustaining net negative global CO2 emissions,” the IPCC report says.

But in urging people to support his climate policies, Biden has been overly pessimistic. In an interview with “The Daily Show” that aired on March 13, for example, Biden said crossing the 1.5 C threshold would mean that a “whole generation is damned. I mean, that’s not hyperbole.”

That same day, in remarks at a Democratic National Committee reception, he said if global warming goes above 1.5 C “we’re done; there’s no way to turn it around, according to the scientists that tell us.” 

The White House did not explain what he meant by an entire generation being “damned” after 1.5 C of warming, nor did it give us any indication of which studies suggest “we’re done.” 

“I think passing 1.5 C means social and economic ‘chaos,’ but ‘done’ sounds like nothing we do afterwards matters,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson told us in an email. “That’s wrong. Every tenth of a degree matters, before and after 1.5 C,” he wrote.

Climate scientist Michael Mann said Biden’s statements contribute to the climate “doomerism” narrative, which he has said could be dangerous and paralyzing, since it implies that it’s already too late to cut back on emissions. 

“Biden said ‘we lose it all’ if we warm beyond 1.5C,” Mann, a professor and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Twitter, referring to language Biden used in July. “Unhelpful rhetoric, unsupported by the science. It’s a continuum not a cliff. We’ve lost much already, and lose more with each fraction of a degree. If we miss the 1.5C exit ramp, we still go for 1.6C exit rather than give up,” Mann said.

The president also has been overly confident at times when talking about American progress in limiting warming to 1.5 C. While the White House typically refers to the U.S. goal in reducing emissions as “within reach,” Biden sometimes says the country is “on track” to achieving the goal.

“With these actions, the United States is on track to achieve a 1.5 degree-aligned goal cutting emissions 50 to 52% by 2030,” he said on April 20, while referring to the Inflation Reduction Act and other actions.

But studies have found that although the IRA — which includes investments in clean energy and is projected to lower emissions 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 — will make significant progress toward achieving the goal, it’s not enough, even with other existing policies.

“Based on Congressional action and currently finalized regulations, we are not on track to meet 50-52% below 2005 by 2030,” Jesse Jenkins, who leads the Princeton Zero carbon Energy systems Research and Optimization Laboratory, told us in an email. It’s possible, Jenkins said, that once certain rules are finalized and others are proposed, that “the gap could be closed,” but it’s premature to say so now.

Why 1.5 Degrees Celsius

The idea of limiting warming to 1.5 C first emerged in climate talks in 2010. Prior to that time, the goal was to keep global warming below 2 C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels to meet the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s objective to “prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.” But in 2010, experts gathered at the conference decided it was necessary to review “the adequacy” of that target and to consider “strengthening” the goal to 1.5 C.

The IPCC defines global warming as the estimated increase in global mean surface temperature, which is the average temperature of the air near the surface of land and ocean, averaged over a 30-year period, relative to pre-industrial levels.

Over the next several years, the language around the goal shifted, with the recognition that particularly for vulnerable regions, going past 1.5 C could be very risky, and that the 2 C goal should not be thought of as a “guardrail” under which all would be safe.

“While science on the 1.5 °C warming limit is less robust, efforts should be made to push the defence line as low as possible,” a 2015 report concluded.

The guidance was then considered in the Paris Agreement, the landmark climate agreement adopted by 196 member parties in December 2015. The agreement set the overarching goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” but also said members of the agreement should pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

The UNFCCC asked the IPCC, which is made up of scientists, to prepare a report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 C compared with 2 C, and on the pathways to get there. The IPCC published that report in 2018.

“What the IPCC 1.5C report told us, and the more recent reports emphasized, is that every half a degree of warming makes things worse,” Natalie M. Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University and one of the authors of the 2018 IPCC Special Report, told us in an email.

The report found a number of significant impacts could be avoided if setting a threshold at 1.5 C compared with 2 C — fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, hunger and infectious diseases; lower risks of flooding, drought and sea level rise; and fewer impacts to ecosystems and biodiversity. 

But neither 1.5 C nor 2 C are “magic numbers,” as Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at The Nature Conservancy, puts it. More carbon emissions in the atmosphere will result in more global warming, which will result in a greater risk.

“Trying to put a number on exactly how much global temperature change is dangerous, and how much carbon we can put into the atmosphere before we hit that level, is like trying to put a number on exactly how many cigarettes we can smoke before we develop lung cancer,” she explains in a video from her PBS series “Global Weirding.” “Now, of course we know that the more we smoke, the greater the risk, but we also know there’s no magic number.”  

How Close Are We and What Happens If We Reach 1.5 C

According to the last IPCC report published in March, global surface temperature warming reached 1.1 C in the decade of 2011-2020, with a 1.59 C warming over the land and 0.88 C over the ocean. The global temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over the last 2,000 years, the report said. Human-made greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 were 12% higher than in 2010, with the largest share coming from fossil fuels combustion and industrial processes, according to the report. 

Many adverse impacts, losses and damages related to climate change had already happened, the report said, and every increment of warming will make the risks of more damage intensify. Some future changes are “unavoidable and/or irreversible,” the report said. 

“People are already suffering and dying from climate change,” Kristie L. Ebi, professor of global health and environment at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the IPCC 1.5 C report, told us in an email. “The magnitude and pattern of health risks of 1.5C are projected to be larger than current impacts. Each additional unit of warming is projected to further increase the level of risk.” 

The estimated remaining carbon budget, or the amount of CO2 that could still be emitted, for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 C is 380 billion metric tons, according to the latest Global Carbon Project report released in November 2022. At the current rate of emissions, analysts say that would last for about nine years. According to the report, 2022 global carbon emissions remained “at record levels – with no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C.” It projected total global CO2 emissions of 40.6 million metric tons.

Overshooting, or failing to limit warming to 1.5 C by 2100, “will result in irreversible adverse impacts on certain ecosystems with low resilience,” according to the latest IPCC report. Some of these impacts — mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands and permafrost thawing — could cause additional warming, the report notes, which would in turn make it harder to return to 1.5 C.

According to the IPCC Special Report, some of the impacts of global warming of 1.5 C include:

• Sea level is projected to rise to a range of 10 to 30 inches relative to 1986-2005 levels. 
• Out of 105,000 species studied, about 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are projected to lose more than half of their habitats.
• About 70% to 90% of tropical coral reefs would disappear.
• Many marine species would shift their range to higher latitudes, and the amount of damage to marine ecosystems will increase, reducing coastal resources. The global annual catch for marine fisheries will decrease by about 1.5 million metric tons, according to projections of a global fishery model. 
• Health risks related to climate, such as heat illnesses and deaths or vector-borne diseases, are projected to increase. 

Limiting warming to 1.5 C is still possible but it would require “rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors this decade,” according to IPCC’s latest report. To achieve that goal, global net carbon dioxide emissions would need to be reduced by about 48% from 2019 levels by 2030, 65% by 2035, 80% by 2040, and reach net-zero emissions, or the balance between emissions produced and removed, around 2050. 

But in the big picture, if warming exceeds 1.5 C, it doesn’t mean “we’re done,” as Biden said. Scientists say there’s no reason to give up.

“We have to remember there’s no expiration on climate action,” Twila Moon, deputy lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, told PBS while discussing a study that shows ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than predicted. “Every tenth of a degree that we prevent warming is worthwhile and will benefit us. And we can continue to strengthen our actions,” she said.

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

The post Warming Beyond 1.5 C Harmful, But Not a Point of No Return, as Biden Claims  appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The relentless storms that hit California from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16 caused extreme flooding and extensive damage in most of the state, killing at least 22 people. A series of storms hit back to back, soaking the state in the midst of California’s driest three-year period on record.

“If anybody doubts that climate is changing, then they must have been asleep for the last couple of years,” President Joe Biden said in California on Jan. 19, after witnessing the destruction left behind by the storms. 

He later added: “For example, places that were ravaged by past wildfires are now at a higher risk of landslides. Extreme weather caused by climate change means stronger and more frequent storms, more intense droughts, longer wildfire seasons — all of which threaten communities across California.” 

There is a good scientific basis to think that storms, including the type that struck California, are generally becoming more extreme due to climate change. But climate scientists told us it’s too soon to know whether climate change had a role in this particular event, and if so, to what degree.

“We are not entirely sure,” Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, told us in an interview. “It’s an active area of research.” 

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told us all extreme weather events are the result of multiple complex and interrelated processes happening across time and space. Therefore, climate change is not “the singular cause” of the storms. But did it affect the storms’ intensity?  

“Here, the answer is probably yes, climate change thus far has likely increased both the intensity and likelihood of seeing such an intense period of precipitation in California,” he wrote in an email. “But then the question becomes: to what degree?”

Here is what we know so far.

What kind of storms hit California?

California was hit by a series of nine atmospheric rivers, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes as “naturally occurring air currents” that can create extreme rainstorms and flooding. The atmospheric rivers were accompanied by a bomb cyclone, a mid-latitude storm or weather system that rapidly intensifies.

Atmospheric rivers are long and narrow corridors in the lower atmosphere that transport water vapor from the tropics to the poles — “like rivers in the sky,” as NOAA explains. When these columns of vapor move inland from oceans and over mountains, the water vapor cools and creates heavy precipitation in the form of snow or rain. Their contribution to the water supply is crucial: A few of them provide, on average, 30% to 50% of the U.S. West Coast’s annual precipitation. 

But stronger atmospheric rivers, which carry greater amounts of moisture pushed along by stronger winds, can cause damage when they hit and stall over lands that are prone to flooding — as seen in the recent storms. Intense atmospheric river sequences have the potential to create a catastrophic “megaflood,” according to research.

Atmospheric rivers were only defined in the 2010s, but they are not new, as F. Martin Ralph, a research meteorologist and director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote in Scientific American. 

These kinds of storm systems slam western coasts across the globe several times a year, but they can also reach as far inland as Yellowstone National Park in the U.S., which lies mostly in northwest Wyoming, he explained. Atmospheric rivers can grow up to 2,000 miles long, 500 miles wide and two miles deep, Ralph wrote, adding that they transport on average “enough vapor to equal 25 times the flow rate of the Mississippi River where it pours into the Gulf of Mexico.”

It’s not uncommon for atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones to occur together, and they feed off of one another. Around 80% of atmospheric rivers are accompanied by an extratropical cyclone, research shows. The cyclones can enhance the winds of an atmospheric river, while atmospheric rivers provide ideal conditions for a cyclone to intensify. A bomb cyclone is a mid-latitude cyclone that intensifies very quickly because of a dramatic drop in pressure in a single day, usually a result of cold and warm air colliding.

How does climate change impact atmospheric rivers? 

Climate modeling studies show that, in general, in a warmer climate atmospheric rivers become more intense, leading to an increase in heavy precipitation. According to a recent study, climate change “has already doubled the likelihood of an event capable of producing catastrophic flooding” in California. But although the effects of climate change in atmospheric rivers have been studied using different approaches, uncertainty remains. 

Most of the climate change impact on the intensification of atmospheric rivers is caused by what’s called the “thermodynamic effect,” Swain, the climate scientist at UCLA, told us. That is, he said, “the fact that the atmosphere can hold exponentially more water vapor” with each degree of temperature increase. 

“A good rule of thumb is that a 1C increase in temperature increases the water vapor holding capacity of the atmosphere … by ~7%,” he said.

According to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is “unequivocal” that the atmosphere, ocean and land have warmed due to human influence. The group concluded, based on an evaluation of evidence quality and agreement, that there is “high confidence” a warmer climate increases the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, making wet seasons and events wetter. There is also “high confidence” heavy precipitation will follow the rate “of about 7% per 1°C of global warming.” 

“Given that global warming is increasing the amount of water vapor, it does seem reasonable to suggest that climate change may be making these storms stronger,” Travis A. O’Brien, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, told us in an email. 

“Indeed, climate model studies of atmospheric rivers and global warming … suggest that atmospheric rivers become ‘stronger’ (more water vapor transport) in a warmer climate and are generally associated with higher precipitation amounts,” O’Brien added.  

Atmospheric rivers are measured in what’s called integrated water vapor transport, Kalansky, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, explained. That includes both how much water is there and the wind that transports the vapor, she said. 

What climate models are showing, she said, is that in a future warmer world, atmospheric rivers will contribute more than other storms to California’s rainfall total annually, and that extreme atmospheric river events will become more extreme — and that’s mostly explained by the increase in water vapor. 

Swain told us the thermodynamic contribution is likely responsible for 80% of the projected change in atmospheric river intensity and the projected extreme precipitation increases. The remainder is more uncertain, he said, but wind and pressure patterns could be important factors. 

But there are still many basic things scientists don’t know about atmospheric rivers and the ways they will respond to a warming climate. 

“In climate models, there is a robust increase in global mean precipitation; however, how the response of ARs contributes towards this change is still uncertain and depends on many more factors than increased moisture alone,” reads a review article on the responses of atmospheric rivers to climate change published in Nature in 2020. 

A recent case study, for example, suggested that not all atmospheric rivers are affected to the same degree by climate change. The study simulated a specific atmospheric river storm that hit Northern California in two waves in 2017 under past, present and future climate scenarios. While both waves of the storm dropped more precipitation because of warming, the second wave dumped more. Precipitation amounts for the first and second waves were about 11% and 15% higher, respectively, under present-day warming, the study found. Those amounts increased to an additional 21% and 59% boost in precipitation, respectively, under late-21st century warming.

It’s not clear whether there will be more or fewer atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate. Most studies, O’Brien said, “do indicate an increase in the frequency of atmospheric rivers, but also some indicate a decrease or no change for western North America.”

Part of the issue, O’Brien found in a 2021 paper, is that researchers are not always consistent in how they define an atmospheric river.

For California specifically, Swain said that while it’s uncertain, the “preponderance of evidence is for fewer” atmospheric rivers overall in a warmer future. But, he said, “there is also strong evidence that the *strongest* atmospheric rivers in California (like those being experienced during this storm sequence) are very likely to be stronger and to produce more precipitation as the climate warms.”

“There is a quite a bit of evidence pointing in this direction at this point,” he added.

Can we say whether or how much climate change impacted this particular series of storms?

Not yet, climate experts say. 

“I don’t think we have evidence to show the degree these events are connected to climate change,” Duane Waliser, chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told us in an email. 

Waliser, who has studied atmospheric rivers and climate change’s effects on them, told us it would require more study to quantify an estimate of the effects of climate change on the storms. “[U]ntil that happens, a statement along these lines would be complete speculation,” he wrote. 

O’Brien agreed. He said it is impossible to make a “formal statement” about the effect of climate change on these storms without a detection and attribution study. 

Detection and attribution studies “can help determine whether a human influence on climate variables (for example, temperature) can be distinguished from natural variability,” according to a federal report on climate science. They are important, O’Brien said, because events like this can, and did, happen before climate change. 

O’Brien said there have been no detection and attribution studies on this storm yet, but he expects there will be one coming out in about the next six months. 

Kalansky said the storms do fit into what the climate models are showing. California weather, which is already highly variable and volatile, is and will become more extreme. Projections also show in a warming climate, because the air can hold more moisture, there is the potential that atmospheric rivers will drop more rain or snow, as we’ve explained. But to know whether or not that’s the case with these storms, more studies are needed, she said.

What was unique about this winter’s atmospheric river storms, she said, was that they came one after the other.

“The fact that they are coming back to back, to back, to back, has been really impactful,” she said in a phone interview. 

Without proper attribution studies, it’s hard to say if that was part of California’s natural climate variability or not.  

“It may,” she said, stressing the word may, “it may have been fueled by climate change. … But it’s too soon, at least in my opinion, to be able to say whether or not, without doing some more studies.”

Are there any estimates?

On Jan. 4, in the midst of the storms, Michael Wehner, a senior scientist in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, tweeted what he called a “conservative attribution statement.” 

“Anthropogenic climate change will cause the rain in today’s west coast … to be about 5% heavier,” he said, linking to a study he co-authored that was published in 2022. 

O’Brien told us the study on which Wehner is basing his estimate “isn’t exactly” a detection and attribution study. What it did is look at historical storms and ask what would they look like in a future climate. 

“His statement of the 5% number is based on the numbers that they found in that study: that storm-total precipitation increases by about 5-10% per degree C of warming,” he said. “So he’s doing a bit of inference with that statement rather than doing a careful D&A study. That said, I suspect that when a formal D&A study is done, it will produce results consistent with his statement.”

Swain, the climate scientist from UCLA, told us that estimate is “a reasonable lower bound.” His best guess, he said, would be 10%, or something in the range of 5% and 15% heavier rainfall due to climate change.

Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist in the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, told us in an email that because the air can hold more water vapor as a consequence of warming, “[t]here is a scientific basis to expect, for identical weather patterns today versus in the 19th Century, that a rainstorm would yield about 5% more precipitation today.” 

But he added that prolonged rains like this one did occur in the 19th century. For example, he said, the wettest 15-day period on record reported in downtown San Francisco, with 19 inches of rain, occurred in 1862. The second, with 13.5 inches, occurred in December 1866, he said. This winter’s storm represented the third, with 12.37 inches.

While Wehner “is correct to offer an important reminder of how rain events are becoming more extreme, historical records when examined carefully provide no less important reminders that nature (without human modification) can deliver remarkable rains alone,” he added.

Correction, Feb. 1: We removed a quotation that incorrectly stated there have not been any detection and attribution studies on atmospheric rivers.  

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The post It’s Too Soon to Attribute the California Storms to Climate Change, Experts Say appeared first on FactCheck.org.

SciCheck Digest

The warming trend in global temperature continued in 2022, which was the sixth-warmest year on record, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But a viral tweet — using just a small segment of a NOAA graph — wrongly claimed the agency had announced a “global cooling” trend.

Full Story

The sixth-warmest year on record was in 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Jan. 12.

NOAA had released highlights from its most recent annual global climate report showing the planet’s average land and ocean surface temperature was 1.55 degrees Fahrenheit higher in 2022 than the 20th century average, which was 57 degrees F. This rise in temperature is part of an upward trend going back decades.

But Steve Milloy, who is on the board of a think tank that publishes content denying the existence of climate change, claimed “NOAA makes it official” that the “last 8 years” of temperature data show a “global cooling” trend.

That’s wrong. NOAA actually said the opposite.

“The planet continued its warming trend in 2022,” the agency’s press release said, “with last year ranking as the sixth-warmest year on record since 1880.”

But Milloy twisted the agency’s finding by copying and sharing a small portion of one of the graphs included in the release.

In a Twitter post that received more than 13 million views, Milloy shared an image showing the tail end of a much larger bar graph and misinterpreting what the larger graph showed. He included just the last eight years of the bar graph that, in its entirety, showed how global temperatures compared to the 20th century average for the last 47 years (shown at right).

In the full report, NOAA included another graph showing the same data, but going back even further — 143 years, to 1880, when records began. That graph shows an even starker change.

“The 10 warmest years in the 143-year record have all occurred since 2010, with the last nine years (2014–2022) ranking as the nine warmest years on record,” the report says.

But, as we said, Milloy claimed that this data from NOAA showed that “CO2 warming is a hoax” by showing data for only the last eight years.

Understanding Fluctuations in the Climate

“I can’t believe this old canard is back,” Gabriel Vecchi, professor of geosciences at Princeton University and director of the High Meadows Environmental Institute, told FactCheck.org in an email.

“Multi-year periods of flat (or slightly negative) temperature changes are to be expected in a warming world,” he said, citing a 2016 paper that explained a warming slowdown in the early 2000s.

Vecchi highlighted some of the findings from the full NOAA report, including:

• Every year since 2015 has been warmer than any year from 1880 to 2014.
• Every year so far in the 21st century has been warmer than every year between 1880 and 2000 (except for 1998, which included a strong El Niño — more on that later).
• As the graph showed, every year since 1977 has been warmer than the average for the 20th century.

“The planet has warmed and is warm,” he said, noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly found that the peer-reviewed literature on climate science indicates that “one cannot explain the warming over the past century in the absence of human-induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc).”

Showing only the last eight years of temperature change is, Vecchi said, “at best, irrelevant for assessing the reality of global warming.”

But, he said, “I think that the Tweet actually obfuscates and misleads.” Showing only the last eight years to suggest that warming has slowed or reversed doesn’t account for how the climate system works, he explained. For example, it takes out of context the impact of phenomena like El Niño and La Niña, climate patterns that develop in the Pacific Ocean roughly every two to seven years and affect global weather.

“It is well-understood that fluctuations in the climate system, like El Niño and La Niña events can cause temporary periods of surface warming and cooling (respectively), due to the redistribution of warm ocean waters in the tropics and their impacts [on] the atmosphere and clouds,” Vecchi said, citing a 2009 paper that removed the effects of events such as El Niño and volcanic eruptions from the temperature record and found “a nearly monotonic global warming pattern since ∼1950.”

So, Vecchi said, “we expect that as the planet warms in response to increasing greenhouse gases, there should be multi-year periods in which the warming appears to accelerate and others in which [it] appears to slow down – and if one picks precisely the right years, one can find periods where there are temporary nominally negative trends.”

That appears to be the case for the eight years that Milloy selected. An El Niño in 2015 and 2016 resulted in surface warming, followed by La Niña in 2020 through 2022, which led to surface cooling.

“The role of the Pacific in driving multidecadal swings in global temperatures is understood well now,” Vecchi said. “If a big El Niño precedes a sequence of La Niña events, then one should expect to see a reduced (and potentially absent) rate of global warming over that period.”

So, presenting only the last eight years of climate data out of the context of the longer-term trend — and without explaining that timespan included, first, a warming period due to El Niño and then a cooling period due to La Niña — is deceptive.

Correction, Jan. 27: Every year so far in the 21st century has been warmer than every year between 1880 and 2000, except for 1998. We had omitted the exception in the original story.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Press release. “2022 was world’s 6th-warmest year on record.” 12 Jan 2023.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Annual 2022 Global Climate Report.” Jan 2023.

Vecchi, Gabriel. Professor of geosciences, Princeton University. Email response to FactCheck.org. 24 Jan 2023.

Fyfe, John, et al. “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown.” Nature Climate Change. 24 Feb 2016.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Reports. Accessed 25 Jan 2023.

National Ocean Service. “What are El Niño and La Niña?” Updated 20 Jan 2023.

Thompson, David W. J., et al. “Identifying Signatures of Natural Climate Variability in Time Series of Global-Mean Surface Temperature: Methodology and Insights.” Journal of Climate. 15 Nov 2009.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “2015 State of the Climate: El Niño came, saw, and conquered.” 2 Aug 2016.

Jones, Nicola. “Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely — what does the future hold?” Nature. 23 Jun 2022.

The post Viral Tweet Misrepresents NOAA Report on Rising Global Temperature appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

Here we go again. Donald Trump’s official bid to get back to the White House had us at FactCheck.org feeling a bit of déjà vu. His Nov. 15 speech announcing his candidacy for 2024 featured assertions we’ve fact-checked before and several mainstays of his rallies leading up to the midterm elections.

• Claiming a double-standard with regard to the search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump wrongly said former President Barack Obama “took a lot of things with him” when he left office. The National Archives and Records Administration says it always controlled and managed Obama administration records after his tenure.

• Trump claimed that “Joe Biden has intentionally surrendered our energy independence,” but the U.S. was never 100% self-sufficient or not reliant on energy imports under Trump.

• Comparing gasoline prices during his administration to Biden’s, Trump cherry-picked the pandemic low during his administration and greatly exaggerated current prices. And in any case, experts say neither president was primarily responsible for the prices.

• Trump also falsely claimed to have “filled up” the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which he said Biden has “virtually drained.” Neither is true.

• The former president wrongly said the southwest border was the “strongest ever” during his term and now is “open.” Apprehensions, a proxy for illegal immigration, were higher during Trump’s term than either of Obama’s terms. While they’ve increased considerably under President Joe Biden, well over 1 million, at least, have been expelled.

• Trump came up short of building the border wall he promised, despite his claim that he “completed” it.

• Trump downplayed the risk of climate change, incorrectly stating that sea level rise will be just “one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.” For U.S. coastlines, scientists project an increase of 10 to 12 inches in the next 30 years alone.

• He claimed that “drugs were coming into our country at the lowest level in many, many years” during his presidency. But the best available federal data suggest that overall drug smuggling may have been higher under Trump than Biden.

• He repeated his false talking point that his administration “built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Annual real gross domestic product has exceeded Trump’s peak year 16 times.

• He claimed the U.S. “surrendered $85 billion” of military equipment when it withdrew troops from Afghanistan, a withdrawal that was initiated by his administration. That gross exaggeration is nearly the total amount spent on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the war began in 2001.

• While talking about tariffs, Trump falsely claimed that “no president had ever sought or received $1 for our country from China until I came along.” Prior to his administration, the U.S. collected billions of dollars in tariffs on products imported from China.

• Trump falsely claimed the Department of Justice is going after parents “who object” at school board meetings to “indoctrinating our children.” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said “spirited debate” is constitutionally protected but not “threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”

Analysis

Mar-a-Lago Search

Referencing the court-approved Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in which FBI agents took possession of numerous records labeled “classified” and “Top Secret,” Trump said federal authorities were out to “get Trump” in ways they never were with his predecessors.

“And I said, ‘Why didn’t you raid Bush’s place?’” Trump said. “Why didn’t you raid Clinton’s place? Why didn’t you do Obama, who took a lot of things with him.”

We’re not sure to which Bush Trump was referring, George H.W. Bush or his son George W. Bush, but as we’ve written, neither of them stored presidential documents in their private residences after they left office. Neither did former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Trump has made similar claims before, and all of the examples he has cited were cases of the National Archives and Records Administration — not the former presidents themselves — storing documents in secure facilities while permanent presidential libraries were being built.

With regard to Obama, specifically, NARA released a statement on Sept. 23, contradicting Trump’s repeated misstatements. NARA said it always controlled and managed the records from the Obama administration.

Energy Independence

The U.S. never stopped importing oil and other forms of energy from other countries when Trump was president. But he frequently claims that the U.S. became “energy independent” during his administration, which may give some people the false impression that the U.S. was 100% self-sufficient.

In his announcement speech, Trump claimed that “Joe Biden has intentionally surrendered our energy independence.”

Similarly, at his Florida rally, Trump said: “We are no longer energy independent or energy dominant, as we were just two short years ago. We are a nation that is begging Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and many other countries for oil.”

In 2019, during Trump’s presidency, the U.S. began producing more energy than it consumed for the first time since 1957, according to the Energy Information Administration. The EIA also said the U.S. became a net total energy exporter in 2019 for the first time since 1952.

Then, in 2020, the U.S. became a total petroleum net exporter for the first time since 1949, the EIA said. Petroleum includes crude oil and refined products from crude oil, such as gasoline and other fuels.

None of those achievements means that the U.S. did not rely on foreign sources of energy. To some energy analysts, a scenario in which the U.S. consumes only the energy that it produces is not likely to happen anytime soon.

As Andrew Campbell, executive director of the Energy Institute at Haas, told Reuters Fact Check: “If a country produces all of the energy that it consumes, does not participate in international trade in energy, does not import energy-intensive products, and does not send energy-related pollution to its neighbors or the atmosphere, then I would consider it energy independent. I don’t think any country meets that definition.”

Even if “energy independence” was determined by being a net exporter or having more production than consumption, the country’s status has not changed under Biden. The U.S. had more exports than imports of total primary energy and petroleum in 2021, and is on pace to do the same in 2022. Also, since Biden took office, U.S. energy production has continued to exceed its energy consumption.

On the other hand, the U.S. has consistently been a net importer of crude oil since the 1940s. But, so far, total crude oil imports, as well as net imports of crude oil, have been lower under Biden than they were under Trump — except in 2020, when imports dropped significantly due to reduced demand at the start of the pandemic.

Gasoline Prices

Contrasting his administration with Biden’s, Trump often cites gasoline prices, which spiked to just over $5 per gallon in mid-June. During his announcement speech, Trump cherry-picked and exaggerated both sides of that comparison, and regardless, experts say neither president’s policies are primarily responsible for the gasoline prices during their tenures.

“We were $1.87 a gallon for gasoline,” Trump said, “and now it’s hitting 5, 6, 7 and even $8 and it’s going to go really bad.”

Gasoline prices did dip to $1.87 in May 2020 when Trump was president, but that was during the pandemic when gasoline usage plummeted. Prices were the lowest in Trump’s presidency that month and the month before. Prices rose to $2.33 per gallon in January 2021, when Trump left office. That’s almost exactly the price of gasoline when Trump took office in January 2017, $2.35.

Trump is also exaggerating the price of gas now. Since the $5 per gallon high in June, the average price has dropped fairly steadily, and was at $3.80 the first week of November. (Trump claimed gas prices had reached their “highest levels in history,” but while the $5 per gallon peak is the highest in raw dollars, the price has been higher in inflation-adjusted dollars.)

In recent speeches, Trump has tied the $8 price to “parts of California.” But even that’s exaggerated. While it’s possible there were some gas stations in California where gas was selling for $8 a gallon when Trump made his statements, the average price of gas in the state — which is typically higher than any other state — was $5.46, according to AAA. And no county in California had an average price anywhere near $8 per gallon. So it is a classic case of cherry-picking. (We should note that Biden cherry-picks as well, like in September when he noted that regular gasoline in “some states” was under $3 per gallon, even though the national average that week was $3.71.)

More importantly, as we have written several times this year, U.S. presidents have little control over the price that consumers pay for gasoline.

The price of crude oil, which is refined into gasoline, is set on a global market. The low price of gasoline that Trump cited was the result of economic activity declining sharply in the U.S. and other countries early in the COVID-19 pandemic. It led to a decline in global demand for crude oil, which in turn led to a drop in the price of gasoline. It also resulted in oil companies spending and investing less. Then, as the global economy began to recover, and people began to resume their regular activities, including travel, global demand for crude oil increased rapidly while the global supply was not able to keep pace — and so gasoline prices rose.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February also has contributed to higher gasoline prices, experts told us. In response to the attack, the U.S. and other nations put sanctions and bans on oil from Russia, one of the world’s largest oil exporters.While Republicans have blamed U.S. oil production, and Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, experts told us those are not the reason for higher gasoline prices this year. U.S. oil production under Biden has increased a bit over 2020 production, and in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for October, the Energy Information Administration projected that crude oil production would average 11.7 million barrels per day in 2022, which would be more than every year but 2019.

During his announcement, Trump also falsely claimed to have “filled up” the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which he said Biden has “virtually drained in order to keep gasoline prices lower just prior to the election.”

When Trump left office, the nation’s emergency reserve held about 8% less crude oil than when Trump became president. Trump’s proposal to refill the reserve in March 2020 was blocked by Democrats.

Since October 2021, Biden has authorized the release of more than 200 million barrels of SPR oil in an attempt to increase the global supply of crude oil and bring down gasoline prices. Experts told us it’s hard to say how much the oil releases helped reduce prices.

As of Nov. 4, the SPR held roughly 396.2 million barrels of crude oil, which is about 55% of its authorized storage capacity. SPR oil stocks have decreased about 38% under Biden.

Illegal Immigration

The number of apprehensions of those trying to cross the U.S. southwest border has increased dramatically under Biden, but, again, Trump has made false and exaggerated claims in trying to draw a contrast between his term and now.

Echoing a claim he has made before, Trump falsely said the southwest border “was by far the strongest ever” during his administration. He also made the claim during midterm election rallies, such as a Nov. 7 event in Ohio in which he said the border was “the best ever,” adding, “There was nothing even close.”

Politicians and researchers use the number of apprehensions at the border as a measure of what’s happening with illegal immigration, and by that measure, the border wasn’t the “strongest” under Trump. In fact, the number of apprehensions was higher during Trump’s term than either of Obama’s four-year terms.

As we’ve written before, the number of apprehensions fluctuated wildly under Trump, dropping in 2017 but then rising the next two years. While apprehensions decreased in early 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, they picked up again the last half of that year and ended up being 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.

Trump then claimed that under Biden, “our southern border has been erased and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people.” As he has said in his rallies, he also claimed the border was “open.” It’s not.

For one, the data we have on illegal immigration are figures on people U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehend. Also, of the 2.2 million apprehended in fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 30, nearly half — 1 million — were expelled under Title 42, a public health law invoked during the pandemic that allows border officials to immediately return Mexican migrants caught trying to enter the country illegally. Biden has tried to end Title 42 , but a federal judge blocked the administration from terminating it.

Recidivism rates have also soared under Title 42, as more than a quarter of people caught at the border were already apprehended at least once before and returned to Mexico in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics.

“Millions” have been apprehended under Biden. In the most recent 12 months on record, apprehensions totaled 2,251,596, a 343% increase compared with Trump’s last year in office.

At one point in his announcement, Trump made the unfounded claim that “I believe it’s 10 million people coming in” through illegal immigration at the southern border. Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us the figure is “inaccurate and impossible,” based on the institute’s analysis of official CBP data.

“These data suggest that the true number of unauthorized migrants entering (even if temporarily) the United States is a fraction of the claimed 10 million figure,” Ruiz Soto said.

Not counting those expelled under Title 42, there have been 2.1 million apprehensions since January 2021 under what’s called Title 8, he said. These are apprehension events, so the number of unique people would be lower. But of the 2.1 million, “a significant number were allowed into the country to pursue asylum claims in immigration court or because they could not be deported to countries with limited U.S. relations (e.g., Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba). But others, primarily from Mexico and Central America, were quickly removed through a process called expedited removal or had prior removal orders reactivated,” Ruiz Soto said.

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security estimates in fiscal year 2021, which would include nearly four months of Trump’s tenure, there were 389,000 so-called “gotaways,” which are migrants U.S. Border Patrol detected but could not apprehend. Ruiz Soto said DHS hasn’t released estimates for fiscal year 2022, but “some unconfirmed news reports suggest there were 599,000 ‘gotaways’ in FY 2022 and up to 64,000 in October 2022.”

So, even if we add together “all these estimated ‘gotaways’ and unrealistically assuming that all of the 2.1 million migrant apprehensions under Title 8 were allowed into the country, the number would be a maximum of 3.2 million migrant entries since January 2021—which is well short of the claimed 10 million entries,” Ruiz Soto said.

Trump’s Wall Not Finished

Trump came up short of building the border wall he promised on the campaign trail in 2016, or what his administration initially proposed. But he has continued to falsely claim otherwise.

“We built the wall. We completed the wall and then we said, ‘Let’s do more,’ and we did a lot more,” Trump said in his announcement. “And as we were doing it we had an election that came up, and when they came in, they had three more weeks to complete the additions to the wall, which would have been great and they said no, no, we’re not going to do that.”

Similarly, he told the crowds at rallies in Pennsylvania and Florida that “we completely finished our original border wall plan.”

That’s wrong. As we’ve reported, when he was a candidate, Trump repeatedly talked about wanting 1,000 miles of a border wall. Once in office, he started moving the goal posts. The administration never released a master plan for the project. In early 2018, CNN obtained Customs and Border Protection documents asking for $18 billion over 10 years to build 722 miles of border wall, including “about 316 new miles of primary structure and about 407 miles of replacement and secondary wall.”

In the end, 458 miles of “border wall system” was built during Trump’s term, according to a CBP status report on Jan. 22, 2021. There were 52 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall where no barriers had been before. The rest, 373 miles, was replacement barriers for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or outdated.

That’s a lot of construction. But the new fencing covers about 20% of the 1,954-mile land border. Including the fencing that existed before Trump took office, there are now about 706 miles of barriers.

False Climate Change Claim

Trump downplayed the threat of climate change when he attempted to argue that people, presumably Democrats, were ignoring the risk of nuclear weapons to focus solely on climate change.

“The Green New Deal and the environment, which they say may affect us in 300 years … is all that is talked about, yet nuclear weapons which would destroy the world immediately are never even discussed as a major threat,” he said. “They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.”

Projections for future sea level rise are well above that figure, which Trump has previously used. Rather than increasing one-eighth of an inch over centuries, global sea level is already rising that much per year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Roads, bridges, subways, water supplies, oil and gas wells, power plants, sewage treatment plants, landfills—virtually all human infrastructure—is at risk from sea level rise,” NOAA says on its website.

That’s the global average, the agency says, so sea level rise may be higher or lower in specific places — and for much of the U.S., it’s projected to be worse.

In the next 30 years alone, sea level along the U.S. coast is projected to rise 10 to 12 inches, according to the U.S. government’s 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report.

“Sea level rise will create a profound shift in coastal flooding over the next 30 years by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland,” a website for the report explains. “By 2050, ‘moderate’ (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today, and can be intensified by local factors.”

By 2100, scientists project between nearly 2 feet to more than 7 feet of sea level rise and between 2.6 feet and 12.8 feet by 2150 in the U.S. relative to the level in 2000.

“Failing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5 – 5 feet (0.5 – 1.5 meters) of rise for a total of 3.5 – 7 feet (1.1 – 2.1 meters) by the end of this century,” the website notes.

Trump is also wrong to suggest that the environment or Americans have yet to be affected by climate change. Not only has the sea level already risen, but temperatures are higher and weather patterns have changed, which has impacted human health as well as plants and animals.

Drugs

In his speech from Mar-a-Lago, Trump claimed that “because the border was so tight” during his administration, “drugs were coming into our country at the lowest level in many, many years.” He later said that, under Biden, “hundreds of thousands of pounds of deadly drugs, including very lethal fentanyl, are flooding across the now open and totally porous southern border.”

He made a similar claim in Ohio, saying: “The drugs were down the lowest they were in 32 years. And now the drugs are seven times to 10 times higher than when we had it only two years ago. Think of it, the drugs are pouring in.”

We don’t know the source of Trump’s statistics, as comprehensive data on the total quantity of illicit drugs smuggled into the U.S. do not exist. The best data available is for the amount of drugs seized by federal border officials — most of which comes through legal ports of entry, not via illegal immigration between those ports.

Some use the drug-seizures data as a proxy for how much enters the country undetected. But if that’s what Trump is doing, the figures don’t back up his claims. If more seizures indicates that more drugs — not less — are getting into the U.S., then there was a bigger drug problem under Trump.

The most recent data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that federal authorities interdicted nearly 656,000 pounds of drugs in fiscal year 2022 and more than 913,000 pounds in fiscal 2021, which included three and a half months when Trump was president. Both figures are lower than the 1.06 million pounds seized in fiscal 2020, Trump’s last full fiscal cycle as president. Prior to the pandemic, 901,000 pounds of drugs were seized by border officials in fiscal 2019.

However, seizures of certain drugs, such as fentanyl, have increased under Biden.

Dozens of ads in the midterm elections mentioned fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid many times stronger than morphine and heroin. Illicit fentanyl can be fatal in very small doses and has contributed to an increasing number of overdose deaths in the U.S. – sometimes when people unknowingly consume illegally manufactured drugs that contain fentanyl.

Federal border officials seized approximately 14,700 pounds of fentanyl in fiscal 2022. That was up more than 206% from the almost 4,800 pounds seized in fiscal 2020, which was about 71% more than the amount confiscated in fiscal 2019.

Afghanistan

Trump, whose administration negotiated an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, criticized Biden for the chaotic withdrawal.

“The United States has been embarrassed, humiliated and weakened for all to see,” Trump said. “The disasters in Afghanistan — perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country — where we lost lives, left Americans behind and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world.”

The former president is right that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic, and it cost the lives of 13 U.S. service members who were ambushed outside the Kabul airport. He is also right, as we have written, that some U.S. citizens were left behind when the last U.S. soldier left the country.

But Trump grossly exaggerates when he claims the U.S. left $85 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan, and ignores his administration’s role in contributing to what he called the disaster in Afghanistan. On other occasions, Trump has said Biden “surrendered in Afghanistan,” which he said in Florida on Nov. 6 at one of his MAGA rallies in the final days of the midterm elections.

“We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers, American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world,” Trump said at the Florida rally.

The Trump administration in February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal. The Trump administration kept to the pact, even though the Taliban did not, and reduced U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, against the advice of U.S. military leaders, before he left office.

During House testimony on Sept. 29, 2021, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley said that based on his advice and “the advice of the commanders at the time,” then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper submitted a memorandum to the White House on Nov. 9, 2020, “recommending that we maintain the US forces, which were then at about 4,500 in Afghanistan, until conditions were met for further reductions.”

The Taliban repeatedly failed to meet conditions required in the withdrawal agreement. It continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership, even as Trump continued to press for troop reductions.

“In the fall of 2020 my analysis was that an accelerated withdrawal without meeting specific and necessary conditions risks losing the substantial gains made in Afghanistan, damaging U.S. worldwide credibility, and could precipitate a general collapse of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] and the Afghan government resulting in a complete Taliban takeover or general civil war,” Milley said in Senate testimony on Sept. 28, 2021. “That was a year ago. My assessment remained consistent throughout.”

Nonetheless, the Trump administration reduced troop levels to 2,500 by Jan. 15, 2021.

Biden delayed the May 1, 2021, withdrawal date that he inherited from Trump. But his administration pushed ahead with a plan to withdraw by Aug. 31, 2021 — also against the advice of U.S. military leaders.

Ultimately, the Taliban took advantage of a weakened United States and took control of the country sooner than Biden’s Aug. 31, 2021, withdrawal date. Taliban fighters entered the Afghan capital Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, as the Afghan president fled the country and the U.S. evacuated diplomats. (For more, see our article “Timeline of U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan.”)

So both administrations bear responsibility for what Trump called the disaster in Afghanistan.

As for the U.S. military equipment left behind, Trump’s $85 billion figure — actually $82.9 billion — was the total amount spent on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the war began in 2001. But it wasn’t all for military equipment, and most of the U.S. equipment purchased in those two decades had become inoperable, or had been moved out of the country or “decommisioned” or destroyed.

As we wrote, the biggest chunk of the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund, about half, was for what is called “sustainment,” and most of that went for Afghan army and national police salaries.

CNN reported in April that a Department of Defense report said $7.12 billion of military equipment the U.S. had given to the Afghan government was in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal.

“Nearly all equipment used by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan was either retrograded or destroyed prior to our withdrawal and is not part of the ‘$7.12 billion’ figure cited in the report,” a spokesperson for the Defense Department, Army Maj. Rob Lodewick, said, according to CNN.

Not ‘Greatest Economy’ in History

As he did many times when he was in office, Trump repeated the false talking point that his administration “built the greatest economy in the history of the world.”

He cited the stock market at one point in his speech, but economists generally measure a nation’s health by the growth of its inflation-adjusted gross domestic product. And dating back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the real GDP exceeded Trump’s peak year of 2.9% 16 times. The GDP also hit 5.9% under Biden in 2021.

China Tariffs

Trump repeated his false claim that no president before him had collected tariffs on Chinese products exported to the U.S.

“China was paying billions and billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs,” Trump said in his Nov. 15 remarks. “No president had ever sought or received $1 for our country from China until I came along.”

As we’ve written before, prior to Trump becoming president, the U.S. collected $122.6 billion in customs duties on Chinese goods from 2007 to 2016, or $12.3 billion a year on average, according to data available though the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.

Furthermore, the tariffs collected are not paid by China, as we’ve also noted before. The tariffs are paid by U.S. importers in the form of customs duties, and to some extent by U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices.

Department of Justice Not Going After Parents Who ‘Object’

Trump revived a false Republican talking point about the Department of Justice going after parents “who object” at school board meetings.

“Joe Biden has also proven that he is committed to indoctrinating our children, even using the Department of Justice against parents who object,” Trump said in his announcement speech.

This is a version of the false claim made by several Republicans that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland labelled parents who complain at school board meetings “domestic terrorists” and that he instructed the Department of Justice to target such parents.

As we wrote back in April, the Justice Department did not label parents “domestic terrorists.” Rather, a Sept. 29, 2021, letter sent by the National School Boards Association to the White House argued that some violent threats against school officials “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.” The association asked for federal assistance to stop what it said was a growing number of threats and acts of violence against public school board members and other public school district officials — mainly over the issues of mask mandates and “propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.” (Critical race theory is the study of institutional racism as a means to better understand and address racial inequality. It has become a hot-button political issue among Republicans who oppose it being taught in public schools.)

Garland did not use NSBA’s “terrorism” language, for which the group later apologized. Although Garland directed his agency to review strategies to address violent threats and harassment against school boards, the policy was never targeted at parents who simply “object,” as Trump put it.

In fact, Garland issued a memo on Oct. 4, 2021, stating that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution.” He added, however, that “that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”

“I want to be clear, the Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children, about the curriculum taught in the schools,” Garland said two weeks later at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

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The post FactChecking Trump’s Presidential Bid Announcement appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In a “fireside chat” with actress Priyanka Chopra, Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden administration is “thinking about the families in Florida [and] in Puerto Rico” and “what we need to do to help them in terms of an immediate response and aid.”

But she also talked about the long-term need to ensure equitable treatment of “our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme [climate] conditions … that are not of their own making.”

Her remarks, which she made Sept. 30, set off a tsunami of criticism from Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who accused the vice president of saying hurricane relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be based on race.

“Harris said yesterday that — or day before yesterday — that, you know, if you have a different skin color, you’re going to get relief,” Scott said in an Oct. 2 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Host Margaret Brennan corrected Scott, saying: “That’s not what the vice president said.” Scott replied, “That’s exactly what she meant.”

But Scott was just repeating what had become a Republican talking point about Harris’ response to Hurricane Ian, which devastated southwest Florida and South Carolina.

Two days earlier, the rapid response director of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection campaign responded to a tweet from @EndWokeness that misleadingly claimed, “Kamala on Hurricane Ian relief: The Biden administration will focus on ‘giving resources based on equity’ by directing funds to ‘communities of color.'” Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis aide, retweeted that comment and added, “This is false. @VP’s rhetoric is causing undue panic and must be clarified. FEMA Individual Assistance is already available to all Floridians impacted by Hurricane Ian, regardless of race or background.”

Conservative commentators and news outlets made similar claims.

On Oct. 3, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: “Hurricanes do not discriminate. And neither should the federal government giving aid to people suffering from the devastation of Hurricane Ian. Is your husband’s life worth less bc he’s white?”

Both the FEMA administrator and the White House press secretary said that hurricane aid would be distributed based on need and help everyone who needs it.

“I was on the ground Friday and Saturday, and I committed to the governor then that we are going to provide assistance to all Floridians because we know that there are people that are just completely devastated from the storm. We are going to be there to support everybody that needs help,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who appeared on “Face the Nation” shortly after Scott.

At a press briefing on Oct. 3, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Republican claims that Harris had said “people of color will get an advantage of some kind with the rebuilding efforts.” Jean-Pierre said the administration is “committed to quickly getting resources to all communities impacted,” insisting Harris’ remarks have been distorted.

Jean-Pierre, Oct. 3: So that is not what the vice president said. The vice president was clearly talking about long-term investment, not FEMA aid, for hurricane response efforts.

The vice president and the president have been clear that the federal government has been and will continue to be there for all Americans recovering from these devastating storms, as we’re seeing the president and the first lady do today and as we’ll see them do, clearly, in Florida on Wednesday.

We are committed to quickly getting resources to all communities impacted, period, full stop. But we also know that some people, particularly in lower-income communities, have a hard time accessing that help. That’s why this administration has also made it a priority to remove barriers and ensure that everyone, regardless of their ZIP Code, can access federal resources. And that’s what she was talking about.

Harris made her remarks during an interview with Chopra at a Democratic National Committee forum on women’s leadership.

Chopra, who is from India, brought up Hurricane Ian in the context of the need for a global response to climate change and the need to help “the poorest countries [that] are affected the most.” It was a long, multiprong question that got an even longer response.

Here’s the exchange with Harris that caused the kerfuffle.

Chopra, Sept. 30: So just talking about a point that I am very concerned about, and I — as I’m sure so is this room: You and the administration obviously are working around the clock right now to support relief efforts in Florida and to prepare citizens as Hurricane Ian now is closing in on South Carolina.

So, extreme weather conditions like this are becoming obviously more frequent and more severe. And I wanted to acknowledge the administration for passing the biggest climate legislation – legislation in history earlier this year because it is a fact that America’s leadership sets an example to other major economies around the world, which are truly dragging their feet when it comes to doing their bit.

So can you talk just a little bit about the relief efforts, obviously, of Hurricane Ian and what the administration has been doing to address the climate crisis in the states?

But — and just a little follow up, because this is important to me: We consider the global implications of emissions, right? The poorest countries are affected the most.

Harris: Yeah.

Chopra: They contributed the least and are affected the most. So how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?

Harris: I’m going to unpack that question.

Chopra: I’m going to ask you packed and loaded questions because I’ve been given a little bit of time.

Harris: So, first of all, again, thanks to the leadership in this room, which were part of the propelling force in the 2020 election so that we could actually be in office — because one of the requests — dare I say, “demands” — of this group was, “Do something about the climate crisis.”  And so, we were able to be elected. Thank you, everyone here.

And then have the … $370 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act dedicated to address the climate crisis — not only because it is a crisis, as it evident — as evidenced, as you have mentioned by Ian, by the wildfires happening in California, the floods, the hurricanes, but also because of America’s leadership and what it should be globally on this issue. And so that has happened, and it will propel a lot of good work.

The crisis is real, and the clock is ticking. And the urgency with which we must act is without any question.

And the way that we think of it and the way I think of it is both in terms of the human toll and — I know we are all thinking about the families in Florida, in Puerto Rico with Fiona — and what we need to do to help them in terms of an immediate response and aid, but also what we need to do to help restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient — not to mention, adapt — to these extreme weather conditions, which are part of the future.

On the point that you made about disparities: You know, when I was — back when I was District Attorney of San Francisco — I was elected in 2003 — I started one of the first environmental justice units of any DA’s office in the country focused on this issue. And in particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making. And so, when —

Chopra: And women.

Harris: Absolutely. And so, we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.

But also, I will say, as a former prosecutor, part of this issue also has to be about enforcement and, where appropriate, making sure that the bad actors pay a price for what they do that is directly harming communities in terms of their health and wellbeing.

So, when we think about policy then, there are many aspects to it, including something that the president and our administration and I are very excited about, which is the opportunity that moving towards a clean energy environment and industry — what it will do in terms of job creation and building up our economy. It’s tremendous.

So, there are many benefits to this work.

And to your point about the global piece: Among the leaders that I have been meeting and convening — just recently, in fact — and now this was, I think, the third time — I convened the presidents and prime ministers of the Caribbean countries; there’s an organization called CARICOM.  And I convened them just a couple weeks ago.  And the consistent discussion we are having is exactly your point, which is: We are one of the greatest emitters in the world and the Caribbean countries, for example, are paying the biggest price. They are some of the lowest emitters, yet the erosion that they are experiencing to their island nations is profound.

And when you combine that with the fact that nations like that — their biggest source for their GDP is tourism, and what the climate crisis and extreme weather conditions do in terms of then plummeting their incoming resources, not to mention what we are expecting all good nations to do to contribute to mitigation and adaptation.

So there is still a lot of work to be done to recognize the equities. And I will say, for us, as the United States, to own responsibility for what we rightly should do to recognize these disparities and contribute in a way that is fair with the goal of equitable priorities.

Nandita Bose, the White House correspondent for Reuters and the only print reporter at the event, said in a Twitter thread that Harris’ remarks were being “deliberately distorted.”

“So I was the only WH pool print reporter in the room on Friday at the DNC Women’s Leadership Forum and heard the remarks from @VP on climate change and Hurricane Ian, which I see are being deliberately distorted,” Bose tweeted.

Readers can judge for themselves what Harris meant to say. What the vice president talked about, though, was the “work to be done to recognize the equities” needed to help low-emitting, poorer countries often bearing the brunt of the consequences of climate change, and the need in the U.S. to make sure that low-income communities and communities of color are not left behind in long-term mitigation plans.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate plans to hold its first vote on Aug. 6 on the Inflation Reduction Act, surprising legislation that he and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a previous holdout, announced on July 27. 

The budget reconciliation bill that the two Democratic senators have agreed upon aims, in part, to address inflation as well as to lower health care costs and prescription drug prices for millions of people. But if it receives enough votes to become law, most of the bill’s spending — an estimated $369 billion over the next 10 years — would go toward efforts to combat climate change while also investing in “energy security” for the United States. 

The bill’s supporters have said it would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by roughly 40% from 2005 levels by 2030 — an estimate that is within the range of possible outcomes projected by at least two research firms that have analyzed the legislation in its current form. Last year, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would target between a 50% and 52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Assuming that every Senate Republican votes against the bill, as expected, Democrats would need the support of all 50 members of their caucus — and Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote — for the legislation to pass. But Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has raised concerns about the bill’s provisions taxing corporations and investment income, has yet to publicly state how she will vote. (For more on those taxes, see “Sorting Out the Partisan Tax Spin on Inflation Reduction Act.“)

Here we review some of the climate-focused provisions in the bill.

Update, Aug. 18: Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Aug. 16. 

Clean Energy Production

According to a Democratic summary, the bill includes over $60 billion for clean energy manufacturing in the U.S.

There is an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, as well as the processing of critical minerals, such as lithium and nickel, used in electric car batteries. There is also $10 billion in investment tax credits for the construction of facilities where those and other clean technologies would be made. 

The bill would make available $20 billion in loans to build new U.S. facilities to make clean vehicles, as well as $2 billion in grants to reconfigure existing car factories for the same purpose.

In addition, the bill includes $500 million for the production of heat pumps and minerals processing under the Defense Production Act, which can be invoked by the president. Heat pumps can be used to heat or cool homes and other buildings. The devices are considered more environmentally friendly than furnaces and air conditioners because they do not run on oil or gas and use less electricity.

Reducing Emissions from Various Sources

Numerous tax credits included in the bill aim to reduce emissions from transportation, industrial manufacturing, buildings, agriculture and the production of electricity. 

About $30 billion in the bill is set aside for grant and loan programs for states and electric companies to speed up the transition to clean electricity. Another $6 billion is slated for a new Advanced Industrial Facilities Deployment Program to reduce emissions from chemical, steel and cement plants, which are some of the largest emitters. 

The bill also increases the value of a tax credit for carbon capture and storage investments, which incentivizes sequestration projects that suppress or remove certain carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

In addition, $27 billion would go to a “clean energy technology accelerator,” or greenhouse gas reduction fund, that allows states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities to benefit from technologies such as rooftop solar installations. 

As for agriculture, there is at least $20 billion to finance practices considered to be “climate smart,” according to one Democratic summary. For example, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program would get $8.45 billion in funding, which the agriculture secretary can use to improve soil carbon, reduce nitrogen losses or greenhouse gas emissions, or capture or sequester greenhouse gas emissions stemming from agricultural production.

Consumer Tax Credits and Incentives

The bill also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individuals through additional tax credits that encourage purchases of energy efficient homes, vehicles and appliances. 

Notably, there is an expansion of an existing tax credit of up to $7,500 for income-eligible individuals who buy qualifying electric vehicles. For joint tax filers to be eligible, their adjusted gross income cannot be more than $300,000; for a head of household, it’s $225,000, and for other tax filers, it’s $150,000.

In addition, the bill offers a tax credit of up to $4,000 for purchases of certain used electric vehicles. To get the credit, joint tax filers must have an AGI below $150,000. For a head of household or other tax filer, the AGI cutoffs are $112,500 and $75,000, respectively.

There is also $9 billion for home energy rebate programs aimed at retrofitting homes and appliances to be more energy efficient.

Oil and Gas Leasing

At the same time, however, the legislation would facilitate more domestic energy production from fossil fuels, including oil and gas drilling — which would offset some of the emissions reductions resulting from other climate-related provisions in the bill.

That’s because it requires the Department of Interior to conduct a number of sales for oil and gas leases in the Outer Continental Shelf, which includes the Gulf of Mexico. The department would also have to periodically make a minimum amount of federal land and offshore waters available for leasing by oil and gas companies before the agency can grant or sell leases to renewable projects using wind and solar energy. 

But the bill would also impose fees on the operators of oil and gas facilities with annual methane emissions of more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The fee would start at $900 per metric ton of reported methane emissions over the allowable threshold for calendar year 2024. That would increase to $1,200 for excess emissions in 2025 and $1,500 for excess emissions in 2026.

Projected Emissions Reductions

Overall, some groups that analyze energy and climate policy have projected that the bill’s provisions could lead to more emissions reductions than projected under current law.

The Rhodium Group, a research firm, said its “preliminary estimate is that the IRA can cut US net greenhouse gas emissions down to 31% to 44% below 2005 levels in 2030 … compared to 24% to 35% under current policy.”

In addition, Energy Innovation, a think tank that produces customized research and policy analysis on how to reduce emissions, said its modeling found that the legislation – despite its oil and gas leasing requirements – “could cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 37-41 percent below 2005 levels.” That is more than a projected 24% decrease in emissions by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario that holds current policy constant, the think tank said.

What Happens Next?

As we mentioned, Schumer has said that he plans to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote this week. The Senate is scheduled to recess for summer break on Aug. 8 and would not reconvene until Sept. 6.

Before a vote can be held, the Senate parliamentarian has to rule on whether the bill’s provisions qualify for consideration under the budget reconciliation process.

In the Senate, that process allows bills to pass with a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes needed to avoid a potential filibuster. There is also a limit on how long a bill can be debated, which is not to exceed 20 hours. To qualify for reconciliation, a bill’s provisions have to change revenues, spending or the debt limit.

Again, if all Republicans vote against the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats would need yes votes from all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus so that the vice president could break the tie.

If the bill passes in the Senate, it would then have to be approved by the House of Representatives. At that point, Biden would be able to sign it into law.

Since 1980, reconciliation has been used 22 times to enact laws, according to the Congressional Research Service.

For instance, Democrats used the process to pass the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 and Republicans used it to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017. More recently, Democrats used reconciliation to pass the American Rescue Plan in March 2021.

Update, Aug. 10: The Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7. The vote was 50-50, with Vice President Harris then casting the tie-breaking vote.  

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SciCheck Digest

There is “unequivocal” evidence that humans are causing global warming, the U.N. climate change panel has said. But viral posts revive a 2014 video of Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman falsely claiming “climate change is not happening.” The channel, which supports the scientific consensus that climate change is real, had distanced itself from Coleman.

Full Story

A vast and growing body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring and is largely caused by human activity, as we’ve written on multiple occasions.

In 2007, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the “evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming,” the U.N. said in a press release at the time. The U.N. panel has repeated that finding ever since, most recently in an April report.

“Widespread and rapid changes” have occurred as a result of climate change and “many changes … are irreversible” for at least centuries, the U.N. climate panel said in another report issued in 2021.

“Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming,” the 2021 report said. “They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, heavy precipitation, and, in some regions, agricultural and ecological droughts; an increase in the proportion of intense tropical cyclones; and reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.”

As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, the issue is also becoming increasingly political. Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June to restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, President Joe Biden said he would take “strong executive action” to “tackle the climate crisis” if the Senate failed to act. 

But social media posts continue to question the existence of global warming by reviving a 2014 interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with climate change skeptic and Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman. 

One Instagram post has the headline, “Weather Channel Founder Goes Savage on CNN for Network’s Climate Change Fake News.” A caption on the video clip says, “The climate change activist and movement is a fraud!” The post has been viewed more than 18,000 times.

A post on Twitter attached a slightly longer portion of the same Coleman interview with the caption, “Founder of The Weather Channel tells Brian Stelter climate change is a hoax.” The post has over 66,000 likes and more than 28,000 retweets. 

In the video shared in these posts, Coleman said: “Climate change is not happening. There is no significant man-made global warming now, there hasn’t been any in the past, and there’s no reason to expect any in the future.”

Coleman’s claims are false, and so is the implication in the social media posts that he was an expert in climate science.

Coleman, who died in 2018, worked as a weather anchor for over 60 years, including on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” But he did not hold a degree in any scientific discipline. The CNN clip was one of many instances in which Coleman perpetuated climate change falsehoods.

In the CNN report, anchor Brian Stelter subsequently spoke with the Weather Channel’s then-CEO David Kenny. In that exchange, which the social media posts leave out, Kenny distanced the Weather Channel from Coleman’s claims and asked viewers to focus on the science. 

“What I want people to know is that the science is pretty clear about climate change,” Kenny said. “We’re grateful that [Coleman] got [the Weather Channel] started 32 years ago, but he hasn’t been with us in 31 years. So he’s not really speaking for the Weather Channel in any way today.”

Kenny continued, “Our position is really clear, it’s scientifically based, and we’ve been unwavering on it for quite some time now.”

The Weather Channel had posted its statement on climate change a few days prior to Kenny’s CNN interview. In its statement, which was updated in 2017, the organization accurately said that “the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities.”

Extensive scientific evidence gathered over many years corroborates the Weather Channel’s conclusion that, contrary to Coleman’s claims, human-caused warming exists. 

As we’ve written, the theory of the greenhouse effect — that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere — has been repeatedly proven since it was first proposed in 1824.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science notes that about 97% of climate scientists believe human-caused warming is occurring. Similarly, NASA calls the fact that “Earth’s climate is warming” a matter of “scientific consensus.”

The Annual 2021 Global Climate Report, prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, found that the global annual temperature increased an average rate of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880 but “over twice that rate” since 1981.

“The years 2013–2021 all rank among the ten warmest years on record. The year 2021 was also the 45th consecutive year (since 1977) with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average,” the report added. 

The year 2021 marked the sixth warmest year recorded, despite the cooling effect of La Niña climate pattern in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

NOAA charted the global average surface temperature since 1880. (See chart.)

“That extra heat is driving regional and seasonal temperature extremes, reducing snow cover and sea ice, intensifying heavy rainfall, and changing habitat ranges for plants and animals,” NOAA explains on climate.gov. 

The NCEI annual report concludes that only the “human emissions of heat-trapping gases” can explain this increase in global temperature. 

The IPCC, a U.N. body of 278 climate experts from 65 countries, in a report released in April attributed climate change to “more than a century of … unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyle and patterns of consumption and production.”  

The panel warned that “without urgent, effective and equitable mitigation actions,” climate change will continue to threaten biodiversity, global health and economic growth. “[C]limate change poses a serious threat to development and wellbeing in both rich and poor countries,” the report said, citing such climate impacts as premature deaths, food insecurity and loss of land and infrastructure. 

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Fichera, Angelo. “No, Climate Changes Isn’t ‘Made Up.’” FactCheck.org. 8 May 2019.

McDonald, Jessica. “Trump Wrong on Climate Change, Again.” FactCheck.org. 18 Oct 2018.

Levitan, Dave. “Jeb Bush Off on Contributions to Warming.” FactCheck.org. 22 May 2015.

United Nations. “Evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming — UN report.” 2 Feb 2007. 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Summary for Policymakers.” 2021.

United Nations. “UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.” UN News. 4 Apr 2022.

Totenberg, Nina. “Supreme Court restricts the EPA’s authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions.” NPR. 30 Jun 2022.

“Statement by President Joe Biden.” White House. 15 Jul 2022.

Coleman, John. “Get politics out of climate debate: Opposing view.” USA Today. 21 Apr 2016.

The Weather Channel. “John Coleman, The Weather Channel Co-Founder, Dies at Age 83.” 22 Jan 2018.

Projectintellectus. “Weather Channel Founder Goes Savage on CNN for Network’s Climate Change Fake News.” Instagram. 26 Jul 2022.

VRosen (@vrosen11). “Founder of The Weather Channel tells Brian Stelter climate change is a hoax.” Twitter. 20 Jul 2022.

The Heartland Institute. “JOHN COLEMAN (1934-2018).” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Nuccitelli, Dana. “Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman prefers conspiracies to climate science.” The Guardian. 3 Nov 2014.

Snopes. “Did a Weather Channel Co-Founder Disprove Climate Change?” 20 Jun 2008.

CNN. “Global warming storm at Weather Channel.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Molloy, Tim. “David Kenny Named Weather Channel Companies CEO.” Reuters. 24 Jan 2012.

Mosbergen, Dominique. “Weather Channel Says Global Warming Is Real Following Co-Founder’s Climate Denial.” HuffPost. 30 Oct 2014.

The Weather Channel. “Global Warming and Climate Change: The Weather Company Stand.” 9 Mar 2017.

The Weather Channel. “Global Warming: The Weather Channel Position Statement.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Schipani, Vanessa. “Precision in Climate Science.” FactCheck.org. 7 Mar 2017.

“What We Know: The Reality, Risks, And Response To Climate Change.” American Association for the Advancement of Science.

NASA. “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. “State of the Climate: Monthly Global Climate Report for Annual 2021.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. “About.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

NOAA Climate.gov. “El Niño & La Niña (El Niño — Southern Oscillation).” 14 Jun 2022.

Lindsey, Rebecca and LuAnn Dahlman. “Climate Change: Global Temperature.” NOAA Climate.gov. 28 Jun 2022.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “About the IPCC.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Authors.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” Accessed 1 Aug 2022.

 

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]]> https://www.factcheck.org/2022/07/faulty-research-paper-leads-to-unfounded-claims-about-health-of-atlantic-ocean/ Fri, 29 Jul 2022 20:53:10 +0000 https://www.factcheck.org/?p=220436 Climate change has affected ocean ecosystems, scientists say. But an unfounded claim on social media that "plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone" and the ocean is "now pretty much dead" is based on a faulty paper.

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SciCheck Digest

Climate change has affected ocean ecosystems, scientists say. But an unfounded claim on social media that “plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone” and the ocean is “now pretty much dead” is based on a faulty paper.

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Full Story

The world’s oceans have changed over the last several decades. Climate change has warmed the surface water and caused the sea level to rise, for example.

But some social media accounts that post about environmental issues have made the unfounded claim, “Plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone.”

Plankton — the catchall term for small marine plants, phytoplankton, and animals, zooplankton — serve two vital functions in the ecosystem. They are a major source of food for other marine life, and they absorb carbon dioxide while creating oxygen in the ocean.

So, if the claim were true it would, indeed, be a major environmental catastrophe. But experts who study plankton have not found that to be the case.

“We absolutely haven’t seen the drops that were noted” in the social media posts, David Johns, head of the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, told us in an email. “[I]n fact, in some areas there have been increases in plankton,” he said. The CPR Survey has been recording marine ecological data since 1931 and is now run by the Marine Biological Association in the U.K.

We’ll explain how the inaccurate claim about plankton developed.

It’s based on a quote from Howard Dryden, a marine biologist in Scotland who has, for most of his career, developed and distributed water treatment systems. In 2021, Dryden sought help from fellow members of the Ocean Cruising Club to gather water samples as part of a citizen science project.

He wrote in a March 11, 2021, announcement calling for volunteers, “There are around 5,000 yachts crossing oceans every year, from Arctic regions to the equator. If some of these yachts were to start collecting data, then it would be invaluable for the measurement of oceanic pollution and productivity.”

Three months later he posted a report suggesting that the primary problem facing ocean ecosystems was chemical and plastic pollution and, about a year after that, on May 6, he posted a paper titled: “Climate change…have we got it all wrong? an observational report by a Marine Biologist.”

The abstract for that paper concluded, “peer reviewed literature shows we have lost more than 50% of all life in the oceans, but from own plankton sampling activity and other observations, we consider that losses closer to 90% have occurred, and these are due to chemical pollution from, for example, wastewater and not climate change.”

The paper was cited in a July 17 article published by a Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Post, which also quoted extensively from an interview with Dryden.

Among the quotes was this, referring to plankton: “Our results confirmed a 90% reduction in primary productivity in the Atlantic. Effectively, the Atlantic Ocean is now pretty much dead.”

Shortly after the article was published, the claim that “plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone” began circulating widely online.

Ars Technica was among the first to address the claim and, after it published a story explaining that the claim was overstated, Dryden contacted the publication and said that the Sunday Post article should have reported a “90% reduction in marine plankton in the Equatorial Atlantic, not the whole Atlantic.”

Dryden also changed the name of his May 6 paper to include the “equatorial Atlantic” distinction. It’s now titled: “Climate Change…Equatorial Atlantic Ocean plankton productivity and Caribbean pollution….a think piece for debate.”

The newspaper updated its story and included an editor’s note at the bottom explaining the changes.

The equatorial Atlantic includes currents flowing west from North Africa toward the southeast coast of the U.S. near the equator, as the name suggests.

That area doesn’t typically have high numbers of visible plankton, though.

“Equatorial waters are naturally not hotspots for plankton (unless you look at the really small stuff, like pico- and nanoplankton, which you cannot see with a typical microscope),” Johns, of the CPR Survey, told us. “So the claims are unfounded.”

Johns also noted the reference in Dryden’s paper to a global loss of 50% of plankton, and disagreed with that, too.

“I work with a large number of national and international plankton scientists,” Johns said, “and no one is reporting those sorts of declines – a decline in that order would be absolutely catastrophic, so many marine organisms depend on plankton, from larval through to adult fish, whales, whale sharks, manta rays, sea birds etc. And the phytoplankton are massively important as global producers of oxygen, and they ‘drawdown’ and fix CO2.”

The larger premise of Dryden’s paper — that climate change isn’t much of a threat — is inaccurate, too.

Looking at the anticipated impacts of climate change on the ocean alone, we can expect increased coastal flooding due to sea level rise, changes in climate patterns due to higher ocean temperatures that affect the currents, and decreased marine biodiversity as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide acidify the water.

“We have seen lots of changes relating to climate change, specifically the warming of the sea surface,” Johns said, addressing Dryden’s specific claim about the amount of plankton in the equatorial Atlantic. “In many cases, this has forced some plankton groups to retract northwards into cooler waters, and has allowed warming loving species to advance northwards as conditions for them become more favourable.”

So, the claim that 90% of plankton has disappeared from the Atlantic is based on a faulty paper that was highlighted by a news outlet. Those who study the issue have found cause for concern about the impacts of climate change, but they haven’t clocked the magnitude of decline trumpeted in the viral social media claim.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Accessed 27 Jul 2022.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “How Do We Know Climate Change Is Real?” Climate.nasa.gov. Updated 26 Jul 2022.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What are plankton?” Updated 26 Feb 2021.

Johns, David. Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey. Email to FactCheck.org. 28 Jul 2022.

Dryden, Howard. “Climate change…have we got it all wrong? an observational report by a Marine Biologist.” 6 May 2022.

Howarth, Mark. “Our empty oceans: Scots team’s research finds Atlantic plankton all but wiped out in catastrophic loss of life.” Sunday Post. 17 Jul 2022.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Climate Change Indicators: Oceans.” Updated 12 May 2021.

United Nations. “How is climate change impacting the world’s ocean.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.

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