Search: #WeNeedToTalk

Shewchuk, please answer these question about your graphic: If your goal is scientific accuracy, why does your graphic consistently choose metrics, baselines, and visual framing known to downplay or obscure well-established climate trends? On hurricanes (top-left panel): -Why did you plot total global hurricane counts rather than intensity (Category 3–5), which is the metric climate science expects to change with warming? -How do you account for improved satellite detection since the 1970s, which artificially inflates earlier undercounts? -Why does your graph exclude Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE), a standard metric used by NOAA and the IPCC? -Can you explain why you used a simple linear trendline on highly variable data without showing uncertainty or statistical significance? -Are you aware that the IPCC reports low confidence in long-term trends in total cyclone counts but higher confidence in increasing intensity and rainfall? Why is that omitted? On tornadoes (top-right panel): -Why did you use EF2+ tornado counts starting in 1950, when reporting practices and radar technology changed dramatically (especially post-1990 Doppler radar)? -How do you correct for non-climatic inhomogeneities in the tornado record that NOAA explicitly warns about? -Why not show normalized or environment-based metrics (e.g., convective available potential energy, shear trends) instead of raw counts? -Can you point to any major scientific body that uses this dataset to claim tornado risk is decreasing? On wildfires (bottom-left panel): -Why are you presenting global burned area without clarifying that the decline is largely due to agricultural expansion and land management, not climate effects? -Why omit data showing that fire weather conditions (heat, drought, vapor pressure deficit) have increased significantly? -Why not show regional trends, such as the well-documented increase in extreme fires in places like western North America or Australia? -Do you agree that burned area ≠ fire severity or ecological impact? If so, why present it as evidence of “less extreme weather”? On disaster deaths (bottom-right panel): -Why are you using raw death totals rather than deaths per capita, given global population growth? -Why omit the role of improved infrastructure, forecasting, and disaster response, which are the primary drivers of reduced mortality? -Are you suggesting that fewer deaths means hazards are decreasing, or just that humans are better at surviving them? -Why include 2020–2021 as partial data points, which visually exaggerate the decline? On CO₂ comparison (across panels): -What is the scientific justification for visually comparing CO₂ (a smooth upward curve) with highly variable hazard data without any causal analysis? -Why do you imply a relationship using dual-axis graphs, a technique widely criticized for creating misleading visual correlations? -Can you provide a peer-reviewed attribution study showing that rising CO₂ should reduce these hazards? On selective omission: Why does your meme omit: -Heatwaves (one of the most robustly increasing extremes)? -Extreme rainfall and flooding intensity? -Marine heatwaves? -How did you decide which indicators to include versus exclude? On methodology and transparency Can you provide: -The full datasets used (not just sources)? -The code or method used to generate the graphs? -Any uncertainty ranges or statistical tests? -Why are these figures presented without error bars, confidence intervals, or methodological caveats?