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Contrary to current climate crisis narrative, the U.S. suffered worse droughts in the past.
1934 U.S. drought conditions: In May 1934 peaked at 44% of land under severe drought conditions.
2022 U.S. drought conditions: In July 2022 peaked at 21% of land under severe drought conditions.
NOAA source for drought charts.
Additional severe weather charts.
Legacy media outlets have driven public confidence in major news sources to all-time lows, for very obvious reasons.
Fake news and disinformation narratives.
One of the better examples of the disinformation 'news' narrative campaign masquerading as objective reporting is the 24/7/365 climate change fear-mongering that is based more on hyperbole and alarmism than empirical evidence.
Most major news sources have taken it as their duty to 'report' that islands and coastal areas will soon be submerged due to climate change from human CO2 emissions. (CNN is just one example.)
In this article, CNN fails to mention that Honolulu's current Waikiki Beach is essentially man-made, with erosion problems dating back to the 1800s. The building of homes and hotels too close to the natural shoreline, and the addition of a multitude of piers, seawalls and groins, have badly disrupted the natural ebb and flow of sand along the entire length of the beach.
The disruption was so bad that Honolulu was forced to import sand from California over many years.
In addition, CNN chose not to share with its readers that NOAA has measured the long-term sea level rise in Honolulu at a tiny 1.55mm/year, which coverts to about 6 inches per century.
Interestingly, there was a greater Honolulu rate of sea level rise for the pre-modern period of 1905-1949 (540 months) of 8.6 inches/century, versus the rate of 7.5 inches/century for the 540-month period ending in 2021.
Per the science, the rate of sea level rise in Honolulu - be it 5, 6, 7, 8 inches/century - will not be placing its famed beaches forever "underwater" anytime soon.
And as the scientific evidence almost always confirms, the MSM press has a well deserved reputation of reporting a biased narrative and not necessarily the facts about climate change impacts required to make informed policy decisions.
Unfortunately, the same is true for the vast majority of important policy issues that we face.
Note: Source of sea level data. Excel used to plot charts and calculate trends.
During 2002, almost all of Texas dealt with varying levels of drought. But the claims that it was a "historic" drought and that it was due to climate change is misinformation.
"On the heels of a historic drought that devastated crops from the High Plains to South Texas, a new Texas Department of Agriculture report released Tuesday linked climate change with food insecurity and identified it as a potential threat to the state’s food supply."
Texas has a very long history of suffering from drought conditions, especially during La Niña events. Below is NOAA's drought reporting for Texas, from 1895 through 2022, that reveals multiple periods of harsh dry conditions that have nothing to do with human caused "climate change".
Below, Texas from 1951-1956 - a seven year period of drought that was historic. At its peak, Texas had 87.6% of its lands in extreme drought conditions, per NOAA.
And below is the 1-year 2022 "historic" drought reported by the Texas Tribune. At its peak in 2022, 61.5% of Texas lands were identified as under extreme conditions.
Indeed, Texans suffered some very harsh conditions during the 2022 but those drought conditions did not rival the exceptionally long and extensive drought of the 1950's.
Regarding the "climate change" attribution for the 2022 Texas drought? Not very likely since 2022 was a La Niña year and it is well documented that Texas and other adjacent Gulf Coast states suffer dry/drought conditions when that occurs.
"Drier-than-normal conditions are observed along the west coast of tropical South America, the Gulf Coast of the United States, and the pampas region of southern South America."
Source for drought charts.
Additional severe weather charts.
The CO2 "control knob" for global warming is a mythical concept without empirical merit.
Note: NOAA temperature anomalies source; NOAA CO2 source; Excel used to plot datasets, calculate trend and r-squared.
Additional global; regional; and historical temperature charts.
The annual Davos' WEF confab of elites has a history of off-the-wall to sheer lunacy about the supposed catastrophic climate change crisis.
And Al Gore wins the WEF 2023 lunacy gold for his claim that humanity produces 600k of Hiroshima-sized atomic atmospheric warming explosions on a DAILY basis, thus the "oceans are boiling," according to the former VP. (Watch him here.)
But as it always seems to be the case, the empirical evidence does not match up even a smidgen with the fantastical catastrophe claims made by doomsday elites. In fact, the oceans have been ever so slightly cooling over the past 8-9 years despite the billions of CO2 tonnes emitted from human fossil fuel combustion.
The below first chart plots the temperature anomalies for the tropical oceans surrounding Hawaii, as reported by NOAA for year-end 2022; the second NOAA chart is for the Gulf of Mexico; and the third NOAA chart is for all oceans.
To put Gore's lunacy in perspective, sea waters would boil at around 105°C. The hottest that Gulf of Mexico and Hawaiian sea waters reach in a given year ranges from 26-28°C, and the highest the global ocean average ranges from 17-18°C. The oceans are not boiling from CO2 emissions and will never do so.
Note: NOAA temperature anomalies source; Excel used to plot the anomalies and calculate the trends. For the record, former NASA climate "expert" James Hansen made similar "boiling ocean" comments but it proved to be so embarrassing to the climate science community that YouTube deleted it. But you can still watch it here.
Additional global; regional; and historical temperature charts.