This spring, heavy rains drenched the Central Mississippi River Valley, sparking headlines like CBS News’ alarmist claim: “Climate change is making floods worse.” [emphasis, links added]
Mainstream media leaned heavily on a sensationalized, non-peer-reviewed attribution report from World Weather Attribution (WWA).
However, peer-reviewed science directly contradicts these claims.
In a robust analysis published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology (Wiel et al., 2018), researchers clearly stated: “There is no statistically significant projected trend in the occurrence of 100-year floods…” for the lower Mississippi River Valley.
While Wiel et al. do project increased heavy rainfall events, this crucial distinction between rainfall and actual flooding is conveniently overlooked by sensationalist headlines.
Just as I’ve shown in previous articles, whether debunking exaggerated mortality claims from heatwaves or sensationalized hurricane reporting, the media’s fear-driven narrative distorts reality, misleads the public, and pushes policy agendas that are costly, ineffective, and ultimately irrational.
Media’s Latest Climate Panic: The Flood Narrative
CBS News claims this latest WWA report demonstrates unequivocally that climate change is intensifying flooding across the Midwest and South.
Headlines scream urgency, framing each rainfall as evidence of impending doom. Yet, as usual, context and rigorous scientific scrutiny are glaringly absent.
These media outlets thrive on cherry-picked statistics, exaggerated claims, and dramatic visuals, fueling public anxiety while ignoring historical flooding data and significant scientific uncertainties detailed within the actual WWA study.
Selective Science: What the Media Won’t Tell You
Just like in my earlier critique of the Science Advances mortality study, the media deliberately omits critical context from the WWA report.
The study itself acknowledges substantial discrepancies among climate models used to attribute recent flooding events to human-induced climate change. In fact, it explicitly states:
“These estimates are smaller than observed trends due to large discrepancies between the climate model results. While some models show increases similar to or larger than the observed trends, others show weaker or even decreasing trends.“
Why don’t these crucial caveats make headlines?
The Forgotten Floods: Historical Context Matters
Historical records demonstrate that severe floods have frequently occurred in the Mississippi River Valley, long before current atmospheric CO2 levels.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, for example, displaced hundreds of thousands and inundated millions of acres.
More recently, floods in 1993 and 2019 devastated large swathes of the Midwest. Neither event can reasonably be attributed to modern climate change.
Yet the media conveniently disregards these historic floods to reinforce their alarmist claims. This isn’t science… It’s selective storytelling to build a narrative.
Behind the Curtain: The WWA’s Pseudoscientific Methodology
I’ve previously detailed the World Weather Attribution initiative’s flawed methodology in my article, “A Critical Examination of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) Initiative.”
Their reliance on oversimplified climate models, inadequate handling of natural variability, and admitted uncertainties render their definitive claims about human influence highly speculative.
Irrational Fear is written by climatologist Dr. Matthew Wielicki and is reader-supported. If you value what you have read here, please consider subscribing and supporting the work that goes into it.
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