Politico’s Climate Hysteria Collides With Reality, Ignores How EU Policies Fuel Unrest

A recent Politico article, “Climate change threatens EU’s survival, German security report warns,” claims that “global warming will exacerbate conflicts, hunger, and migration worldwide, with growing risks for Europe.” [emphasis, links added]

Evidence undermines these claims.

In reality, the world is not suffering destabilization due to climate change, but European populations are far more likely to suffer from climate policy, as Politico briefly mentions.

Politico reports on a “landmark” political report from the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) that attempts to assess “the dangers climate change poses to German and European security over the next 15 years.”

The report concludes that “climate change’s destabilizing effects will drive up migration and food prices, threatening economic and political upheaval,” and “the unequal impact of rising temperatures in the EU — with southern countries hit worse than others — risks tearing the bloc apart.”

Politico goes on to claim that as global average temperature rises, “so do the frequency, severity, and intensity of flood-triggering extreme rainfall, deadly heat waves, harvest-destroying droughts and the conditions that allow wildfires to spread easily.”

These claims are false, as available data proves.

While rainfall has modestly increased over northern latitudes that contain the European Union member states, extreme rainfall that causes flooding has not.

Claims that recent flooding events were “supercharged” or worsened by climate change are pure speculation based on attribution modeling. Data and historical records of flood frequency and severity debunk claims of unprecedented flooding.

Recent flooding in Spain, for instance, was blamed on climate change by attribution groups, but the storm that hit Spain was consistent with a long history of similar storms that are not becoming more severe or frequent.

In the Climate Realism post, “Flooding Facts Drowned by Climate Hysteria: The BBC Ignores Spain’s Weather History,” meteorologists Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett describe the history of the region struck by the floods:

Valencia, which sits along and at the mouth of the Turia River on the Mediterranean Sea, suffered similar flooding, for example, in 1897, 1957, and 1996, 127, 67, and 28 years of warming ago, respectively, when temperatures were cooler than at present.

…

As Caroline Angus’ account of the 1957 Valencia flood reveals, these conditions are neither new nor unprecedented. The BBC’s focus on “climate change” and a warmer atmosphere as the primary cause of the recent flooding ignores the atmospheric mechanics behind these storms and downplays the recurrent pattern of similar natural events.

Likewise, Climate Realism debunked other regional European flooding events here.

Heatwaves and drought are likewise not getting worse, and contra Politico and the German report’s claims, crop production is not declining in Europe due to those conditions, as pointed out in numerous Climate Realism posts here, here, and here, for example.

Wildfires are also on the decline globally.

Interestingly, Politico and the German report do admit that government response to climate alarmism may also cause tension.

Politico reports that policies meant to address climate change “will cause tensions, noting that carbon pricing — the backbone of EU climate efforts — disproportionately affects poorer households.” This fact should be obvious to anyone.

Carbon pricing does not bother the elites, who can afford higher energy prices.

Politico and the report authors also warn that “the cost of decarbonization and its (perceived) unfair distribution … provide space for populism, right-wing and left-wing extremism, and disinformation campaigns[.]”

Extreme weather is not getting worse, but the impacts of government overreach and taxation in the name of climate change are.

That claim should be taken further as it has already caused tensions and contributed to a growing threat to European food supplies, resulting in frequent mass protests in multiple countries by farmers.

Not only that, but it’s not a perception that the distribution of the costs is unfair, it is a fact. Looking beyond carbon taxes, the push for electric vehicles is a subsidy for a luxury product that most cannot afford.

London’s “ultra-low emission zones” (ULEZ) are a tax on the poor who cannot afford to purchase new electric or low-emitting hybrids.

What is true for Europe with regards to crop production is also true for other major crop-producing parts of the world, and so climate change is not driving or likely to drive mass migration that could destabilize Europe.

Climate Realism has debunked claims that climate change was causing mass emigration in multiple posts here, here, and here, for instance.

If Politico and German leaders are worried about “populism” and right-leaning sympathies rising in their nations due to concerns about mass immigration from unstable parts of the world, then perhaps [the government] could impose restrictions on immigration, no need to blame climate change.

It’s shameful that Politico and the German government are downplaying the harm that the unnecessary, unjustified, climate policies which they have supported have had on Europeans.

Extreme weather is not getting worse, but the impacts of government overreach and taxation in the name of climate change are.

Read more at Climate Realism