Fox guests falsely claims extreme weather events aren't becoming more severe

Mike Shellenberger: “We're not seeing any significant increase in extreme weather events affecting people's lives”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the November 9, 2021, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino

DANA PERINO (CO-ANCHOR): And then in the meantime you have a lot of doomsday scenarios and doomsday thoughts. ... And then if you look here at some of these statements from this past week over in Glasgow, Scotland where they are having this meeting, ‘common destruction,' ‘doomsday,' basically saying none of us can escape if we fail, that's what Biden says. ‘Doomsday device strapped to humanity,' etc.. Now, I'm not saying that climate isn't something we should be thinking about and maybe even doing more about, but they're asking voters and citizens from around the world -- but let's just focus here in the United States -- to pony up a heck of a lot of taxpayer dollars, with crushing regulations, based on data that seems to not be correct.

MIKE SHELLENBERGER (ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS CEO):  Well yeah. It is not only that Dana, but it is just wrong. The fact of the matter is the United States has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 22% since the year 2005 and we did so mostly by fracking for natural gas, and since gas produces half the carbon emissions of coal we saw a really big reduction in emissions, but that had absolutely nothing to do with the Paris or United Nations climate agreements. It had nothing to do with cap and trade climate legislation which failed under President Obama in 2010. So the fact of the matter is most environmental trends are going in the right direction. Deaths from natural disasters are down 90%. We're not seeing any significant increase in extreme weather events affecting people's lives. So the fact of the matter is most of the trends are going in the right direction. Kids should be more optimistic about the future. Kids have a lot of things to worry about, climate change should not be one of them.