Don’t fall for the climate bait – How to get there?

By Vijay Jayaraj

On May 14, Cyclone Mocha made landfall near Myanmar and Bangladesh. It’s no surprise to see much of the mainstream media blaming climate change. The model has now become popular.

Every time there is a major tornado event, the media panics about climate change and assumes that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing more extreme weather. However, an examination of the relevant data shows that such reports are misleading.

As I write this, Mocha has landed near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Residents of the coastal counties of Chattogram and Barishal are likely to experience the worst of the storm’s effects for weeks to come.

Among the most vulnerable are refugees who have fled persecution in Myanmar and have lived for half a decade in camps in Bangladesh without the protection of storm shelters. Such a sad situation, tornadoes are not unprecedented for the region.

The rate of hurricanes is decreasing

According to the Government of India’s Climate Change Assessment of the Indian Region, the overall frequency of storms in the Indian Ocean has not increased. In fact, there has been a decline.

The report states: “Long-term observations (1951–2018) show a significant decrease in the annual frequency of tropical cyclones” in both the North Indian Ocean basin and the Bay of Bengal.

The data clearly shows a decrease in the frequency of cyclones over the past 100 years in the North Indian Ocean, the birthplace of storms affecting more than 1.5 billion people. However, this information is obscured by cherry picking data for shorter time frames to suggest alarming weather trends.

Hurricane data reveals similar drop in US

It’s not just the Indian Ocean region. In the US, the number of hurricanes making landfall has decreased every decade since 1850. According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division, the number of major hurricanes has decline since the 1950s.

“In summary, it is too early to conclude with high confidence that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities have had a detectable impact on storm activity in the basin. Atlantic Ocean,” NOAA’s Laboratory of fluid geophysical dynamics Statuses.

The mainstream media is very good at tricking people into believing a fake emergency. In cases like Hurricane Mocha, they tap into people’s compassion for the storm’s victims and use natural disasters to instill fear in people’s minds.

Don’t fall for the climate bait. We will see more and more of it in the coming days, as the apocalyptic climate group loses steam in many parts of our world. And desperate times call for reckless deceptions that are ingrained in the public psyche through repetitive, aggressive media programmes.

This comment was first published by CO₂ Union, May 15, 2023, and can be accessed here.

Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate at CO2 Alliance, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.