Wrong Again, Atlantic, High Lumber Prices Aren’t Caused by ‘Climate Change’ – Rising Because of That?
Via Linnea Lueken -January 19, 2022
Near the top of the results of a Google search for “climate change” is a story in Atlantic, titled “The price of sawn timber has increased again. Blame the climate . ” This is wrong. Evidence suggests that supply chain disruptions are responsible for higher lumber prices.
The article attributed the recent high price of lumber and the volatility to climate change, which has severely impacted the supply of lumber from Canada.
“When it comes to lumber, climate change has manifested itself in extreme instability, lack of supply and a paradigm shift in how lumber markets have operated for decades. The price of lumber is the second highest they have ever hit, today, right now — ever. And it is precipitated by mudslides, precipitated by burning, precipitated by the killing of beetles. There’s an infrastructure story in there. There is a story about climate. ”
While it is true that lumber prices are unusually high at the moment, as shown by the 5-year trend screen shot from the NASDAQ Lumber (LUM) report, climate change is not the cause.
The recent spike in lumber prices is due to the post-pandemic supply chain and transportation bottlenecks. Already escalated prices were exacerbated by the destruction of infrastructure such as roads and railways in British Columbia and the Northwestern United States as a result of the heavy rainfall that hit the region this winter. Portions of major highways such as British Columbia Freeway 1 were closed to repair or clear debris following the flooding and associated mud slides.
This atmospheric river The event that brought rain to the West this winter was not an unprecedented climate event, but rather a weather event. Climate realism discuss the difference between weather events and climate change here and here, Eg.
Recently Article on Climate Realism shows that the claim that the recent atmospheric river event extending across the Pacific Northwest was caused by climate change is false. In the paper, Dr. Cliff Mass of the University of Washington, cites rainfall data that proves recent weather events are not indicative of climate change. Mass analyzed precipitation data from Bellingham and Clearbrook Washington, more than a hundred years ago, and found no evidence to support the claim that there was a large increase in rainfall.
“NO HINT of a more extreme rainfall trend at either of these locations.” Dr. Mass said.
Atmospheric rivers have appeared many times in the region throughout history, and was much more severe in the decades before the Industrial Revolution, as meteorologist Anthony Watts describes:
“The highest rainfall ever in California in recorded history was likely to have occurred in January 1862, during the “Great Flood”. This was an atmospheric river event like we’re experiencing now, but lasted several days, causing 24.63 inches of rain in San Francisco, 66 inches in Los Angeles, leaving downtown Sacramento in country. ”
Severe weather events are and will always be a potential cause of infrastructure damage and supply chain disruptions. The possibility of local disasters should be included in infrastructure plans. Corporate media such as Atlantic was wrong to blame climate change every time the sky opened.
Linnea Luekenhttps://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/linnea-lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. As a Heartland Institute intern in 2018, she co-authored the Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Drawling Four Persistent Myths of Hydraulic Fracture.”
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