Where are the graphs for the emergency? The missing data behind the climate crisis narrative

By Bhaskaran Raman 

Ever so often, we are reminded by the media that we are living in a “climate emergency.” This especially happens after every natural disaster, such as after the recent floods in North India. While nature’s fury and its victims are not trifling matters, is there anything new about this that warrants a declaration of “crisis” or “emergency”?

Until about two years ago, I lived with the assumption of a “climate emergency” — for instance, I believed my city, Mumbai, was going to go underwater in my lifetime. But since then, I have been looking for graphs or trends of measured data in various forums — news, books, scientific reports, discussions with friends and colleagues, prominent scientific talks, and so on. Yet I have not come across a single graph indicating that we are careening toward disaster.

Hence my question: Where are the graphs of measured data for the “climate emergency”?

Given my engineering and science background, what I am looking for are time-trend graphs. The x-axis should be time, covering the duration for which data is available. The y-axis should show some measured metric of a climate extreme — for example, cyclone strength, wildfires, or heatwaves. If, for instance, cyclones or droughts have increased in ferocity or frequency over the last 50–100 years, that would indeed be a matter of concern.

Here is what I have learned so far in my quest for such data or graphs.

IPCC Report: Projections Versus Measured Data

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is considered the scientific authority on this topic. It released its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) on the physical science basis of climate change through Working Group I (WG1) in August 2021. However, this WG1 report does not contain a single trend graph of measured data on climate extremes — which is telling in itself.

The same IPCC report, however, includes several projection graphs of climate extremes such as floods, hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires. These projections are indeed concerning — for instance, “peak wind speeds of the most intense tropical cyclones are projected to increase at the global scale with increasing global warming” (B.2.4 in the Summary for Policymakers). This sounds alarming, as cyclones are among the major causes of global economic and societal damage.

But the key point is that these projections are not based on measured data at all; they are based on climate models. Measured data, in fact, often shows either no trend indicating an “emergency” or sometimes even the opposite trend. Taking the specific example of cyclones, measured data shows a declining power dissipation index globally as well as in most regions over the last three decades. This result, published in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Earth & Environment in 2024, is presented in graphs accessible to laypersons with a high-school-level education.

To summarize: the IPCC report projects an increase in cyclone power based on models, whereas real-world measured data shows the exact opposite — a decline in cyclone power in recent decades. There is only one way to resolve this discrepancy: the IPCC climate models are wrong. As Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman famously said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is; it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” The IPCC climate models do not agree with measured data, so they are wrong.

Projections Versus Measured Data on Droughts

Let us take another area of concern — droughts and food security. The IPCC AR6 WG1 report’s Summary for Policymakers mentions the word “drought” 41 times across 40 pages. It predicts “clearly discernible increases in... agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions” with high confidence (B.2.2 of the SPM). These projections sound alarming.

However, do projections match measured data? NASA’s satellite-based measurements show that global leaf cover has increased by 25–50% in most regions of the world over the last four decades. The graph can be seen at https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/, and it is easy for laypersons to understand. The cited reason for this greening is carbon dioxide — the same gas blamed by the IPCC for causing more droughts. The reason is straightforward to anyone with basic science knowledge: carbon dioxide is plant food.

Once again, applying Feynman’s principle, the IPCC’s climate models and drought projections do not agree with experimental observation — therefore, they are wrong.

Rhetoric Versus Measured Data on Climate-Related Deaths

Whether or not climate extremes have intensified, the rhetoric of “climate emergency” has certainly intensified. Greta Thunberg, the Gen-Z face of the “climate emergency,” delivered her famous “People are dying... How dare you” speech at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. Not to be outdone, the UN chief claimed last year that we are on a “highway to climate hell”. These pronouncements sound terrifying — but what does measured data show about people dying from climate-related causes?

A peer-reviewed publication in 2020 in the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change presents the measured data clearly. Even without adjusting for population growth, the number of climate-related deaths has decreased by a factor of about 20 compared to the early 1920s (see Fig. 17). After adjusting for population growth, the risk of death from climate extremes has decreased by a factor of 100. Once again, measured data shows the exact opposite of the alarmist claims of “climate hell” or “climate emergency.”

Here too, we can apply Feynman’s test: it doesn’t matter how beautiful or scary your theory (of a climate emergency) is; it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment — i.e., measured data — it is wrong.

Summary

Two years ago, I blindly assumed there was a “climate emergency.” In my quest for data demonstrating such an emergency, I have found none so far. It does not inspire confidence in the IPCC’s scientific credibility when its claims fail to meet Feynman’s simple yet exacting standard: experimental data should drive conclusions. At present, fear, rhetoric, and climate models that do not align with reality seem to be driving the conclusion of a “climate emergency” ahead of what measured data supports.

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Bhaskaran Raman is a Professor at IIT Bombay. Views are personal. He has authored the book “Math Murder in Media Manufactured Madness,” which presents simple math to illustrate absurdities in the mainstream Covid-19 narrative. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/u5india