Carbon emissions are rising but global temperatures aren’t rising as fast as many scientists predicted. So instead the rhetoric about climate change is what is on the rise. Climate change alarmists are making statements that do not match the facts.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, provides some examples of some of the extreme claims made by alarmists. He rightly argues that these worst-case stories are a poor foundation for sound policies.

Alarmists point to Artic sea ice that is melting but ignore that their computer models also predicted Antarctic sea ice would decrease. The ice in the Antarctic is increasing. They worry that sea levels are rising, but sea levels have been rising long before our current industrial period. The most recent papers show a small decline in the rate of sea-level increase.

Every weather phenomenon these days seems to be blamed on global warming. We are told that is why we are seeing more and more droughts. But a study in the journal Nature actually shows a decrease in the world’s surface that has been affected by droughts since 1982. Hurricanes are also blamed on climate change. Yet the only thing that is going up appears to be the damage costs from hurricanes. And that is due to the fact that more people, with more expensive homes and property, are living near coastlines that have annual hurricanes. If you adjust for population and wealth, hurricane damage has actually decreased.

If you dig into the Oxford University database for deaths from floods, extreme temperatures, droughts and storms, you find that the death rates are dropping. Economic development is the primary reason. A hurricane may damage homes in Florida but will kill few people. A hurricane in a poor country like the Philippines will kill many more people and devastate the economy.

The super-heated rhetoric of climate-change alarmists does not advance the discussion about policy alternatives. It causes the average citizen to roll his or her eyes and turn a deaf ear to the debate. These doomsayers are losing credibility because of their climate alarmism.