Obama Climate Scientist Rips Claims of Climate ‘Emergency’; Says Heat Waves Same Now as in ‘1900’

(USA Features) A climate scientist who served during the Obama administration is pushing back on current claims that there is a climate “emergency” requiring immediate policy and legislative action, adding that modern heatwaves are “no more common than they were in 1900.”

“Both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years,” Steven Koonin, the undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, in an op-ed for the New York Post published on Saturday.

“Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie ‘The Princess Bride’ — I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says,” Koonin continued.

He went on to provide three examples of how climate emergency claims by environmentalists differ from the reports.

“Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century,” he wrote, noting further that “Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.”

“The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record,” he continued, adding that misinformation is not always put forth on purpose.

“There are abundant opportunities to get things wrong — both accidentally and on purpose — as the information goes through filter after filter to be packaged for various audiences,” Koonin wrote, describing how “the public gets their climate information almost exclusively from the media.”

“As a result, most people don’t get the whole story,” he added.

He went on to write that “humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate.”

“The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations,” he said. “In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.”

Koonin noted that the discussion about the climate has shifted away from actual scientific data and has been replaced by emotional phrases like “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” and “climate disaster.”

Continuing, he wrote that President Joe Biden is contributing to the alarmist language by appointing climate envoy John Kerry and pledging to spend trillions to combat an illusory problem.