Going to Extremes: How Activists and the Media Distort Climate
Reports  Commentaries on economics and technology. Dec. 15 2011
4:29 PM  Going to Extremes  How activists and the media distort
climate reports to make global warming sound scarier than it is.
Atlantic Ocean as seen from space. Hurricane-damage costs have
increased steadily because more people now live where hurricanes
strike. Population, exposure, and vulnerability, not greenhouse
gasses, are the main factors underlying future damage as well.
Photograph by NOAA via Getty Images.  Global warming activists
like to cite extreme weather as one of the main reasons that we
must take firm action on global warming. No hurricane or heat
wave passes without a politician or activist claiming it as
evidence of the need for a global climate deal, like the one
that just got postponed until the end of the decade in Durban,
South Africa.  Such claims merit close scrutiny. A 2007 report
by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received
considerable