A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Re: Weather events, fewer fires.
Here on Saturday Iain Boyle attempted to disprove the Ministry for the Environment information I offered that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and will continue to worsen. He offered a “Climate at a Glance” disclaimer that wildfires occurring
in the United States over the past decade are significantly lower and less severe than they were in the first part of last century.
For any who may have been taken in by the Climate at a Glance comment he presented, this is a weekly publication of the Heartland Institute, the infamous American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank founded in 1984 that deliberately spreads climate misinformation.
The latest example, in February this year the organisation sent copies of its “Climate at a Glance” misinformation book to 8000 middle and high school teachers across the United States, in order to teach American school children “the earth is not experiencing a climate crisis”.
So Iain’s words have changed nothing at all. Despite the flood of misinformation, climate research and evidence confirms that the warming world is having an impact on the extreme weather — as we have been experiencing here — including “both increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall and flooding, and making them more severe”. This remains a great threat to us all, with a heightened threat of wildfires as well.
