The Canadian science organization Friends of Science is taking alarmist ringleader Katharine Hayhoe to climate school, releasing a 78-page study debunking Hayhoe’s climate misinformation. Friends of Science describes its study as “a plain language document, meant to help the general public and policymakers understand the complexities of climate change and forecasting.” The study lives up to those words.

The title of the study, “Facts vs. Fortune Telling,” is particularly appropriate. Hayhoe frequently attempts to appeal to Christians and conservatives by self-identifying as a Christian and then attempting to make climate alarmism a Christian issue. During a 2019 talk in Juneau, Alaska, Hayhoe, “asked her Juneau audience how a Christian, like herself, could truly say they were pro-life if they ignored the damage being done by climate change.” Self-righteously interjecting the abortion issue into the climate change debate is weak science, weak theology, and the type of tactic leftists frequently employ to take attention away from actual science. Interjecting religion into science debates also divides the Christian flock, which should concern a true Christian.

Her scientific assertions are just as shoddy as her theological assertions.

Friends of Science observes, “Hayhoe claims that society was built on the assumption that climate is stable. Anyone with a modicum of common-sense should be able to dispute that claim and present evidence to show that this is not supported by observation and evidence.”

Even in the absence of common sense, people need only look to the asserted “gold standard” of climate science, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to see how scientific observations refute Hayhoe’s claims.

The chart below is a slide that Hayhoe uses in public presentations. The slide, presented without any scientific citation or sources, asserts temperatures steadily declined for thousands of years before the warming of the 20th century.

Compare that to the chart below, presented in the UN IPCC’s very first climate assessment (see pg. 202, here). The IPCC chart shows climate change is the norm, not the exception. Temperatures are frequently warming or cooling, with humans thriving under warmer temperatures than today during most of human history.

This is just one of many, many examples of Hayhoe misrepresenting facts to further her agenda. Kudos to Friends of Science for setting the record straight.

[Note: Katharine Hayhoe image by Jay Godwin – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbjlibrarynow/sets/72157690630876710/with/41823605772/, Public Domain, Link]

James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland's Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.

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