A recent article posted at German news site Deutsche Welle (DW) titled “Heat waves, floods, and cyclones disrupt school for millions,” discusses a report from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) which claims that poorer countries are the hardest hit by the so-called climate crisis in the form of extreme weather in 2024, leading to disruptions in the education of underprivileged children. This is false. While it is true that extreme weather events can do greater harm to people in poorer countries, it is not true that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent or severe there. Therefore, climate change can’t be an “overlooked” cause of disrupted education as they claim. The reason people in poorer countries suffer more when natural disasters strike is precisely because they are poor and lack the technologies, infrastructure, and institutions that have arisen in developed countries, in part a result of fossil fuel dependent economic progress, to anticipate, face, respond to and recover from extreme weather events.
The DW post explained that extreme weather caused disruptions in school for “approximately 242 million children across 85 countries in 2024,” according to UNICEF, and goes on to say that “[o]ne in seven students could not attend school due to heat waves, floods, cyclones, and other extreme weather conditions.” Most of the children affected were from poorer countries, and UNICEF reported that the worst hit areas were in Southeast Asia.
It is a fact that extreme weather hits the poor worse, a fact commonly but falsely linked to climate change. Regardless of climate change’s alleged effects on weather, people who live in underdeveloped areas with limited access to stable utilities like electricity, and modern structures and infrastructure, suffer greater harm when natural disasters strike than people in relatively wealthier countries.
That being said, extreme weather is not getting worse. DW mentions heat waves, floods, and cyclones as examples, and it is common enough in the media to claim these events are becoming more frequent or extreme, but available data refutes such claims.
Globally, looking at the region UNICEF highlights as the worst hit by weather events, let us first take a look at heat waves. India is frequently pointed at in the media as suffering from erratic weather patterns, and last year the city of Delhi supposedly hitting all-time high temperatures, which turned out to be the result of an urban sensor error. The fact that it was urban is very important, because the commonality between many places in developing countries as well as developed countries is that urban locations are already consistently hotter than the surrounding regions. In India in particular, climatologist Roy Spencer showed how the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is strongest in places with high populations and urban sprawl, which can be seen in maps tracing the most populous parts of India and air temperature. (See image below)
If heat is disruptive to schooling in Southeast Asia, the solution is to promote more widespread availability of air conditioning and better building construction, not blaming climate change and suppressing the cheap energy required to make that development possible.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has not found that flooding has not become more severe or frequent as a result of the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years. Climate at a Glance: Floods points out that the IPCC gives only “low confidence” in any sign of change, meaning it is as likely climate change would decrease floods as it would increase them. Studies looking at flood frequency support the IPCC’s finding. For example, one study in the Journal of Hydrology reports that the number of major floods in recent decades have been “about the number expected due to chance alone,” and that evidence for changes to flood patterns globally is lacking.
Cyclones are likewise not getting worse, this is the easiest record to pull and Climate Realism has produced that data extensively in other posts, including ones focusing on the Pacific and South Asia, here, and here. The latter post discusses a recent study published in Nature which examines hurricane/cyclone storm severity in various ocean regions. That study notes for the South Pacific and South Indian Ocean region data show declining trends in tropical cyclone destructive potential. (See figure below)
Again, as with heatwaves, logically one must understand countries with limited resources, slow or non-existent economic growth, underdeveloped infrastructure, often disorganized or corrupt governments, or experiencing civil strife,—are going to be worse off when disaster strikes. This does not mean that climate change targets the poor, nor does it indicate that there is an increasing urgency (or any need at all) to somehow address it, usually by abandoning fossil fuel use.
The idea that we should stop using the cheap energy supplied by oil, gas, and coal is almost always the underlying message in stories claiming that climate change is hurting people. By contrast, since fossil fuel development and use, combined with strong property rights, and sound institutions, have been critical to wealth creation in developed countries, the same factors should be encouraged in developing countries to help their people rise out of poverty, with one result that they would be better prepared to face extreme weather regardless of the type or cause.
The UNICEF report itself seemed like it was primarily interested in justifying funding from climate coffers going towards its programs, in this case, for education for third-world residents. While providing education and school buildings to kids in poor countries is a noble goal, trying to tie funding to causes that would damage the advancement of infrastructure in those same places is foolish at best. Extreme weather is not getting worse, and trying to prevent or hinder the use of fossil fuels will not help poor countries modernize or improve the educational prospects for their children.
