This website condenses frequently argued climate issues into one- or two-page “at-a-glance” summaries. Bullet-points at the top provide quick, memorable information. Short summaries of a paragraph or two provide additional depth. Many summaries include powerful visual graphs. Embedded links verify the information. The menu above groups the summaries together by category. Heartland will regularly add new summaries.
Climate at a Glance: U.S. Wildfires
Wildfires, especially in arid parts of the United States, have always been a natural part of the environment and likely always will. Global warming did not create wildfires.
Climate at a Glance: Ocean Acidification
Science and media outlets claim Ocean Acidification is happening due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But objective data show the ocean is far from acidic.
Climate at a Glance: Coronavirus Impact on CO2 Levels
The COVID-19 aka Coronavirus pandemic is causing a worldwide shutdown in economic activity as businesses close, airlines cancel flights, energy production is reduced, and people shelter in their homes and drive less.
Climate at a Glance: Greenland Ice Melt
Climate activists, including government bureaucrats, claim the Greenland ice sheet is melting six times faster than it was 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, the Greenland ice sheet was barely melting at all. “Six times” almost no ice loss remains almost no ice loss.
Climate at a Glance: Climate Sensitivity
Declaring future predictions of global warming “settled science” requires a fairly precise calculation of future temperatures.
Climate at a Glance: Ocean Currents
For the past 20 years, alarmists have claimed the ocean currents are slowing down and global warming is to blame.
Climate at a Glance: Antarctic Ice Melt
Thirty years ago, Antarctica was barely losing ice mass, and this remains so. “Six times” almost no ice loss remains almost no ice loss.
Climate at a Glance: Cold Spells
Climate alarmists frequently respond to polar vortex events and other extreme cold weather by claiming global warming is to blame. Not only does that defy common sense, it also defies scientific evidence and the findings of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Climate at a Glance: Drought
Real-world data show drought in the United States has become less frequent and severe as the climate has modestly warmed. Moreover, the United Nations reports “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.
Climate at a Glance: Consensus
Science is the evaluation of evidence, not a vote or show of hands. Nevertheless, to the extent people claim a scientific consensus exists, there has been only a single science organization whose full membership has been polled on climate-change issues – the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
Climate at a Glance: Crop Production
As global climate modestly warms, U.S. and global crop yields are setting new records almost every year. The same is true for nearly all other nations, too. Thanks in large part to longer growing seasons, fewer frost events, more precipitation, and the fertilization effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, farmers are producing more food on less land, allowing them to feed a growing global population.
Climate at a Glance: National Security
Economic strength is the most important factor in determining a nation’s ability to fund and deploy a powerful military over the long term. That is the reason why the United States has by far the world’s most capable military, even though Russia and Canada are larger in size and China and India have far more people.
Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs
Coral require warm water, not cold water, to live. Coral cannot live outside of tropical or subtropical waters. (See Figure 1.) As Earth continues to modestly warm, coral are extending their range toward the poles while still thriving at and near the equator.
Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes
Devastating hurricanes occurred long before the invention of SUVs and coal-fired power plants. Real-world hurricane activity shows little or no impact from global warming.
Climate at a Glance: Tipping Point – 1.5 Degrees Celsius Warming
Climate alarmists warn we must take drastic steps within the next 10 years to keep warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial conditions. They claim that warming beyond that threshold will unleash a crisis of substantially worse extreme weather events and other climate harms.
Climate at a Glance: Floods
Occasional heavy precipitation events and floods have always occurred and always will. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports low confidence in any climate change impact on floods, and even acknowledges that climate change is as likely to have reduced flooding frequency and severity as it has been to make them more common.
Climate at a Glance: U.S. Temperatures
The United States has experienced no significant warming since at least 2005. The lack of warming is documented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Climate Reference Network, an extremely accurate network of temperature stations throughout the United States that requires no corrective adjustments.
Climate at a Glance: Urban Heat Islands
The majority of U.S. temperature stations utilized for NOAA and NASA temperature records have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, buildings, and air conditioner exhausts.
Climate at a Glance: Subsidies
Climate alarmists often assert that wind and solar subsidies are necessary to level the playing field regarding fossil fuel subsidies.
Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise
Global sea level has been rising at a relatively steady pace of approximately one foot per century since at least the mid-1800s. There has been very little recent acceleration in sea level rise.
Climate at a Glance: Water Levels – Lake Mead
Even before global warming, some regions of the world experienced periods of lower rainfall and fluctuating river flows and lake levels.
Climate at a Glance: Water Levels – Great Lakes
Alarmists and their media allies claimed during a recent, short-term decline in Great Lakes water levels that climate change was bringing a new normal of low Great Lakes water levels.
Climate at a Glance: Snowpack
Satellites have been measuring snow cover since 1966. Snowpack throughout the Northern Hemisphere have increased in the fall and winter.
Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes
Tornadoes typically form when very cold, dry air clashes with very warm, humid air. Global warming warms the Arctic more than the tropics and subtropics, resulting in less of a clash between cold Arctic air masses and warm Gulf of Mexico air masses.
Climate at a Glance: Carbon Dioxide Tax
The purpose of a carbon dioxide tax is to make conventional energy so expensive that people will be coerced into buying wind and solar power, which is already very expensive. When that happens and people purchase expensive wind and solar power, no carbon dioxide taxes are collected, so no revenue is retuned to the people.
Climate at a Glance: Polar Bears and Climate
Climate alarmists often speculate that just a modest amount of warming will sufficiently reduce Arctic ice and food availability to push polar bears to extinction. However, the truth is, polar bear populations have actually increased the last several decades.