LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – If you read MLive’s latest climate story in their “Environment” section last week, you might come away thinking every flood, snowstorm, tornado, power outage and puddle in Michigan has a single culprit: climate change. According to the experts quoted, Michigan has a “fever,” and the symptoms are only getting worse.
But there’s another possibility that rarely gets equal consideration: weather is complex, constantly changing, and difficult to evaluate in a state with more than a century and a half of recorded weather history. While the article focuses heavily on trends since 1970, Michigan’s longer record includes substantial variability in temperatures, precipitation, Great Lakes water levels, floods, droughts, blizzards, and severe storms. Not every natural disaster fits neatly into a political narrative, despite Democrats frequently attributing recent climate changes to human activities such as fossil fuel use, deforestation, and agricultural practices (cows) that increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Three experts, one narrative.
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MLive assembled what amounted to a climate-change echo chamber: one Climate Central meteorologist and two University of Michigan climate “experts,” all reinforcing the same conclusion. What readers won’t find in the article are dissenting scientists, skeptical meteorologists, infrastructure specialists or policy analysts giving their opinions on how flooding, power outages and storm damage are often influenced by factors unrelated to carbon emissions. Apparently, when every “expert” agrees, it’s easier to declare the debate over.
Al Gore’s climate cash machine continues.
For decades, Americans have been told that a climate catastrophe was just around the corner unless governments spent trillions and consumers changed their lifestyles. Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore became one of the movement’s most visible faces, promoting carbon offsets and green initiatives that critics argued often enriched consultants, investors and politically connected interests while producing questionable real-world results.
Climate-related programs have become a major economic sector, generating billions of dollars in government funding, private investment, consulting contracts, and renewable-energy development. This is especially true under Democratic rule at all levels of government. Skeptics have long argued that fear sells – and climate fear sells especially well. Politicians told their voters that they were saving them from catastrophe…and continue to do so.
What are carbon offsets?
The idea of carbon offsets is simple – and lucrative: individuals, corporations and governments can actually continue producing carbon emissions if they pay their “fine” and invest in projects such as tree planting, renewable energy development or conservation efforts. These projects are supposed to offset their emissions. Critics have argued that many offset programs became a lucrative industry that allowed companies and wealthy individuals to purchase environmental “credits” without significantly reducing their actual emissions, creating what skeptics called a feel-good business model while producing questionable environmental benefits. So it never really was about helping the earth. It was about money.
Carbon offsets still remain widely used today by major corporations, airlines, and governments seeking to meet climate goals or achieve “net-zero” emissions targets. Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Shell continue to purchase carbon credits tied to projects ranging from forest conservation to carbon-removal technology, while international airlines participate in offset programs designed to compensate for a portion of their emissions. What began as a niche environmental concept has evolved into a global market involving billions of dollars in annual transactions.
Much of the current push is being driven by the rise of energy-hungry AI systems, as big tech companies scramble to offset the massive emissions tied to expanding data centers and computing demands – or at least create the public perception that they are addressing the problem for environmental and public- relations purposes.
The “real” Al Gore.
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The climate rhetoric is connected to someone who has been pushing the idea for decades: Al Gore. In his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore argued that rising greenhouse-gas emissions could lead to melting ice caps, rising sea levels, stronger storms, droughts, and widespread environmental disruption if governments and societies failed to act. The film portrayed climate change as an urgent global crisis requiring immediate action.
Let me tell you a little secret about Al Gore. When I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, a few decades ago he owned a sprawling mansion in one of the city’s wealthiest suburbs. He was rarely there, but every time I drove past his homestead, the place was lit up like a small airport runway – floodlights blazing and lights shining throughout the property. For someone who spent years lecturing Americans about reducing energy consumption to save the planet, his own electricity habits didn’t exactly scream personal sacrifice. But that’s how Democrats operate. They lecture everyone else about morality and accountability while engaging in behavior that’s 10 times worse themselves. Then, somehow, they still manage to spend all their time figuring out how to make you pay for their sins instead of owning their own.
Climategate.
Then there’s “Climategate,” the 2009 controversy involving leaked emails from climate researchers. The Climategate controversy erupted after thousands of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit were leaked online. The messages revealed scientists discussing ways to “hide the decline” in certain temperature proxy data, strategizing about how to respond to critics, and debating access to underlying research data.
To many Americans, the emails reinforced concerns that some influential climate researchers were more interested in controlling the narrative than encouraging open scientific debate. Whether intended that way or not, the leaked correspondence damaged public trust and gave skeptics plenty of reason to question claims that the science was completely settled.
The public isn’t buying what it used to.
Whether the controversies have involved failed predictions, carbon-credit profiteering, or the fallout from Climategate, they all produced the same result: growing public skepticism. And that skepticism appears to be showing up in how Americans rank climate change among their priorities.
Recent polling has shown that while many Americans still believe the climate is changing (yes, climate IS changing every day even in my own front yard), concern about inflation, energy costs, immigration, crime and the economy consistently ranks higher among voter priorities than climate policy. That creates a problem for politicians who continue pushing expensive green-energy mandates while families struggle with utility bills and everyday costs.
Weather happens – and so does politics.
Michigan has experienced floods, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts and severe storms for generations. Infrastructure failures, poor drainage systems, development decisions and aging dams can all make weather events even more damaging – and make Michiganders feel like things are worse than they have ever been before. The narrative from the left that the “sky is falling” is often easily accepted when Michiganders are constantly dealing with fallout from weather events.
Climate trends deserve serious attention, but journalists should be cautious about presenting one perspective as unquestionable truth. Science advances through scrutiny, debate, testing, and re-testing – not by treating complex questions as settled simply because the answers align with a preferred political narrative.
Part 2 of this editorial series drops Monday, taking a closer look at why climate change continues dominating political headlines even as most Americans rank other issues far higher in their daily lives.
