Chief Critic
The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental non-profit, blasted Wright last year, accusing his arguments on energy and climate change of relying on “cherry-picked data, outdated assumptions, and misleading framing.” The nonprofit echoed sentiments from climate researchers who have also accused Wright of selectively picking data. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, likened Wright’s report on the impact of greenhouse gases to a “law brief from attorneys defending their client, carbon dioxide,” adding the report did not “appear to be a fair assessment of the state of climate science.”
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What Else Did Wright’s Report Say?
The report also alleges increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes is not supported by U.S. data and says links between extreme weather events to human CO2 emissions is “challenged by natural climate variability, data limitations, and inherent model deficiencies.”
Key Background
A 2023 study cited by Yale Climate Connections found that as much as one-third of the U.S. population is expected to experience a one-in-100-year storm as often as three times in their lives, also noting extreme precipitation in nearly two-thirds of the continental U.S. has exceeded the national standard. The EPA has said multiple lines of evidence have proven changes to temperature and precipitation patterns, increases in ocean temperatures, the melting of glaciers and changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather. Homeowners in hurricane-prone states have continuously faced high insurance premiums even as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a quiet storm season this year. Hurricane insurance pricing is driven by long-term catastrophe modeling which, instead of relying on historical data, estimates extreme losses for the future.
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Further Reading
Most Americans Aren’t Convinced Humans Are Causing Climate Change, New Data Shows (Forbes)
Fewer Hurricanes Are Forecast This Year—Here’s Why Your Insurance Bill Probably Won’t Go Down (Forbes)
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