Ronald Reagan once famously said about the left, "The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." This applies to leftists and "progressives" across the board, but nowhere does it apply more than in the sciences. The left thinks it's OK to allow men to play on women's sports teams, they think that lower-energy-density, unreliable energy sources like solar and wind will power our modern technology-based lifestyle as well as high-energy-density sources like oil, natural gas, and nuclear power.
But nowhere do they know so much that just isn't so than in the arena of the climate.
Now, disclaimer: Yes, the climate changes. That much is known. It always has, and it always will, and through most of the planet's history, it's been warmer than it is now. Just ask any climate scold to explain the Paleoncene/Eocene Thermal Maximum, and you'll get an illustration of stuttering and tap-dancing. The earth's climate is also vast and chaotic beyond our capacity to fully understand.
So now, the climate scolds are going local, claiming that record rainfalls in our major cities are because of climate change. This is weather, not climate, and there's a much more obvious reason for increased rainfall; Climate Realism's Anthony Watts has some details.
In its March 26, 2025 article titled “Heavier Rainfall Rates in U.S. Cities,” Climate Central (CC) claims that “Climate change is supercharging the water cycle, bringing heavier rainfall extremes and related flood risks across the U.S.” This conclusion is misleading at best, and scientifically irresponsible at worst. The evidence, when properly examined, points to alternative, well-known meteorological causes of localized rainfall increase.
CC claims that, “as the atmosphere warms with climate change, it can hold more water vapor, leading to heavier downpours—especially in urban areas.” This is easily explained by local urban meteorological factors unrelated to climate change.
The factors are well-known and have been for decades; Mr. Watts is referring to the urban heat island effect.
To start, the CC article commits a common logical fallacy in climate reporting: correlation mistaken for causation. Yes, some cities have recorded increases in intense rainfall over recent decades, but that’s not the smoking gun for anthropogenic-driven climate change as CC would have you believe. Rather, Climate at a Glance provides a far more comprehensive and nuanced assessment of precipitation trends, showing that nationwide rainfall in the U.S. has not increased in an alarming or unprecedented manner. In fact, the entry on U.S. Precipitation shows that while total precipitation has slightly increased over the last century, there’s no consistent trend of intensifying rainfall that matches the hysteria being promoted.
Worse, CC completely ignores the well-documented Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in their article. Cities are warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the heat-retaining properties of asphalt, concrete, and reduced vegetation—this is a basic principle of meteorology that’s been acknowledged for decades.
The urban heat island effect has been well-documented for decades. It's even seen here in Alaska; Anchorage and even Wasilla routinely turn in slightly higher temperatures than our rural communities up here in the valley north of Big Lake Road. A major urban area, like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, or Shanghai, though, is a whole different story. Virtually every surface is paved, concrete, and asphalt jungles that capture heat during the day and radiate it at night, resulting in overall warmer temperatures.
Those warmer temperatures then act on water vapor in the air, raising temperatures to the point where the water condenses. That, in case you haven't guessed yet, is where rain comes from. Warmer temperatures increase rainfall levels, again, something that has been well-documented, not for decades but for centuries.
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Climate Central ignored this to push an agenda - again, there's just so much they know that isn't so.
Part of the reason for their fudging on this matter lies in the solutions. For the nebulous claims of climate change, the scolds make claims that we must surrender much of our modern lifestyle and the high energy use that comes with it, but what can they claim as a solution to urban heat island effects? Tearing down our cities? Returning vast numbers of people to the countryside, to do... what? These are the questions that they can't answer, so they return to the anthropogenic climate change well.
Mr. Watts concludes:
This kind of shoddy research for media consumption undermines public trust in climate science. CC claims to be an authority, yet their work shows a consistent pattern: cherry-pick data, ignore contradictory evidence, and blame everything on humans using fossil fuels causing climate change. Real science considers all variables, especially ones as obvious as localized urban heating and pollution. Until Climate Central acknowledges these fundamental factors, they’re not reporting science—they’re spinning a fake news narrative.
This is, sadly, what we have come to expect; Climate Central worked backward from a conclusion and did not accurately assess the data, and that's because they aren't doing science; they are promoting an agenda.
