Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Australiaโs carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds
Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised
Adam Morton Climate and environment editor Wed 27 Mar 2024 09.21 AEDT
Australiaโs main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.
Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as โhuman-induced regenerationโ and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analysed 182 projects in arid and semi-desert areas and found forest cover had either barely grown or gone backwards in nearly 80%.
The academics said it meant these projects were therefore not reducing emissions as promised, and polluting companies that bought offsets created through these projects were often not reducing their impact on the climate as they claimed.
โฆ
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen told the ABCโs RN Breakfast on Wednesday that a review of the carbon credit scheme that he commissioned from Ian Chubb, a former Australian chief scientist, had backed the integrity of the system.
Australian human-induced native forest regeneration carbon offset projects have limited impact on changes in woody vegetation cover and carbon removals
Carbon offsets are a widely used climate policy instrument that can reduce mitigation costs and generate important environmental and social co-benefits. However, they can increase emissions if they lack integrity. We analysed the performance of one of the worldโs largest nature-based offset types: human-induced regeneration projects under Australiaโs carbon offset scheme. The projects are supposed to involve the human-induced regeneration of permanent even-aged native forests through changes in land management. We analysed 182 projects and found limited evidence of regeneration in credited areas. Changes in woody vegetation cover within the areas that have been credited also largely mirror changes in adjacent comparison areas, outside the projects, suggesting the observable changes are predominantly attributable to factors other than the project activities. The results add to the growing literature highlighting the practical limitations of offsets and the potential for offset schemes to credit abatement that is non-existent, non-additional and potentially impermanent.Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01313-x
Chris Bowen isn't having any of Uhlmann's 'wind doesn't always blow' rhetoric.
"the rain doesn't always fall either, but we manage to store the water – we can store the renewable energy if we have the investment"#auspolpic.twitter.com/LjJkEr3zJy
Note: The picture at the top of the article is not as far as I know a carbon offset vegetation regeneration site, just a photogenic example of how dry and harsh the Aussie outback can be.
Assessing human impacts on climate and biodiversity requires an understanding of the relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earthโs atmosphere and global temperature (T). Here I explore this relationship empirically using comprehensive, recently-compiled databases of stable-isotope proxies from the Phanerozoic Eon (~540 to 0 years before the present) and through complementary modeling using the atmospheric absorption/ transmittance code MODTRAN.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration is correlated weakly but negatively with linearly-detrended T proxies over the last 425 million years.
Of 68 correlation coefficients (half non-parametric) between CO2 and T proxies encompassing all known major Phanerozoic climate transitions, 77.9% are non-discernible (p > 0.05) and 60.0% of discernible correlations are negative. Marginal radiative forcing (ฮRFCO2), the change in forcing at the top of the troposphere associated with a unit increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, was computed using MODTRAN. The correlation between ฮRFCO2 and linearly-detrended T across the Phanerozoic Eon is positive and discernible, but only 2.6% of variance in T is attributable to variance in ฮRFCO2.
Spectral analysis, auto- and cross-correlation show that proxies for T, atmospheric CO2 concentration and ฮRFCO2 oscillate across the Phanerozoic, and cycles of CO2 and ฮRFCO2 are antiphasic. A prominent 15 million-year CO2 cycle coincides closely with identified mass extinctions of the past, suggesting a pressing need for research on the relationship between CO2, biodiversity extinction, and related carbon policies.
This study demonstrates that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not cause temperature change in the ancient climate.
Introduction
The role of atmospheric CO2 in climate includes short- and long-term aspects. In the short term, atmospheric trace gases including CO2 are widely considered to affect weather by influencing surface sea temperature anomalies and sea-ice variation, which are key leading indicators of annual and decadal atmospheric circulation and consequent rainfall, drought, floods and other weather extremes [33โ37]. Understanding the role of atmospheric CO2 in forcing global temperature, therefore has the potential to improve weather forecasting.
In the long term, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) promulgates a significant role for CO2 in forcing global climate, estimating a โmost likelyโ sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of CO2 concentration as 2โ4 ยฐC [29โ31]. Policies intended to adapt to the projected consequences of global warming and to mitigate the projected effects by reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions are on the agenda of local, regional and national governments and international bodies.
The compilation in the last decade of comprehensive empirical databases containing proxies of Phanerozoic temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration enables a fresh analytic approach to the CO2/T relationship. The temperature-proxy databases include thousands of measurements by hundreds of investigators for the time period from 522 to 0 Mybp [28,38,39], while proxies for atmospheric CO2 from the Phanerozoic Eon encompass 831 measurements reported independently by hundreds of investigators for the time period from 425 to 0 Mybp [40]. Such an unprecedented volume of data on the Phanerozoic climate enables the most accurate quantitative empirical evaluation to date of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature in the ancient climate, which is the purpose of this study.
I report here that proxies for temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration are generally uncorrelated across the Phanerozoic climate, showing that atmospheric CO2 did not drive the ancient climate.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is a less-direct measure of its effect on global temperature thanย marginal radiative forcing,ย however, which is nonethelessย also generally uncorrelated with temperature across the Phanerozoic.ย The present findings from the Phanerozoic climate provide possible insights into the role of atmospheric CO2 in more recent glacial cycling and for contemporary climate science and carbon policies. Finally, I report that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 oscillated regularly during the Phanerozoic and peaks in CO2 concentration closely match the peaks of mass extinctions identified by previous investigators. This finding suggests an urgentย need for research aimed at quantifying the relationship between atmospheric CO2 ย concentration and past mass extinctions.ย I conclude that that limiting anthropogenic emissions of CO2 may not be helpful in preventing harmful global warming, but may be essential to ย conserving biodiversity.
Discussion of Temperature versus Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration proxies plotted in the same time series panel (Figure 5) show an apparent dissociation and even an antiphasic relationship. For example, a CO2 concentration peak near 415 My occurs near a temperature trough at 445 My. Similarly, CO2 concentration peaks around 285 Mybp coincide with a temperature trough at about 280 My and also with the Permo-Carboniferous glacial period (labeled 2 in Figure 5). In more recent time periods, where data sampling resolution is greater, the same trend is visually evident. The atmospheric CO2 concentration peak near 200 My occurs during a cooling climate, as does another, smaller CO2 concentration peak at approximately 37 My. The shorter cooling periods of the Phanerozoic, labeled 1โ10 in Figure 5, do not appear qualitatively, at least, to bear any definitive relationship with fluctuations in the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
[My Comment: Antiphasic in this context refers to times when temperatures are rising while CO2 is declining, and also periods when temperatures are falling while CO2 is going higher. These negative correlations are to be expected if temperature is the leading variable and CO2 the dependent variable.]
Regression of linearly-detrended temperature proxies (Figure 3b, lower red curve) against atmospheric CO2 concentration proxy data reveals a weak but discernible negative correlation between CO2 concentration and T (Figure 6). Contrary to the conventional expectation, therefore, as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased during the Phanerozoic climate, T decreased. This finding is consistent with the apparent weak antiphasic relation between atmospheric CO2 concentration proxies and T suggested by visual examination of empirical data (Figure 5). The percent of variance in T that can be explained by variance in atmospheric CO2 concentration, or conversely, R2 ร 100, is 3.6%. Therefore, more than 95% of the variance in T is explained by unidentified variables other than the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
Regression of non-detrended temperature against atmospheric CO2 concentration shows a weak but discernible positive correlation between CO2 concentration and T. This weak positive association may result from the general decline in temperature accompanied by a weak overall decline in CO2 concentration.
The correlation coefficients between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and T were computed also across 15 shorter time segments of the Phanerozoic.
These time periods were selectedto include or bracket the three major glacial periods of the Phanerozoic, ten global cooling events identified by stratigraphic indicators, and major transitions between warming and cooling of the Earth designated by the bar across the top of Figure 5. The analysis was done separately for the most recent time periods of the Phanerozoic, where the sampling resolution was highest (Table 1), and for the older time periods of the Phanerozoic, where the sampling resolution was lower (Table 2).
For the most highly-resolved Phanerozoic data (Table 1), 12/15 (80.0%) Pearson correlation coefficients computed between atmospheric CO2 concentration proxies and T proxies are non-discernible (p > 0.05). Of the three discernible correlation coefficients, all are negative, i.e., T and atmospheric CO2 concentration are inversely related across the corresponding time periods.
For the less highly-resolved older Phanerozoic data (Table 2), 14/20 (70.0%)Pearson correlation coefficients computed between atmospheric CO2 concentration and T are non-discernible. Of the six discernible correlation coefficients, two are negative. For the less-sampled older Phanerozoic (Table 2), 17/20 (85.0%) Spearman correlation coefficients are non-discernible. Of the three discernible Spearman correlation coefficients, one is negative.
Combining atmospheric CO2 concentration vs. T correlation coefficients from both tables, 53/68 (77.9%) are non-discernible, and of the 15 discernible correlation coefficients, nine (60.0%) are negative.
These data collectively support the conclusion that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was largely decoupled from T over the majority of the Phanerozoic climate.
The finding that periodograms of atmospheric CO2 concentration proxies and T proxies exhibit different frequency profiles implies that atmospheric CO2 concentration and T oscillated at different frequencies during the Phanerozoic, consistent with disassociation between the respective cycles. This conclusion is corroborated by auto- and cross-correlation analysis.
If ฮRFCO2 is a more direct indicator of the impact of CO2 on temperature than atmospheric concentration as hypothesized, then the correlation between ฮRFCO2 and T over the Phanerozoic Eon might be expected to be positive and statistically discernible. This hypothesis is confirmed (Figure 9). This analysis entailed averaging atmospheric CO2 concentration in one-My bins over the recent Phanerozoic and either averaging or interpolating CO2 values over the older Phanerozoic (Methods). Owing to the relatively large sample size, the Pearson correlation coefficient is statistically discernible despite its small value (R = 0.16, n = 199), with the consequence that only a small fraction (2.56%) of the variance in T can be explained by variance in ฮRFCO2 (Figure 9). Even though the correlation coefficient between ฮRFCO2 and T is positive and discernible as hypothesized, therefore, the correlation coefficient can be considered negligible and the maximum effect of ฮRFCO2 on T is for practical purposes insignificant (<95%).
Conclusions
The principal findings of this study are that neither the atmospheric concentration of CO2 nor ฮRFCO2 is correlated with T over most of the ancient (Phanerozoic) climate.
Over all major climate transitions of the Phanerozoic Eon, about three-quarters of 136 correlation coefficients computed here between T and atmospheric CO2 concentration, and between T and ฮRFCO2, are non-discernible, and about half of the discernible correlations are negative. Correlation does not imply causality, but the absence of correlation proves conclusively the absence of causality [63]. The finding that atmospheric CO2 concentration and ฮRFCO2 are generally uncorrelated with T, therefore, implies either that neither variable exerted significant causal influence on T during the Phanerozoic Eon or that the underlying proxy databases do not accurately reflect the variables evaluated.
The generally weak or absent correlations between the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and T,and between ฮRFCO2 and T, imply that other, unidentified variables caused most (>95%) of the variance in T across the Phanerozoic climate record. The dissimilar structures of periodograms for T and atmospheric CO2 concentration found here also imply that different but unidentified forces drove independent cyclic fluctuations in T and CO2. Since cycles in atmospheric CO2 concentrationoccur independently of temperature cycles, the respective rhythms must have a different etiology. It has been suggested that volcanic activity and seafloor spreading produce periodic CO2 emissions from the Earthโs mantle ([69] and references therein) which could in principle increase radiative forcing of temperature globally.
The present findings corroborate the earlier conclusion based on study of the Paleozoic climate that โglobal climate may be independent of variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.โ [64] (p. 198). The present study shows further, however, that past atmospheric CO2 concentration oscillates on a cycle of 15โ20 My and an amplitude of a few hundred to several hundreds of ppmv. A second longer cycle oscillates at 60โ70 My. As discussed below, the peaks of the ~15 My cycles align closely with the times of identified mass extinctions during the Phanerozoic Eon, inviting further research on the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and mass extinctions during the Phanerozoic.
My Added Comment
Some climatists will admit that CO2 changes did not cause ancient climate changes, but then assert that everything shifted when humans began burning hydrocarbons and releasing CO2.ย Somehow natural processes ceased and now only warming can occur due to CO2 added by humans.ย On the contrary, we can look more recently at the recovery from the LIA (Little Ice Age) to see the same antiphasic pattern described in the above paper.
Moberg is a highly respected recontruction of NH temperatures over the last 2000 years. It shows peak warming after 1000, followed by a sharp cooling hitting bottom by 1600. Kouwenberg is a CO2 time series based on plant stomata proxies. For 250 years during the cooling, CO2 was rising, and then later CO2 was declining for 240 years while temperatures were rising.
As for the 20th century, consider the graph from climate4you (KNMI Climate Explorer)
Even with modern instrumental temperature records, correlation is inconsistent between temperature and CO2.ย Much ado is made about the happenstance of positive linking between the 1990s to 2007, while ignoring the negative relation earler, and a weak connection since.ย The latter period is obviously driven by oceanic ENSO activity rather than CO2 radiativity.
All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for millennia, human populations have resided in the same narrow part of the climatic envelope available on the globe, characterized by a major mode around โผ11 ยฐC to 15 ยฐC mean annual temperature (MAT).
I stumbled across a paper called โFuture of the human climate nicheโ, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The abstract says (emphasis mine):
Abstract All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for millennia, human populations have resided in the same narrow part of the climatic envelope available on the globe, characterized by a major mode around โผ11 ยฐC to 15 ยฐC mean annual temperature (MAT).
Supporting the fundamental nature of this temperature niche, current production of crops and livestock is largely limited to the same conditions, and the same optimum has been found for agricultural and nonagricultural economic output of countries through analyses of year-to-year variation.
We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 y than it has moved since 6000 BP. Populations will not simply track the shifting climate, as adaptation in situ may address some of the challenges, and many other factors affect decisions to migrate.
Nevertheless, in the absence of migration, one third of the global population is projected to experience a MAT >29 ยฐC currently found in only 0.8% of the Earthโs land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara. As the potentially most affected regions are among the poorest in the world, where adaptive capacity is low, enhancing human development in those areas should be a priority alongside climate mitigation.
Well, that seemed kinda reasonable. After all, a mean average temperature (MAT) between 11 ยฐC to 15 ยฐC (52ยฐF to 59ยฐF) sounds comfortable, and I imagined it would be a fairly wide zone. And people tend to go where itโs comfortable.
So I decided to graph out just how that plays out around the globe โฆ hereโs that result. Upper graphic shows the whole planet, lower graphic shows just the land.
Figure 1. The โhuman climate nicheโ lies between 11ยฐC (blue line) and 15ยฐC (red line). Berkeley Earth data
YIKES! When the Abstract said a โnarrow part of the climatic envelopeโ, they werenโt kidding. A skinny strip across the US, a skinny strip along the Andes, a narrow band from Europe to China, a tiny part of Africa and Australia โฆ wow.
Of course, my first question was whether the problem was with my data. So I repeated the experiment with the CERES data.
Figure 2. The โhuman climate nicheโ lies between 11ยฐC (blue line) and 15ยฐC (red line). CERES data.
Well, slight differences, but basically the same.
So I thought, well, maybe theyโre using some special dataset. So I checked the Supplementary Information and found that they use a dataset called the โWorldClimโ data. I downloaded that, spent far too long trying to figure out how to import a โGeoTiffโ file into R, and took a look.
Figure 3. The โhuman climate nicheโ lies between 11ยฐC (blue line) and 15ยฐC (red line). WorldClim data.
Aaaand โฆ they all agree, within the usual differences in climate datasets.
Next, I looked at where people live on this wonderful planet. Hereโs that chart. Iโve overlaid the WorldClim 11ยฐC (white) and 15ยฐC (yellow) lines on the graphic.
Figure 4. Log base 10 of population density per square kilometer.
As you might have guessed, the biggest population centers are in India and eastern China. Other populated spots are Europe, tropical Africa, southeast Asia, eastern Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and the eastern US.
And the crazy part?
Not one of those centers of dense population lies within their โhuman climate nicheโ โฆ some are too cold, some are too hot. India, packed with people, has an average annual temperature of 27ยฐ. Canada and Russia are hopeless. And cold foggy England? Fuggeddaboutit!
Not sure I can say much more about that study โฆ have I made some curious error? I donโt think so.
Onwards, ever onwards,
w.
PSโMy usual request: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings. Thanks.
Theย Daily Mailย posted an alarming Easter themed story saying climate change has caused the price of chocolate Easter eggs to increase. This is false. Chocolate Easter eggs and other chocolate candies have seen prices increase; however, data prove it isnโt due to a shortage of cocoa beans since cocoa production has risen as the Earth has warmed. If climate change isnโt harming cocoa production, it canโt be behind the rising prices.
The Daily Mail posted an alarming Easter themed story saying climate change has caused the price of chocolate Easter eggs to increase. This is false. Chocolate Easter eggs and other chocolate candies have seen prices increase; however, data prove it isnโt due to a shortage of cocoa beans since cocoa production has risen as the Earth has warmed. If climate change isnโt harming cocoa production, it canโt be behind the rising prices.
โAccording to researchers from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a combination of wet heatwaves and drought have battered this yearโs cocoa harvest,โ writes the Daily Mail.
The ECIUโs claim is false on a number of counts. First, across the region making up West Africa, it is common, not rare, for it to have heatwaves and heavy rains, interspersed with periods of drought. Those conditions are known as typical weather there. Hot weather is the norm across West Africa. While the northern part of West Africa is semi-arid Sahel, a transition from the Sahara to the savannah grasslands, much of the region is tropical forests where rainfall is common and commonly heavy. So, a โwet heatwaveโ is not uncommon and cocoa production, in fact, requires and thrives in hot wet conditions, which is why most global cocoa production comes jungles and forests near the equator, where much of West Africa lies.
The rains are interspersed with periods of intense drought, especially in the arid northern part of West Africa. As the U.S. National Science Foundation wrote recently, โWest African droughts are the norm, not an anomaly โฆ some droughts lasted centuries in the past โฆ.โ So a single yearโs drought after heavy rain is not proof or even an indication of climate change. Indeed, history indicates that West Africa cycles periodically from wet periods to dry periods lasting multiple decades each. Multiple studies, here, here, and here, for example, confirm the regionโs climate history. Since 1991, the Sahel region in West Africa has been in a rainy period recovering from an extended dry period from the early 1970s to the 1990s. As has been pointed out repeatedly at Climate Realism, here and here, for example, scientific bodies recognize climate change as indicated by a shift in average weather recorded over a 30-year period, not the weather happening in a single year or couple of years. There is no trend for either drought or extreme rainfall which would indicate climate change is impacting normal rainfall patterns in West Africa, rather recent weather has been well within the historic cyclical norms for the region.
While weather hasnโt changed much in West Africaโs cocoa production region, cocoa production has, increasing dramatically even has the weather has varied from year to year. Like most other crops, cocoa production has grown substantially during the recent period of climate change in response, in part, to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. During the period when climate alarmists claim warming has been most severe,ย dataย from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that between 1992 to 2022 (the latter being the most recent year for which data is available): Cocoa bean production in West Africa increased by more than 158 percent. West Africa set records for production 17 times during that period, most recently in 2022. (see the figure, below)
Globally the story is much the same. Global cocoa bean production from 1992 to 2022 grew by nearly 120 percent, setting records for production 19 times, with each of the last six years setting new records for production. (see the figure, below)
Because the climate in West Africa isnโt changing and cocoa production is setting records, one can hardly blame climate change for the higher costs of chocolate Easter eggs in the United Kingdom or anywhere else.
Interestingly, in its story the Daily Mail pointed to two other more likely candidates for the price increase: El Niรฑo and inflation. Sadly, the Daily Mail promptly downplayed these two tangible factors to play up the false climate change angle.
The past two years wide weather swings across the globe have been dominated by the shift from a La Niรฑa to a โstrong El Niรฑo year,โ as the Daily Mail admits.
Then there is the dramatic increase in inflation affecting most of the world, complicated by supply chain issues. It should be noted that inflation is being driven, in part, by developed countriesโ climate policies that have raised the costs of fossil fuel production and use which has contributed to higher costs for the energy used to process and the fuels used to transport cocoa and finished chocolate products.
To conclude, there is no evidence climate change has played any role in the U.K.โs chocolate Easter egg crisis. Rather than publishing one more โclimate change is causing everything badโ fairy tale, theย Daily Mail, would better serve their readers by checking the facts and publishing them. Doing so would reduce its readersโ climate anxiety and in the process direct their attention to a more likely cause of higher chocolate prices: government climate policies which increase energy costs.
Here is the abstract and introduction to this open access paper, which of course has the obligatory nod to โclimate changeโ no matter how insignificant to the result.
Abstract
Fire suppression is the primary management response to wildfires in many areas globally. By removing less-extreme wildfires, this approach ensures that remaining wildfires burn under more extreme conditions. Here, we term this the โsuppression biasโ and use a simulation model to highlight how this bias fundamentally impacts wildfire activity, independent of fuel accumulation and climate change. We illustrate how attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than expected from fuel accumulation or climate change. Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias exceed those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone, suggesting that suppression may exert a significant and underappreciated influence on patterns of fire globally. Managing wildfires to safely burn under low and moderate conditions is thus a critical tool to address the growing wildfire crisis.
Introduction
Wildfires are becoming more destructive and deadly around the world1,2,3,4. The societal and ecological impacts of fires5,6ย are in our collective consciousnessโfrom Australiaโs 2019โ2020 megafires7, to destructive wildfires in the Mediterranean8, to beloved giant sequoias killed by fire in California9โprompting widespread calls to address the wildfire crisis8,10,11,12,13,14. We understand the broad drivers of increasing fire activity: changes in climate1,15,16, vegetation and fuel accumulation8,17,18, and ignition patterns19. However, humans also play a direct role in modifying fire activity across much of the globe by engaging with fires minutes to hours after ignition (i.e., initial attack20,21), and subsequent suppression of escaped fires22,23,24. While weather, fuels, topography, and ignitions determine how fires might burn, humans strongly shape this into when, where, and how fires do burn (Fig.ย 1).
aย Potential fire behavior depends on the fire triangle (topography, weather, fuel) and ignitions. Intentional ignitions (i.e., prescribed fires and cultural burning) do not pass through the suppression filter, as they are allowed to burn unimpeded if within prescription. Unplanned human ignitions and lightning ignitions only burn if they successfully pass through the โsuppression filter.โ Fire โremovedโ by the suppression filter leads to fuel accumulation, influencing fires from all ignition types (suppression paradox, brown color). Wildfires that do burn are biased toward the fire that was not removed (suppression bias, red). These wildfires, together with intentional fires, form the realized fire regime with the suppression paradox and suppression bias inherently incorporated.ย bย The suppression filter. 1) Initial attack success probability as a function of fireline intensity and fire size at initial attack (from Hirsch et al.69); 2) Proportion of escaped fire suppressed as a function of fire intensity. Suppression becomes increasingly impossible at high fire intensities. Colors depict the suppression scenarios used in the simulation.ย cย Fire perimeters (viewed from overhead) after the first day of burning for an example ignition. Colors correspond to suppression scenarios shown in panelย b. Fire intensity of the burned area is displayed with a color ramp.
Wildfires only burn if they are not extinguished through suppression. Thus, suppression is a โfilterโ that allows certain types of fire to pass through while removing other types of fire (Fig. 1b). In some locations (e.g., a remote wilderness area) this filter may be relatively porous, and many fires may burn with only minimal suppression25. In most landscapes, however, aggressive suppression of fire is a cultural expectation, and the suppression filter is much less permeable, with only the most extreme fires escaping (e.g., Maximum suppression in Fig. 1)20,21. Intentional fires (i.e., prescribed fires and cultural burning) are the only types of fires that do not pass through the suppression filter, as they are allowed to burn unimpeded if they are within prescription (Fig. 1a). Area that does not burn because it was โremovedโ through suppression, results in fuel accumulation and ultimately increases the likelihood and intensity of future fires26,27 (Fig. 1a). This well-known consequence has been termed the โfire suppression paradoxโ28,29: by putting out a fire today, we make fires harder to put out in the future26,30,31,32 (Table 1).
Term
Definition
Mechanism
Impact
Time lag
Fire suppression paradox
By suppressing fire today, we increase fuel loads, making fires harder to suppress in the future
Fuel accumulation
Indirect
Future
Fire suppression bias
By suppressing some fire types more than others, the remainder reflects a biased representation of fire types
Differential suppression filter
Direct
Immediate
Suppressing wildfires also has an additional and poorly quantified consequence that we define as the โsuppression biasโ: fire suppression extinguishes some types of fire (e.g., surface fire) more than others (e.g., crown fire), and thus skews the resulting fire activity toward those types less likely to be removed (Table 1). In contemporary fire management, which easily suppresses and removes low-intensity fire, this bias is inevitably toward higher-intensity burning occurring under extreme weather20,21,33,34,35. Thus, the fires which ecosystems, species, and people experience are skewed towards the most severe and destructive.
We define management approaches that suppress lower-intensity fire more heavily than higher-intensity fire as โregressive suppression,โ borrowing language from economics (e.g., a regressive tax rate decreases as taxable income increases) (Table 2). In some instances, however, management could contain and suppress relatively higher-intensity fire more heavily than lower-intensity fire, an approach we term โprogressive suppressionโ (e.g., a progressive tax rate increases as taxable income increases) (Table 2). Both regressive and progressive suppression are subject to the same upper limit, above which fires are simply too intense to suppress (Fig. 1b)36; however, within the domain where suppression is possible, regressive and progressive approaches can have profoundly different impacts (i.e., biases) on the way fires burn.
Type of suppression
Definition
Direction of suppression bias
Regressive suppression
Suppresses lower-intensity fire more heavily than higher-intensity fire
Toward higher-intensity fires, more extreme fires
Progressive suppression
Suppresses higher-intensity fire more heavily than lower-intensity fire
Toward lower-intensity fires, more moderate fires
Although the fire suppression bias has been referenced tangentially in the literature8,28,33,37,38,39, the emergent impacts of the suppression bias have not been assessed. This is largely due to the difficulty of isolating the impact of suppression with empirical data. Suppression is so ubiquitous that we have virtually no control landscapes where fire is completely unsuppressed; even in remote wilderness areas, some fires are still suppressed40. Furthermore, it is difficult to measure the magnitude of suppression efforts because even relatively direct proxies such as suppression cost are confounded by other factors, including terrain accessibility, human infrastructure at risk, and availability of suppression resources41. Finally, data on suppression efforts are generally only available for larger fires42, obscuring the many ignitions that are quickly and easily suppressed during initial attack20,21. To overcome these constraints, we used a simulation approach to assess and quantify the magnitude of the fire suppression bias on fire behavior and ecological impacts, relative to the influence of climate change and fuel accumulation.
Our modeling framework simulates fundamental components of fires: weather and fuel moisture; ignitions; fire growth; fire suppression (through initial attack and containment of escaped fires); and ecological effects. To isolate the effect of fire suppression, we simulated thousands of fires with identical biophysical conditions, but which differed only in their suppression scenario, including three โregressive suppressionโ scenarios (Moderate, High, and Maximum; Fig. 1b), one โprogressive suppressionโ scenario (Progressive; Fig. 1b), and a control scenario with no suppression. For each fire, we calculated the proportion burned at high severity, average fire severity, daily and total fire size, and the diversity of fire severity43. To compare the influence of suppression to that of climate change and fuel accumulation, we simulated fires across a range of plausible current and future fuel aridity (vapor pressure deficit; VPD) and fuel loading conditions in forest ecosystems in North America. These ranges represent a 240-year time period of modeled increases (e.g., increased VPD based on RCP 8.5 climate scenario44; fuel loading rates based on historical fuel modeling45).
Using this modeling framework, we show how the suppression bias directly influences fire activity and subsequent fire effects. Specifically, we asked: 1) How does fire suppression influence patterns of area burned, ecological impacts (i.e., fire severity), and the diversity of both factors over space and time? 2) How does the magnitude of this influence compare to that from climate change and fuel accumulation?
The title of the first paragraph of the result section is pretty straightforward
Results
Regressive fire suppression makes fires more severe
You can read the full, obvious, known forever, realizations about forest and land management article here.
Our (mankindโs) ability to control the weather and change the planetโs climate is greatly exaggerated. More precisely, it is a fruitless and wastrel endeavor and unnecessary besides.
Our (mankindโs) ability to control the weather and change the planetโs climate is greatly exaggerated. More precisely, it is a fruitless and wastrel endeavor and unnecessary besides.
That is the main takeaway from the new filmClimate: The Movie (The Cold Hard Truth), written and directed by Martin Durkin and released last week. The film can be viewed here.
Climate will always change, no matter how many square miles of solar panels and wind turbines desecrate the landscape and oceans, regardless of how many strip-mined electric vehicles the government attempts to force-feed us, and no matter how many trillions of dollars are printed and spent by politicians and virtue-signaling multi-billionaires.
Climate change is a natural phenomenon primarily influenced by solar activity, including sunspots, solar winds, and cloud formation. Thatโs right: the sun impacts Earthโs climate, something I learned by drawing pictures in kindergarten science, yet is disregarded by the vast climate change mega-industry of governments, corporations, media, grant-receiving scientists and professors, and the entertainment world.
Instead, said industry is obsessed with carbon dioxide, which is a trace atmospheric gas comprising four ten-thousandths of the atmosphere, or 0.04 percent, that is essential to human, animal, and plant life. Indeed, CO2 makes the world livable and thriving, yet is falsely labeled a โpollutantโ that somehow threatens the existence of Earth itself and must be curtailed. In fact, carbon in the atmosphere has been much higher at temperatures cooler and hotter than today, at levels resulting from temperature changes, rather than the cause of them.
Climate: The Movie features a series of interviews of prominent and credentialed scientists, including Steven Koonin, NYU professor and former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration; Richard Lindzen, retired atmospheric physicist from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Roy Spencer, meteorologist at the University of Huntsville in Alabama and an award-winning veteran of NASA; Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer at Harvard and the Smithsonian; and others, some of whom were blackballed for daring to challenge the prevailing climate change group-think narrative.
Another major feature of the film is data. How warm is the planet today compared to previous decades, centuries, and millions of years ago? Based on rock formations, temperature can be estimated going back as long as 500 million years. At the present day, it turns out Earth is in a colder period than the planetary norm. Measured over thousands of years, the climate has been quite stable, ranging within a few degrees, and now in an overall warming trend by about one degree since the late 1800s, during which average global temperature has varied modestly up and down.
Another key data point is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which was four and five times higher than the levels of today, at 2,000-plus parts per million, including during ice ages. Yet, such realities have eluded climate obsessives like John Kerry and countless others who assert that nameless scientists warn of exceeding 400 parts per million means the planet is headed to a proverbial danger zone.
In sum, the climate changes of recent decades and centuries have ebbed and flowed in an unremarkable, non-threatening fashion.
The film also discusses the importance of accurately measuring global temperature change by making apples-to-apples comparisons, which the climate alarmist industry routinely ignores to fulfill its political narrative. Temperature records of 100 or more years past were commonly taken from thermometers in sparse areas when the U.S. was a more rural nation. These readings do not properly compare to results taken in dense areas of today due to the โurban heat effect,โ studied by Dr. Spencer. By contrast, temperature data measured by satellites, ocean or rural-based thermometers show smaller vicissitudes over time.
How did it get this way? How did climate change alarmists become a pervasive influence? Money. It always comes back to the money, primarily from government.
After a global cooling period in the 1970s, when actor Leonard Nimoy (โMr. Spockโ) and many others warned of the coming ice age (even as man-made carbon emissions were sharply increasing since World War II), temperature reverted slightly upward. This spawned a movement championed by then- U.S. Senator Al Gore, who became Vice President in the Clinton administration, which sharply increased funding to study global warming.
Government research funding typically chases problems to โstudyโ and solve, the film asserts. The climate change issue, with its growing alarm bells, unscrupulously parroted in the media for decades, has since gone far beyond government research grants to subsidizing big corporate industries (e.g., solar, wind, EVs) to purportedly lower the temperature.
Politicians from President Biden on down who peddle climate exaggerations, dutifully echoed by most national media, will go on ignoring the science and reality presented inย Climate: The Movie. To otherwise embrace the scientific evidence from this robust film would mean the end of the climate gravy train and the climate alarmist crusade to expand government power and control over society.
As usual, the facts are the opposite of the BBCโs concocted story.
Over the last decade, both hop outputs and yields have proven to be remarkably stable, in comparison to earlier decades.
Climate change threatens to “call time” on the great British pint.
But scientists are working with the brewing industry to help save it.
Hops give bitter its taste but the plant doesnโt like the hotter, drier conditions weโve experienced in recent decades and production has plummeted.
Researchers in Kent are isolating hop genes in the hope of producing more climate-change resilient varieties.
They also want to produce more intense flavours that are now becoming popular.
“Without it, the British pint is going to die off,” Danielle Whelan of the Shepherd Neame brewery said of the work.
“We are just going to be importing beer and we wonโt have the culture that goes with it anymore.”
Warmer, drier conditions have also affected the trademark bitter flavour hops gives beer. And the worry is that because of climate change, the problem is only going to get worse. Eddie Gadd, the head brewer at Ramsgate Brewery said that it was already having an impact.
“Climate change is very relevant to me,” he said.
“I buy most of my hops from Kent and Iโve seen the harvests over the past 10 or 12 years going up and down. It has been a real rollercoaster.
“The growers have been feeling the impact and the search for drought-resistant genes is going to be exceptionally important.”
As for the idea that a slightly warmer climate will destroy the hop industry, the south of England marks the northern edge of climate suitable for commercial hop production.
If hops can be successfully grown places like Central Europe, which have much hotter summers, they certainly wonโt have any problems in Kent!
The cult demonises coal for the CO2 it releases, but without a hint of irony reckons that the CO2 released from wood is a completely different molecule. Adding the term โbiomassโ to the millions of tonnes of timber stripped from the forests of the northern hemisphere apparently makes all the difference. Whereas the term โdirtyโ is employed with a certain kind of venom, whenever coal is mentioned.
The cult demonises coal for the CO2 it releases, but without a hint of irony reckons that the CO2 released from wood is a completely different molecule. Adding the term โbiomassโ to the millions of tonnes of timber stripped from the forests of the northern hemisphere apparently makes all the difference. Whereas the term โdirtyโ is employed with a certain kind of venom, whenever coal is mentioned.
Clear-felling forests and burning them in power stations is, we are told, clean, green and perfectly renewable, donโt you see โ as if showering in the ash from incinerated pine trees will leave you feeling fresh as a daisy.
Slashing and burning modern forests, and merrily wiping out entire ecosystems and healthy habitats for critters, large and small, doesnโt rate a mention. This is all about reducing human generated carbon dioxide gas, right?
In the Carboniferous period, a couple of hundred million years ago, the world was awash with CO2 and, believe it or not, covered from top to bottom in swathes of forests and swamps.
However, those looking to flaunt their green credentials in the so-called โmodern ageโ, donโt hesitate in jumping ahead of the queue and torching whole forests, before geology and time can turn them into the stuff thatโs been dug up and used to great effect, for centuries.
The irony and hypocrisy is not lost on John Hinderaker.
Burn those Trees Powerline John Hinderaker 2 March 2024
We have written a couple of times about biomass, which is a fancy term for burning wood. If you thought using wood fires for energy was out of dateโit has been, actually, for a century and a halfโyou are behind the times. Wood burning is considered โgreen,โ a wholly political concept, and therefore is heavily subsidized in Europe. Millions of trees in the U.S. and Canada suffer the consequences.
Wood, the fuel that British industry thought it had left behind more than a century ago, is staging a comeback.
Powering the resurgence is Drax Group, owner of the controversial Drax power station that recently posted a 10-fold increase in its latest yearly profits.
Its plant in Yorkshire, Britainโs largest and most controversial power station, generated around 6pc of the countryโs electricity in 2023 by burning 6.4 million tonnes of wood. In context, it is the equivalent of 27 million trees.
27 million trees! The same Telegraph article points out that the New Forest only has 46 million trees, less than two yearsโ worth. So where does the wood come from?
Last year alone Drax imported 4.6 million tonnes of wood from the US and another 760,000 tonnes from Canada, with further deliveries coming from Brazil, Latvia and Russia.
You might think that cutting down trees in the southern U.S., thus preventing them from absorbing CO2 from the atmosphereโdo they still teach junior high kids about photosynthesis?โshipping them to Europe on diesel-powered ships, and then burning them, releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, must be the dumbest possible way of generating electricity. And, while it is appallingly stupid, and not โgreenโ in any coherent sense, it is arguably not as dumb as wind and solar:
[Drax chief executive Will Gardiner says], โWe have created a business which plays an essential role in supporting energy security, providing dispatchable, renewable power for millions of homes and businesses, particularly during periods of peak demand when there is low wind and solar power.โ
Yes: burning wood on an industrial scale is idiotic, but at least it works in the dark and when the wind isnโt blowing.
Finally, why does such a foolish way of generating electricity exist? Mandates and subsidies, of course:
Sir Peterโs reference to cost relates to the taxpayer subsidies that Drax receives for producing green energy, which amounted to ยฃ617m in 2022 and ยฃ587m in 2023.
Meanwhile, China is humming along with more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants, and more coming on line constantly. Powerline
Geoscientistย Lindsey Guldenย speaks for the Climate Industrial Complex, not the average person who depends on oil and gas every minute of every day, when she portrays herself as a martyr for the cause of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.
A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas September 15, 2008. A big chunk of U.S. energy production shuttered by Hurricane Ike could recover quickly amid early indications the storm caused only minor to moderate damage to platforms and coastal refineries. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi ( UNITED STATES) – RTR30K4U
โThere is a strong intellectual case against the view that ExxonMobil โknewโ that CO2 was a threat to human betterment versus the continuous growth of consumer-desired, taxpayer-neutral oil and natural gas. In fact, Enron, not Exxon, was the bigger culprit in the climate-change-and-business saga.โ
Geoscientist Lindsey Gulden speaks for the Climate Industrial Complex, not the average person who depends on oil and gas every minute of every day, when she portrays herself as a martyr for the cause of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.
It is not easy to get fired by ExxonMobil, but there are underperformers and just bad apples in every batch. Lindsey Gulden appears to be one. On social media, she tells of just this experience, invoking climate alarmism.
But she does note one thing of interest: the companyโs overhyped political play of carbon capture and storage, which is correct. But it is climate exaggeration that has created the political winds to allow ExxonMobil to get its piece of the taxpayer-subsidy pie. Dialing back politics would right-size the very technology she decries.
Her Story
โIt may not be advisable to talk on LinkedIn about the time I was fired by #ExxonMobil,โ she begins. โBut here goes.โ
I am a #climate scientistโฆ. I started out as Ms Rebecca Grekin, a climate scientist who earnestly, naively believed that the ExxonMobil of today is a trustworthy actor in the energy transition. I spent more than a decade working for ExxonMobil, occasionally (but not often enough) advocating for combatting #climatechange .
In 2020, I was firedโyes, firedโby ExxonMobil because I reported what amounted to a $10 billion fraud. To put it mildly, that experience fundamentally altered my opinion of whether present-day ExxonMobil can be considered an honest broker in anything, but most especially in the realm of the energy transition, which is a far-greater-than-$10-billion threat to the Exxonโs bottom lineโฆ.
What is good for oil and gas re ExxonMobil is good for energy consumers worldwide. And the less climate politics, the better. But Gulden will have none of this.
Despite what smooth-talking spokespeople will tell you, ExxonMobil continues to fund and be an active member of organizations that areโtodayโworking to decrease political support for government action to curb climate change and decrease the publicโs access to and trust in readily available replacements for #oilandgas.
They fund PhDs and national labs to burnish their reputation and influence what questions researchers address.
Then a very good point is made by Gulden: the rent-seeking and greenwashing of ExxonMobil with carbon capture and storage, a mistake in the making.
#industry lobbyists have convinced large swaths of the public (and most of their own well-meaning employees) that technologies like carbon capture and storage are legitimate recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for combatting climate change.
Those taxpayer dollars are urgently needed for existing, proven, ready-right-now solutions but instead are funding a massive campaign to enhance oil recovery. Carbon capture and storage is, at its core, a technology for producing more oil. It requires more carbon to be expended to inject #co2 at pressure than it keeps out of the atmosphere. It is not and will not be a viable solution to climate change.
She blames herself with her half-truth conscience.
ExxonMobil executives can continue this deception in large part because so many useful idiots, myself included, willingly lend their personal reputations to the propping up of a lie. They can continue this deception because they make an example of people like me (Iโm not the only one) to ensure that their employees are afraid to truly challenge the ethics of the company line.
She concludes:
I wish I could tell my younger self that the cynical Mr Yannai Kashtan is right. That idealism and/or a paycheck can lull you into trusting those who say one thing and do another. That we must stop allowing ourselves to be used by a few people who care more about their reserve shares than about doing the right thing. And, most important, that we must, without delay, find the unflinching political will to turn off the #fossilfuels tap as fast as we possibly can.
Social injustice and carnage on a global, massive scale, Ms. Gulden? If she is in turmoil about her time at ExxonMobil and the way forward, a fundamental rethink is in order. Whole new ideas to quell โclimate anxietyโ as the worldโs energy needs continue to be met, increasingly so, by oil, natural gas, and coal.
Exxon and ExxonMobil: The Road Not Taken
More fundamentally, Exxon and (after 1997) ExxonMobil abandoned the moral high ground when it substituted appeasement for principle, which began around the time of President Obamaโs election in 2008.
There is a strong intellectual case against the view that Exxon โ ExxonMobil โknewโ that CO2 was a threat to human betterment. Just the opposite, the company smartly understood that continued growth of consumer-desired, taxpayer-neutral oil and natural gas was good business and morally imperative. (โBig Oil, Exxon Not Guilty as Chargedโ offers a six-part rebuttal to the simplistic, errant arguments of the ExxonKnew legal campaign.)
What about employees at ExxonMobil whose take is opposite of that of Lindsey Gulden? Glen Lyons offers an opposite take:
Hereโs my two cents on the general concept of โWhat Exxon Knewโ as a retired employee with more than 36 years of experience there.
First, Exxon doesnโt โknowโ anything. Itโs a collection of people and just like any other organization with many people, there are many views and understandings on almost every topic imaginable. I worked with Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Libertarians.
I worked with people who believed 25 years ago that climate change was a concern and I worked with people who still donโt believe that climate change is a concern. One of the great features about working at ExxonMobil is that it gives employees a fair amount of latitude to think โoutside the boxโ by studying and proposing ideas that their management may not agree with.
There was always disagreement and tension among talented people. Lyons continues:
I did plenty of that during my career, and sometimes it was well received by my management and sometimes not. Just because I made a presentation on a particular topic of my choosing doesnโt mean that my management was fully aligned on the front end or after the fact.
One thing is very true about ExxonMobil โ the company has a long history of hiring brilliant people who are original and creative thinkers. Sometimes the output of these people finds broad support among management and sometimes it doesnโt. No one who knows ExxonMobil is surprised to learn that some employees were studying the link between CO2 emissions and global temperatures. However, that does NOT mean that his/her management agreed with the findings.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Glen Lyons has a maturity and open-mindedness that a Lindsey Gulden does not.
Many viewers of Climate: The Movie have asked for more information on the topics discussed. In response, I selected the following 70 key statements from the movie and provide references and context for the statements here. Sometimes the statements are slightly paraphrased from what was said for brevity. The statements are listed in the same order as they appear in the movie. The references, illustrations, and links below are my attempt to clarify the statements, provide context, and support the idea behind the phrase or sentence.
I received help from Dr. Willie Soon and Marty Cornell in building this bibliography. My thanks to both.
These โ27 estimates are a thin basis for drawing definitive conclusions about the total welfare impacts of climate change. Moreover, the 11 estimates for warming of 2.5 C indicate that researchers disagree on the sign of the net impact: 3 estimates are positive and 8 are negative. Thus it is unclear whether climate change will lead to a net welfare gain or loss.โTol, 2018
Lomborg, B. (2020, July). Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies,. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 156. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981
Tol, R. (2023). Costs and benefits of the Paris Climate Targets. Climate Change Economics, 14(4). doi:10.1142/S2010007823400031
Tol, R. S. (2018). The Economic Impacts of Climate Change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 12(1), 4-25. doi:10.1093/reep/rex027
Skepticism is career suicide and might be criminalized.
Unsettled, What Climate Science tells us, what it doesnโt, and why it matters, by Steven Koonin.
Climate proxies
A good overview of climate proxies:
Patalano, R., & Roberts, P. (2021). Climate proxies. In D. T. Potts, & E. Harkness, The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/9781119399919.eahaa00609
For a discussion of many of the best global temperature proxies that cover the past 12,000 years see Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?, 2018, pp. 95-107.
May, A. (2018). Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction? American Freedom Publications LLC.
Temperature for the past 500 million years
Scotese, C., Song, H., Mills, B. J., & Meer, D. v. (2021, January ). Invited Review: Phanerozoic Paleotemperatures: The Earthโs Changing Climate during the Last 540 Million Years.ย Earth-Science Reviews.
Figure 1. Scoteseโs reconstruction of the past 125 million years. Major climatic changes are identified, as well as the IPCC projected anthropogenic global warming (PAW). (Scotese, Song, Mills, & Meer, 2021). Notice the PAW has recently (geologically speaking) been exceeded, it is not unusual.
When was the Earth as cold as now?
As can be seen in figure 2, temperatures have not been as cold as today for over 250 million years. Figure 2 is by the Smithsonian and from NOAAโs climate.govย website.
Figure 2. A reconstruction of Phanerozoic (past 540 million years) temperatures by Scott Wing, Brian Huber, and Chris Scotese at the Smithsonian.
Late Cenozoic Ice Age
Figure 3. The most recent 420,000 years of the 2.5 million year Late Cenozoic Ice Age as seen in Antarctic ice core data collected byย Petit, et al, 1999. The CO2ย is in parts per million atmospheric concentration and the temperatures are anomalies from the present. Plot fromย Watts and Pacnik, 2012.
The Late Cenozoic Ice Age (the past 2.6 million years) is characterized by a series of glacial advances (colder periods) and glacial retreats (warmer periods) that are about 100,000 years apart. We are currently in a period of glacial retreat, also called an โinterglacial.โ Our interglacial is named the โHoloceneโ and is the most recent 12,000 years. Notice the changes in CO2 (in red) tend to follow the changes the temperature (in blue), suggesting that CO2 did not cause the temperature change.
Holocene warm period or the โHolocene Climatic Optimum.โ
Figure 4. The Holocene, with its major periods identified.
The two temperature proxies shown are from the Indonesian Makassar Strait and from Greenland. While the Makassar Strait is technically in the Southern Hemisphere, the 500-meter water there flows from the Northern Hemisphere and represents sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific. Thus, the proxies represent the Northern Hemisphere, but they are 9,500 miles apart. The Northern Hemisphere is where the largest temperature changes occur. The Holocene Climatic Optimum is about 3.6ยฐC warmer at these two locations than the Little Ice Age, also known as the โpre-industrial.โ The source of the figure and more explanation is here.
There has been an attempt to claim that the Holocene Climatic Optimum was actually colder than today by Bova, et al. (2021), but the paper has drawn two serious criticisms (see Laepple, et al., 2022 and Zhang & Chen, 2021) and undergone a major revision.
Bova, S., Rosenthal, Y., & Liu, Z. (2021). Seasonal origin of the thermal maxima at the Holocene and the last interglacial. Nature, 589, 548-553. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03155-x
Laepple, T., Shakun, J., He, F., & Marcott, S. (2022). Concerns of assuming linearity in the reconstruction of thermal maxima. Nature, 607. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04831-w
Zhang, X., & Chen, F. (2021). Non-trivial role of internal climate feedback on interglacial temperature evolution. Nature, 600. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03930-4
Holocene Climatic Optimum and the beginning of civilization
Figure 5. An overview of the development of human civilization over the past 18,000 years and its relationship to major climate changes. To download the full resolution version clickย here. Major events in the development of human civilization are noted, both Greenland and Antarctic ice core temperatures are plotted.ย Source.
Also see these interesting articles on the Little Ice Age/pre-industrial by Paul Homewood, Geoffrey Parker, and Soon et al.
Soon, W., Baliunas, S., Idso, C., Idso, S., & Legates, D. (2003b). Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 years: A Reappraisal. Energy and Environment, 14(2&3).
Roman Warm Period
A brief overview of the evidence for the Roman Warm Period in Europe, with a bibliography, can be seen at CO2science.org here. More information and references are given here. The topic is also covered by Soon, et al.:
Soon, W., Baliunas, S., Idso, C., Idso, S., & Legates, D. (2003b). Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 years: A Reappraisal. Energy and Environment, 14(2&3). Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830503765184619
Central England Temperature Record
The Central England Temperature record is now maintained by the Hadley Centre. It can be viewed and downloaded here. A discussion of the climatic significance of the record is given in Baliunas, et al.
Baliunas, S., Frick, P., Sokoloff, D., & Soon, W. (1997). Time scales and trends in the central England temperature data (1659โ1990): A wavelet analysis. Geophysical Research Letters, 24(11), 1351-1354. doi:10.1029/97GL01184
New York Central Park temperature record
The New York Central Park temperature record can be seen and downloaded here.
1.5ยฐC of warming will not lead to the end of man.
The potential impact of the mild rate of warming we are experiencing has been exaggerated.
Tol, R. (2023). Costs and benefits of the Paris Climate Targets. Climate Change Economics, 14(4). doi:10.1142/S2010007823400031
Nordhaus, W. (2018). Climate change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics. Nobel Prize Lecture.
Tol, R. S. (2018). The Economic Impacts of Climate Change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 12(1), 4-25. doi:10.1093/reep/rex027
The 1.5 and 2ยฐC warming limits are arbitrary as discussed here.
Urban Heat Island Effect and Urban vs. Rural weather stations
The best and most authoritative source for the Urban Heat Island Effect is Soon, et al., 2023, here.
Soon, W., Connolly, R., Connolly, M., Akasofu, S. I., Baliunas, S., Berglund, J., . . . al., e. (2023). The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850โ2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data. Climate, 11(9). doi:10.3390/cli11090179
Scafetta, N. (2021, January 17). Detection of nonโclimatic biases in land surface temperature records by comparing climatic data and their model simulations. Climate Dynamics. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05626-x
Land vs. Ocean temperatures.
Reid, 1991 and Connolly, et al., 2021 have noted that while surface air temperatures do not correlate very well with solar activity, sea surface temperatures do.
Connolly et al., R. (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21(6). doi:10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131
Connolly et al., R. (2023). Challenges in Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Trends since 1850 Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 23(10). doi: 10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e
Reid, G. (1991). Solar Total Irradiance Variations and the Global Sea Surface record. J Geophysical Research, 96(D2), 2835-2844.
Tree Ring temperatures
Tree ring proxy temperatures have advantages and disadvantages. They are well-dated at an annual resolution, but they are also sensitive to CO2 concentration, precipitation, and growing season length. This limits their accuracy as a proxy thermometer since they have to be calibrated to the instrumental record during the industrial revolution and a period of global warming.
The sensitivity to CO2 concentration can be a problem. When CO2 is relatively high, as it is today, trees use less water per pound of growth and are more tolerant of drought than in the past which causes a divergence in the tree ring to temperature relationship in the second half of the twentieth century. This divergence corrupts the temperature/tree ring correlation function used for the past (Briffa, Jones, Schweingruber, & Osborn, 1998).
Briffa, K., Schweingruber, F., Jones, P., Osborn, T., & Vaganov, E. (1998b). Reduced Sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high latitudes. Nature, 678-682. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/35596
Other problems with tree rings as temperature proxies, especially combining them into one temperature record are discussed by Stephen McIntyre here.
The notorious โHockey Stickโ tree ring reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures by Michael Mann, et al. is thoroughly discussed in the Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford and in several blog posts and papers by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick:
Mann, M. E., Bradley, R. S., & Hughes, M. K. (1998). Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries. Nature, 392, 779-787. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/33859
McIntyre, S., & McKitrick, R. (2003, November 1). Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series. Energy and Environment. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830503322793632
Montford, A. (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International Publishing.
Satellite temperatures
Measuring atmospheric temperature from satellite microwave measurements was invented by a team of scientists and engineers led by Roy Spencer and John Christy. It was first reported in detail in a now classic paper (Spencer & Christy, 1990):
The global satellite temperature data can be downloaded here.
Global average surface temperatures are too high.
It has long been known that modern global average surface temperature datasets show too much warming, although the reasons for the problem are often debated. We know the exaggerated rate of surface warming exists by comparing satellite estimates, ocean temperature estimates, and rural only temperatures to the standard land & ocean datasets. All independent rates of warming are less than the standard land & ocean rates.
Soon, W., Connolly, R., Connolly, M., Akasofu, S. I., Baliunas, S., Berglund, J., . . . al., e. (2023). The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850โ2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data. Climate, 11(9). doi:10.3390/cli11090179
Christy, J. R., Herman, B., Sr., R. P., Klotzbach, P., McNider, R. T., Hnilo, J. J., . . . Douglass, D. (2010). What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979? Remote Sensing, 9, 2148-2169. doi:10.3390/rs2092148
Rae, J. W., Zhang, Y. G., Liu, X., Foster, G. L., Stoll, H. M., & Whiteford, R. D. (2021). Atmospheric CO2 over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archive. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 49(1), 609-641. doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-082420-063026
Figure 6. Atmospheric CO2ย concentration from proxies for the past 66 million years. Source (Rae, et al., 2021).
CO2 is plant food, more means more plants.
More CO2 fertilizes plants, and they grow faster in the presence of CO2, which is why CO2 is pumped into greenhouses. More CO2 also makes plants more drought resistant. More details here.
Chen, X., Chen, T., He, B., Liu, S., Zhou, S., & Shi, T. (2024). The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000. Global Ecology and Conservation, 49. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02791
CO2 dropped to 180 ppm 20,000 years ago and some plants died of CO2 starvation.
At CO2 partial pressures of 15 Pa or lower (roughly 150 ppm at sea level), most plants will either die or lose their ability to reproduce. In some areas in the last glacial maximum these conditions were possible.
Neftel, A., Moor, E., & Oeschger, H. (1985). Evidence from polar ice cores for the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past two centuries. Nature, 315. doi:10.1038/315045a0
Soon, W. (2007). Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. Physical Geography, 2, 97-125. doi:10.2747/0272-3646.28.2.97
Renee Hannon discusses problems with ice core CO2 estimates here.
CO2 has never driven temperature, itโs the opposite.
See figure 3 and the discussion around it.
Koutsoyiannis, D., Onof, C., Kundzewicz, Z. W., & Christofides, A. (2023). On Hens, Eggs, Temperatures and CO2: Causal Links in Earthโs Atmosphere. Sci, 5(3). doi:10.3390/sci5030035
Soon, W. (2007). Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. Physical Geography, 2, 97-125. doi:10.2747/0272-3646.28.2.97
The 1930s were very warm.
The most pronounced warming in the historical global climate record, prior to the warming from 1980 to 2000, occurred in the first half of the 20th century. It peaked in the late 1930s.
Hegerl, G. C., Brรถnnimann, S., Schurer, A., & Cowan, T. (2018). The early 20th century warming: Anomalies, causes, and consequences. WIREs Climate Change, 9(4). doi:10.1002/wcc.522
Climate models do not capture this period of warming very well because they rely too much on CO2. In all likelihood, CO2 played a very small role in the early 20th century warming.
From 1945 to 1976 the world cooled
Guy Callendar published a major paper introducing his collection of past CO2ย concentration measurements and global temperatures in 1938. The study tried to show that they correlated in the fashion predicted by Svante Arrhenius thirty years earlier and that CO2ย controlled Earthโs temperature. Unfortunately, just after he published the paper the world began to cool as CO2ย concentration increased rapidly during the post war industrial boom. The following plot of global temperatures is from HadCRUT4.
Figure 7. Plot of the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature average and the NOAA/NASA CO2ย dataset in light gray. The CO2ย concentration is shown as the logarithm to the base two so it can be compared directly to temperature. Notice the correlation is good after 1980, but poor before then.
In figure 7 we see that CO2 increases from about 1945 to 1980 while global average temperature falls.
Callendar, G. S. (1938). The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223-240. doi:10.1002/qj.49706427503
Climate models overestimated observed temperature increases.
From the IPCC AR6 WGI report:
โHence, we assess with medium confidence that CMIP5 and CMIP6 models continue to overestimate observed warming in the upper tropical troposphere over the 1979โ2014 period by at least 0.1ยฐC per decade, in part because of an overestimate of the tropical SST trend pattern over this period.โ(AR6 WGI, page 444).
McKitrick, R., & Christy, J. (2018, July 6). A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPa Warming Rate in Climate Models, Earth and Space Science. Earth and Space Science, 5(9), 529-536. doi:10.1029/2018EA000401
McKitrick, R., & Christy, J. (2020). Pervasive Warming Bias in CMIP6 Tropospheric Layers. Earth and Space Science, 7. doi:10.1029/2020EA001281
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Pรฉan, S. Berger, . . . B. Zhou (Ed.)., WG1. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Climate models do not reproduce the ocean cycles properly.
From Eade, 2022:
โThis suggests that current climate models do not fully represent important aspects of the mechanism for low frequency variability of the NAO.โEade, et al. 2022
Eade, R., Stephenson, D., & Scaife, A. (2022). Quantifying the rarity of extreme multiโdecadal trends: how unusual was the late twentieth century trend in the North Atlantic Oscillation? Climate Dynamics, 58, 1555โ1568 . doi:10.1007/s00382-021-05978-4
The NAO, the North Atlantic Oscillation, is an important ocean oscillation.
One of the best indicators of the weakness of the CMIP climate models is the fact that they do not reproduce or include as input, these vital climate indicators. For example, see the discussion on the โAMVโ (AMV is what AR6 calls the AMO) in AR6 WGI page 504. The โAMV-likeโ signal in the climate models is too weak, following is a quote from AR6:
โOn average, the duration of modelled AMV episodes is too short, the magnitude of AMV is too weak and its basin-wide SST spatial structure is limited by the poor representation of the link between the tropical North Atlantic and the subpolar North Atlantic/Nordic seas. Such mismatches between observed and simulated AMV have been associated with intrinsic model biases in both mean state and variability in the ocean and overlying atmosphere. For instance, compared to available observational data CMIP5 models underestimate the ratio of decadal to interannual variability of the main drivers of AMV, namely the AMOC, NAO and related North Atlantic jet variations โฆ which has strong implications for the simulated temporal statistics of AMV, AMV-induced teleconnections and AMV predictability.โAR6, page 504
If they canโt model these important oscillations correctly, their models are wrong.
There is no relationship between CO2 concentration and climate.
Besides the lack of a correlation in figure 7, there is also no correlation between CO2 and climate over the entire Holocene as shown in Figure 4 here. This lack of correlation has been called the Holocene Temperature Conundrum.
Kaufman, D., & Broadman, E. (2023, February 15). Revisiting the Holocene global temperature conundrum. Nature, 614, 425-435. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05536-w
Liu, Z., Zhu, J., Rosenthal, Y., Zhang, X., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., Timmermann, A., . . . Timm, O. E. (2014). The Holocene temperature conundrum. PNAS, 111. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/111/34/E3501.short
There is no evidence that the Earth is warmer today than in the past.
See figures 2 and 4 and the references.
There is no evidence that CO2 is now dangerously high.
The CO2 concentration has been many times higher than today in the past, and the only thing that happened was the Earth became greener.
Chen, X., Chen, T., He, B., Liu, S., Zhou, S., & Shi, T. (2024). The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000. Global Ecology and Conservation, 49. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02791
Also see this essay on the very warm PETM, 56 million years ago.
Clouds are important in climate change.
Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty in the IPCC calculation of the impact of CO2 concentration on climate according to AR6 WGI page 979. The net impact of changes in average cloud cover ranges from a positive feedback (warming) to a negative or cooling feedback, so even the direction of cloud-caused changes is unknown. Clouds cannot be modeled so their effect must be โparameterized,โ which means they are varied in the model according to complex assumptions.
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Pรฉan, S. Berger, . . . B. Zhou (Ed.)., WG1. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Ceppi, P., Brient, F., Zelinka, M., & Hartmann, D. (2017, July). Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models. WIRES Climate Change, 8(4). Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.465
Galactic cosmic rays can contribute to creating clouds.
Galactic cosmic rays may help nucleate cloud formation.
Svensmark, H., Svensmark, J., Enghoff, M., & Shaviv, N. (2021). Atmospheric ionization and cloud radiative forcing. Sci Rep, 11. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-99033-1
Nir Shavivโs spiral arm hypothesis
It is quite possible that Earthโs Ice Ages are related to the solar systemโs path through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy as proposed by Nir Shaviv.
Solar wind and its effect on galactic cosmic rays.
Dumboviฤ, M., Vrลกnak, B., ฤalogoviฤ, J., & Karlica, M. (2011). Cosmic ray modulation by solar wind disturbances. Astronomy and Astrophysics. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201016006
Does solar activity correlate with climate changes?
Solar activity correlates with many features of Earthโs climate, including surface temperature, La Nina frequency, and polar vortex strength. For an overview see here.
Connolly et al., R. (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21(6). doi:10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131
Soon, W., Connolly, R., & Connolly, M. (2015). Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth Science Reviews, 150, 409-452. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825215300349
Soon, W., Connolly, R., Connolly, M., Akasofu, S. I., Baliunas, S., Berglund, J., . . . al., e. (2023). The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850โ2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data. Climate, 11(9). doi:10.3390/cli11090179
Connolly et al., R. (2023). Challenges in Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Trends since 1850 Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 23(10). doi: 10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e
IPCC AR6 cannot attribute extreme weather to humans, but they try.
โโฆ both thermodynamic and dynamic processes are involved in the changes of extremes in response to warming. Anthropogenic forcing (e.g., increases in greenhouse gas concentrations) directly affects thermodynamic variables, including overall increases in high temperatures and atmospheric evaporative demand, and regional changes in atmospheric moisture, which intensify heatwaves, droughts and heavy precipitation events when they occur (high confidence). Dynamic processes are often indirect responses to thermodynamic changes, are strongly affected by internal climate variability, and are also less well understood. As such, there is low confidence in how dynamic changes affect the location and magnitude of extreme events in a warming climate.โAR6 WGI, page 1527
While AR6 says that it is hard to explain changes in severe weather without anthropogenic forcing, it is โextremely difficult to detect and attribute changesโ in precipitation/cyclones/drought/etc. to human activities (AR6 WGI, Chapter 11). They also note that โit remains uncertain whether past changes in Atlantic TC [tropical cyclone] activity are outside the range of natural variability.โ AR6 WGI page 1588.
1930s in the U.S. were warmer than today.
This is a complicated issue and no definitive answer can be given either way. The surface temperature data quality and coverage in the U.S. varies a lot since 1930 and the data processing algorithms are often questioned. Further, the differences between the warmest years in the 1930s and today are small and well below the accuracy of the measurements.
James Hansen and a large group of co-authors concluded in 2001 that the U.S. mean temperature had just reached a level comparable to that of the 1930s. He concludes: โThe U.S. was warm in 2000 but cooler than the warmest years in the 1930sโฆโ
Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Imhoff, M., Lawrence, W., Easterling, D., . . . Karl, T. (2001). A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 106(D20), 23947-23963. doi:10.1029/2001JD000354
The U.S. surface temperature data (called USHCN or the U.S. Historical Climatology Network) are ambiguous, and the trend is highly dependent upon the corrections applied to it. Figure 8 compares the final processed CONUS (Contiguous U.S. states) temperature anomaly in blue to the raw temperature anomaly in orange. The important point to notice is that the raw data from the 1930s is nearly as high as raw modern temperatures because the โcorrectedโ data in the 1930s is corrected down and the modern temperatures are โcorrectedโ up. The reasons given for this pattern are controversial. The other unusual thing about the plot is the corrections to the modern data, which is presumably more accurate, are larger than the corrections in the 1930s.
The final temperatures, shown in figure 8 in blue, are highly processed and missing stations are filled in with data from nearby stations. The raw data shown in figure 8 are only the data from real stations, so how many functioning stations exist in any given year matters. Figure 9 shows the number of stations reporting each year in orange. The final station count is forced to be constant by the infilling algorithm.
Figure 8. Comparison of the continental U.S. (โCONUSโ) USHCN v 2.5.5 weather station
The actual number of reporting weather stations in the 1930s and the 1990s is fairly high and only a few stations had to be infilled with the processing algorithm. Yet while the peak years in the 1930s and in the 1990s have similar raw data temperature anomalies, the final temperatures are different. This is the context behind the statement.
Figure 9. The number of weather stations reporting in each year is shown in orange. Only stations reporting in each of the 12 months of the year are counted to avoid seasonal anomalies. The number of values in the final dataset (some are infilled with the algorithm) are shown in blue. The apparent loss of โaccuracyโ in figure 8, after 2000 is at least partially due to the loss of reporting weather stations.
More on the U.S. temperature record, including additional references and datasets that indicate the 1930s is warmer than 2000, can be seen here. The post also provides the official explanation for the โcorrections.โ
James Hansen and co-authors also wrote the following in 1999, link:
โWhatโs happening to our climate? Was the heat wave and drought in the Eastern United States in 1999 a sign of global warming?
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s โDust Bowlโ that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeckโs Grapes of Wrath.โ (James Hansen, 1999)
Winter temperatures are rising and summer temperatures have hardly changed.
This is a common assumption, but the real story of winter versus summer warming rates is more complex. Models predict that winters and nights will warm faster than summers and days, but this trend only happens in some regions of the Earth. In other areas it is opposite and no one really understands why (Balling, Michaels, & Knappenberger, 1998).
Balling, R., Michaels, P., & Knappenberger, P. (1998). Analysis of winter and summer warming rates in gridded temperature time series. Climate Research, 9. doi:10.3354/cr009175
Wildfires were worse in the 1930s.
Figure 10. U.S. forest area burned since 1926, from the National Interagency Fire Center.
No change in U.S. hurricanes.
There is no trend or a slight decline in continental U.S. landfalling hurricanes over the past 120 years.
Klotzbach, P. J., Bowen, S. G., Pielke, R., & Bell, M. (2018). Continental U.S. Hurricane Landfall Frequency and Associated Damage: Observations and Future Risks. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc, 99, 1359-1376. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0184.1
No change in global cyclones
Figure 11. Global major hurricane frequency, from Ryan Maue.
Figure 12. Global tropical cyclone frequency, from Ryan Maue.
Schneider, D. P. (2006). Antarctic temperatures over the past two centuries from ice cores. Geophysical Research Letters, 33(16). doi:10.1029/2006GL027057
โBeyond the Antarctic Peninsula there has been little significant change in temperature.โTurner, et al., 2019
Turner, J., Marshall, G. J., Clem, K., Colwell, S., Phillips, T., & Lu, H. (2019). Antarctic temperature variability and change from station data.ย International Journal of Climatology, 2986-3007. doi:10.1002/joc.6378
Figure 13. Antarctic temperatures.
Global drought has not changed.
Meteorological drought has not increased in at least the past 120 years.
Vicente-Serrano, S. M., Peรฑa-Angulo, D., Beguerรญa, S., Domรญnguez-Castro, F., Tomรกs-Burguera, M., Noguera, I., . . . Ahmed, E. K. (2022). Global drought trends and future projections. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 380. doi:10.1098/rsta.2021.0285
Polar bear population is growing.
As of 2021 the world polar bear population was growing according to polar bear expert Susan Crockford.
Crockford, S. (2022). The State of the Polar Bear 2021. Global Warmig Policy Foundation.
Great barrier reef is growing and reached record levels.
Figure 14. Great Barrier Reef growth record, Afterย Peter Riddย using data from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Climate change can kill maple trees?
This is highly speculative, but claimed, see here.
Climate change and prostitution.
Farley, M. (2022). Making the connections: resource extraction, prostitution, poverty, climate change, and human rights. The International Journal of Human Rights, 26(6), 1032-1055. doi:10.1080/13642987.2021.1997999
Climate change affects beer quality.
Mozny, M., Trnka, M., & Vlach, V. (2023). Climate-induced decline in the quality and quantity of European hops calls for immediate adaptation measures. Nature. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-41474-5
Climate change in video games.
Yes, there are climate change video games, see here and here.
If you donโt find climate change is a problem your money dries up.
โOn March 7, 2019, Senator Schumer (together with Senators Carper, Reed, Van Hollen, White-house, Markey, Schatz, Smith, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Booker, Stabenow, Klobuchar, Hassan, Merkley, and Feinstein) introduced Senate bill S.729:โ
โ . . . to prohibit the use of funds to Federal agencies to establish a panel, task force, advisory committee, or other effort to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change, and for other purposes.โKoonin, 2021, p 202
Incredibly shocking, the U.S. Senate attempting to legislate scientific research outcomes, it doesnโt get worse than this. Fortunately, the bill failed to pass, but the political pressure to find humanโs caused recent climate changes is overwhelming.
Filing reports on how climate change affects businesses.
The U.S. SEC have tried to implement a new climate change impact filing requirement, see here. However the rule has been temporarily halted by the courts (see here).
It has been criticized as unnecessarily punitive and expensive.
Renewable energy is a trillion-dollar business.
A recent McKinsey report expects $9.2 trillion to be spent on reaching net zero by 2050.
Scafetta, N., & Willson, R. (2014). ACRIM total solar irradiance satellite composite validation versus TSI proxy models. Astrophysics and Space Science, 350(2), 421-442. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-013-1775-9
Soon, W., Connolly, R., & Connolly, M. (2015). Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth Science Reviews, 150, 409-452. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825215300349
Connolly et al., R. (2023). Challenges in Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Trends since 1850 Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 23(10). doi: 10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e
We are looking for the range of natural variability.
โโฆ a signi๏ฌcant part of the 20th century warming may be interpreted as the result of natural climatic variationsโฆโHumlum, 2011
Humlum, O., Solheim, J.-E., & Stordahl, K. (2011). Identifying natural contributions to late Holocene climate change. Global and Planetary Change, 79(1), 145-156. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2011.09.005
Here is a discussion of natural variability in the Arctic by Judith Curry.
โThese results support the notion that the enhanced wintertime warming over high northern latitudes from 1965 to 2000 was mainly a reflection of unforced variability of the coupled climate system.โ(Wallace, Qiang, Smoliak, & Johanson, 2012)
Wallace, J., Q. F., Smoliak, B. V., & Johanson, C. M. (2012). Simulated versus observed patterns of warming over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents during the cold season. Earth, Atmospheric, And Planetary Sciences, 109(36). doi:10.1073/pnas.1204875109
More government control.
โThe politicianโs power increases because exercising power increases it and people will give up their freedoms in exchange for security, whether the danger is real or not.โ(May, Politics and Climate Change: A History, 2020c, p. 15)
May, A. (2020c). Politics and Climate Change: A History. Springfield, Missouri: American Freedom Publications.
โNo matter if the science of global warming is all phonyโฆclimate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.โChristine Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment, speaking to the editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald in 1998.
โThis is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.โChristiana Figueres, February 4th, 2015
None of the countries participating in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol had any idea what the treaty would cost them, either in jobs or standard of living. They also had no idea what the benefits would be. William Nordhaus, the famous Yale economist and Nobel laureate, called the Kyoto Protocol a:
โconceptual disaster; it has no coherence politically or economically or environmentally.โWilliam Nordhaus, (Yale University, 2007, pp. 131-132).
Kyoto had little to do with climate change, it was mainly an enormous transfer of money from wealthy countries to poor countries. (May, Politics and Climate Change: A History, 2020c, pp. 236-237)
Burning wood and dung for heat or to cook is deadly.
โTraditional biofuelsโ are the burning of wood and dung in houses or businesses for heat, light, or cooking. This is not desirable because it produces toxic air pollution. The indoor air pollution caused by traditional biofuels, causes 4% of global deaths. A major study, published in The Lancet, estimates that more than two million deaths can be attributed to indoor air pollution in 2019 (Christopher Murray, 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that four million deaths, every year, are caused by indoor air pollution. Domestic wood burning is not just a problem in the developing world, the European Environment Agency, WHO, and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research suggest that over 40% of toxic emissions are from residential biomass burning. The UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural affairs (DEFRA) estimates that 38% of UK air pollution is due to wood-burning stove emissions.โ
โThe energy-intensiveness of industrial agriculture is well-documentedโ
โThe energy basis of industrial food production has a rich tradition, but quantitative analysis of changes in energy use in agriculture has been limited by the lack of consistent data. This analysis used a new methodology for calculating the direct and indirect use of fossil fuels in agriculture. The procedure was used to quantify energy use in USA agriculture from 1910 to 1990. The results showed a substantial overall increase in energy use from 1910 through the 1970s, and a shift from gasoline to diesel fuel and electricity. The use of all fuels declined in the 1980s.โ
โEnergy productivity rose in the 1980s due to a diminution in the rate of energy use, a reduction in the number of harvested acres, and larger farms. The results showed a clear response of farmers to higher energy prices that resulted in technical and managerial changes that improved energy productivity.โ(Cleveland, 1995)
In essence the higher energy prices in the 1980s led to small farmers selling out to larger more efficient farmers, improving overall productivity. Small farmers being forced to sell out to larger farmers was epidemic in the 1980s and mostly due to the high cost of gasoline and diesel.
Cleveland, C. (1995, September). The direct and indirect use of fossil fuels and electricity in USA agriculture, 1910-1990. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 111-121. doi:10.1016/0167-8809(95)00615-Y
Fossil fuels built western civilization.
The 20th century has been called the โAge of Oilโ and with good reason. It was a century when life expectancy doubled and extreme poverty dropped from 80% to less than 10%. The drop in poverty is closely correlated (R2= 0.99) to fossil fuels consumed.
Yergin, D. (1991). The Prize. New York: Touchstone.
โIn recent years, the overused word โsustainabilityโ has fostered a narrative in which human needs and aspirations have taken a back seat to the green austerity of Net Zero and โdegrowthโ. The ruling classes of a fading West are determined to save the planet by immiserating their fellow citizens. Their agenda is expected to cost the world $6 trillion per year for the next 30 years. Meanwhile, they will get to harvest massive green subsidies and live like Renaissance potentates.โSee Joel Kotkin, Spiked, here for more.
China builds two coal powerplants a week.
In 2022 China granted permits for 106 coal power plants across 82 sites.
China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined.
Figure 15. Coal consumption for the whole world compared to China from ourworldindata.org.
Anti-environmentalism is rampant.
Polish farmers protest EU environmental regulations.
Belgian farmers protest excessive environmental rules.
You must be logged in to post a comment.