{"id":299394,"date":"2024-02-02T16:38:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T15:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299394"},"modified":"2024-02-02T16:38:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T15:38:52","slug":"punching-back-at-counterpunchs-false-climate-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299394","title":{"rendered":"Punching Back at Counterpunch\u2019s False Climate Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A website called Counterpunch.com ran a story on January 31st saying that we must solve climate change or disaster will befall us. The story is titled, \u201cSolving Climate Change\u2026or Else!\u201d <\/a>by Stan Cox<\/a>. As we\u2019ve written time<\/a> and again<\/a> on Climate Realism,<\/em> these sorts of claims about worsening disasters are easily proven false simply by looking at historical data. The story cites other sources such as the New York Times<\/em> but has no new information itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story leads with this claim:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cEarth is finishing up its warmest year in the past 174 years and very likely the past 125,000.\u201d (Though it\u2019s not the Times<\/em>\u2019s style, that latter figure should have had a couple of exclamation points after it!) Furthermore, according to<\/a> the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s chief scientist, \u201cNot only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA\u2019s 174-year climate record \u2014 it was the warmest by far.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then after establishing what they believed to be a record warm year, they immediately go towards trying to link catastrophes to the warmth in 2023 without any real evidence to support it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you don\u2019t have to wait for the distant future to see the impact of such accelerated heating.  Just look at current global data. Comparing 2023 to 2022, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported<\/a> a worldwide rise of 60% in the number of deaths from landslides, 278% from wildfires, and 340% from storms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the landslides claim. Landslides aren\u2019t a direct result of climate change, but rather are a symptom of weather events, such as excess rainfall saturating the ground and weakening it. Put simply, weather events are not climate<\/a>. The following table is from Chapter 12 of the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Page 90<\/a> of Chapter 12 Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment.<\/a>  It essentially charts the UN IPCC\u2019s assessment of the odds that each type of extreme weather is due to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, the increased wildfires and storms claim made by counterpunch.com are also addressed by the IPCC in the table below.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Table 1 from Page 90 \u2013 Chapter 12 of the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Emergence of Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs) in time periods, for the present-day, 2050, and 2100. The color corresponds to the confidence of the region with the highest confidence: white colors indicate where evidence of a climate change signal is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As can be seen from the table, there is no evidence of any increase or decrease, globally or by region, in the frequency, severity or extent of frost, mean precipitation, river floods, heavy precipitation and pluvial floods, landslides<\/strong>, aridity, hydrological drought, agricultural or ecological drought, fire weather or wildfires<\/strong>, mean wind speed, severe wind storms or tornados, tropical cyclones or hurricanes, sand and dust storms, snow glacial or ice sheets, heavy snowfall and ice storms, hail, snow avalanche, relative sea levels, coastal floods, coastal erosion, marine heatwaves, ocean acidity, or air pollution weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to no increase in landslides or wildfires, the IPCC states there\u2019s no increase in storms overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the \u201cincreasing disasters\u201d claim made by counterpunch.com is completely nullified because there\u2019s no evidence to support it whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the claims of the hottest year ever in 2023 going back 125,000 years, that too is false. A\u00a0study in 2013 by Marcott, et al.<\/a>\u00a0reconstructed temperatures from the present back to 11,300 years ago. Figure 2 shows clearly that temperatures about 9500 years ago known as the\u00a0Holocene Climatic Optimum<\/a>\u00a0were warmer than present-day.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 1: Temperature and carbon dioxide change during the Holocene. Black curve, global temperature reconstruction by Marcott et al., 2013. Red curve, CO2 levels as measured reported in Monnin et al., 2004. Importantly, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), in the red line, began increasing 8200 years ago even as temperatures, the black line, went down.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Clearly the author\u00a0Stan Cox<\/a>\u00a0has no significant comprehension of climate data and climate history but prefers to simply regurgitate claims made in other publications as if they were fact. This lack of attention to detail and facts might explain why even after being\u00a0online since 1993<\/a>, counterpunch.com remains virtually unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Punching Back at Counterpunch\u2019s False Climate Claims<\/a>\u00a0appeared first on<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0ClimateRealism<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A website called Counterpunch.com ran a story on January 31st saying that we must solve climate change or disaster will befall us. The story is titled, \u201cSolving Climate Change\u2026or Else!\u201d\u00a0by\u00a0Stan Cox. As we\u2019ve written\u00a0time\u00a0and\u00a0again\u00a0on\u00a0Climate Realism,\u00a0these sorts of claims about worsening disasters are easily proven false simply by looking at historical data. The story cites other sources such as the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0but has no new information itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":299402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A website called Counterpunch.com ran a story on January 31st saying that we must solve climate change or disaster will befall us. The story is titled, \u201cSolving Climate Change\u2026or Else!\u201d\u00a0by\u00a0Stan Cox. As we\u2019ve written\u00a0time\u00a0and\u00a0again\u00a0on\u00a0Climate Realism,\u00a0thes","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691819743,691826685,691821642,691821016,691825531],"class_list":{"0":"post-299394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-propaganda","10":"tag-counterpunch","11":"tag-ipcc-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","12":"tag-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-noaa","13":"tag-warmest-year","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0weather_pictures-1890x699-1.jpg?fit=1890%2C699&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1fSW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":233215,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=233215","url_meta":{"origin":299394,"position":0},"title":"USA Today Blames Climate Change and \u2018Weird Weather\u2019 for Higher Disaster Costs and Crop Declines \u2013 Wrong on Both Counts!","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/12\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"A\u00a0USA Today\u00a0story from December 7th, 2022 by Elizabeth Weise claims climate change is causing droughts and other \u201cweird weather,\u201d that is hampering crop production. 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What CNN doesn\u2019t seem to understand is that the limit was reached\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"1.5\u00b0C of Warming\"","block_context":{"text":"1.5\u00b0C of Warming","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=1-5c-of-warming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0FldGJXeXEAAGx7D.jpg?fit=1200%2C1122&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0FldGJXeXEAAGx7D.jpg?fit=1200%2C1122&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0FldGJXeXEAAGx7D.jpg?fit=1200%2C1122&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0FldGJXeXEAAGx7D.jpg?fit=1200%2C1122&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0FldGJXeXEAAGx7D.jpg?fit=1200%2C1122&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299394"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299404,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299394\/revisions\/299404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/299402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}