Fictional Alarmism, Time for Some Debunking. Part I: Climate
When the news bulletin on television starts to use Hollywood film footage, you know you are being lied to big time! And this is exactly what happened in the Netherlands after the release of the IPCC report. A dramatic clip was shown with footage of forest fires, floods, and… footage from the disaster movie `The Day After Tomorrow.´ So what does this mean, and what does it tell us about the times we are in now?
Truth Died
If the narrative is a lie, it doesn´t matter that what is shown in the mainstream media is also fiction.
Even fact-checking has become a way to influence the public and has nothing to do with fact-checking, but more with checking if the information fits the current narrative. Thus, the public discourse is entirely killed. The IPCC report tells us that things were never this bad. Well, this rings a bell. Since my childhood, I remember the message that things couldn´t get worse. If everything which was predicted had come true, the world would be destroyed because of a nuclear war between the USA and USSR, AIDS would have killed us all, there would be no animals anymore, we would have run out of oil, acid rain would have destroyed all forests, the Amazon would be a desert now, there would be no ozone layer left, and we would live in an ice age now (remember? Ice age…, and now we have to believe that Earth will warm up by 5 degrees). This list is not extensive, but I could reproduce this list within one minute.
So now we have to believe that the Earth will warm up by five degrees, that the problem of discrimination has never been so big, that the police is dangerous and should be defunded, that the only way to get women emancipated is to kill men (especially white men), actually, emancipation is not necessary because we have to believe that we are gender fluid, and sea levels will rise to dangerous heights. Ah, and let´s not forget, all of this is, of course, our fault, and we have to teach our kids that they are guilty unless they exactly do what the MSM, WHO, UN etc. is telling them to do. It is hard to keep track of all the threats and fears we should be afraid of nowadays.
In this article, I will try to shed another light on some of the `problems´ we are supposed to be afraid of. Part I will be about climate-related things, part II about the rest.
Debunking the Rise in Wildfires
Footage of forest fires is usually impressive. The fire, firemen fighting the fire, houses that are burning and people who are fleeing away. This images make a big impression on us, so no wonder they are used a lot.
A forest fire is a natural event in nature. For example, in California, away from the coast, there is both written and forest evidence that the typical region burned every 27 years, thereby `cleaning up´ the forest by removing the fuel. When fires do not occur from time to time, the fuel level increases year after year. The eventual, inevitable fire is then ferocious. This also explains that poor forest management is causing more ferocious fires during the past 100 years. Perhaps the biggest issue related to forest management began in 1910 when it became a national policy to stop forest fires, especially in the West, as quickly as possible. Forest fires were considered bad. As a result of this approach, the amount of wood per acre increased, increasing the fuel supply over what would have existed if fires had been allowed to burn in some cases. Further, the forest lost many of its natural clearings without trees that would have resulted in natural wildfire breaks. Add to this approach the decrease in harvesting as a management tool, partly due to the lack of funding to mark and sell federal timber and partly due to public perception that tree harvesting, especially clear cutting, is always bad. Another important part of forestry is to thin underbrush; in Australia, this was stopped, and this was the cause of the wildfires we have seen at the start of 2020.
The idea of putting out fires and no harvesting was highlighted in U.S. Park Service lands, such as Yellowstone National Park. A document was issued to the Park Service warning about the big fire (1988) 10 years before it happened, with the suggestion of creating cleared treeless areas; it was not done. The end result of this lack of harvesting to control fires in advance and limiting fires resulted in many large, very hot wildfires that cannot be easily controlled. So changes in how we perform forestry are the reasons why wildfires have become more ferocious.
Data from NASA refutes claims made by climate alarmists that forest fires are becoming more prevalent as a result of climate change and that the world is losing its forests. In reality, there is a 25 percent decrease in the area burned from 2003 to 2019. These findings are consistent with other research published in Science. Globally, the total acreage burned by fires declined 24 percent between 1998 and 2015. Scientists determined that the decline in burned area was greatest in savannas and grasslands, where fires are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems and habitat conservation. Using NASA satellites to detect fires and burn scars from space, researchers have found that an ongoing transition from nomadic cultures to settled lifestyles and intensifying agriculture has led to a steep drop in the use of fire for land clearing and an overall drop in natural and human-caused fires worldwide.
1998–2017
The map above, based on data from the international research team, shows annual trends in burned area over the study period. Blues represent areas where the trend was toward less burning, whether natural or human-caused, while red areas had more burning. The line plot shows the annual fluctuations in the global burned area and the overall downward trend. The research team, led by Niels Andela of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, analyzed fire data derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. They then compared these data sets with regional and global trends in agriculture and socio-economic development.
By 2015, savanna fires in Africa have declined by 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 square miles), an area the size of Texas. When land use intensifies on savannas, fire is used less and less as a tool. As soon as people invest in houses, crops, and livestock, they don’t want these fires close by anymore. The way of doing agriculture changes, the practices change, and fire disappears from the grassland landscape. A different pattern occurs in tropical forests and other humid regions near the equator. Fire rarely occurs naturally in these forests; but as humans settle an area, they often use fire to clear land for cropland and pastures. As more people move into these areas and increase the investments in agriculture, they set fewer fires and the burned area declines again. There is a substantial global decline over the satellite record, and the loss of fire has some really important implications for the Earth system. Fewer and smaller fires on the savanna mean that there are more trees and shrubs instead of open grasslands. Regions with less fire see a decrease in carbon monoxide emissions and an improvement in air quality during fire season. With less fire, savanna vegetation is increasing, taking up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Since the 80´s the world has been re-foresting, meaning new tree growth has exceeded deforestation. The area of the Earth covered with forest has increased by an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined.
Debunking Dangerous Sea Level Rising
Of all known and imagined consequences of climate change, many people fear sea-level rise most. But efforts to determine what causes seas to rise are marred by poor data and disagreements about methodology.
The end of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago caused the sea level to rise by a huge amount, about 120 meters. This change happened rapidly at first, caused primarily by the melting of huge ice sheets covering North America and Eurasian landmasses, which disappeared about 8000–5000 years ago. The West Antarctic Ice sheet began to melt at that time also, but at a much slower rate, and that melting continues today. This melting will continue until it is gone in another 7,000 years or so, or until the next Ice Age. Other smaller ice sheets that once existed in the Antarctic are already gone.
From 1915–45, an independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred. However, the sea-level rise was not affected by the warming; it continued at the same rate of 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. This contradicts that the temperature of seawater or the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide directly affects sea-level rise. It shows that sea-level rise does not depend on the use of fossil fuels.
Sea levels are, in fact, rising at a constant rate. The trend has been measured by a network of tidal gauges, many of which have been collecting data for over a century.
Sea level has been overall rising since the last ice age, with some ups and downs. Sea level has been rising for the past 200 years….Humans are not going to stop sea-level rise on the time scale of a few centuries by ceasing emissions of CO2.
Judith Curry, “The Blame Game.” Climate Etc. August 14, 2017.
Sea levels seem to be rising steadily, and if you look at studies, the range is about 1.5 to 3 mm a year, 1.5 to 3 centimeters in a century is well within natural bounds. Different studies can show different numbers because methods and measured areas can differ.
But what about Greenland and Antarctica? If it gets warmer and they melt, will sea levels rise?
Greenland east is not melting; Greenland west, the Disco Bay is melting, but it has been melting for 200 years, at least, and the rate of melting decreased in the last 50–100 years. But more important, in 5,000 years, the whole of the Northern Hemisphere experienced warming, the Holocene Warm Optimum, and it was 2.5 degrees warmer than today. And still, no problem with Antarctica or with Greenland; still, no higher sea level. There couldn’t have been more melting than after the Ice Age. Then the sea level rise was up to 10 mm per year. Hudson Bay, in a very short period, melted away: and it came up to 12 mm per year. And these rates were when the ice caps were vanishing.
The West Antarctic ice sheet is melting because it is being undermined by warm water rising up from below in the Amundsen Sea. This is because prevailing winds are from land to sea and blow away the cold surface water, which is then replaced by warmer Antarctic bottom water. It has collapsed before, most recently 1500 years ago, and may collapse again if this keeps up. In the Arctic, we are now in the middle of a century-long warming period that started abruptly at the start of the twentieth century. This abrupt beginning rules out any greenhouse effect as its cause and indicates that a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system directed warm water to the north occurred at the turn of the century. Since we know that the Gulf stream now brings warm water to the Arctic, it is likely that it assumed its present northerly course at that time. It is futile to try to predict any of this from computer models using the old carbon dioxide global warming paradigm. Antarctica may only contribute about 30 centimeters of sea-level rise by 2100.
Debunking Rise in Extreme Weather
Just about every type of extreme weather event is becoming less frequent and less severe in recent years as our planet continues its modest warming in the wake of the Little Ice Age. While global warming activists attempt to spin a narrative of ever-worsening weather, the objective facts tell a completely different story.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed in 2012 a record for the fewest tornadoes in recorded history. Not only was it a record for lack of tornado activity, it also absolutely shattered the previous record for the fewest tornadoes in a 12-month period. In 2012, 197 tornadoes struck the United States. Prior to that year, the fewest tornadoes striking the United States during a 12-month period occurred from June 1991 through July 1992, when 247 tornadoes occurred.
That new tornado record is particularly noteworthy because of recent advances in tornado detection technology. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is able to detect more tornadoes in recent years than in prior decades due to technological advances. Even with such enhanced tornado detection capability, the past 12 months shattered all prior records for recorded tornadoes.
NOAA posted a list of the five `lowest non-overlapping 12-month counts on record from 1954-present.´ Notably, each of these low-tornado periods occur since 1986, precisely during the time period global warming alarmists claim global warming is causing more extreme weather events such as tornadoes. According to NOAA, the lowest non-overlapping 12 month counts on record from 1954-present, with the starting month, are:
197 tornadoes — starting in May 2012
247 tornadoes — starting in June 1991
270 tornadoes — starting in November 1986
289 tornadoes — starting in December 2001
298 tornadoes — starting in June 2000
Hurricane inactivity has also been setting all-time records. In 2012 the United States was undergoing its longest stretch in recorded history without a major hurricane strike, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. It was more than 2,750 days, while the prior record was less than 2,300 days between major hurricane strikes.
Droughts are also less frequent and less severe than in prior, colder centuries. Extreme weather events are becoming quite rare. The data on drought conditions from the EPA show that there is no meaningful increase from 1900 to 2016. In fact, the past decade has been relatively mild on the drought front, with several years below average.
This drought statistic is based on the Palmer Drought Index, a widely used measure of drought.
Debunking Climate Change Is Caused by Humans
Climate is on the agenda since All Gore showed `An Inconvenient Truth´ in 2006 (15 years ago). The message was:
1. Evil carbon dioxide from human fossil burning is heating the climate to unprecedented levels.
2. This is causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise at an accelerating and disastrous rate.
3. The salvation of our planet depends upon an immediate transition to wind and solar energy, electric cars and bicycles, and less consumption-oriented lifestyles.
The world’s mean temperatures have been rising at a pretty constant rate of about 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years and is likely to continue, although with both warmer and cooler fluctuations, for many hundreds of years into the future. The overall warming trend did not begin with the fossil-burning Industrial Revolution and did not change in any detectable way due to human influences.
The global temperature mainly depends on how much energy the planet receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back into space, quantities that change very little. The amount of energy radiated by the Earth depends significantly on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, particularly the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one- to two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago.
The total solar irradiance (TSI), which is by far the largest contributor to the energy input to the Earth’s climate system, has been measured from space for the last four decades. Solar activity, based on models that closely fit past trends, looks to be headed for a sharp downward turn. Indeed, the activity could decline to levels not seen since the so-called `Little Ice Age,´ an unusually cold period that stretched across the Northern Hemisphere and lasted from roughly 1650 to 1850.
There are also natural causes for warming and cooling effects, for example, the natural but transient climatic effects of volcanoes and El Niño. Mathematically removing these events leaves an underlying climate trend, which is far less dramatic.
TLT is without correction for natural incidents, and TLT-SST-VOL is with correction.
Furthermore, carbon dioxide emissions and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have ecological and economic benefits, not only costs. Government mitigation policies will have negligible impacts on climate.
Conclusion
Although global warming activists and their media allies often claim global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, virtually all extreme weather events are becoming less frequent and less severe as our planet gradually warms. There will always be some extreme weather events, even as they become less frequent and less severe. Global warming activists can always highlight some extreme weather event occurring somewhere on the planet and paint a false narrative that global warming must be to blame, even though extreme weather events are becoming rarer as the planet gradually warms and returns to pre-Little Ice Age norms. We must not try to influence climate, and it would be arrogant to think we can. Adaptation to climate is a much more sensible and durable approach.
Interesting links:
4 Things You Should Know About the New European Green Deal: It’s a Hard Rain’s a-Going to Fall
Fictional Alarmism, Time for Some Debunking. Part II: Social Issues
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