February 8, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
The title Apocalypses? means: are all the future dire climate predictions accurate? Here is scientist Steven E. Koonin’s conclusion on floods, droughts, and wildfires:
Dear Friends and Family,
The title Apocalypses? means: are all the future dire climate predictions accurate? Here is scientist Steven E. Koonin’s conclusion on floods, droughts, and wildfires:
Floods, droughts, and fires bring great tragedy and sorrow, and their consequences can be devastating. As the world gets more and more connected through communications, we become more and more aware of these events when they happen. But that does not make them “further proof” of climate change. In the end the data tells us there’s not very much changing very quickly with precipitation, either globally or in the U.S.
Of interest is an article in yesterday’s (2/07/2022) Wall Street Journal titled “Climate Scientists Encounter Computer Model’s Limits.” Here are some pertinent excerpts:
Computer Models: As world leaders consider how to limit greenhouse gases, they depend on what computer climate models predict. But as algorithms and the computer they run on become more powerful – able to crunch far more data and do better simulations – climate models are hitting a wall. They are running up against the complexity of the physics involved: the limits of scientific computing, and uncertainties around the nuances of climate behavior. Despite significant improvements, the new models are still too imprecise to be taken at face value, which means climate change projections still require judgment calls.
Clouds: For almost five years, an international consortium of scientists was chasing clouds, determined to solve a problem that bedeviled climate change forecasts for a generation: How do these wisps of water vapor affect global warming? Because clouds can both reflect solar radiation into space and trap heat from Earth’s surface, they are among the biggest challenges for scientists honing climate models. At any given time, clouds cover more than two-thirds of the planet. Their impact on climate depends on how reflective they are, how high they rise and whether it is day or night. They can accelerate warming or cool it down. Clouds are crucially important for regulating Earth’s energy balance.
IPCC Guidance: In its guidance to governments last year, the U.N. climate change panel for the first time played down the most extreme forecasts.
Source: Wall Street Journal 2/07/2022
Incidentally, I noted on September 17, 2018, in my Climate Change Postscript that the uncertainty of clouds/water vapor was a significant problem with climate change models. You can access the Postscript in the Climate Change Past Series.
Next: The next climate change epilogue will focus on Climate Change Communication Influencers and why crucial parts of the science are unsettled despite the narrative of “THE SCIENCE” concluding otherwise.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Computer Models: As world leaders consider how to limit greenhouse gases, they depend on what computer climate models predict. But as algorithms and the computer they run on become more powerful – able to crunch far more data and do better simulations – climate models are hitting a wall. They are running up against the complexity of the physics involved: the limits of scientific computing, and uncertainties around the nuances of climate behavior. Despite significant improvements, the new models are still too imprecise to be taken at face value, which means climate change projections still require judgment calls.
Clouds: For almost five years, an international consortium of scientists was chasing clouds, determined to solve a problem that bedeviled climate change forecasts for a generation: How do these wisps of water vapor affect global warming? Because clouds can both reflect solar radiation into space and trap heat from Earth’s surface, they are among the biggest challenges for scientists honing climate models. At any given time, clouds cover more than two-thirds of the planet. Their impact on climate depends on how reflective they are, how high they rise and whether it is day or night. They can accelerate warming or cool it down. Clouds are crucially important for regulating Earth’s energy balance.
IPCC Guidance: In its guidance to governments last year, the U.N. climate change panel for the first time played down the most extreme forecasts.
Source: Wall Street Journal 2/07/2022
Incidentally, I noted on September 17, 2018, in my Climate Change Postscript that the uncertainty of clouds/water vapor was a significant problem with climate change models. You can access the Postscript in the Climate Change Past Series.
Next: The next climate change epilogue will focus on Climate Change Communication Influencers and why crucial parts of the science are unsettled despite the narrative of “THE SCIENCE” concluding otherwise.
Happy Learning,
Harley
CLIMATE CHANGE EPILOGUES – Epilogue 2
APOCALYPSES? -- EXCERPTS
COMMON HEADLINES: On October 7, 2018, a headline in The New York Times said: “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040.” Another headline in The Washington Post on the very same day said: “The World Has Just Over a Decade to Get Climate Change Under Control, U.N. Scientists Say.”
These stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outlets around the world were based on a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is a United Nations body of 195 scientists and other members from around the globe responsible for assessing science related to climate change.
In early 2019, newly elected 29-year-old congresswoman Alexander Ocasio-Cortez said, “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change. For some reason the media latched onto the twelve years (2030), presumably because they thought that it helped to get across the message of how quickly we are approaching this and hence how urgently we need action. Unfortunately, this has led to a complete mischaracterization of what the report said.
What the IPCC had actually written in its 2018 report and press release was that in order to have a good chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial times, carbon emissions needed to decline 45% by 2030. The IPCC did not say the world would end, nor that civilization would collapse, if temperatures rose above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger (2020)
“Surging sea levels are inundating the coasts.” “Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent.” “Climate change will be an economic disaster.” You’ve heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all these statements are profoundly misleading.
When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that “the science is settled.” In reality, core questions – about the way the climate is responding to our influence and what the impacts will be – remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing but the why and how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe.
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin
EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS: Hurricanes: Scholars have found no trend in normalized losses. And it is not just hurricanes. There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornados or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact, we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. The IPCC says the same thing. “Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change.” Climate change has not resulted in increases in the frequency or intensity of many types of extreme weather. The IPCC “concluded that there’s little evidence of a spike in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornados.”
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger (2020)
Floods: The amount of water on the earth is essentially fixed. Almost all of it (some 97%) is in the oceans, and almost all of the rest is on the land – in ice and snow, in lakes and rivers, and in the groundwater. The sun’s energy moves water among these various reservoirs to form what’s termed “the hydrological cycle.” The largest and most dynamic part of this cycle is the flow of water from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. That water remains aloft for an average of ten days before condensing and falling back to the surface as rain or snow
Precipitation depends upon both how much water vapor is in the air and the air’s temperature. Water vapor will condense into liquid or ice – and falls out of the air when the temperature drops. For that reason, while the average annual precipitation over the globe is 38.6 inches of water, that is, if every location on earth received the same amount of precipitation every year, that’s about what we’d all get – in practice it varies greatly with the weather, the season, and most importantly, location.
All else being equal, the hydrological cycle is expected to intensify as the globe warms: that is, there’ll be more evaporation, and the warmer air will be able to carry more water, leading to more precipitation. This could lead to an increase in flooding is some areas, but since higher temperatures would also increase evaporation from land, droughts might also increase. There is little consensus among models exactly how, where, and when these changes would play out.
Droughts: Models project that the Southwest will become steadily drier as the globe warms, but the data shown for the 20th century are well within the historical context and, as the 5th assessment report notes, the current impact of human influences seems weak in comparison with natural variability.
The 2009 National Climate Assessment explicitly noted the large natural variability in Southwest droughts by including a graph of the Colorado River flow reconstructed back over 1,200 years. (Shown below). The accompanying text says, “These data reveal that some droughts in the past have been more severe and longer lasting than any experienced in the last 100 years.”
APOCALYPSES? -- EXCERPTS
COMMON HEADLINES: On October 7, 2018, a headline in The New York Times said: “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040.” Another headline in The Washington Post on the very same day said: “The World Has Just Over a Decade to Get Climate Change Under Control, U.N. Scientists Say.”
These stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outlets around the world were based on a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is a United Nations body of 195 scientists and other members from around the globe responsible for assessing science related to climate change.
In early 2019, newly elected 29-year-old congresswoman Alexander Ocasio-Cortez said, “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change. For some reason the media latched onto the twelve years (2030), presumably because they thought that it helped to get across the message of how quickly we are approaching this and hence how urgently we need action. Unfortunately, this has led to a complete mischaracterization of what the report said.
What the IPCC had actually written in its 2018 report and press release was that in order to have a good chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial times, carbon emissions needed to decline 45% by 2030. The IPCC did not say the world would end, nor that civilization would collapse, if temperatures rose above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger (2020)
“Surging sea levels are inundating the coasts.” “Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent.” “Climate change will be an economic disaster.” You’ve heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all these statements are profoundly misleading.
When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that “the science is settled.” In reality, core questions – about the way the climate is responding to our influence and what the impacts will be – remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing but the why and how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe.
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin
EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS: Hurricanes: Scholars have found no trend in normalized losses. And it is not just hurricanes. There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornados or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact, we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. The IPCC says the same thing. “Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change.” Climate change has not resulted in increases in the frequency or intensity of many types of extreme weather. The IPCC “concluded that there’s little evidence of a spike in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornados.”
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger (2020)
Floods: The amount of water on the earth is essentially fixed. Almost all of it (some 97%) is in the oceans, and almost all of the rest is on the land – in ice and snow, in lakes and rivers, and in the groundwater. The sun’s energy moves water among these various reservoirs to form what’s termed “the hydrological cycle.” The largest and most dynamic part of this cycle is the flow of water from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. That water remains aloft for an average of ten days before condensing and falling back to the surface as rain or snow
Precipitation depends upon both how much water vapor is in the air and the air’s temperature. Water vapor will condense into liquid or ice – and falls out of the air when the temperature drops. For that reason, while the average annual precipitation over the globe is 38.6 inches of water, that is, if every location on earth received the same amount of precipitation every year, that’s about what we’d all get – in practice it varies greatly with the weather, the season, and most importantly, location.
All else being equal, the hydrological cycle is expected to intensify as the globe warms: that is, there’ll be more evaporation, and the warmer air will be able to carry more water, leading to more precipitation. This could lead to an increase in flooding is some areas, but since higher temperatures would also increase evaporation from land, droughts might also increase. There is little consensus among models exactly how, where, and when these changes would play out.
Droughts: Models project that the Southwest will become steadily drier as the globe warms, but the data shown for the 20th century are well within the historical context and, as the 5th assessment report notes, the current impact of human influences seems weak in comparison with natural variability.
The 2009 National Climate Assessment explicitly noted the large natural variability in Southwest droughts by including a graph of the Colorado River flow reconstructed back over 1,200 years. (Shown below). The accompanying text says, “These data reveal that some droughts in the past have been more severe and longer lasting than any experienced in the last 100 years.”
In 2014, the IPCC’s AR5 was similarly straightforward stating in Chapter 5, “There is high confidence for droughts during the last millennium of greater magnitude and longer duration than those observed since the beginning of the 20th century in many areas.”
Wildfires: Drought exacerbates wildfires, which garner more dire headlines than any other precipitation-related phenomenon. Sophisticated satellite sensors first began monitoring wildfires globally in 1998. Unexpectedly, analysis of the images showed that the area burned annually declined by about 25% from 1998 to 2015. Researchers attribute this decline to human activities, specifically the expansion and intensification of agriculture:
In other words, whatever influence a changing climate might have had on wildfires globally in recent decades, human factors unrelated to climate were dominant. But the satellite data also showed a significant increase in the intensity and reach of fires in the western United States. Climate changes are surely playing a role here. Less rainfall and higher temperatures make for drier “fuel” that’s easier to ignite and promotes a fire’s spread and intensification.
But factors other than climate must also play an important, if not dominant role, since fires declined in the early part of the 20th century even as California’s drought conditions showed no trend, as seen in the figure below. As you can see since 1901, the six-year drought was at its worst during 2014; by 2019 coverage was of the “wet” winter. It is hard to justify a climate assessment analyzing any “trend” shorter than 10 years, even if that makes its conclusions less newsworthy. On longer timescales, the state has moved toward drought since 2000; it remains to be seen whether that will persist in the coming decades.
NOTE: The red curve shows the ten-month trailing average of monthly values, while the black curve shows the five-year trailing average.
“Human influences” can take many forms. Forest management (How much fuel is allowed to accumulate? Are fires suppressed or allowed to burn? How much development is permitted in or near forests?) and human-caused ignition (nearly 85% of US wildland fires have a human cause) are among the contributors. While we may not be able to fully quantify, much less control, the many climate-related influences on wildfires, we have significant power to address these human factors. By making the conversation about wildfires only one of unavoidable doom due to “climate change,” we miss an opportunity to take steps that would more directly curtail these catastrophes.
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin
California suffers from two major kinds of fires. First, there are wind-driven fires on the coastal shrubland, or chaparral, where most of the houses are built. Think Malibu and Oakland. Nineteen of the state’s most deadly and costly fires have taken place in chaparral. The second type is forest fires in places like the Sierra Nevada where there are far fewer people.
Mountain and coastal ecosystems have opposite problems. There are too many fires in the shrublands and too few prescribed burns in the Sierras. Dr. Jon Keeley, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in California, refers to the Sierra fires as “fuel-dominated” and the shrubland fires as “wind-dominated.” Keeley published a paper in 2018 finding that all ignition sources of fires had declined in California except for electric power lines. “Since the year 2000 there’ve been a half-million acres burned due to powerline-ignited fires, which is five times more than we saw in the previous 20 years,” he said. “Some people would say, ‘Well, that’s associated with climate change.’ But there’s no relationship between climate and these big fire events.”
What then is driving the increase in fires? “If you recognize that 100% of these shrubland fires are started by people, and you add six million people (since 2000), that’s a good explanation for why we’re getting more and more of these fires,” said Keeley.
Fires in Australia are similar. Greater fire damage in Australia is, as in California, due in part to greater development in fire-prone areas, and in part to the accumulation of wood fuel. One scientist estimates that there is ten times more wood fuel in Australia’s forests today than when Europeans arrived. The main reason is that the government of Australia, as in California, refused to do controlled burns, for both environment and human health reasons. As such, the fires would have occurred even had Australia’s climate not warmed.
The bottom line is that other human activities have a greater impact on the frequency and severity of forest fires than the emission of greenhouse gases. And that’s great news, because it gives Australia, California, and Brazil far greater control over their future than the apocalyptic news media suggested.
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger (2020)
Conclusion: Floods, droughts, and fires bring great tragedy and sorrow, and their consequences can be devastating. As the world gets more and more connected through communications, we become more and more aware of these events when they happen. But that does not make them “further proof” of climate change. In the end, the data tells us there’s not very much changing very quickly with precipitation, either globally or in the U.S.
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin (2021)
EXTREME FUTURE PROJECTIONS: Sea Level Rise: The question is not whether sea level is rising – it’s been doing that for the past 20,000 years. Instead, what we want to know is whether human influences are accelerating that rise. Since human influences increased dramatically after about 1950, the best way to assess whether sea levels are going up faster than they would without us is to compare measurements since then with those in the more distant past.
Analysis show that the Global Mean Sea Level was rising at the end of the 19th century – well before there were significant human influences on the climate – and since 1880 risen by some 250 mm (10 inches), for an average rate of 1.8 mm (0.07 inches) per year. In the context of the earth’s hydrological cycle, these are small numbers.
For the past three decades, sea level has been going up by about 3 mm (0.12 inches) each year – higher than the overall average rate. The rate of rise between 1925 and 1940 – a period almost as long as the 18-year satellite record then available – was almost the same as the recent satellite value (3 mm (0.12 inches) per year.
Whatever the future changes in the global average, local sea level is what matters for planning adaptation measures, and in the coastal places that matter most to humans, it’s been measured far longer and more accurately than global values. In summary, we don’t know how much of the rise in global sea levels is due to human-caused warming and how much is a product of long-term natural cycles. There’s little doubt that by contributing to warming we have contributed to sea level rise, but there’s also scant evidence that this contribution has been or will be significant, much less disastrous. The message put forth that human-caused warming is the sole source of rising sea levels gives the impression that reducing emissions is a solution – alas, because ice melting lags behind warming even if we were the culprit and ceased all emissions tomorrow, global sea level would continue to rise.
Food Production: In August 2019, the New York Times ran the headline “Climate Change Threatens the World’s Food Supply, United Nations Warns.” The Times’s description followed the standard template for such coverage – it’s already bad, it’s going to get a lot worse, but we can take prompt and drastic action to avert the worst.
Crop yields depend upon several factors – plant genetics, nutrients available in the soil, agricultural practices, and the weather manifestations of climate (temperature, insolation, and rainfall). But you might be surprised to learn that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide has been a significant factor in yield improvements, as it boosts the rate of photosynthesis and alters plant physiology to use water more efficiently. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has also fertilized the natural world.
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin
Two scientists at Potsdam Institute found that food production could increase even at four to five degrees Celsius warming above preindustrial levels. Technical improvements such as fertilizer, irrigation and mechanization, mattered more than climate change. The report also found, intriguingly, that climate change policies were more likely to hurt food production and worsen rural poverty than climate change itself. The “climate policies” the authors refer to are ones that would make energy more expensive and result in more bioenergy use (the burning of biofuels and biomass), which in turn would increase land scarcity and drive-up food costs. The IPCC comes to the same conclusion.
Source: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger
POLLUTION: A 2019 article in Foreign Affairs by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, was entitled “Climate Change Is Already Killing Us.” Astoundingly, the article conflates death due to ambient and household air pollution with deaths due to human-induced climate change. The World Health organization itself has said that indoor air pollution in poor countries – the result of cooking with wood and animal and crop waste – is the most serious environmental problem in the world, affecting up to three billion people. This is not the result of climate change. It is the result of poverty. Pollution deaths aren’t caused by a changing climate; it’s the pollution itself that kills. Such brazen misinformation by the WHO’s leadership is particularly upsetting for its potential to diminish confidence in the organization’s vital public health mission. [Note: Pollution is usually caused by incomplete combustion of a fuel source].
OVERALL CONCLUSION
It’s clear that media, politicians, and often the assessment reports themselves blatantly misrepresent what the science says about climate and catastrophes. Those failures indict the scientists who write and too-casually review the reports, the reporters who uncritically repeat them, the editors who allow that to happen, the activists and their organizations who fan the fires of alarm, and the experts whose public silence endorses the deception. The constant repetition of these and many other climate fallacies turns them into accepted “Truths.”
Source: Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| cc_e2l_apocalypse_--_epilogue_2.pdf |