NBC News' Chuck Todd recently asserted that we humans can control the climate and the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events (hurricanes, floods, droughts) and disasters (wildfires) with our CO2 emissions. He has declared the science is "settled" on this point and therefore no "denier" is allowed on his Meet the Press program. But Todd and the members of his panel have recited claims that are contravened by observational evidence and scientific publications.
Image Source: The Western Journal via Youtube
On 30 December, 2018, the United States news media (NBC) put their political advocacy on full display in a Meet the Press program dedicated to tackling the issue of climate change in the U.S.
The episode's focus was on how to persuade Americans that immediate action to eliminate CO2 emissions was required to prevent catastrophic hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, sea level rise…from wreaking havoc across the U.S. landscape. The hour-long program was entitled "How do we explain the urgency of climate change?" .
Those who might offer dissenting information or challenges to the panelists' viewpoints were not in attendance. Only those who agreed with the host, Chuck Todd, were permitted. This was clearly stated at the outset.
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Chuck Todd (NBC News):
"We're not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter, and human activity is a major cause. Period. We're not going to give time to deniers. The science is settled even if political opinion is not."
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NBC News report on climate change
(a narration accompanied by footage of wildfires, floods, desperate Americans…)
• "Climate-related disasters…from wildfires…to more intense storms…extreme rain events and floods are already a serious threat…and getting worse."
• (Man on the street:) "I saw the water mark in my basement. It was up to my nose."
• "Glaciers are disappearing. And Arctic ice melt is producing rising sea levels and re-writing global weather patterns. All 5 of the warmest years on record in the Arctic have come since 2014 [NOAA]."
• "And these rising temperatures have already cost the U.S. economy."
• (Iowa farmer:) "We're not talking about whether you and I eat tonight. We're talking about the survival of [the] human species over the long term."
• "This year a series of climate reports… issued dire warnings of economic and human catastrophe if there is not immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the federal response has been political paralysis…and denial."
[A video of an odd 2015 Senate floor episode in which a snowball was brought into the congressional building from the outside (apparently to demonstrate it was cold outside during winter). This footage was seemingly illustrative of what "political paralysis…and denial" look like.]
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Chuck Todd (NBC News):
• "Just look at this year alone, the cost of three disasters. There's Hurricane Michael, $25 billion; insurance claims for the California fires were up to $9 billion; $50 billion for Hurricane Florence."
• "Few states have been hit harder by climate change than California."
[Video images of fires and people talking about the fires' devastation appear, indicating that wildfires and climate change are viewed by NBC News as one in the same.]
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Dr. Kate Marvel (NASA):
"We're talking about something that affects the planet that we live on. We're talking about global warming, but we're also talking changes to rainfall patterns, changes to extreme events like heat waves and floods and droughts and hurricanes."
"Warm air holds more water vapor. So even if you live in the Midwest you're going to see increased downpours. The rain is really going to dump on you."
"The thing that I find sort of perversely comforting is the fact that we know exactly what's causing this. Can you imagine if this was just a natural cycle that we didn't have any control over? We know exactly what's causing this. It's us. It's greenhouse gas emissions that we are putting in the atmosphere. And as a scientist, I can tell you: let's not do that anymore."
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Anne Thompson (NBC News Environmental Journalist):
"I always liken climate change to cancer. […] Take a look at Glacier National Park out in Montana. In 1850, when the Industrial Revolution started and we started burning coal and sending greenhouse gases in the air, there were 150 glaciers in that national park. Today, there are 26, and they're in danger of losing those 26. They're really threatened. The reason why we're seeing more people believe in it today is because we're now starting to see climate change in real time in the United States."
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What does the (banned) scientific evidence say?
1. Most of the U.S. has been cooling overall since the 1930s
2. Climate models, media wrong on the emissions-extreme weather link
3. No evidence that humans have unleashed climate "tipping points"
4. Extreme weather events have not increased
5. U.S. (and global) hurricane frequency, intensity have decreased
6. U.S. (and global) flooding events have decreased
7. U.S. (and global) drought events have decreased
8. U.S. (and global) wildfire frequency have decreased
9. Financial losses/deaths from extreme weather have decreased
10. 90% of the Holocene had more retreated/absent glaciers than today
11. Antarctic Peninsula has been cooling and gaining mass this century
12. Since 1958, Greenland/Antarctica melt contribution to sea levels is just 1.5 cm
13. More global land area above sea level today than in the 1980s
14. 89% of the globe's small islands have stable or growing shorelines
15. Long-term (80+ years) global sea level rise acceleration not significant
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Listed below are 55 peer-reviewed scientific papers published in journals by real scientists supporting these 15 statements. They are but a small sample. Hundreds of other affirming scientific papers have not been included. After all, over 1,500 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published since 2016 that support a skeptical position on climate alarm.
The U.S. news media do not wish to consider scientific evidence that contradicts their agenda-driven narrative.
So, to further their aims, they ban information that might contradict the supposition that the science is "settled" and disagreement only comes from ill-informed "deniers".
Some might call this deliberate attempt to squelch contravening evidence by another name.
Image Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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1. Most of the U.S. has been cooling overall since the 1930s
Alter et al., 2017 "From 1910- 1949 (pre-agricultural development, pre-DEV) to 1970-2009 (full agricultural development, full-DEV), the central United States experienced large-scale increases in rainfall of up to 35% and decreases in surface air temperature of up to 1°C during the boreal summer months of July and August … which conflicts with expectations from climate change projections for the end of the 21st century (i.e., warming and decreasing rainfall) (Melillo et al., 2014). … As part of this expansive agricultural development, the Corn Belt of the central United States – one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world (Guanter et al., 2014; Mueller et al., 2016) – experienced major increases in both corn and soybean production. For example, from 1950 to 2010, the amount of corn harvested annually in the Corn Belt increased by 400%, from 2 billion to 10 billion bushels (NASS, 2016)."
Image Source: Alter et al., 2017
Lansner and Pepke Pedersen, 2018 "In locations best sheltered and protected against ocean air influence, the vast majority of thermometers worldwide trends show temperatures in recent decades rather similar to the 1920–1950 period. This indicates that the present-day atmosphere and heat balance over the Earth cannot warm areas – typically valleys – worldwide in good shelter from ocean trends notably more than the atmosphere could in the 1920–1950 period. … [T]he lack of warming in the OAS temperature trends after 1950 should be considered when evaluating the climatic effects of changes in the Earth's atmospheric trace amounts of greenhouse gasses as well as variations in solar conditions."
Image Source: Lansner and Pepke Pedersen, 2018
Partridge et al., 2018 "We present a novel approach to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution of regional cooling across the eastern U.S. (commonly called the U.S. warming hole), by defining a spatially explicit boundary around the region of most persistent cooling. The warming hole emerges after a regime shift in 1958 where annual maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) temperatures decreased by 0.46°C and 0.83°C respectively. … [T]he seasonal modes also vary in causation. Winter temperatures in the warming hole are significantly correlated with the Meridional Circulation Index (MCI), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). … We select only stations in the contiguous U.S. that have an 80% complete record from 1901-2015, resulting in 1407 temperature stations."
Image Source: Partridge et al., 2018
Eck, 2018 "[A] majority (12/14) of the regions within the SAM [Southern Appalachian Mountains] have experienced a long-term decline in mean winter temperatures since 1910. Even after removing the highly anomalous 2009-2010 winter season, which was more than two standard deviations away from the long-term mean, the cooling of mean winter temperatures is still evident. … Higher winter temperatures dominated the early 20th century in the SAM [Southern Appalachian Mountains] with nine of the ten warmest winter seasons on record in the region having occurred before 1960. The 1931-1932 winter season, the warmest on record, averaged 8.0°C for DJF [December-February], nearly 4.7°C higher than the 1987-2017 normal mean winter temperature of 3.3°C."
Image Source: Eck, 2018
Peterson et al., 2013 "For the conterminous United States, the highest number of heat waves occurred in the 1930s, with the fewest in the 1960s. The 2001–10 decade was the second highest but well below the 1930s. Regionally, the western regions (including Alaska) had their highest number of heat waves in the 2000s, while the 1930s were dominant in the rest of the country."
Image Source: (Peterson et al., 2013)
2. Climate models, uncritical media get it wrong on the climate change-extreme weather link
D'Aleo and Khandekar, 2016 "In recent years, media and scientific journals have given increasing attention to worldwide extreme weather (EW) events and their possible relation to climate change and to specifically model proposed warming of the earth's climate. This warming, which has been linked to human CO2 emissions, has been referred to by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as anthropogenic global warming (AGW). A brief overview of the ongoing debate is presented, synthesizing worldwide EW events of last decades and analyzing the possible linkage between EW and AGW. Data show that the postulated AGW/EW [extreme weather/anthropogenic global warming] link is a perception rather than reality, the perception being fostered by increased and uncritical media attention to recent EW [extreme weather] events."
Bellprat and Doblas-Reyes, 2016 "Attribution of extreme weather and climate events overestimated by unreliable climate simulations … Event attribution aims to estimate the role of an external driver after the occurrence of an extreme weather and climate event by comparing the probability that the event occurs in two counterfactual worlds. These probabilities are typically computed using ensembles of climate simulations whose simulated probabilities are known to be imperfect. The implications of using imperfect models in this context are largely unknown, limited by the number of observed extreme events in the past to conduct a robust evaluation. Using an idealized framework, this model limitation is studied by generating large number of simulations with variable reliability in simulated probability. The framework illustrates that unreliable climate simulations are prone to overestimate the attributable risk to climate change. Climate model ensembles tend to be overconfident in their representation of the climate variability which leads to systematic increase in the attributable risk to an extreme event."
Laliberté et al., 2015 "Global warming is expected to intensify the hydrological cycle, but it might also make the atmosphere less energetic. Laliberté et al. modeled the atmosphere as a classical heat engine in order to evaluate how much energy it contains and how much work it can do (see the Perspective by Pauluis). They then used a global climate model to project how that might change as climate warms. Although the hydrological cycle may increase in intensity, it does so at the expense of its ability to do work, such as powering large-scale atmospheric circulation or fueling more very intense storms. … [S]tudies over a wide range of climates suggest that global atmospheric motions are reduced in extremely warm climates."
3. No supporting evidence that humans have unleashed "tipping points" in Earth's climate
Gaucherel and Moron, 2016 "'Tipping points' (TPs) are thresholds of potentially disproportionate changes in the Earth's climate system associated with future global warming and are considered today as a 'hot' topic in environmental sciences. In this study, TP interactions are analysed from an integrated and conceptual point of view using two qualitative Boolean models built on graph grammars. They allow an accurate study of the node TP interactions previously identified by expert elicitation and take into account a range of various large-scale climate processes potentially able to trigger, alone or jointly, instability in the global climate. Our findings show that, contrary to commonly held beliefs, far from causing runaway changes in the Earth's climate, such as self-acceleration due to additive positive feedbacks, successive perturbations might actually lead to its stabilization."
Boos and Sterelvmo, 2016 "Theoretical models have been used to argue that seasonal mean monsoons will shift abruptly and discontinuously from wet to dry stable states as their radiative forcings pass a critical threshold, sometimes referred to as a "tipping point." Further support for a strongly nonlinear response of monsoons to radiative forcings is found in the seasonal onset of the South Asian summer monsoon, which is abrupt compared with the annual cycle of insolation. Here it is shown thatthe seasonal mean strength of monsoons instead exhibits a nearly linear dependence on a wide range of radiative forcings. … Thus, neither a physically correct theoretical model nor a comprehensive climate model support the idea that seasonal mean monsoons will undergo abrupt, nonlinear shifts in response to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol emissions, or land surface albedo."
4. Extreme weather events have not increased
van der Wiel et al., 2016 "[T]he observed record and historical model experiments were used to investigate changes in the recent past. In part because of large intrinsic variability, no evidence was found for changes in extreme precipitation attributable to climate change in the available observed record"
van Wijngaarden and Syed, 2016 "Changes in annual precipitation over the Earth's land mass excluding Antarctica from the 18th century to 2013 …The trends for precipitation change together with their 95% confidence intervals were found for various periods of time. Most trends exhibited no clear precipitation change. The global changes in precipitation over the Earth's land mass excluding Antarctica relative to 1961-90 were estimated to be: -1.2. ±. 1.7, 2.6. ±. 2.5 and -5.4. ±. 8.1% per century for the periods 1850-2000, 1900-2000 and 1950-2000, respectively. A change of 1% per century corresponds to a precipitation change of 0.09. mm/year. … Stations experiencing low, moderate and heavy annual precipitation did not show very different precipitation trends. This indicates deserts/jungles are neither expanding nor shrinking due to changes in precipitation patterns. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that some caution is warranted about claiming that large changes to global precipitation have occurred during the last 150 years."
Shi et al., 2016 "Patterns and trends of high-impact weather in China during 1959–2014 … The spatial and temporal characteristics of the frequencies of four types of high-impact weather (HIW), i.e. snowfall, thunderstorms, fog and hailstorms, were analysed in China during 1959–2014. Results indicate a significant decrease in the number of snowfall days, thunderstorm days and thunderstorm spells in all six regions of China … [F]og and hailstorm spells decreased at rates of 0.06–0.17 and 0.001–0.043 times per decade respectively in most regions of China."
Pausata et al., 2016 "Following the devastating droughts that ravaged the Sahel in the 1970–1980s, many efforts have been directed at investigating climate variability in Northern Africa, focusing on vegetation–climate feedbacks and the dynamics of the West African Monsoon (WAM) system (Charney et al., 1975 and Giannini et al., 2003). However, the past millennia have witnessed much larger precipitation changes than those seen in recent decades."
Dezileau et al., 2016 "Storms and tsunamis, which may seriously endanger human society, are amongst the most devastating marine catastrophes that can occur in coastal areas. Based on radiocarbon dating, these extreme events occurred around 5250, 4000, 3600, 3010, 2300, 1350, 650, and 80 years cal BP. No comparable events have been observed during the 20th and 21st centuries. The results indicate little likelihood of a tsunami origin for these coarse-grained layers, although historical tsunami events are recorded in this region. These periods of surge events seem to coincide with the coldest periods in Europe during the late Holocene, suggesting a control by a climatic mechanism for periods of increased storm activity."
Tozer et al., 2016 "Paleoclimate research indicates that the Australian instrumental climate record ( ∼ 100 years) does not cover the full range of hydroclimatic variability that is possible. To better understand the implications of this on catchment-scale water resources management, a 1013-year (1000– 2012 common era (CE)) annual rainfall reconstruction was produced for the Williams River catchment in coastal eastern Australia. … The reconstruction shows that significantly longer and more frequent wet and dry periods were experienced in the preinstrumental [1000-1900 CE] compared to the instrumental period [1900–2012]. This suggests that existing drought and flood risk assessments underestimate the true risks due to the reliance on data and statistics obtained from only the instrumental record."
Guo et al., 2016 "The other two-thirds area, where 60% of the U.S. tornadoes were reported (but the frequency of occurrence of tornadoes is less), however, showed a decreasing or a near-zero trend in tornado temporal variability. Furthermore, unlike the temporal variability alone, the combined spatial-temporal variability of U.S. tornado occurrence has remained nearly constant since 1950."
5. U.S. (and global) hurricane frequency, intensity have decreased
Truchelut and Staeling, 2018 "The extremely active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season concluded an extended period of quiescent continental United States tropical cyclone landfall activity that began in 2006, commonly referred to as the landfall drought. We introduce an extended climatology of U.S. tropical cyclone activity based on accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and use this data set to investigate variability and trends in landfall activity. The [hurricane landfall] drought years between 2006 and 2016 recorded an average value of total annual ACE [accumulated cyclone energy] over the U.S. that was less than 60% of the 1900–2017 average. Scaling this landfall activity metric by basin-wide activity reveals a statistically significant downward trend since 1950, with the percentage of total Atlantic ACE expended over the continental U.S. at a series minimum during the recent drought period."
Chang et al., 2016 "Extratropical cyclones cause much of the high impact weather over the mid-latitudes. With increasing greenhouse gases, enhanced high-latitude warming will lead to weaker cyclone activity. Here we show that between 1979 and 2014, the number of strong cyclones in Northern Hemisphere in summer has decreased at a rate of 4% per decade, with even larger decrease found near northeastern North America."
Klotzbach et al., 2018 "Continental United States (CONUS) hurricane-related inflation-adjusted damage has increased significantly since 1900. However, since 1900 neither observed CONUS [Continental United States] landfalling hurricane frequency nor intensity show significant trends, including the devastating 2017 season."
Image Source: Klotzbach et al., 2018
Zhang et al., 2018 "Over the 1997–2014 period, the mean frequency of western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones (TCs) was markedly lower (~18%) than the period 1980–1996. Here we show that these changes were driven by an intensification of the vertical wind shear in the southeastern/eastern WNP tied to the changes in the Walker circulation, which arose primarily in response to the enhanced sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the North Atlantic, while the SST anomalies associated with the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in the tropical Pacific and the anthropogenic forcing play only secondary roles."
Zhao et al., 2018 "A vigorous debate has currently focused on the relationship between increasing TC [tropical cyclone] activity and increasing SST [sea surface temperatures] (Knutson et al. 2010). … [O]ver the WNP [Western North Pacific] basin,a significant decrease of TCF [tropical cyclone frequency] has been observed since 1998 (Liu and Chan 2013; Lin and Chan 2015; Zhao and Wang 2016). Global TCF [tropical cyclone frequency] has showed a similar reduction since the late 1990s (Maue 2011). Change of TCF over the past few decades does not appear to be consistent with changes in local SST. Observational analyses further pointed out that there is no significant correlation between the TCF [tropical cyclone frequency] and local SST [sea surface temperatures] over the WNP [Western North Pacific] basin (Chan 2006; Yeh et al. 2010)."
Image Source: Zhao et al., 2018
Hu et al., 2018 "Tropical cyclone (TC) genesis frequency in the western North Pacific (WNP) during 1960–2014 shows a step-by-step decrease on interdecadal timescale, in accordance to the phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO)."
Image Source: Hu et al., 2018
Yoshida et al., 2017 "Projected future changes in global tropical cyclone (TC) activity are assessed using 5,000 year scale ensemble simulations for both current and 4 K surface warming climates with a 60 km global atmospheric model. The global number of TCs [tropical cyclones] decreases by 33% in the future projection. … The global number of category 4 and 5 TCs [tropical cyclones] significantly decreases, contrary to the increase seen in several previous studies."
6. U.S. (and global) flooding events have decreased
Mangini et al., 2018 "The main objective of this paper is to detect the evidence of statistically significant flood trends across Europe using a high spatial resolution dataset. … Anticipated changes in flood frequency and magnitude due to enhanced greenhouse forcing are not generally evident at this time over large portions of the United States for several different measures of flood flows. … Thus, similarly to the main findings of Archfield et al. (2016) for the US, the picture of flood change in Europe is strongly heterogeneous and no general statements about uniform trends across the entire continent can be made."
Aryal et al., 2018 "TCs [tropical cyclones] contribute to ∼20–30% of AMs and POTs over Florida and coastal areas of the eastern United States, and the contribution decreases as we move inland. … The record length ranges from 50 to 153 years and a large number of 121 stations have discharge measurements from 1950 onwards. … We do not detect statistically significant trends in the magnitude or frequency of TC [tropical cyclone] floods."
Schedel, Jr. and Schedel, 2018 "Flood events on the U.S. East Coast are not more severe or frequent than in the past."
Hodgkiins et al., 2017 "In the current study, trends in major-flood occurrence from 1961 to 2010 and from 1931 to 2010 were assessed using a very large dataset (>1200 gauges) of diverse catchments from North America and Europe … Overall, the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately the number expected due to chance alone. Changes over time in the occurrence of major floods were dominated by multidecadal variability rather than by long-term trends. There were more than three times as many significant relationships between major-flood occurrence and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation than significant long-term trends. … The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded (Hartmann et al., 2013) that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records. … North American trends in … frequency of extremes in the 1980s and 1990s were similar to those of the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was no discernible trend in the frequency of extreme events in Canada. The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC (Hartmann et al., 2013) that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking."
7. U.S. (and global) drought has decreased
McCabe et al., 2017 "In this study, a monthly water-balance model is used to simulate monthly runoff for 2109 hydrologic units (HUs) in the conterminous United States (CONUS) for water-years 1901 through 2014. … Results indicated that … the variability of precipitation appears to have been the principal climatic factor determining drought, and for most of the CONUS, drought frequency appears to have decreased during the 1901 through 2014 period."
Cheng et al., 2016 "The results thus indicate that the net effect of climate change has made agricultural drought less likely and that the current severe impacts of drought on California's agriculture have not been substantially caused by long-term climate changes."
Prein et al., 2016 "Summary and Conclusion:Projected changes of a poleward extension of the subtropical dry zones simulated by climate models and the corresponding decrease of precipitation in the U.S. Southwest have not been found in observations to date because of the large natural climate variability."
8. U.S. (and global) wildfire frequency has decreased
Marlon et al., 2012 Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA "Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent fire-history data from historical records and fire scars. There has been a slight decline in burning over the past 3,000 y, with the lowest levels attained during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca. 1400–1700 CE). Prominent peaks in forest fires occurred during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. 950–1250 CE) and during the 1800s."
"Analysis of climate reconstructions beginning from 500 CE and population data show that temperature and drought predict changes in biomass burning up to the late 1800s CE. Since the late 1800s , human activities and the ecological effects of recent high fire activity caused a large, abrupt decline in burning similar to the LIA fire decline. Consequently, there is now a forest "fire deficit" in the western United States attributable to the combined effects of human activities, ecological, and climate changes. Large fires in the late 20th and 21st century fires have begun to address the fire deficit, but it is continuing to grow."
Image Source: Marlon et al., 2012
Doerr and Santín, 2016 "Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades."
Earl and Simmonds, 2018 "We find that there is a strong statistically significant decline in 2001–2016 active fires globally linked to an increase in net primary productivity observed in northern Africa, along with global agricultural expansion and intensification, which generally reduces fire activity."
Image Source: Earl and Simmonds, 2018
Ward et al., 2018 "Globally, fires are a major source of carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere, occurring on a seasonal cycle and with substantial interannual variability. To understand past trends and variability in sources and sinks of terrestrial carbon, we need quantitative estimates of global fire distributions. … Global fire emissions of carbon increase by about 10% between 1700 and 1900, reaching a maximum of 3.4 Pg C yr−1 in the 1910s, followed by a decrease to about 5% below year 1700 levels by 2010."
Image Source: Ward et al., 2018
9. Financial losses/mortality from extreme weather have decreased
Bouwer and Jonkman, 2018 "Global mortality from storm surges is decreasing … Changes in society's vulnerability to natural hazards are important to understand, as they determine current and future risks, and the need to improve protection. Very large impacts including high numbers of fatalities occur due to single storm surge flood events. Here, we report on impacts of global coastal storm surge events since the year 1900, based on a compilation of events and data on loss of life. We find that over the past, more than eight thousand people are killed and 1.5 million people are affected annually by storm surges. The occurrence of very substantial loss of life (>10 000 persons) from single events has however decreased over time."
Pielke, 2018 "Since 1990 the world has seen a decrease in overall and weather-related disaster losses as a proportion of global GDP. This trend has occurred even as disaster losses have increased in absolute terms. The primary factor driving the overall increase in disaster losses is societal, mainly growth in populations and settlements at risk to the consequences of extreme events (IPCC, 2012)."
Image Source: Pielke, 2018
Weinkle et al., 2018 "Consistent with observed trends in the frequency and intensity of hurricane landfalls along the continental United States since 1900, the updated normalized loss estimates also show no trend. A more detailed comparison of trends in hurricanes and normalized losses over various periods in the twentieth century to 2017 demonstrates a very high degree of consistency."
Image Source: Weinkle et al., 2018
10. 90% of the Holocene had more retreated/absent glaciers than today
McKay et al., 2018 "In total, observations from 144 sites north of 57°N that span at least the interval from 6 to 2 ka, and that had median Holocene temporal resolution of <500 yr were included in the analysis. … Across all observations (Fig. 2a), the area-weighted total distribution of cooling onset ages indicates two primary intervals of when cooling began or accelerated. The first, beginning ca. 7 ka, primarily captures cooling following peak summer warm conditions in the early- to mid-Holocene, when nearly all Arctic glaciers were smaller than during 20th century positions. … The first-order structure of Holocene glaciation in the Arctic is a general increase in the size of glaciers from the early Holocene through the Little Ice Age (Fig. 3). From 8-6.5 ka, glaciers were uniformly retreated or absent throughout the Arctic."
Image Source: McKay et al., 2018
Bjørk et al., 2018 "We show that, during the period from 10.5 to 9.6 cal ka BP, the extent of Helheim Glacier was similar to that of today's, after which it remained retracted for most of the Holocene until a re-advance caused it to reach its present extent at c. 0.3 cal ka BP, during the Little Ice Age (LIA). [The glacier's present extent is not different than it was 300 years ago, during the Little ice Age.] Thus, Helheim Glacier's present extent is the largest since the last deglaciation, and its Holocene history shows that it is capable of recovering after several millennia of warming and retreat. Furthermore, the absence of advances beyond the present-day position during for example the 9.3 and 8.2 ka cold events as well as the early-Neoglacial suggest a substantial retreat during most of the Holocene. … Our results show that the ice sheet significantly retreated during the HTM [Holocene Thermal Maximum] 8-5 ka BP when temperatures were 2-4°C warmer than now (Axford et al., 2013; Buizert et al., 2018)."
Fjeldskaar et al., 2018 "About 60% of Svalbard is covered by glaciers today, but many of these glaciers were much reduced in size or gone in the Early Holocene."
Røthe et al., 2018 "During the early Holocene, the glaciers in the Vårfluesjøen catchment were considerably smaller than today or had even melted completely. … D'Andrea et al. (2012) […] point to increased heat transport via the West Spitsbergen Current, and accompanying increased winter precipitation, rather than cold temperatures, to have caused LIA expansions on Svalbard. … During the early and mid-Holocene period, other glacier reconstructions from the west coast of Svalbard suggests that many glaciers were small or completely melted during this time interval (Svendsen and Mangerud, 1997; Røthe et al., 2015; van der Bilt et al., 2015; de Wet et al., 2018). Mangerud and Svendsen (2018) postulated that August temperatures in Svalbard were 6°C warmer from 10000 to 9000 cal. yr. BP than they are today, based on the presence of Zirfaea crispate."
Kelley et al., 2018 "In this study, we reconstruct the timing and pattern of middle- and late-Holocene GrIS [Greenland Ice Sheet] margin fluctuations at two locations, ~190 km apart, in central West Greenland using radiocarbon-dated sediment cores from proglacial-threshold lakes. Our results demonstrate that deglaciation occurs at both sites during the early Holocene, with the ice sheet remaining in a smaller-than-present ice margin configuration until ~500 years ago when it readvanced into lake catchments at both sites. … Historical and remote-sensing records indicate that Nordenskiöld Gletscher has been stable or advancing since AD 1950 (Weidick, 1968, 1994). This evidence, in addition to the lack of a moraine or trimline marking the culmination of the late-Holocene advance fronting the ice margin, as occurs across much of the region, infers that the system is at or is still advancing to its late Holocene maximum extent. We note the difference between the ice margin locations on the laterals versus the terminus relative to the late-Holocene maximum position and attribute this to deepening of the glacial trough as described by Kaplan et al. (2009). In fact, observations at the terminus of Nordenskiöld Gletscher in 2013 documented that the terminus is currently advancing onto living tundra."
11. Antarctic Peninsula has been cooling and gaining mass this century
Engel et al., 2018 "Two small glaciers on James Ross Island, the north-eastern Antarctic Peninsula, experienced surface mass gain between 2009 and 2015 as revealed by field measurements. A positive cumulative surface mass balance of 0.57 ± 0.67 and 0.11 ± 0.37 m w.e. was observed during the 2009–2015 period on Whisky Glacier and Davies Dome, respectively. … Ambrožová and Láska (2016) reported a significant decrease (0.03–0.15°C a−1 [-0.3 to -1.5°C per decade]) in the temperature along the AP [Antarctic Peninsula] over the 2005–15 period with the most prominent cooling at the Bibby Hill station on JRI [James Ross Island]. … The cumulative mass gain of the glaciers around the northern AP [Antarctic Peninsula] indicates a regional change from a predominantly negative surface mass balance in the first decade of the 21st century to a positive balance over the 2009–15 period. The change in the glacier mass balance follows a significant decrease in the warming rates reported from the northern AP [Antarctic Peninsula] since the end of the 20th century. The mass gain is also consistent with the regional trend of climate cooling on the eastern side of the AP [Antarctic Peninsula]."
Image Source: Engel et al., 2018
Turner et al., 2016 "The annual mean temperature has decreased at a statistically significant rate [1999-2014], with the most rapid cooling during the Austral summer."
Image Source: Turner et al., 2016
12. Since 1958, Greenland/Antarctica melt contribution to sea levels is just 1.5 cm
Frederiske et al.,2018 "The trends and accelerations of the individual contributors to sea-level rise and their sum are shown in table 1. The estimated trend in sum of contributors is 1.3 ± 0.1 mm/y, which explains the reconstructed global-mean sea level trend of 1.5 ± 0.2 mm/y within the 1−σ confidence interval. Also, the acceleration in the sum of contributors (0.07 ± 0.01 mm/y2) explains the reconstructed sea-level acceleration of 0.07 ± 0.02 mm/y2."
Image Source: Frederiske et al.,2018
Fettweis et al ., 2017 "SMB [surface mass balance, Greenland Ice Sheet] during the 1920–1930 warm period over Greenland was comparable to the SMB of the 2000s, due to both higher melt and lower precipitation than normal. … Finally, with respect to the 1961–1990 period, the integrated contribution of the GrIS SMB [Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance] anomalies over 1900–2010 is a sea level rise of about 15 ± 5 mm [1.5 centimeters], with a null contribution from the 1940s to the 2000s"
13. More global land area above sea level today than in the 1980s
Donchyts et al., 2016 "Earth's surface water change over the past 30 years [1985-2015] … Earth's surface gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years, including 20,135 km2 of water and 33,700 km2 of land in coastal areas."
(press release) "Coastal areas were also analysed, and to the scientists' surprise, coastlines had gained more land – 33,700 sq km (13,000 sq miles) – than they had been lost to water (20,100 sq km or 7,800 sq miles). 'We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world,' said Dr Baart. 'We were able to create more land than sea level rise was taking.'"
14. 89% of the globe's small islands have stable or growing shorelines
Duvat et al., 2018 "This review first confirms that over the past decades to century, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization by sea-level rise. The global sample considered in this paper, which includes 30 atolls and 709 islands, reveals that atolls did not lose land area, and that 73.1% of islands were stable in land area, including most settled islands, while 15.5% of islands increased and 11.4% decreased in size. Atoll and island areal stability can therefore be considered as a global trend. Importantly, islands located in ocean regions affected by rapid sea-level rise showed neither contraction nor marked shoreline retreat, which indicates that they may not be affected yet by the presumably negative, that is, erosive, impact of sea-level rise. .. These results show that atoll and island areal stability is a global trend, whatever the rate of sea-level rise. Tuvaluan atolls affected by rapid sea-level rise (5.1 mm/yr; Becker et al., 2012) did not exhibit a distinct behavior compared to atolls located in areas showing lower sea-level rise rates, for example, the Federated States of Micronesia or Tuamotu atolls."
Ahmed et al., 2018 "This paper draws upon the application of GIS and remote sensing techniques to investigate the dynamic nature and management aspects of land in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. … This research reveals that the rate of accretion [coastal land growth] in the study area is slightly higher than the rate of erosion. Overall land dynamics indicate a net gain of 237 km2 (7.9 km2annual average) of land in the area for the whole period from 1985 to 2015."
Kench et al., 2018 "We specifically examine spatial differences in island behaviour, of all 101 islands in Tuvalu, over the past four decades (1971–2014), a period in which local sea level has risen at twice the global average (Supplementary Note 2). Surprisingly, we show that all islands have changed and that the dominant mode of change has been island expansion, which has increased the land area of the nation. … Using remotely sensed data, change is analysed over the past four decades, a period when local sea level has risen at twice the global average [<2 mm/yr-1] (~3.90 ± 0.4 mm.yr−1). Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls."
Image Source: Kench et al., 2018
15. Long-term (80+ years) global sea level rise acceleration not significant
Tomasicchio et al., 2018 "The estimation of long-term sea level variability is of primary importance for a climate change assessment. Despite the value of the subject [sea level changes], no scientific consensus has yet been reached on the existing acceleration in observed values. … The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international organisation responsible for assessing the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, warned that at current trends, the projected increments in mean sea level (MSL) for the year 2100, relative to the 1986–2005 period [IPCC] are 400, 470, 480 and 630 mm, for the Representative Concentration Pathways scenarios indicated as RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5, respectively. However, from the tide gauge records, the acceleration required to reach these large projected MSL [mean sea level] rises over the course of the twenty-first century is not evident. Even though the measurement of this acceleration is a topic with a long standing history (Douglas 1991; Church and White 2006; Jevrejeva et al. 2008), the most recent debate was initiated by a series of publications (Houston and Dean 2011a, b, c, d, e) that raised concerns about the general validity of the sea level projections; the authors did not find any acceleration in the sea level in USA tide gauge records during the twentieth century. Instead, for each time period they considered, the records showed small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide gauge records (Woodworth 1990; Douglas 1992; Woodworth et al. 2009). By using a different approach in data analysis, other researchers (Rahmstorf and Vermeer 2011a, b; Donoghue and Parkinson 2011a, b) found the arguments of Houston and Dean (2011a, b, c, d, e) not convincing and showed that accelerations are present."
Parker and Ollier, 2017 "The loud divergence between sea-level reality and climate change theory—the climate models predict an accelerated sea-level rise driven by the anthropogenic CO2 emission—has been also evidenced in other works such as Boretti (2012a, b), Boretti and Watson (2012), Douglas (1992), Douglas and Peltier (2002), Fasullo et al. (2016), Jevrejeva et al. (2006), Holgate (2007), Houston and Dean (2011), Mörner 2010a, b, 2016), Mörner and Parker (2013), Scafetta (2014), Wenzel and Schröter (2010) and Wunsch et al. (2007) reporting on the recent lack of any detectable acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. The minimum length requirement of 50–60 years to produce a realistic sea-level rate of rise is also discussed in other works such as Baart et al. (2012), Douglas (1995, 1997), Gervais (2016), Jevrejeva et al. (2008), Knudsen et al. (2011), Scafetta (2013a, b), Wenzel and Schröter (2014) and Woodworth (2011). … [T]he information from the tide gauges of the USA and the rest of the world when considered globally and over time windows of not less than 80 years […] does not support the notion of rapidly changing mass of ice in Greenland and Antarctica as claimed by Davis and Vinogradova (2017). The sea levels have been oscillating about a nearly perfectly linear trend since the start of the twentieth century with no sign of acceleration. There are only different phases of some oscillations moving from one location to another that do not represent any global acceleration. The global sea-level acceleration is therefore in the order of + 0.002 ± 0.003 mm/year², i.e. + 2 ÷ 3 μm/year², well below the accuracy of the estimation."
Parker, 2018 "[T]he long-term tide gauges of the world show no significant sign of sea level acceleration since the start of the 20th century. … Ocean and coastal management in the area should be based on the accurate monitoring of the relative sea level rise and the subsidence of the land by coupled tide gauge and Global Navigation Satellite System measurements, rather than models' predictions and speculations defocusing coastal management from more relevant situations than the non-existent threat of extreme sea level rise."
Wenzel and Schröter, 2014 "Global mean sea level change since 1900 is found to be 1.77 ± 0.38 mm year on average. … [T]he acceleration found for the global mean, +0.0042 ± 0.0092 mm year, is not significant, local values range from -0.1 mm year in the central Indian Ocean to +0.1 mm year in the western tropical Pacific and east of Japan."
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2Qv6l4T
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