Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "Astrum" channel.

  1. 2:05 Thermometers, after a fashion, have been in use for centuries. That does not mean, however, that they have been used consistently and repeatedly everywhere for centuries. During the latter half of the nineteenth century reliable records are only really available from parts of Europe, USA and eastern Australia, with a very small number of reliable stations outside of that. Even before 1950 there are essentially no GHCN-Daily stations in South America, India, S. E. Asia, China, Africa, or around the Poles.
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  2. Extinction rates (1500-2009) peaked around 1900 at 50 per decade. Extinction rates have declined dramatically to around 4 to per decade in the 2000s. So the extinction rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years (IUCN), so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Out of a known species total of over 2 million. That gives an annual percentage loss of less than 0.0001%. That's background extinction. At that frequency it will take over 930,000 years to reach 80% extinction of species experienced at the K-T boundary that saw the extinction of the dinosaurs. Of course, extinction is a natural part of the evolution of life on this planet with the average lifespan of a species thought to be about 1 million years (cf 930,000). It is estimated that 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have existed have gone extinct. It should also be noted that no families or genera have become extinct in the last 500 years. In fact marine diversity at the taxonomic level of families is the highest it has ever been in the Earth's long history (see Sepkoski Curve). In a review of 16,009 species, most populations (85%) did not show significant trends in abundance, and those that did were balanced between winners (8%) and losers (7%) (Dornelas et al, 2019). There have been only 9 species of continental birds and mammals confirmed extinct since 1500 (Loehle, 2011). No global marine animals have become extinct in the past 50 years (McCauley et, 2015 using IUCN data).
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  3. The UN's IPCC AR6, chapter 12 "Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment", section 12.5.2, table 12.12 confirms there is a lack of evidence or no signal that the following have changed: Air Pollution Weather (temperature inversions), Aridity, Avalanche (snow), Average precipitation, Average Wind Speed, Coastal Flood, Agricultural drought, Hydrological drought, Erosion of Coastlines, Fire Weather (hot and windy), Flooding From Heavy Rain (pluvial floods), Frost, Hail, Heavy Rain, Heavy Snowfall and Ice Storms, Landslides, Marine Heatwaves, Ocean Acidity, Radiation at the Earth’s Surface, River/Lake Floods, Sand and Dust Storms, Sea Level, Severe Wind Storms, Snow, Glacier, and Ice Sheets, Tropical Cyclones. There is no objective observational evidence that we are living through a global climate crisis. None.
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  4. Antarctic ice sheet mass loss is about 90 Gt/yr (Otosaka et al, 2023). It's total mass is 24,380,000 Gt (24380000000000000 tons), so it loses less than 0.0004% of its mass annually. It contributes 0.36mm to sea-level rise per year (that's pitiful). At the current rate it will take well over ¼ million years to melt, but we are due for two more glacial periods in that time. The ice is here to stay. There's also a bit of a problem with your "accelerating continental ice loss in Antarctica" position. It's not accelerating. If you want to dig down to the actual data, that is. Just so we're clear, I'm referring to the paper entitled "Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from 1992 to 2020" by Otosaka et al, 2023. Can I direct you to table 2, and the text below it? If we include the APIS in "continental" (although I wouldn't) there's no pattern with a slight loss overall - neglible. EAIS, by far the larger of the continent's ice caps, both by surface and volume, hasn't lost mass. It has gained mass, but again it's neglible. So that leaves us with WAIS. It's only WAIS that's driving the mass loss from Antarctica, and you can see that from the Figure 4 graph. Figure 4 and Table 2 show there is a step up in mass loss around 2007. You might want to call that an acceleration. However there's a deceleration from 2017 or at least a noticeable reduction in the rate of annual ice mass loss for the period 2017-2020 when compared to 2012-2016. So accelerating then decelerating. Not really though, is it? These are such miniscule periods of Time.
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  5. Panama canal's problems are due to population not climate. The management of the lakes that supply water to the canal itself also supplies water to the local population. The population has increased by a factor of 5 since 1950, and personal income, and along with it water consumption has ballooned. The water supply comes from the very same lakes that supply the canal.
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  6. 0:45 ENSO (El Niño) shows no trend or pattern for this natural occurrence. I refer you to The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) – 1882 to Present.
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  7. The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover reached the greatest extent ever recorded in 2022, 2023 and 2024 (AIMS), and that is despite reports of supposed repeated bleaching, despite starfish predation and despite any bad weather. It should be renamed the Greatest Barrier Reef! If you look at the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) data, the WIO (West Indian Ocean) shows 26% hard coral cover in 1985 upto 30% in 2020. South Asia reefs shows a decline around 2000 to below 25% then a regrowth to around 40% (2010) and a decline to 25% (2020). The Red Sea shows no change at around 25% (1995-2020). So the pattern in these three areas show no relationship to each other or to a changing climate. The Caribbean region reefs have a cover of around 0.15 ± 0.02. There is no evidence of a major reduction in coral cover in the Caribbean over the last two decades. GCRMN data for the most important coral bioregion, the East Asia Seas, with 30% of the world’s coral reefs, and containing the most diverse coral of the ‘Coral Triangle’, show no statistically significant net coral loss since records began. The East Asia region has the biggest human population living in close proximity to reefs, and is located in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool – the hottest major water mass on earth. Life is most diverse in the warmest parts of the world’s oceans. This has been shown across 13 major taxonomic groups from zooplankton to marine mammals. Warmer water = more biodiversity. This is a scare story about things you cannot see.
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  8. So let's be scared about something natural that happens all the time.
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