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

  1. Since 1900 the global temperature has increased by 1.3°C. In that time humanity has flourished. Life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 to 73 years. Literacy has quadrupled from 21% to 86%. Humans are seven times more productive ($2,241 to $15,212 GDP per capita, per annum). People are better fed, having ⅓ more calories every day (2,192kcal to 2,928kcal). Global extreme poverty rates have tumbled from 70% to less than 10% (<$1 a day). And death from weather events have collapsed by a factor 50 from 241 million down to 5 million even while the global population has increased by a factor of 5. There is no climate crisis. There is no evidence of a climate crisis.
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  2. @JFB1111  I really don't think you understand... There is no "global" warming. The northerly latitudes are warming, but the southerly latitudes are cooling with little change in trend around the Equator (NOAA-STARv5 TLT & TMT 1979-2023). Overall the Earth appears to be warming at around 0.13°C/decade (UAHv6, NOAA-STARv5, radiosondes - 28 million weather balloons, and climate reanalyses concur on this). NOAA-STARv5 TLT may even appear to show a reduction in the rate of warming globally. 1981-2023: +0.129°C/decade, 1981-2001: +0.130°C/decade, 2002-2014: +0.008°C/decade, 2015-2023: -0.060°C/decade, so when you look at actual instrumental records the warming is uneven both spatially and temporally. This has little to do with CO2. The Earth's changing climate has extremely low sensitivity to CO2. This is supported by a huge body of scientific evidence.
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  3.  @superstormthunder3  There's very little to ignore: Sea level appears to be rising at a small 3mm per year. Atolls in the Pacific nations of the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have risen up to 8 percent in size (Ford and Kench, 2020). 89% of the globe’s islands and 100% of large islands have stable or growing coasts (Duvat, 2019). No island larger than 10ha decreased in size. As regards NOAA tide gauge data, let's look at some examples from around the world. N.B. All sites show a linear Relative Sea Level Trend: Kanmen, China 2.40mm/yr; Sydney, Australia 0.75mm/yr; Ferandina Beach, Florida 2.20mm/yr; Los Angeles, California 1.04mm/yr; Mera, Japan 3.8mm; Cascais, Portugal 1.32mm/yr. Remember, all linear over many decades, or more than a century. Anyway, if you prefer satellite data NOAA's trend was +3.0mm/year Global Mean Sea Level (1993-2022), again linear last time I looked for each set of satellite data (but hey, it may have accelerated in the last month). NASA satellite data (1993-present) for Global Mean Sea Level shows a linear rise of 3.3mm per year. That's the same as two stacked penny coins. No acceleration, so no relationship to the exponential increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, but can be correlated to multi-decadal oscillations in ocean circulation. It's going to be decades before even your big toe is submerged. As regards ocean acidification, it is estimated that the ocean’s global mean surface pH may have declined (i.e., become less alkaline and thus more “acidic”) by -0.07 to -0.08 in the last 200 years — from pH8.12 during pre-industrial times to 8.04 to 8.05 today (Wei et al, 2015). N.B. The decline in pH occurred before 1930. However, and very importantly when you look the data after CO2 emissions began rising precipitously in the 1930s, the oceans have become less “acidic”!!! By way of comparison, from one season to the next, or over the course of less than 6 months, pH levels naturally change by ±0.15 pH units, or twice the overall rate of the last 200 years. On a per-decade scale, the changes are even more pronounced. Oceanic pH values naturally fluctuate up and down by up to 0.6 U within a span of a decade, with an overall range between 7.66 and 8.40. This decadal rate of pH change is larger than the overall 200-year span (0.07-0.08) by a factor of 8. Indeed the daily noted maximum pH range of 0.7 (Santos et al. 2011) is far greater than the overall change predicted between now and the end of the century. The retreat of Himalayan glaciers began before the current warming and was caused by reduced precipitation (Shekhar, 2017. Singh, 2020.). This supported by further work done by Schneider (2014), and Chen (2019). The retreat was due to a reduction in precipitation. Currently, precipitation is half of what it was 20 years previously. Research by Salerno (2015) "challenges the assumption of the main driver [i.e. temperature] of glacier mass changes". Satellite data shows the glaciers in the Karakoram largely unaffected by current warming. Of 1219 glaciers surveyed, 79.5% were stable, 5.3% were advancing, and 7.6% retreating (Rankl, 2014). Swiss Alps glacier extents were smaller than 2000 C.E. during the warmer-than-today Roman and Medieval Warm Periods and throughout 75% of the Holocene, or when temperatures were 1-3°C warmer (Schimmelpfennig et al., 2022). Glaciologists Bohleber et al, 2020 of the Austrian Academy of Science discovered from ice cores that the 3500-meter high Weißseespitze summit was ice free 5900 years ago. There is “no evidence” that Jostedalsbreen, a southern Norway glacier, even existed during the first several thousand years of the Holocene, or when CO2 hovered near 260 ppm (Winker, 2021). There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis. Glacial retreat is certainly not evidence of this. Globally satellite data shows how variable the Earth's climate is with changes up or down of more than 1°C occurring from one year to the next. However, overall the Earth's ecosystems are resilient to these fluctuations, as most species are eurytopic enough to survive these changes. 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 taxonomic families 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). There really is no climate crisis.
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  4. The climate attribution studies are based on the relative frequency of daily temperatures in the current climate and in a world without human-caused climate change. Unfortunately, one cannot prove that changes in the climate are man-made, but here it is presented as a fact. To provide proof of this one would need to observe another Earth-like planet to which no extra CO2 had been added. This is obviously impossible. It is untestable. It is unverifiable. It is not a fact. It is not Science.
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  5. ​ @superstormthunder3 And what effects of climate change would that be? The UN's IPCC AR6 report, chapter 11 'Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate' summarises the fact that severe weather events cannot be detected as increasing, nor attributed to human caused climate change: Increased Flooding: not detected, no attribution. Increased Meteorological Drought: not detected, no attribution. Increased Hydrological Drought: not detected, no attribution. Increased Tropical Cyclones: not detected, no attribution. Increased Winter Storms: not detected, no attribution. Increased Thunderstorms: not detected, no attribution. Increased Hail: not detected, no attribution. increased lightning: not detected, no attribution. Increased Extreme Winds: not detected, no attribution. There is no climate crisis. The UN's IPCC AR6 report, chapter 11 'Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate' summarises the fact that certain severe weather events cannot be detected as increasing, nor attributed to human caused climate change: Pages 1761 - 1765, Table 11.A.2 Synthesis table summarising assessments Heavy Precipitation: 24 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend (12 medium confidence), 43 out 45 low confidence in human attribution. Agricultural Drought: 31 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend (14 medium confidence. No high confidence assessment). 42 out 45 low confidence in human attribution (3 medium, no high confidence). Ecological Drought as above. Hydrological Drought: 38 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend. 43 out 45 low confidence in human attribution (2 medium confidence, no high confidence). So the IPCC are saying we didn't cause droughts and we didn't make it rain. How surprising! There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis. 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. How about some quotes from the UN's IPCC AR6? "There is low confidence in the emergence of heavy precipitation and pluvial and river flood frequency in observations, despite trends that have been found in a few regions." "There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions." "Observed mean surface wind speed trends are present in many areas, but the emergence of these trends from the interannual natural variability and their attribution to human-induced climate change remains of low confidence due to various factors such as changes in the type and exposure of recording instruments, and their relation to climate change is not established. . . The same limitation also holds for wind extremes (severe storms, tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms)." There is no objective observational evidence that we are living through a global climate crisis. None.
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  6. Quotes from the UN's IPCC AR6 WG1: Flooding - “the assessment of observed trends in the magnitude of runoff, streamflow, and flooding remains challenging, due to the spatial heterogeneity of the signal and to multiple drivers” "Confidence about peak flow trends over past decades on a global scale is low." "In summary there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale. Confidence is in general low in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence" s11.5.4, p1569. So in absence of detected trends, there won’t be much ability to attribute to humans. You can't say floods are caused by, driven by, or intensified by climate change. The evidence doesn’t support that. Drought - "There is low confidence that human influence has affected trends in meteorological droughts in most regions" s11.6.4.5, p1579. So no real evidence we changed the weather to cause periods of dryness. Tropical Cyclones (TC) - "Identifying past trends in TC remains a challenge...There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) trends in TC frequency - or intensity based metrics" s11.7.1.2, p1585. So we can't spot a trend and therefore we can't really attribute that unknown trend to us humans. Storminess - outside the tropics (ETCs) - "There is overall low confidence is recent changes in the total number of ETCs over both hemispheres" "Overall there is low confidence in past-century trends in the number and intensity of the strongest ETCs" s11.7.2.1, p1592 So we don't know what's happening with winter storms, so we can't say it's us that changed them. Tornadoes, hail, lightning, thunderstorms, extreme winds - "It is not straightforward to make a synthesizing view of trends in severe connective storms [thunderstorms] in different regions. In particular, observational trends in tornadoes, hail and lightning associated with severe connective storms are not robustly detected" s11.7.3.2, p1595. "the observed intensity of extreme winds is becoming less severe in lower to mid latitudes" s11.7.4, p1598. That's between 60°N and 60°S, so pretty much where everyone lives.
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  7. The mirage of a climate crisis has hardened into a delusion. There is no climate crisis. 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000. Accumulated cyclone energy shows no increasing trend. Global hurricane landfalls shows no trend. Downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers. NOAA: "We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes." NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. The trend for over 7 decades has been downwards in the Pacific as well. Drought appears to be decreasing globally measured by SPI 1901-2017. Global trends show no increasing flooding frequency or severity. For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes have declined 98%. Deserts have shrunk considerably since the 1980's. The Sahara shrank by 12,000km² per year 1984-2015. The Earth has greened by 15% or more in a human lifetime. The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover has reached the greatest extent ever recorded. On extinction the rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years, so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Global temperatures maxed out in 2016 and have been lower ever since. There is no climate crisis.
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  8. ​@PremierCCGuyMMXVI But in the wibbly wobbly world of climate change shouldn't the rising temperatures have had disastrous effects on humanity? It's almost like it doesn't matter.
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  9. The mirage of a climate crisis has hardened into a delusion. There is no climate crisis. 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000. Accumulated cyclone energy shows no increasing trend. Global hurricane landfalls shows no trend. Downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers. NOAA: "We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes." NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. The trend for over 7 decades has been downwards in the Pacific as well. Drought appears to be decreasing globally measured by SPI 1901-2017. Global trends show no increasing flooding frequency or severity. For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes have declined 98%. Deserts have shrunk considerably since the 1980's. The Sahara shrank by 12,000km² per year 1984-2015. The Earth has greened by 15% or more in a human lifetime. The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover has reached the greatest extent ever recorded. On extinction the rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years, so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Global temperatures maxed out in 2016 and have been lower ever since. There is no climate crisis.
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  10. The Royal Society recommend the UK should have 100TWh of energy storage by 2050 (it's currently 39.3 GWh from 4 pumped storage facilities). That's over a 2,500 fold increase. That means building 10,000 pumped storage facilities or 400 every year. A typical pumped storage facility has a 300 to 400m dam built to hold back 10 million cubic metres of water, with a fall to the turbines below of about 400 metres. That's at the same time as increasing wind power generation from 75TWh (in 2020) to 665TWh (in 2050 - these are UK National Grid figures). That's around 100,000 giant wind turbines. And by the time you get to 2050, the 4,000 wind turbines you needed to install in 2025 would have reached the end of their working lives and will need to be buried in landfill, and replaced with another 4,000. It's all impossible and absurd. The cabling and additional structures to connect all this together will essentially require the UK consuming huge amounts of copper and other rare metals for the next 25 years. 1.5 billion tonnes of concrete 42 million tonnes of steel (which is going to need 27 million tonnes of coking coal) 1.9 million tonnes of copper 1.3 million tonnes of zinc 184,000 tonnes of manganese 122,000 tonnes of chromium 56,000 tonnes of nickel 54,000 tonnes of other critical minerals. No doubt all of these materials will be ethically sourced using low carbon processes. Nuclear power would require less than ½ of these resources and Coal power around ¹/10th. The cost will be unaffordable and the skilled manpower levels unattainable. And that is just to eliminate the less than 1% of the global CO2 emissions that the UK is responsible for. So times that by 100 for the whole Earth going Net Zero. Good luck with that.
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