Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "10 News First" channel.

  1. Global burned area has decreased by a quarter this century! For the whole of Canada, there is no trend in burn acreage for the period 1980-2021. Over that same period the trend for number of fires was slightly downwards (CNFDB). Note that 2020 had the lowest recorded burn acreage and number of fires. Burn acreage was much, much, higher in the US during the 1920's, 30's and 40's. It peaked in 1930 at well over 50,000,000 acres. The trend is downwards (1926-2020 NIFC US) eventhough CO2 has increased exponentially. For 2000 onwards the average burn acreage is much less than 10,000,000 acres. The number of fires has also declined. Remember CO2 was increasing all the time. Data for Siberia seems harder to come by. However, for the period 1997-2016, the trend was highly variable (by a factor of 4) but the trend for the annual burn acreage was downwards (Global Fire Data). For the Amazon (2003-2019), 2010 was the record year for fire emissions with all subsequent years lower by at least ½. When it comes to wildfires there is nothing unusual about this summer's fire season in Europe (look it up on the EFFIS website). Besides all this the forest fire record in Southern Europe is related to the previous winter rains, not summer temperatures. Wetter winters encourage more plant grow, which forms more fuel for fires when it dries out. Mediterranean summers are always hot and dry enough to allow fires to spread. Furthermore, with regard to the IPCC, they have not detected or attributed the number of fires or the burn acreage to man-made climate change. Also IPCC only has medium confidence ( that's a 50-50, so toss a coin) that weather conditions that promote wildfires (fire weather) have become more probable in southern Europe, northern Eurasia, the USA, and Australia over the last century. Note that annual Global Wildfire Carbon Emissions have been declining dramatically since 2003, with 2022 being the lowest on record (Copernicus). "With higher CO2, increased tree cover leads to reduced fire ignition and burned area, and provides a positive feedback to tree cover" (Chen et al, 2019), so burning fossil fuels actually leads to less forest fire! Global burned area has decreased by nearly by 24.2% in 20 years (Chen et al, 2023). There is no climate crisis...there isn't even any evidence for it.
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  2. Please be aware that the IPCC's (Scenario A) modelled predictions are junk. Back in 1990 they predicted a warming of 0.30-0.34°C per decade. Of course we've only had 0.13°C per decade, which is well below the IPCC's lower bound of 0.20°. IPCC’s business-as-usual scenario was founded on the assumption that CO2 emissions would increase by 10-20% by 2025. The truth, however, is that global CO2 emissions are not 20% above their 1990 level but 60% above it! But there is still no crisis just an unexciting set of observations. All the climate models run too hot, 100% of them.
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  3. This is nonsense. It was hotter in the recent and distant past. There is no satellite data before 1979, and there was no real network of temperature stations outside Europe and America before the 1950s, so "hottest ever" is not very long! It was much hotter in America in the 1930s. Heatwaves were more than 6 times worse with greater frequency and covering a larger area (Kunkel, 2022, EPA). Further back the Vikings grew barley on Greenland, which is impossible today. This is bull meant to scare people into giving up their prosperity. Satellite data shows the Earth is continuing to warm at around one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade. If we didn't have thermometers we couldn't even notice it. What the data from NOAA SPC shows about tornados: EF1-EF5 (1954-2022) no trend; EF3-EF5 (most destructive) (1954-2022) 50% decline. No EF5s in US since 2013 (a record absence). The 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, so 50-50), 43 out 45 low confidence in human attribution. Agricultural Drought: 31 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend (14 medium confidence, so 50-50. 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!
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  4. More nonsense.
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  5. This is nonsense. It was hotter in the recent and distant past. There is no satellite data before 1979, and there was no real network of temperature stations outside Europe and America before the 1950s, so "hottest ever" is not very long! It was much hotter in America in the 1930s, and the Vikings grew barley on Greenland, which is impossible today. This is bull meant to scare people into giving up their prosperity. Satellite data shows the Earth is continuing to warm steadily at around one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade. If we didn't have thermometers we couldn't even notice it.
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