Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "WFLA News Channel 8" channel.

  1. Did man-made climate change cause the much more severe heatwaves of the 1930s, even though CO2 was lower?
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  2. @scottekoontz  Heat waves have not been increasing in intensity or frequency in the United States. Data from NOAA's Climate Reference Network shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005. In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less severe than they were in the 1930s. At that time Heatwaves were more than 6 times worse with greater frequency and covering a larger area than the last decade (Kunkel, 2022, EPA). The all-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
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  3. @scottekoontz  As stated, 1930s heatwaves were many times worse than today's. You start in the 1960s because that was a cooler decade so it's bound to flatter more recent decades. I made a reference starting in 2005 because the USCRN started collecting data then, but you wouldn't know that.
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  4. 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. Burn area for US in 2023 was 3rd lowest on record. It was under 3 million acres well below the ten year average of 7 million, the lowest since 1998 (NIFC), and 3% of the burn in the 1900s. Annual share of the total land area burnt by wildfires in the US went from 0.6% (2012) to 0.4% (2024)(GWIS/FAO UN). There's basically no increasing trend in the data. The areas burnt are comparatively tiny.
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  5. 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 Earth has greenedDrought appears to be decreasing globally (Watts et al, 2018) measured by SPI 1901-2017. 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. 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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  6. Sea surface temperatures (SST) were trending downwards 2000-2018 (HadSST 4), and from 1950-1980, and from 1880-1910. The oceans warmed at a faster rate 1910-1940 than 1980-2010. Remember CO2 has been accumulating in the atmosphere at an accelerating rate all the time, so there is little correlation between the two. The most recent rise stopped in August 2023, and has been declining since (NOAA SST v5 monthly). The ocean has warmed rapidly and repeatedly during the current interglacial with no correlation to CO2 e.g. 10,300-10,200 years before the present (y BP), 9,500y BP, 6,000-5,900y BP, 5,400-5,300y BP, 2,500-2,300y BP, 1,700-1,600y BP (Berner et al., 2008). There is a high frequency (18 events) of SST variability on the order of 1-3°C during a 10-50 year time resolution throughout the Holocene in the North Atlantic with no correlation to CO2. And Life just carried on.
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  7.  @hosnimubarak8869  Is that because comparable quality data does not exist globally?
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  8. @LucyParsons87  My data sources are in the comment, but I can also recommend USDA Forest Service report 1916-2008.
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  9. Even if there is radical climate change (and that is a very, very big 'if') with the manifestation of numerous tipping points (including permafrost thaw, ocean hydrates dissociation, Arctic sea ice loss, rainforest dieback, polar ice sheet loss, AMOC slowdown, and Indian monsoon variability) the disruption to economic growth and well-being will be minimal. The world's economy will continue to grow making everyone much richer. By 2050 world mean consumption per capita should be $29,100 with tipping points or $29,300 without tipping points - barely noticeable. Apart from it being approximately double what it is now. By 2100 world mean consumption per capita should $71,000 with or without tipping points (Dietz et al, 2021). This is the most fortunate time to be alive in the whole of history.
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  10. There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis. The UN's IPCC AR6 WG1, chapter 12 "Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment", page 1856, 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, Antarctic Sea Ice, Tropical Cyclones.
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  11. @tastytoast4576  We are repeatedly told this is a global climate crisis. At the height of northern summer so far this July, of 176 countries in the Northern Hemisphere, only two (China and Albania) have broken their national records, which is a little disappointing considering all the scary reporting. It's more what you would expect from a slowly warming world (~0.1°C per decade UAHv6), which is, of course, what we're living in. There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis.
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  12. @hosnimubarak8869  The Party line is the number and length of heatwaves has increased globally (1950-2014) as you would expect in a slowly warming world, but there is no trend for average intensity (Perkins-Kirkpatrick and Lewis, 2020, also ref. by IPCC). However, data that these heatwave assumptions are built upon are largely non-existent or fabricated. At least with the one data source GHCN it shows there is no reliable data going back to the 1950s across almost the whole of Indonesia, India, Arabia, Africa, plus Central and South America. The other data source Berkeley Earth "observational" dataset - now that's a misrepresentation! - just makes it up. It's supposed to be high resolution (1° lat, 1° long) and go back to 1850. So I thought, hmm, the Horn of Africa and Arabia are looking a bit toasty and red on the maps. Let's check out the data. I found Berkeley Earth’s data sources. I reviewed WMO, GSOD, and NCAR. For the period reviewed in the paper (1950-2014) in the Horn of Africa there were no meteorological station that cover that period. That's right - zero. In the whole of Arabia there were three, just three. Just like Arabia, the whole thing is built on sand. Very interestingly, if you look at the charts on Fig. 1 on the paper, the US, especially the eastern half looks distinctly unaffected by any increase in heatwaves. Bit of a blue tinge there, I think you'll agree. It's much more difficult to fudge that one because of the huge number of long-term meteorological stations in the US. And why do they start in 1950, and not 1930 or 1900? Hmm.
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