Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "Greta Thunberg warns COP28: Fight climate change now or face "death sentence"" video.
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The naughty little truant should go back to school and learn something. There has been a 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000 (CRED). Normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920.
Climate change saved 555,103 lives in England and Wales between 2001 and 2020 (ONS, 2022).
Globally the ACE index (accumulated cyclone energy) 1980-2021 shows no increasing trend. Global Hurricane Landfalls 1970-2021 (updated from Weinkle et al, 2012) shows no trend. Satellite data since 1980 shows a slight downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers with 2021 being a record low year. From the NOAA GFDL website 'Global Warming and Hurricanes, An Overview of Current Research' (dated Feb. 9, 2023). And I quote "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." Multidecadal variability in Atlantic hurricaines is most probably related to the AMO (Vecchi et al, 2021). NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. It makes no difference if you look at the Pacific. Using data from the JMA 1951-2022 we see typhoon activity trending downwards for over 7 decades.
There is evidence cited in AR6 (IPCC) that Australia is experiencing the lowest frequency of tropical cyclones in the last 550 to 1,500 years, and that windspeed overland throughout the Northern Hemisphere has been dropping in recent decades. Also the number of intense storms (below 960 mbars) in the Northern Atlantic has fallen sharply since 1990 (Tilinina et al, 2021).
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).
There has been no clear change in annual precipitation over the Earth's landmasses between 1850-2000 (Wijngaarden, 2015).
Drought appears to be decreasing globally (Watts et al, 2018) measured by SPI 1901-2017.
There are over 5 million excess deaths per annum globally due to abnormal temperatures from the 2000-2019 study led Prof. Guo of Monash University. It found that over 90% of excess deaths were caused by excess COLD rather than excess heat. This applied globally including in the hottest continent, Africa. So, in a world with increasingly mild temperatures, there will be less excess death. Warming is good not bad.
Deserts have shrunk considerably since the 1980's. The Sahara shrank by 12,000km² per year 1984-2015(Liu & Xue, 2020). The Earth has greened by 15% or more in a human lifetime. "The greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rainforests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year"(NASA, 2019). Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016 (Nature, 2018). As well as human intervention, the reasons for this include forests expanding polewards aided by additional CO2 and a slight rise in temperature.
The Earth’s natural vegetation productivity actually increased 6% in 18 years (Nemani et al, 2003) with 42% of this increase coming from the Amazon rainforests.
Between 1961 and 2021 cereal production increased 250% and cereal yield increased over 200%. Land used for cereal hardly increased (Data from World Bank, FAO/UN). This is the only time in human history that you are more likely to be overfed rather than underfed. We should be thankful we were borne into an age of such abundance.
The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover has reached the greatest extent ever recorded (AIMS). 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.
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.
On extinction the 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).
Global temperatures maxed out in 2016 and have been lower ever since (UAH v6 global satellite data). 500 billion tonnes of emissions in that time (14% of all man-made CO2) and no warming.
There is no climate crisis.
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