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

  1. Here's a conspiracy of truths: 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. 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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  2. "Insane and dangerous." 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. 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.
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  4. Climate change saved 555,103 lives in England and Wales between 2001 and 2020 (ONS, 2022). Warming saves lives!
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  5. Why does this guy have such a posh accent? Bloody racist.
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  6. "Insane and dangerous." In reality, "there have been statistically significant positive trends in total Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979." (Fogt et al, 2022. Published in Nature) "since 1979 is the only time all four seasons demonstrate significant increases in total Antarctic sea ice in the context of the twentieth century". Antarctic sea ice extent is an unusual weather event dressed up as the end of the world. Antarctic sea ice was at a record maximum in 2015. No one mentioned that as part of a climate crisis. And why we hear about the Arctic? Because there's been no warming there this summer. Summer 2023 is one of the coldest in decades in the Arctic, and May 2023 was the coldest on record there. The Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance (SMB) for the past 11 months is a massive 450 billion tonnes of ice accumulated. 5 out of the last 7 years have seen huge accumulations above the average (1981-2010).
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  7. "Insane and dangerous." At the height of northern summer in July, of 176 countries in the Northern Hemisphere, only China and Albania broke 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 and NOAA-STARv5) which is of course what we're living in. 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.
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  8. 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.
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  9. "Insane and dangerous." Global burned area has decreased by one quarter this century! The World is burning less. For the whole of Canada, there is no trend in burn acreage for the period 1980-2021. The previous highest burn acreage was in 1989. 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, so can that record be attributed to man-made climate change? 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 so far in 2023 including Maui is 3rd lowest on record. 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). The World is burning less! There is no climate crisis...there isn't even any evidence for it.
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  10. "Insane and dangerous." As regards flooding, the U.N. IPCC admits having “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—in other words, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe. In a study on the climate impact on flooding for the USA and Europe, published in the Journal of Hydrology, Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717, the study found: ‘The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone.’ ‘Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.’ ‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded (Hartmann et al., 2013) that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.’ ‘The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.’
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