Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless

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APA
Agresti, J. D. (2019, October 17). Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless. Retrieved from https://www.justfactsdaily.com/climate-change-fears-of-teen-activist-are-empirically-baseless
MLA
Agresti, James D. “Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless.” Just Facts. 17 October 2019. Web. 5 October 2024.<https://www.justfactsdaily.com/climate-change-fears-of-teen-activist-are-empirically-baseless>.
Chicago (for footnotes)
James D. Agresti, “Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless.” Just Facts. October 17, 2019. https://www.justfactsdaily.com/climate-change-fears-of-teen-activist-are-empirically-baseless.
Chicago (for bibliographies)
Agresti, James D. “Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless.” Just Facts. October 17, 2019. https://www.justfactsdaily.com/climate-change-fears-of-teen-activist-are-empirically-baseless.

By James D. Agresti
October 17, 2019

At a recent United Nations summit, 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg claimed that the Earth is on the brink of destruction and that older generations are betraying younger ones by not doing enough to stop climate change. The media has amplified these allegations by giving her speech broad, glowing coverage, but the fears she expressed are not grounded in reality.

The End of Humanity?

Thunberg says that she is “one of the lucky ones” who are not already “dying” from global warming and claims that with “today’s emissions levels our remaining CO2 budget will be gone in less than 8.5 years.” She frets that if we exceed this so-called budget, we risk “setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.”

Such apocalyptic beliefs are common among young people. A recent Scott Rasmussen/HarrisX poll found that 51% of U.S. voters under the age of 35 believe it is “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that the “the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out” in “the next 10–15 years.”

Thunberg says her fears are justified by “more than 30 years” of “crystal-clear” science, but as detailed below, just the opposite is true. Contrary to predictions made three decades ago, a broad range of environmental and human welfare indicators related to the effects of climate change have stayed level or improved. Yet, in accord with a stratagem published at the outset of this period, many people are unaware of this.

“Getting Loads of Media Coverage”

Exactly 30 years ago in 1989, climatologist Stephen Schneider—the creator of the journal Climatic Change and one of the founding members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—told Discover magazine that in order to “reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change”:

we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Despite his willingness to tell half-truths and compromise honesty for the sake of “being effective,” Schneider, along with his IPCC colleagues and Al Gore, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change….”

In 1989, the same year that Schneider laid out his plan and when Thunberg says the clear scientific record began, high-ranking UN officials and EPA scientists predicted ruinous effects from global warming unless timely actions were taken to prevent it. These include projections about plants, forests, extinctions, agriculture, flooding, rainfall, hurricanes, and human health. Comparing these forecasts to the actual outcomes—or crystal-clear science—is revealing.

Plant Life

In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “global warming may be the greatest challenge facing humankind,” and “any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems” like “plant” life.

In reality, a 2016 paper in the journal Nature Climate Change examined three long-term satellite datasets and found “a persistent and widespread increase” in “greening” or plant growth “over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area” from 1982 to 2014, “whereas less than 4% of the globe” had less greening over this period.

Those findings support and update a 2003 paper in the journal Science, which found that a principal measure of worldwide vegetation productivity increased by 6.2% between 1982 and 1999. The authors note that this occurred during a period in which human population increased by 37%, the level of atmospheric CO2 increased by 9%, and the Earth “had two of the warmest decades in the instrumental record.”

Forests & Trees

In the same 1989 article, Mansfield claimed that “forests would be adversely affected” by global warming.

In contrast, reports published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization from 2015 through 2018 found that the mass of above-ground organic plant materials in forests “has remained stable since the 1990s” and “most regions of the world are experiencing either positive or small-to-no changes in forest area or above-ground biomass.”

More significantly, the journal Nature published a study in 2018 that analyzed satellite data to obtain “a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics” from 1982 to 2016. It found that tree cover increased by 7.1% during this period, with the margins of error ranging from a 2.9% to 10.8% rise with 90% confidence.

Extinctions

In 1989, Sandra Henderson, a biogeographer at EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratory, wrote that “scientists are warning of a possible loss of 20 percent of the earth’s species before the end of the century,” and “a major factor in this modern species extinction may be our alteration of the earth’s climate: global warming due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

Given that roughly 1.2 million species have been cataloged, a loss of 20% would be 240,000 species.

Yet, during 1984–2004, the International Union for Conservation of Nature recorded 27 confirmed species extinctions. This is not an exact figure, as the report notes that other extinctions may have occurred, such as “eight species of birds.” Regardless of the precise number, the actual loss was orders of magnitude below the projected one and in line with the average historical extinction rate.

Likewise, a 2011 paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions notes that extinctions mainly occur on islands where populations are small and tightly restricted by physical boundaries. Thus, the paper analyzed continental extinctions and found only six confirmed extinctions of continental birds and three confirmed extinctions of continental mammals since the year 1500. These figures amount to 0.08% of continental mammals and 0.062% of continental birds.

Despite these facts, people have led Thunberg to believe that “entire ecosystems are collapsing,” and “we are in the beginning of a mass extinction.”

Agriculture

Mansfield also wrote in 1989 that “food supplies” would be negatively impacted and “changes in rainfall patterns would disrupt agriculture.”

In actuality, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2003 that food consumption per person increased by 15% worldwide and 25% in developing countries between the mid-1970s and late 1990s.

Continuing this trend, UN data from 2000 to 2015 shows that the portion of the world population that was undernourished decreased from 15% to 11%:

Moreover, the severity of undernourishment for the malnourished has declined. From 1992 to 2016, while global population increased by 36%, the average number of calories needed to lift all the undernourished people of the world out of that condition decreased from 172 to 88 calories per person:

Flooding

In 1989, the Associated Press reported: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco- refugees,’ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program.”

Similarly, Mansfield wrote in 1989: “Sea-level rise as a consequence of global warming would immediately threaten that large fraction of the globe living at sea level. … Most of the world’s great seaport cities would be endangered: New Orleans, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Cairo. Some countries-the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, islands in the Pacific-would be inundated. Heavily populated coastal areas such as in Bangladesh and Egypt, where large populations occupy low-lying areas, would suffer extreme dislocation.”

In reality, a study of satellite data published by the journal Nature Climate Change in 2016 found that from 1985 to 2015, the net amount of land area on Earth grew by about 22,400 square miles, and the net amount of coastal land grew by about 5,200 square miles.

Increases in land area and/or human population have also occurred in places that are considered to be highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. This includes Pacific island nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu, Bangladesh, and Florida’s coastal areas.

This is not to say that the average global sea level isn’t rising. This has been happening since 1860 or earlier, which is about 45 years before surface temperatures began to rise and 75 years before man-made emissions of carbon dioxide reached 1% of natural emissions. However, the trends and effects have been nothing like climate doomsayers have predicted.

Rainfall

Again in 1989, Dr. David Rind, an atmospheric scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a “leading researcher” on global warming, wrote that his agency’s “model’s forecast for the next 50 years” predicts an average global temperature increase of “3.6ºF by the year 2020.” As a result, he said that “rainfall patterns would likely be substantially altered, posing the threat of large-scale disruptions of agricultural and economic productivity, and water shortages in some areas.”

As it turned out, Earth’s average global temperature increased by about 0.7ºF between the 1980s and 2010s, or by one-fifth of this projection.

With regard to rainfall, a 2015 paper in the Journal of Hydrology examined rainfall measurements “made at nearly 1,000 stations located in 114 countries” and found “no significant global precipitation change from 1850 to present.” The paper notes that previous studies had analyzed shorter timeframes and found rainfall changes that some people had attributed to global warming, but those results were generally not statistically significant and “not entirely surprising given that precipitation varies considerably over time scales of decades.”

Regarding drought, a 2013 paper in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology found that contrary to “climate models,” actual observations “reveal no significant trend in the areas under drought over land in the past three decades.” The study did find increasing drought over land in the Southern Hemisphere, but the hemisphere is only 19% land, as opposed to 39% in the Northern Hemisphere. The trend is also well within the bounds of short-term variability, as shown in this chart from the paper:

Hurricanes

Mansfield also wrote in 1989 that “warmer oceans would spawn stronger hurricanes and typhoons, resulting in coastal flooding, possibly swamping valuable agricultural lands around the world.”

Actual outcomes show nothing of the sort. As far back in time as reliable data exists, global hurricane frequency, intensity, and duration have all been level. Comprehensive global datasets on hurricane frequency and intensity, which were published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters in 2011 and updated in 2018, show roughly flat trends for the past four-to-five decades.

Likewise, the IPCC reported in 2012: “There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.” This also applies to hurricanes, which are tropical cyclones with winds exceeding 73 miles per hour.

Highlighting how people have been misled about this issue, a national scientific survey commissioned by Just Facts in 2018 found that 66% of U.S. voters believe that the global “number and intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms have generally increased since the 1980s,” including 91% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans.

Human Health

Mansfield also wrote in 1989: “Human health would be affected. Warming could enlarge tropical climate bringing with it yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases.”

Populations of disease-carrying insects have grown dramatically over the past several decades, but as multiple studies have shown, there is no reliable evidence that climate change is the reason. Instead, another factor is the probable cause.

As documented in a 2016 study of coastal U.S. mosquito populations in the journal Nature Communications, increases in U.S. mosquito populations don’t correspond with rising temperatures but with decreasing residues of the pesticide DDT. This occurred because governments restricted and banned DDT at the behest of environmental activists.

The World Health Organization and some environmental organizations now endorse using DDT inside of homes to combat malaria. Other environmental groups still insist that it harms human health, even though a 2000 article in the British Medical Journal reported that there is “not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome.”

Likewise, a 2012 paper in the medical journal Lancet about insect-borne diseases explains that “climate has not consistently changed in the right way, at the right time, and in the right places to account for the” changes in vector-borne diseases. The paper also notes that “a persistent stream of reviews are published that claim that climate change is a primary driving force.” This incessant misreporting fits with Schneider’s marching orders to “offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”

Tipping Points

Despite the fact that these decades-old predictions of climate catastrophes have yet to materialize, some claim they are just around the corner. Thunberg, for instance, says that people don’t “fully” understand the “urgency” of the situation and that “cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.”

Such assertions are strikingly similar to those made thirty years ago. The Associated Press reported in 1989 that Brown “said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”

Thunberg, however, seems to be unaware of the historical record and worries about “tipping points.” A tipping point, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, is “a critical moment in a complex situation in which a small influence or development produces a sudden large or irreversible change.” While the future is inherently uncertain, the very nature of carbon dioxide impedes that possibility.

That is because the greenhouse effect of additional carbon dioxide—the primary manmade greenhouse gas—declines as its levels increase. This scientific fact is rarely revealed to the public, but as Stephen Schneider himself wrote in the journal Science in 1971: “As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere, the rate of temperature increase is proportionally less and less, and the increase eventually levels off.”

In technical terms, Schneider explains that “the runaway greenhouse effect does not occur because the 15-μm CO2 band, which is the main source of absorption, ‘saturates,’ and the addition of more CO2 does not substantially increase the infrared opacity of the atmosphere.”

Conclusion

According to an article in Time magazine, Thunberg “cited more than 30 years of scientific evidence showing the consequences of a perpetually warming globe.” That is a misleading description of her words. In reality, she merely claimed this was so without presenting any scientific evidence to support it.

To the contrary, a wide array of environmental and human welfare indicators related to climate change have stayed level or improved for the past 30 years. This includes measurable outcomes of plants, forests, extinctions, agriculture, flooding, rainfall, hurricanes, and human health. This is true “crystal-clear” science, and it is at odds with Thunberg’s beliefs.

Legendary physicist Richard Feynman was an extremely creative thinker who blazed new frontiers of science, but he was also a staunch advocate of the view that science must be grounded in practical reality. He expressed this by saying: “The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth’.”

The real-world experiments of the past 30 years constitute genuine science, while the failed predictions of certain scientists and environmental officials have proven to be the antithesis of science.

In her speech, Thunberg raged that people “have stolen my dreams and my childhood,” which is arguably true. However, she blames the wrong culprits. Her anxiety and desperation are not the fault of adults who act in accord with the facts of this issue. Instead, Thunberg’s tormenters are the people who have indoctrinated her and many other youth with unfounded fears.

  • October 17, 2019 at 4:00 PM
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    It is lamentable that this obviously immature child has garnered so much press time. No one in the MSM seems to fact-check before publication.

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  • October 17, 2019 at 4:12 PM
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    I completely agree with the basic premise you present, in that the dire predictions made 30 years ago have in no way come true. The likelihood of today’s horrifying predictions comIng true is slim to none. M question is this: is any of this attributable to the steps taken by my parents and my generation to clean up the air and water and be better stewards of nature? If yes, that completely flies in the face of Greta’s accusation that we have stolen her future. Her parents and grandparents would have effectively saved her future. If the answer is no, and that despite all our efforts, the earth simply did not and was never going to disintegrate before our eyes, then Greta has been fed blatant lies. Does anyone know how much effect the steps already taken have had?

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    • October 18, 2019 at 8:53 AM
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      Comprehensive data for the entire world does not exist, but below are the facts on U.S. air pollution levels:

      The EPA monitors the outdoor (ambient) concentrations of six major air pollutants on a nationwide basis. These are called “criteria air pollutants.” Criteria pollutants are those that are deemed by the administrator of the EPA to be widespread and to “cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare….” According to the EPA’s primary measures, the average U.S. ambient levels of:

      • carbon monoxide declined by 84% from 1980 through 2017.
      • ozone declined by 32% from 1980 through 2017.
      • lead declined by 99% from 1980 through 2017.
      • nitrogen dioxide declined by 60% from 1980 through 2017.
      • 10 micron particulate matter declined by 34% from 1990 through 2017.
      • 2.5 micron particulate matter declined by 41% from 2000 through 2017.
      • sulfur dioxide decreased by 90% from 1980 through 2017.

      The EPA is also required by law to regulate the emissions of substances that “present, or may present” a “threat of adverse human health effects” or “adverse environmental effects….” These are called “hazardous or “toxic” air pollutants. Between a baseline period of 1990–1993 and 2011, EPA’s annual emission estimates for the seven hazardous air pollutants believed to account for the greatest health risks changed by the following amounts:

      • acetaldehyde: –18%
      • acrolein: –14%
      • benzene: –47%
      • 1,3-butadiene: –26%
      • carbon tetrachloride –98%
      • formaldehyde: 5%
      • tetrachloroethylene: –91%

      Despite these facts, activists, journalists, and educators have misled a major portion of the public into believing just the opposite. A scientific, nationally representative survey commissioned in 2018 by Just Facts found that 41% of voters believe the air in the United States is now more polluted than it was in the 1980s.

      Reply
  • October 17, 2019 at 4:33 PM
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    Thank you for this.

    Reply
  • October 17, 2019 at 5:00 PM
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    Thank you so much for this information. It is very difficult to find material that does not agree with or further the agenda of the Climate Warming alarmists.
    It is suspected by many of us that the alarmists are using these scare tactics to gain more power over the lives of all. More truth is needed.

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  • October 17, 2019 at 7:48 PM
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    My hope is that many more people appreciate this fine work. The man-made climate change promoters know convincingly that the youth are in their camp after years of marinating in progressive thought within public education. They know that youth are their “useful idiots.” Putting children up to do the dirty work of adults is reprehensible.

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  • October 17, 2019 at 8:24 PM
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    I believe 97% of all scientists that Global Warming is here and it is real!!. You CANNOT argue with science. Do not spread false information.

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    • October 19, 2019 at 9:45 AM
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      Your argument fails in at least four respects:

      1) Science is not the opinion of scientists. It is the “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” That’s exactly what this article provides.

      2) Your “97%” figure is based on surveys that ask selected scientists if the earth has warmed over the past century and if human activity has contributed to this. They don’t ask if global warming will have catastrophic effects. There’s a big difference between these views, but activists often conflate them.

      3) Those surveys have substantial flaws that cast doubt on their credibility, and thus, it is misleading to cite them without qualification, as you did.

      4) Thousands of atmospheric, earth, and environmental scientists have signed a petition stating that there is “no convincing scientific evidence” that manmade greenhouse gases will “cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

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      • November 11, 2019 at 2:21 PM
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        Your response is what is misleading:
        1) Monica said she believed (opinion) the 97% of scientists who have examined the DATA on climate change and find it convincing. That is how science works. The scientists are by no means in agreement on all the details (even people like Nir Shaviv attribute 50% of warming to human activities Nir Shaviv. “Carbon Week: The sun raises the seas,” Financial Post, June 16, 2015. Archived October 7, 2016. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/ww5qZ). They ARE in agreement with the fact that the climate is changing, warming overall, and that humans have a large part in that change (50% is large!). Monica has an opinion, scientists have an evaluation based on evidence.
        2. I agree that activists do not explain how scientists work. But that is not the scientists’ fault. The “selected scientists” is a very large group,(https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002). It was not “only” a survey, but first an examination of published papers. You conveniently leave that out.
        3. and 4. Your citation here, from a right-biased fact-checking source, proves the previous point. Yes, climate scientists are NOT saying that ABSOLUTELY there are definitely, without-doubt going to be CATASTROPHIC problems in the next few years. No scientist would say that. They say they think the data points to this conclusion, but they also acknowledge the complexity of climate science. Your citation in #3 actually confirms their evaluation that climate change is anthropogenic. The unsolved questions are, how much, and what to do? Again, even people like Nir Shaviv are for getting rid of fossil fuels, although for other reasons (see citation above).

        I agree with the previous comment: Stop spreading false information, or at least present the whole picture.

        Furthermore, the attacks on teenagers like Greta Thunberg are pathetic. She is, understandably so, worried about what MAY happen. Some of the scenarios presented, such as “the extra CO2 from fossil fuel combustion actually spurs plant growth, look at the satellite images) should make us even more concerned, for if so, more plants take up more CO2 that we are emitting, meaning that the warming would be MORE extreme than it already is, based on our emissions. Please. Don’t mock anyone’s concern, especially since you should be held to your own standards of “We aren’t sure.” Not being sure does NOT constitute a reason for inaction, as though it’s settled.

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        • November 11, 2019 at 3:27 PM
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          1) You are taking Monica’s comment out of context. Immediately after she cited the surveys, she wrote “You CANNOT argue with science. Do not spread false information.” Since this article is entirely about whether global warming will have catastrophic effects, her appeal to those surveys is deceptive and useless.

          2) The source you cited is a merely a compilation of surveys debunked by the research I provided above and similarly flawed studies. The “examination of published papers” that you refer to is so spurious that several authors of the papers publicly wrote that it misrepresented their papers.

          3 & 4) The research that you dismiss with nothing more than name-calling is from Just Facts. Thus, every fact is rigorously documented with highly credible primary sources. Unless you can provide verifiable evidence that something in the research is false or misleading, your comment is empty bluster.

          5) To characterize this article as an “attack on teenagers” is manipulative and grossly dishonest. The people attacking teenagers are those who are stoking fears in them by brainwashing them with patent falsehoods.

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          • December 25, 2019 at 4:34 PM
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            Excellent initial observations and excellent response to someone who is obviously guilty of many of the very points you were making.
            Close evaluations of surveys such as Oreskes (2004), Doran and Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010), Cook et al. (2013), etc. demonstrate that not only did the surveys not find anything near 97% of scientists agreeing with the CAGW mantra but most couldn’t even find 97 scientists to fully agree!
            Further, too many fail to realize that the so-called attacks on Greta are not attacks on a child but rather attacks on the utter rubbish which has been indoctrinated into her by her handlers. Also, Greta is now a celebrity and as such she and her fans need to become fully aware and expect that nearly everything she now does or says will be cast under the public spotlight.
            For any to bring up whether or not the climate is changing and whether or not it may be warming somewhat since coming out of the last ice, is immature babble at the very least. It would be difficult to find any educated person who would disagree with either claim.
            Greta’s claims on the other hand…

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      • December 26, 2020 at 2:57 PM
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        Rubbish! The “Thousands of atmospheric, earth, and environmental scientists” are anything but atmospheric, earth, and environmental scientists. You give no link to this list, nor of the relevance of the knowledge of the members. The miscellaneous “scientists” list that I’ve seen have tenuous links to science, never mind the use of the scientific method or of critical thinking. This website scatters random, irrelevant facts between cherry-picked strawman arguments. For example, the questionnaire of by how much has the atmospheric carbon dioxide increased since the start of the industrial revolution deliberately side steps the fact that the RATE of the increase is the issue. It is utterly irrelevant to state that an increased level of carbon dioxide in the vicinity of plants helps their growth. More to the point would be the effect on animals, and on the atmosphere far above the level of plants. This seems to be a site for those science deniers that “don’t confuse me with facts; I’ve made up my mind” want cherry-picked obfuscation of the broad range of demonstrated facts.

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        • December 27, 2020 at 1:33 AM
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          Your claim that I “give no link to this list” is patently false. Simply click on the link and then into the footnotes, and you will find this list and everything else you claim I don’t present. The rest of your comments are equally baseless.

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    • December 23, 2019 at 10:37 AM
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      Check out the Wall Street Journal Article from MAY 2014 that picks apart the supposed “survey” that states that 97% of scientists think that….the survey, it turns out, was anything but objective and scientific…It deliberately posed misleading questions and used dubious statistical interpretations of the data. It also included in the definition of “scientists” professions like “political scientists”, Civil Engineers, etc….

      Reply
  • October 19, 2019 at 11:03 AM
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    Please continue to post about climate change. It’s extremely hard to find rational analysis of climate change that is neither denialist (i.e. NIPCC) nor alarmist.

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  • October 21, 2019 at 2:35 PM
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    I believe that God created the Earth and only he can control any major changes that occur. When total temperature models that are known, there have been major changes that took place long before man had the ability to impact or change it in any way. If they were honest with the populous, they would present the total data not pick the areas that fit their agenda. Much of the land areas that have been sinking over time has been found to have been caused by the draining of the aquafer thereby removing the support of the land and causing it to subside. When water withdrawal is stopped, the land stops sinking! We love our Earth and must do what is practical to limit our impact, but we also must remember that man is also a species on Earth.

    Reply
  • November 7, 2019 at 10:57 AM
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    Thanks for a breath of fresh air – no pun intended- on this subject.

    Try Googling “catastrophic AGW is a hoax” or is unproven or any other variation. All that I’ve seen pop up are “scholarly articles” on “deniers” or those promoting the notion that it is a hoax or unproven. Nothing came up actually linking to articles like this.

    Please keep up the thankless work!

    Reply
    • December 4, 2019 at 12:48 PM
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      Try using a different search engine as Google is biased. I discovered this in my research on cancer treatments and the list from DDG (duckduckgo.com) was far more related to my search query. Another area of bias for Google (there could be many – I don’t know) is global warming.

      When you ask the exact same query in both search engines you’ll get the picture.

      Reply
      • December 25, 2019 at 4:37 PM
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        Edward: FWIW, I believe that Duckduckgo uses the Google search engine.
        I do agree however, that Google is extremely left-wing biased and this has been clearly demonstrated several times by various researchers.

        Reply
  • November 17, 2019 at 12:25 AM
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    Thank you for this article. It has been very helpful in the climate of mis-information. Please keep up the good work for the rest of us who don’t wish to jump on bandwagons or take sides but just want to know the truth.

    Thank you again.

    SA

    Reply
  • December 4, 2019 at 3:13 PM
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    The whole global warming issue cannot be correct for the simple matter that the people most in fear of our climate are saying human activity caused it BUT, then, they say it is up to us to fix it. How can people be trusted to make the right changes after they have been accused of corrupting the climate in the first place? There is no logic in the blame game. If humans are too stupid and reckless to be trusted—with some holding the levers of power—then why are we charged with fixing the problem. I mean even if there were a problem, but apparently the data says not.

    From the start the argument doesn’t show empirical evidence that we are in a climate crisis, and the longer we see reversals of alarming predictions the less people believe the headlines. What is the agenda of those encouraging fear? In my mind it is only a combination of two things: money and power.

    Reply
  • December 5, 2019 at 2:38 PM
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    David B. Wake and Vance T. Vredenburg
    PNAS first published August 11, 2008 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801921105
    Article Info & Metrics PDF
    Abstract
    Many scientists argue that we are either entering or in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction. Intense human pressure, both direct and indirect, is having profound effects on natural environments. The amphibians—frogs, salamanders, and caecilians—may be the only major group currently at risk globally. A detailed worldwide assessment and subsequent updates show that one-third or more of the 6,300 species are threatened with extinction. This trend is likely to accelerate because most amphibians occur in the tropics and have small geographic ranges that make them susceptible to extinction. The increasing pressure from habitat destruction and climate change is likely to have major impacts on narrowly adapted and distributed species. We show that salamanders on tropical mountains are particularly at risk. A new and significant threat to amphibians is a virulent, emerging infectious disease, chytridiomycosis, which appears to be globally distributed, and its effects may be exacerbated by global warming. This disease, which is caused by a fungal pathogen and implicated in serious declines and extinctions of >200 species of amphibians, poses the greatest threat to biodiversity of any known disease. Our data for frogs in the Sierra Nevada of California show that the fungus is having a devastating impact on native species, already weakened by the effects of pollution and introduced predators. A general message from amphibians is that we may have little time to stave off a potential mass extinction.

    Reply
    • December 21, 2019 at 8:46 PM
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      The canary in the mine
      The amphibian in the pond
      It’s happening slower than they tried to alarm us
      Unfortunately exaggerating has backfired
      Unfortunately trying to use it to enslave for their cashless society OWG/NWO has also backfired
      But
      It will happen as prophesied,
      The sun will get so hot it will scorch people
      Men’s hearts will stop from fear
      And there will be roaring of the seas

      Reply
  • December 22, 2019 at 5:01 AM
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    “says her fears are justified by “more than 30 years” of “crystal-clear” science, but as detailed below, just the opposite is true. Contrary to predictions made three decades ago, a broad range of environmental and human welfare indicators related to the effects of climate change have stayed level or improved. Yet, in accord with a stratagem published at the outset of this period, many people are unaware of this.”

    — Dear Mr. Agresti, I understand that you’re not a scientist and therefore can not distinguish between facts and opinions, however, if you say something along the lines of: “a broad range of environmental and human welfare indicators related to the effects of climate change have stayed level or improved.” you should add a reference in the end (if you can ever find a peer-reviewed publication confirming this nonsense). If you cannot find a reference then anything you say should be taken only as your opinion, which I personally wouldn’t recommend listening to considering the amount of misinterpretation you’ve provided (I’ll explain it step by step below):

    “Exactly 30 years ago in 1989, climatologist Stephen Schneider—the creator of the journal Climatic Change and one of the founding members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—told Discover magazine that in order to “reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change”:
    we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

    — This statement is very frequently used by climate change deniers. However, not only it has nothing to do with the scientific evidence of climate change that we have ( I’m stating this as a climate scientist), but also it is a complete misinterpretation of Schneider. What you’re doing here is called cherry picking. You’ve cut the beginning of the full statement for it to look like scientists are lying. Can refer to this article for the true statement: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199608/environmental.cfm

    “Despite his willingness to tell half-truths and compromise honesty for the sake of “being effective,” Schneider, along with his IPCC colleagues and Al Gore, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change….”

    — This is not only doesn’t have any grounds but is also a personal attack on individuals which again has no scientific basis or evidence against observations and modelling confirming climate change.

    “In 1989, the same year that Schneider laid out his plan and when Thunberg says the clear scientific record began, high-ranking UN officials and EPA scientists predicted ruinous effects from global warming unless timely actions were taken to prevent it. These include projections about plants, forests, extinctions, agriculture, flooding, rainfall, hurricanes, and human health. Comparing these forecasts to the actual outcomes—or crystal-clear science—is revealing.”

    –You’re referring to studies that are 30 years old and also misinterpreting them. Since then advancements in modelling and predictions improved significantly. You simply cannot deny the evidence that we have now because it is based on mathematics, physics, environmental science and modelling. Denying it just means that you need to get a better education I’m afraid.

    Plant Life
    ” In 1989, William H. Mansfield III, the deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote that “global warming may be the greatest challenge facing humankind,” and “any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems” like “plant” life.”

    — You did not correctly cite the statement. The author said: ” Any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems and living things and hence to man as well.”
    As you can see there is no word “plant” here. You’ve added it yourself.
    The focus here is on the destruction of ecosystems because they don’t have enough time to adapt to changing climate.

    “In reality, a 2016 paper in the journal Nature Climate Change examined three long-term satellite datasets and found “a persistent and widespread increase” in “greening” or plant growth “over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area” from 1982 to 2014, “whereas less than 4% of the globe” had less greening over this period.”

    — You’re completely misinterpreting the publication. Whether you’re doing it intentionally or from a lack of understanding of scientific publications I don’t know. In any case, I’ll explain this: the publication never stated that there is no climate change. In fact it says: “CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau”. It is really difficult to predict the exact behaviour of plants in changing climate. However, the fact that the climate is changing globally and the temperature is rising at an extremely high rate has been proven.
    Your link to ” less or more green” is an over-simplistic perception on the climate system and ecosystems in general.

    “Those findings support and update a 2003 paper in the journal Science, which found that a principal measure of worldwide vegetation productivity increased by 6.2% between 1982 and 1999. The authors note that this occurred during a period in which human population increased by 37%, the level of atmospheric CO2 increased by 9%, and the Earth “had two of the warmest decades in the instrumental record.”

    — Exactly. The paper uses the growth in vegetation as an evidence of climate change. It is misinterpretation of the publication to say that it states otherwise.
    You can read: ” Recent climatic changes have enhanced plant growth in northern mid-latitudes and high latitudes.” So yes, there is a growth of vegetation in high latitudes because it is where we observe the highest temperature anomalies and the area covered by snow becomes smaller.

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    • December 23, 2019 at 8:36 AM
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      It would be helpful if you could avoid lecturing instead of arguing your point. The author quoted Schneider accurately, you imply he did not. You offer no facts to counter his fundamental thesis. The hysterical predictions made 30 years ago were inaccurate.
      You claim that current models are much better. They are not.
      https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/05/JohnChristy-Parliament.pdf
      Climate change is a historical fact. The greenhouse gas theory of global warming is a pathetic hoax.

      Reply
    • December 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM
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      First, resorting to name-calling as part of your response is one of the first clues that the rest of you claim is not worth reading.
      Secondly, the references for which you claim you are searching, for the most part, can be found in the article.

      Reply
    • January 24, 2020 at 9:16 PM
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      1) You claim: “I understand that you’re not a scientist and therefore can not distinguish between facts and opinions….”

      Actually, I am scientist according to the definition of “scientist” in Collins English Dictionary, which is a “a person who studies or practises any of the sciences or who uses scientific methods.” Moreover, my scientific research has been cited and praised by numerous Ph.D. scientists and scholarly publications (https://www.justfacts.com/aboutus#serving). Also, when you make the irrational claim that one must be a scientist to “distinguish between facts and opinions,” you only discredit yourself.

      2) You write: “[I]f you say something along the lines of: ‘a broad range of environmental and human welfare indicators related to the effects of climate change have stayed level or improved.’ you should add a reference in the end (if you can ever find a peer-reviewed publication confirming this nonsense).”

      It hard to believe you didn’t notice, but this article rigorously documents that fact with references to a broad array of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and other credible, primary sources, such as Nature Climate Change, Science, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Nature, Diversity and Distributions, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Sustainability Science, Nature Communications, Geospatial World, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, The Lancet, Global and Planetary Change, NASA’s National Space Science and Technology Center , the Journal of Hydrology, Geophysical Research Letters, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

      3) Your claim that I cherry-picked the quote from Schneider is flagrantly bogus. I quoted it at length and in context. The link you provided provides nothing that alters the meaning or import of this quote.

      4) You claim: “You’re referring to studies that are 30 years old and also misinterpreting them. Since then advancements in modelling and predictions improved significantly.”

      I accurately represented each and every one of these studies, and the fact that they are 30 years old is precisely the point of this article. As it states: “The real-world experiments of the past 30 years constitute genuine science, while the failed predictions of certain scientists and environmental officials have proven to be the antithesis of science.” Any assertion that predictions have improved is empirically baseless until the real-world results come in.

      5) Regarding the quote from Mansfield, you claim: “You did not correctly cite the statement. The author said: ‘Any change of temperature, rainfall, and sea level of the magnitude now anticipated will be destructive to natural systems and living things and hence to man as well.’ As you can see there is no word ‘plant’ here. You’ve added it yourself.”

      Yes, it is there. In the sentence just beforehand, Mansfield stated: “The natural systems—both plant and animal—will be less able than man to cope and adapt.”

      6) With regard to the 2016 paper in the journal Nature Climate Change that I cited, you claim: “You’re completely misinterpreting the publication. Whether you’re doing it intentionally or from a lack of understanding of scientific publications I don’t know. In any case, I’ll explain this: the publication never stated that there is no climate change. In fact it says: “CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau.”

      To the contrary, you are completely misinterpreting what I wrote. Not here—nor anywhere in this article—nor anywhere in my many publications on global warming—do I say or imply that “there is no climate change.” You made that up out of thin air.

      If you acknowledge the 6 patently false statements you made above, I’d be happy to address the ones you made below. But if you don’t show enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge reality, I won’t continue this discussion. I don’t like to take this hard line, but I serve millions of people, and a tiny fraction of them would waste all my time if I let them.

      Reply
      • December 26, 2020 at 3:04 PM
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        You use the statement “a person who studies or practises any of the sciences or who uses scientific methods”. Sorry, no. it is entirely possible to practice, for example, mechanical engineering, and never use critical thinking to verify data. There are numerous tables of empirical data in mechanical handbooks that have no links whatsoever to the source data. Religiously following this practices, in engineering, as in religion shows the opposite of critical thinking or the use of the scientific evaluation process.

        Reply
  • December 22, 2019 at 5:14 AM
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    Forests & Trees
    In the same 1989 article, Mansfield claimed that “forests would be adversely affected” by global warming.

    Again it is “cherry picking”. What the author is talking about is that forests and plants that are within costal areas can be affected if the land gets flooded by ocean water, because this salty water can damage the trees.

    “In contrast, reports published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization from 2015 through 2018 found that the mass of above-ground organic plant materials in forests “has remained stable since the 1990s” and “most regions of the world are experiencing either positive or small-to-no changes in forest area or above-ground biomass.”

    This is a reference to a non-scientific publication that wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal and can be ignored as garbage.

    “More significantly, the journal Nature published a study in 2018 that analyzed satellite data to obtain “a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics” from 1982 to 2016. It found that tree cover increased by 7.1% during this period, with the margins of error ranging from a 2.9% to 10.8% rise with 90% confidence.”

    Please, read the article first. The article confirms human-induced climate change. It states:” Of all land changes, 60% are associated with direct human activities and 40% with indirect drivers such as climate change”
    Seriously, this is nor a very smart way to deny climate change by providing articles that confirm climate change, c’mon!

    “Extinctions
    “In 1989, Sandra Henderson, a biogeographer at EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratory, wrote that “scientists are warning of a possible loss of 20 percent of the earth’s species before the end of the century,” and “a major factor in this modern species extinction may be our alteration of the earth’s climate: global warming due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
    Given that roughly 1.2 million species have been cataloged, a loss of 20% would be 240,000 species.”

    — Incorrect. “The most accurate census, conducted by the Hawaii’s University, estimates that a total of 8.7 million species live on the planet.”
    Moreover, Sandra Henderson is not a scientist and the publication doesn’t have any scientific weight.

    Yet, during 1984–2004, the International Union for Conservation of Nature recorded 27 confirmed species extinctions. This is not an exact figure, as the report notes that other extinctions may have occurred, such as “eight species of birds.”

    — There are much more species at a high risk of extinction. It is not just 27.

    “Regardless of the precise number, the actual loss was orders of magnitude below the projected one and in line with the average historical extinction rate.

    — You’re referring here to your own publication that has never been peer-reviewed and you don’t have a scientific degree. The article is full of misconceptions.

    Likewise, a 2011 paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions notes that extinctions mainly occur on islands where populations are small and tightly restricted by physical boundaries. Thus, the paper analyzed continental extinctions and found only six confirmed extinctions of continental birds and three confirmed extinctions of continental mammals since the year 1500. These figures amount to 0.08% of continental mammals and 0.062% of continental birds.
    Despite these facts, people have led Thunberg to believe that “entire ecosystems are collapsing,” and “we are in the beginning of a mass extinction.”

    — The exact sentence is: “he continental mammal extinction rate was between 0.89 and 7.4 times the background rate, whereas the island mammal extinction rate was between 82 and 702 times background.” This states that the extinction rate is much higher than normal. Even though at the moment it’s higher for the islands doesn’t make it good or inexistent.

    Reply
  • December 22, 2019 at 5:35 AM
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    In reality, a study of satellite data published by the journal Nature Climate Change in 2016 found that from 1985 to 2015, the net amount of land area on Earth grew by about 22,400 square miles, and the net amount of coastal land grew by about 5,200 square miles.

    –You’re picking a number without any understanding of where it’s coming from.
    You also forgot to mention that the article states: ” Earth surface gained 115,000 km square of water”. Also: “The team found that vast areas that were once land are now submerged beneath water, with the largest change occurring in the Tibetan Plateau, where melting glaciers are creating huge new lakes.”
    How land gained area? A number of ways. One of them is melting and retreat of glaciers (caused by climate change). Another – isostatic adjustment or ongoing movement of land due to the decrease of the area covered by ice from the last ice age.

    Increases in land area and/or human population have also occurred in places that are considered to be highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. This includes Pacific island nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu, Bangladesh, and Florida’s coastal areas.
    This is not to say that the average global sea level isn’t rising. This has been happening since 1860 or earlier, which is about 45 years before surface temperatures began to rise and 75 years before man-made emissions of carbon dioxide reached 1% of natural emissions.

    — Sea level can rise naturally, no one denies it. However, we link to CO2 emissions now because of the rate of sea level rise and it’s correlation to other climate factors.

    However, the trends and effects have been nothing like climate doomsayers have predicted.

    — Both tide gauge and satellite altimeter indicate a significant trend in sea level rise. The observed sea level rise is already above IPCC projections. Since 1993 the sea height variations have reached 1cm, which is significant when talking on a global scale.

    Reply
  • December 22, 2019 at 12:03 PM
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    What constitutes a “scientist”?

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  • December 22, 2019 at 12:49 PM
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    Get this excelle3nt article out there, Letters to the newspapers a must. Hardly ever read of a scientific letter exposing the fraud of man made climate change(which does not exist)

    Reply
    • December 23, 2019 at 4:56 PM
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      really? see my comments above exposing this article then for being faulty at almost every sentence.

      Reply
      • January 24, 2020 at 9:22 PM
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        Wrong. See my reply above exposing your comments as baseless.

        Reply
  • December 25, 2019 at 4:12 PM
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    Excellent points and excellent video, especially for those who don’t like to read extensively explained information. This definitely clarifies how extreme the alarmists’ claims about our climate have become.
    Keep up the good work.

    Reply
  • December 26, 2019 at 7:30 PM
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    Veronika, your arguments are quite compelling. You were quick to point out Mr. Agresti’s educational shortcomings. So that I can better evaluate both sides of the discussion, may I ask, what is your educational pedigree?

    Reply
  • December 28, 2019 at 5:40 PM
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    After reading a lot of opinions on both sides and the studies that support their arguments, I’m of the opinion that yes, global warming (which as been occurring off and on for centuries) is enhanced somewhat by human activities.

    From where I stand, far more important are other factors that are not in our control such was solar activity, where our solar system is relative to the spiral arms of our galaxy, cloud formation (which none of the computer models take into account), the duodecadal ocean movements, lunar nodal cycles, among other factors.

    Imagine if a bunch of kids went to a beach at Lake Tahoe every day and threw rocks in the water. Technically, every rock thrown would make the lake’s level rise. No scientist would dispute that. During the winter the alarmists might say that the practice was going to cause a disaster because the level rise would eventually overflow and flood the towns below. And then sure enough during the spring thaw they would see a dramatic rise in the level and say that a tipping point was just around the corner. Of course during the summer when water levels receded, and when even more kids were throwing rocks, they would probably say that the lower water levels were also somehow caused be the rock throwers. And yes, those rocks did make the lake rise, but should we really clamp down on those happy kids?

    So yes, man is contributing to global warming, but I think it’s slight. And even if the effect is slightly more than ‘slight’ the consequences of trying to mitigate those activities is far worse than simply adapting. Want to end fossil fuels? If we turned off the oil spigot off today, in a month the entire western world would be in the throes of mass starvation.

    So the next idea is to wean ourselves more gradually replacing our energy production with wind and solar. Do you realize how much fossil fuel energy is consumed every minute in the world? It’s staggering. Multiply it all out and you’ll probably find that replacing it with wind and solar could drastically affect wind currents and thermal distribution causing who knows what disasters.
    The only thing that is better than fossil fuels with regard to energy density is electricity generated from nuclear plants. But the environmentalists won’t allow that, even though thorium plants are very safe with no weapons-grade by-products.

    But the left should be happy to know that eventually our world will run out of fossil fuels and we will have had to solve the energy production problem by that time. They, of course, would say that by the time we run out of oil, the world will have already reached that doomsday tipping point (after all, AOC only gives us 12 years).

    Can we at least all agree on a few things? CO2 is not a pollutant (food production cannot occur with less than about 150 parts per million). Mankind should continue reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. We should not drag down our standard of living with fossil fuel regulations without at least doing an honest cost-benefit analysis (starving half of the world to death would certainly reduce CO2 , but maybe living with rising sea levels would actually be better) .

    Reply
    • December 30, 2019 at 9:41 AM
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      In other words, you can’t point to single falsehood on the entire site, but because certain facts don’t confirm your biases, you will ignore them and engage in name-calling.

      Reply
      • December 30, 2019 at 11:24 AM
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        James, are you referring to my post? I essentially agreed with the article in that man is only slightly responsible for the rise in CO2 which has never really been proved to be a significant factor in global warming. Also, I sure as heck didn’t do any name calling.

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        • December 31, 2019 at 9:20 AM
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          Apologies. My reply was intended for someone else’s comment on an entirely different article.

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  • April 1, 2020 at 4:05 PM
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    The article mentions that Richard Feynman once said “The test of all knowledge is experiment”. That is undoubtedly the best test for phenomena that can be set up and evaluated, one parameter at at time, whilst holding others constant. This is not possible for predictions such as climate or economics which cannot be set up for a lab test. This is abundantly obvious, and the only conclusion to be drawn is that by mentioning a famous name the author somehow attempts to gain credibility for a totally unrelated preposition.

    Reply

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