‘Global Climate Crisis’ Fact Check

As the COP26 rhetoric gets even more hysterical, with cars targetted in Boris Johnson’s ‘Coal, Cars, Cash, Trees’ slogan, we take a brief look at actual data from observations.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent: Despite Al Gore’s prediction that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013, at 8.69Mkm and 2Mkm greater than 2020 for the date, sea ice extent stands at a 6-year high (1).

Polar Bear Population: polar bears continue to defy extinction predictions, Polar bear numbers have risen from an average estimate of 10,000 in 1960 to at least 25,000 now (2)

Antarctica: No warming for the past 70 years (3) and the past 6 months have been the coldest on record (4). Sea ice extent is still above the 1985 level (1).

Global Burning and Wildfires: The share of land burned globally has declined from 4.2% in 1900 to 2.5% in 2021. In California wildfires burned 12% of the state before 1800 and 4.2% in 2020 (5). The key human causes of wildfires remain deliberate arson, accidental fires and poor forest management.

Global Weather Losses: As a percentage of GDP, weather losses show a declining trend since 1990 (6).

Hurricanes: There’s no upward trend in USA landfalling hurricanes since 1900, or total global hurricane energy since 1980 (6).

Tornadoes: There’s a declining trend for tornadoes since the 1950s including strong and violent tornadoes with 166mph wind speeds or over (6).

Sea Level Rise: A paper published in Nature Climate Change in 2016 showed that the Earth’s surface gained 115,000 Sqkm of water and 173,000 Sqkm of land over 30 years, including 20,135 Sqkm of water and 33,700 Sqkm of land in coastal areas (7). Also, pacific atoll Tuvalu has experienced an increase in land area over 2.9%. In fact 74% of islands in the pacific atoll group are larger now than they were 40 years ago (8).

Death Rates and Economic Damage: Climate-related deaths are down 80 – 90% during the past four decades, from flood, flash flood, coastal flood, cold, heatwaves and wind (2019 study published in Global and Environmental Change) (9). There are 10 times as many deaths from cold compared to heat. Since 1920 the climate-related death risk has fallen from 250 per 1 million people to 1 per 1 million in 2020 (Bjorn Lomborg) (10).

Global Crop Yields: Since the 1960s yields of maize, oats, wheat, rice and barley have increased significantly (Our World in Data) (11), no doubt helped by the greening of the Earth thanks to increased levels of atmospheric CO2 (Nature Climate Change/NASA 2016) (12).

Carbon Dioxide v Temperature in the 20th/21st Century: During 1910 to 1945 the global average temperature increased by 0.4C, but was accompanied by only a 10 parts per million (ppm) increase in atmospheric CO2, and the temperature in the Arctic increased by 1.6C. Little or no warming occurred after 1945 until 1980 to 2018, when there was another 0.4C increase accompanied by a 97ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 – either CO2 was 10 times more powerful during 1910 to 1945, or the warming was mostly natural. Half of the 21st century temperature increase so far is due to the natural phenomenon known as El Nino.

Methane: One of the many bizarre claims being emitted by COP26 is that methane (CH4) is responsible for 50% of warming and we should stop eating meat/dairy products. Given that the level of methane in the atmosphere is around a tiny 0.00018%, it is therefore out-competed by much higher levels of the greenhouse gases CO2 (0.0417%) and water vapour (up to 4%) for absorption of infrared radiation, methane is largely irrelevant.

Implausible Climate Model Scenarios: After years of misuse, the UN IPCC’s latest AR6 report finally declared model scenario RCP8.5 as having a ‘low likelihood.’ However, this hasn’t stopped alarmist scientists using these scenarios to predict implausible outcomes for future climate, which are being publicised in the media for scaremongering purposes.

If anyone knows what the global climate crisis or emergency is, then please let us know without relying on computer model predictions. The demonisation of carbon dioxide (CO2) is suicidal given the fact that at the end of the last glaciation atmospheric CO2 at 180ppm was dangerously close the threshhold for the survival of plant life on Earth.

Despite ignorant politicans like Boris Johnson attacking the industrial revolution, which was the UK’s greatest ever gift to itself and the world, the world is a richer and healthier place. Prior to the industrial revolution UK life expectancy from birth was little more than 35 years. The two main problems that need to be solved in the world are poverty and a lack of access to electricity. These problems won’t be solved by the premature abandonment of oil, gas and coal.

A Powerpoint presentation of graphs supporting this PR is available on request.

Ends

Notes for Editors

(1) https://www.meereisportal.de/en/

(2) https://polarbearscience.com/

(3) http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/singh+polvani-NPJCAS-2020.pdf

(4) https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html
(5) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1454860126448324611.html

(6) Roger Pielke Jr peer reviewed publications: https://rogerpielkejr.com/

(7) https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3111

(8) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-03/pacific-islands-growing-not-sinking/851738

(9) https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/global-environmental-change

(10) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157

(11) https://ourworldindata.org/

(12) https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth