This week I note 3 articles which decimate the mythology of climate change impact.

The primary consequences of global warming climate change are estimated to be from

  1. reduced food supply
  2. increasing sea levels
  3. increased death from diseases and other causes leading to overall increased mortality
  4. species extinction.

The articles below decimate the problems anticipated from 1 and 2 and the 3rd article implies lower overall temperature reducing the impact from other presumed consequences considerably.

FIirst Issue I want to talk about is “CO2 Scenarios” deception

A lot of the consequences of global climate change are because of computer models estimation of future temperature which depends on predictions of CO2 output.  The IPCC always has included a 1400ppm scenario in their models because when you include a chart with a 1400ppm concentration of CO2 it leads to much higher temperatures in the future and that looks good on their charts to frighten people.

1400ppm is a ludicrous concentration of CO2 considering we are adding about 2ppm / year and with 80 years to go to 2100 it would require that we instantly multiple our CO2 output by a factor of 6.  If everyone produced the maximum CO2 they could and did everything possible we would never get to half this value so the use of the 1400ppm in the charts is to provide a nice scary line.   Combined with a double or triple level of sensitivity in the models to CO2 it produces a huge temperature change in their computer models which are then used to predict all the future consequences.  It is important to note that the most likely level of CO2 is well under half the line they use as their high estimate.  This is another way in which the political aspect of climate change is pushed forward by emphasizing impossible scenarios.  Later they will undoubtedly say they were successful in getting us not to produce such a crazy amount and that was why things went well. Haha.

So, the temperature change being a (Less than linear function of CO2) we should expect maybe 0.4C roughly by 2100 not 6 degrees.   I think most people would agree that with another 0.4C the consequences are likely to be relatively minor but even those consequences can now be safely relegated to the history bin.

Below 1.5C or 2.0C IPCC says Climate Change is net positive

The IPCC originally said that at 2.0C was the tipping point for negative consequences from additional heat.  This means that up until 2.0C the net consequences of climate change are positive.  You will never hear them say that.

No self-respecting climate alarmist will ever admit that any climate change is positive. Every change will have negative consequences and positive consequences but the climate community has been careful to never mention any positive consequences afraid people will latch onto that and lose interest in the fear they are trying to generate.

Nonetheless, the big one that they have been really hating to admit is that increasing CO2 is a benefit to plants and therefore to life in general.  Over the last 60 years as we have added 90ppm to the atmosphere plant productivity has climbed dramatically.  During this last 60 years, our overall agriculture productivity has tripled but part of that improvement has been because we unknowingly for much of the period were seeding the atmosphere with CO2 fertilizer for plants.

Would we reduce CO2 concentration if we could?  Probably not.

If we posed the question:  If we had a magfc wand to immediately reduce our CO2 levels in the atmosphere back to the 310 level of 1945 would we wave that wand?  With doing that we would immediately cut plant productivity by 20% worldwide against all plant species.  We also would see a drop of  temperature.  A 20% drop in plant productivity would be devastating to the world.   We need that CO2 in the atmosphere.  They never mention that.  In fact with rising CO2 plant productivity will continue to improve and one could argue it is the most natural way to increase our food supply rather than genetic manipulation or lots more alternative means.

However, admitting that the CO2 we’ve put in is probably good and we wouldn’t reverse it if we could is saying that means that CO2 is not actually the toxic chemical that is portrayed.  Something never mentioned in any press release from any newspaper, publication or scientist I know of.   In fact, scientists know that below 180ppm all life on Earth would die.  First the plants starving to death and then the animals dependent on plants and the oxygen.  We are far closer to this minimum than to an unsafe maximum level.  We know that plants will consume CO2 to at least 1400ppm and grow stronger.  It is possible to go to 4000ppm or more and for life to prosper.  In fact, during much of the last 250 million years Co2 level has been above 2000ppm and temperatures 6C to 10C higher and this was when almost all life evolved that we see today.

Climate Science is not like other sciences.  You will not see in these articles any reference to past failures or to lessons learned, to broader implications of the study on things other people have said about catastrophic disasters.  To do that would make the articles unpublishable in this field.  So, I need to provide the context to understand how these articles affect “settled science” and the statements made in the past that were “100% certain proved” or to how this contradicts things that were projected.

They will not say these things because they will be chastised by the establishment which has become extremely political on these points.  The political establishment wants to keep the narrative that the science is settled, that the consequences are grave and there is no doubts.  So, you will notice every article in this field avoids challenging any of these things.

Contribution of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation to twentieth-century global surface temperature trends

This article attributes about 75% of the heating during the period between 1910-1940 and between 1975-2005 to PDO.  This is the first time I’ve seen the climate community embrace the natural variability phenomenon called PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation).  In the past, these phenomena have either been denied or predicted to die off.

A big problem is not understanding the fundamental causes of them.  The models have typically assumed to only use physics formulas for describing proposed physical interactions.  They might be wrong about the magnitude or even the sign of an interaction but at least they have a physical process identified.  With the PDO they don’t know what the fundamental factors might be.

Admitting the existence of PDO/AMO means admitting CO2 is less important

With the PDO and AMO we can only measure the heat in the ocean at designated locations and determine the magnitude simply by the anomaly of the temperature in the ocean at that region without understanding why there is the anomaly or how long it will persist but we do not have a way of predicting the AMO or PDO levels without looking at historical data and the oscillations these have had in the past.  Unfortunately, confounding that is very poor information on sea temperatures.

This article does something I’ve never seen which is to ascribe a large portion of the heat during the most critical CO2 building phase to a non-CO2 cause.   Previously scientists like Hansen had ascribed 110% of the heat between 1975-2005 to CO2.  This article says it is 25% or 1/4 what Hansen said.

If only 25% of the heat was CO2 it means that the 2 trillion tons of CO2 poured in the atmosphere during those years only moved temperatures 0.4C / 4 = 0.1C which means the next 5 trillion tons we might pour in over the next 85 years can generate no more than 0.2 – 0.3C.   That’s consistent with my estimate above actually but falls way short of the IPCC predicted 1.0C-6.0C expected in the next 85 years by their models.

This study puts into grave doubt the sensitivity and predictions of the models going forward because they say that the PDO was responsible for most of the heating last century it means CO2 has much less effect than the models currently ascribe.  

Most of us have known this for a long time.  It was apparent that PDO and AMO contributed something to the heat during the last 50 years.  This article puts the figure higher than I guessed but every bit that isn’t caused by CO2 means the sensitivity to Co2 is less than they thought which means ultimately less temperature change than they guessed for any level of CO2 we do reach.

Earth’s Surface Gaining Coastal Land Area, Despite Sea Level Rise

This article is incredible.  Maybe I should have led with this one.   This study shows that land surface area and coastal square km are expanding for 30 years during a period where sea levels are supposed to be accelerating upward.

Effectively, if coastal  areas are growing there is NO sea level rise at all.  In fact, it is negative.  Now that’s a shocker.

How could this be?  A combination of sediment from eroding mountains, coastal development, rising land from rising aquifers and reduction in mass of melting glaciers which depressed the continents has caused an overall INCREASE in land area and 33,000 KM^2 of net new coastal surface area.

How can sea level be going up and the land and coastal areas be going up too?  They can’t.  The fact which I have pointed out before is that tide gauges which measure the actual sea level have not corresponded to computer models, ice models and satellites measurements of volume loss of glaciers.

Tide gauges have recorded over the last 150 years about half of the gain that satellites and models have said.

One can imagine that measuring sea rising across the entire globe is a hard thing.  Many factors contribute to estimating this.  The gulf region of the US near Florida is seeing massive sea level rise but this is mainly because of extracting oil and water from land which causes subsidence.  This subsidence is more than 10 times the rise ascribed in the past to glaciers melting or global warming.  Hawaii is gaining land rapidly as volcanoes build land.

What was not fully understood was how much silt and erosion from mountains could be extending coastlines or how mass changes in glaciers might also allow the land to rise.  Recently we discovered there was so much additional rain in the last 50 years that aquifers have been filling and raising land levels by 0.7mm/year worldwide.

The net result of this study is that it calls into serious question the biggest consequence of global warming which is the loss of coast and islands and the idea cities will be engulfed in inexorably rising sea levels.  So far, it’s not clear if there is any net sea level rise at all in the last 50 years.  Pretty astonishing.

 

Study: plants do better during drought thanks to increased CO2 levels

This study was known previously in general but the details of how much CO2 improved plants productivity and specifically how they made plants resilient to drought was not quantified well.

I have railed on this particular consequence a lot because I believe we are growing productivity of our agriculture so fast through numerous technologies that whatever decrease they ascribed to heat would be negligible.   It is likely that in 65 years when they anticipate temperatures would be high enough to cause this drop in productivity we would not even need all the food we grow and we would be so efficient at producing food that we could compensate trivially for any drop.

This article says there actually won’t be any drop not because of other techniques we learn or by growing food in different regions of the world that are too cold today but because simply the CO2 makes the plant resistant to drought.

Plants with more CO2 need less water because they don’t need to transpire (breathe) as much.  The breathing is what causes the water loss.   By concentrating the CO2 the plants are able to conserve water and produce the same amount of plant.  Therefore, any droughts or other causes of plant productivity drop off won’t materialize.

This means the other really big consequence anticipated from global warming simply won’t happen.

Summary

This is awesome news overall.   These studies tell us that things we thought would need to be watched carefully and spend a lot of money to fix possibly simply aren’t happening and won’t happen.

I’m not blind.  I realize that another study could come out and change the estimate of the land area sp that we are actually sinking.  Another study could come out and say plants will suffer in other ways from temperature change but the first article is pretty key to my optimism.

The overall temperature change is impossible really to climb anywhere near where the models predict.  If temperature change is 0.4C in the next 85 years it will be impossible to argue this is going to be a big problem for anyone.

It’s important to note that like with some past environmentalists it is likely they will take credit for anything that goes well.  They will claim only their steadfast alarmism got us to change and that is why the consequences didn’t happen.  What they keep telling us is we are not doing enough.  However, these articles show that the problems they are telling us to fix don’t actually exist in the first place.  We can reduce our CO2 output fast or slowly and the net result will be almost nil either way.

Even if the ridiculous scenario transpires and for some reason we couldn’t do anything and somehow we multiplied our CO2 output by a factor of 6 and kept it up so that CO2 was at 1400ppm it is likely the temperature change is 1.5C, not 6C.  Even with 1.5C ,these studies show the consequences of this warming are likely to be far less than previously thought.