Michaelyya/contrarian-claims huggingface dataset:
Projections v. Reality: On his blog, Roy Spencer presents a comparison of the lower atmospheric temperature trends as projected from 44 climate models and as calculated from satellite observations. John Christy provided the model projections. Spencer used the both the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) and the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) calculations. The disparity is striking. Since the greenhouse effect takes place in the lower atmosphere, this is further evidence that the planet is not as sensitive carbon dioxide emissions as advocated by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
When I looked at historic temperature and CO2 levels, it was impossible for me to see how they could be in any way consistent with the high climate sensitivities that were coming out of the IPCC models. Even if all past warming were attributed to CO2 (a heroic assertion in and of itself) thetemperatureincreases we have seen in the past imply a climate sensitivity closer to 1 rather than 3 or 5 or even 10 (I show this analysis in more depth in this video ).
Readers may recall that last December I published an informal climate sensitivity study at Bishop Hill, here . The study adopted a heat-balance (energy budget) approach and used recent data, including satellite-observation-derived aerosol forcing estimates. I would like now to draw attention to a new peer-reviewed climate sensitivity study published as a Letter in Nature Geoscience , "Energy budget constraints on climate response", here . This study uses the same approach as mine, based on changes in global mean temperature, forcing and heat uptake over 100+ year periods, with aerosol forcing adjusted to reflect satellite observations. Headline best estimates of 2.0C for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and 1.3C for the arguably more policy-relevant transient climate response (TCR) are obtained, based on changes to the decade 200009, which provide the best constrained, and probably most reliable, estimates. The 595% uncertainty ranges are 1.23.9C for ECS and 0.92.0C for TCR. I should declare an interest in this study: you will find my name included in the extensive list of authors: Alexander Otto, Friederike E. L. Otto, Olivier Boucher, John Church, Gabi Hegerl, Piers M. Forster, Nathan P. Gillett, Jonathan Gregory, Gregory C. Johnson, Reto Knutti, Nicholas Lewis, Ulrike Lohmann, Jochem Marotzke, Gunnar Myhre, Drew Shindell, Bjorn Stevens, and Myles R. Allen. I am writing this article in my personal capacity, not as a representative of the author team.
Finally, if, as Lindzen (2008) has suggested, all terrestrial forcings were cut by two-thirds to take account of the absence of the altitudinal difference in decadal warming rates in the tropics that is predicted in all of the models on which the IPCC relies but has not been observed in half a century of radiosonde observations and 30 years of satellite records (Douglass et al., 2007), climate sensitivity would again decline
Now researchers at MIT have found that with the loss of sea ice, the Arctic Ocean is becoming more of a carbon sink. The team modeled changes in Arctic sea ice, temperatures, currents, and flow of carbon from 1996 to 2007, and found that the amount of carbon taken up by the Arctic increased by 1 megaton each year.
Truth n 10 The water vapour content of the air has been roughly constant since more than 50 years but the humidity of the upper layers of the troposphere has been decreasing: the IPCC foretold the opposite to assert its ???positive water vapour feedback?? with increasing CO2. The observed ???feedback?? is negative.
But if some other forcing is responsible for the temperature change, that necessarily implies lower climate sensitivity. And the greater the unknown forcing involved, the smaller the climate sensitivity you will calculate.
August, 2007 RESEARCH UPDATE: Our peer-reviewed paper showing the natural cooling behavior of tropical cirrus clouds in response to warming was published on August 9 in Geophysical Research Letters. (The UAH news release is here. ) In that paper we describe satellite evidence for a natural cooling mechanism (negative feedback)that occurs when the tropical atmosphere heats up. This is in contrast to all leading climate models, which have cirrus clouds behaving as a positive feedback, amplifying warming tendencies.
Several negative feedback mechanisms have been proposed by others to explain the stability of maximum sea surface temperature (SST) in the western Pacific warm pool (WPWP). If these ocean thermostat mechanisms effectively suppress warming in the future, then coral reefs in this region should be less exposed to conditions that favor coral reef bleaching. In this study we look for regional differences in reef exposure and sensitivity to increasing SSTs by comparing reported coral reef bleaching events with observed and modeled SSTs of the last fifty years. Coral reefs within or near the WPWP have had fewer reported bleaching events relative to reefs in other regions. Analysis of SST data indicate that the warmest parts of the WPWP have warmed less than elsewhere in the tropical oceans, which supports the existence of thermostat mechanisms that act to depress warming beyond certain temperature thresholds.
And this is what many have been saying now and for some time, that the climate sensitivity has been overestimated. Kudos to Annan for realizing the likelihood of a lower climate sensitivity.
Q: Dr. S. Fred Singer: Perhaps to clarify the discussion. We need to separate these results of model experiments - of course that's all they are are experiments with models, from scenarios of how CO2 will increase. These are two separate issues. As far as I can tell from the IPCC report, their estimate or their numbers for the what is call the "climate sensitivity" that is, how much temperature rise will be produced by doubling of CO2 alone, all other things being equal, has not changed since 1990. It is still estimated to be between 1.5 and 4.5 C for a doubling of CO2. And what Roy has addressed here is the fact that this is probably a faulty estimate because they have not taken into account the reduced feedback, perhaps even negative feedback, of water vapor and reduced, perhaps even negative feedback of clouds. So the climate sensitivity is the one we are interested in. I think many of us believe that these numbers, that the IPCC has given, are just plain wrong.
Even more important, the feedbacks (from WV and from clouds) may actually be negative rather than positive (as assumed in all climate models). This possibility follows from the analyses of satellite data .
These strong negative cloud feedbacks resulted in a low climate sensitivity of only 0.41 K/(W m-2), described as being at the ???low end?? of traditional GCMS (i.e. around 1.5 deg C/doubled CO2.):
Professor Ray Bates gave a paper in Moscow in summer 2015 in which he concluded, based on the analysis by Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011) (Fig. T10), that temperature feedbacks are net-negative. Accordingly, he supports the conclusion both by Lindzen & Choi (1990) (Fig. T11) and by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011) that climate sensitivity is below and perhaps considerably below 1 C per CO2 doubling.
Using satellite observations interpreted with a simple model, Spencers data support negative feedback (or cooling) better than they support positive feedback.
A team of scientists recently released a report debunking the IPCC prediction that there would be a massive die-off of ocean plankton due to ocean acidification. That??s not happening either.
The same can be said of most of the other species on the planet. The Ice Age Megafauna survived the stresses of many Ice Age cycles, until the Upper Paleolithic human hunters came along and added a new stress. The Ice Age Megafauna had evolved and survived in tandem with the Ice Ages, and it doesn't appear likely that "climate change' made them go extinct.
This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better. In future decades, as temperatures rise, wed expect to see more cases.
The authors write that "woody species are predicted to increase in tundra ecosystems as a result of global climate change (Chapin et al ., 1996; Epstein et al ., 2000)," and, in fact, it has been found that in response to rising air temperatures, "trees have established where they did not previously occur, both in alpine areas (Wardle and Coleman, 1992; Peterson, 1994; Kullman, 2001, 2002), and in arctic tundra (Lescop-Sinclair and Payette, 1995; Danby and Hik, 2007)," while "increasing shrub abundance also has been reported in alpine (Klanderud and Birks, 2003) and arctic locations (Sturm et al ., 2001; Tape et al ., 2006; Wilson and Nilsson, 2009)."
In the words of the eight scientists involved in the study, "the observed association between shrub cover types and increased NDVI is generally consistent with the concept that woody plants can take advantage of warmer conditions and grow more vigorously." Reviewed 28 November 2012
So the third claim is not true either. Atolls are created by sea level rise, not destroyed by sea level rise.
In discussing the roles of wave exposure, local currents and the presence of large sand islands, the seven scientists state that it is the combination of those factors -- and "not temperature" -- that "is the primary factor influencing biogeographic distributions along the subtropical east coast of Australia." And supporting this conclusion is the contemporaneous study of Seabra et al . (2011) , which describes how it is that intertidal marine species can easily withstand significant climatic warming without having to migrate poleward. Reference
A recent paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change , reported in The Australian, showed Zooxanthellae the symbiotic organisms that live inside corals can adapt much better to warming water than was previously thought It is also known corals can, to a degree, change their Zooxanthellae with changing conditions. ( source )
(3) Coral tissue thickness, often seen as an indicator of coral health, is generally higher for corals in hotter water. Some of the highest tissue thickness measured have occur around PNG where the water is far hotter than the GBR.
Van Woesik et al . write that their findings suggest that the ecosystem they studied was "able to absorb the thermal stressors without undergoing change to a less desirable state," citing the similar findings of Holling (1973) and Scheffer and Carpenter (2003)," as well as the fact that " Acropora populations had fully recovered seven years after an extreme thermal-stress event in Palau (Golbuu et al ., 2007)," plus the fact that in the Arabian Gulf, "Riegl and Purkis (2009) showed that Acropora assemblages could recover from thermal-stress cycles occurring every fifteen years."
The results of this study demonstrate that the biosphere can -- and does! -- respond to rapid changes in climate. Indeed, the group of 15 authors state that "the biosphere was a full participant in these rapid fluctuations, contrary to widely held views that vegetation is unable to change with such rapidity." Furthermore, warmer was always better in terms of vegetative productivity. Thus, future warming in this region may return this area to more favorable conditions.
Noting that "in summer, 51 of 65 breeding species had negative slopes of mass against year, 20 of 26 wintering species had negative slopes, 60 of 83 spring migrants had negative slopes, and 66 of 75 autumn migrants had negative slopes," Van Buskirk et al . conclude that their results "offer compelling evidence that climate change has already produced observable adaptive shifts in morphology, behavior, and phenology of a great many species," as, we might add, birds do what they need to do to successfully cope with the climate changes they encounter, which according to the world's climate alarmists have been unprecedented over the past one to two millennia. Yes, birds do it ... and they do it fast , and they do it well .
Lets also keep in mind that coastal sealife are routinely subjected to dramatically changing conditions including pH, temperature, salinity and turbidity and they survive.
In the concluding words of Caruso et al ., "the rapidity and the widespread extent of these changes across so many species in a biodiversity hotspot may signal rapid adaptation to novel environmental conditions."
Shock News : Polar Bears Surviving An Ice-Free Hudson Bay
Of course this isnt news, as Ive previously reported: Polar Bears Survived the Ice Free Arctic
"We see reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis," Canadian scientists wrote in their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
???In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it??s 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent.??
Baffin Bay population. The IUCN says that the initial estimate (1984-1989) for this subpopulation was 300 to 600 bears. A second survey (1993 to 1997) estimated this declining population to be 2,074 bears. Please note that the previous two sentences are not the result of some bizarre typo. The extremely low initial numbers were presumably due to a flawed methodology (data collected in the spring in which the capture effort was restricted to shore-fast ice and the floe edge off northeast Baffin Island while recent work has shown that an unknown proportion of the subpopulation is typically offshore during the spring) How can the IUCN confidently conclude that this subpopulation is decreasing? Because the current (2004) estimate based on simulations is that the population is 1,600 bears. The reason for the decline is that the subpopulation appears to be substantially over-harvested. One of the reasons that it is over-harvested is that in 2004 Nunavut increased its hunting quota from 64 to 105 bears per year because reports from Inuit hunters that polar bear numbers in BB had grown substantially. Note that nowhere in this Orwellian story is the decrease in the Baffin Bay polar bear population blamed on receding summer ice due to global warming.
Based on many decades of evidence, the Inuit declare it is the time of the most polar bears. In contrast, reports of the polar bear decline have been based on cherry-picked shortterm trends. Here are some longerterm trends to put polar bear population fluctuations into perspective:
Polar bear expert Susan Crockford marked the 40th anniversary of an international agreement to protect polar bears by publishing 10 good reasons not to worry about climate change impacts on the Arctic predator.Among the reasons not to be concerned, Crockford notes that only one polar bear subpopulation has had a statistically significant decline in recent years.Another reason, Crockford observed, is sea ice extent during the spring gorging period remains virtually unchanged, with most sea ice decline occuring during the less important late summer.Crockford's full article is available here.
Then there is Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia, who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career. She claims polar bears are threatened by too much ice. Shes released a new, in-depth report on the relationship between sea ice and polar bears, entitled Arctic Fallacybut you dont see her conclusions touted in the New York Times .
Also, the bear count did not take into account the fact that polar bears can just move to other areas if their food supply is limited, Crockford told CNSNews.com.If some of those bears were part of that count, it would look like they died.
Regarding the models used to predict the future for polar bears, remember that Steven Amstrup, who is now a full time spokesperson for Polar Bears International , was the only polar bear expert consulted about how polar bears might respond to the sea ice changes generated by climate models. As Ive pointed out previously ( here and here ), Amstrup appears to have been wrong, at least as far as his predictions on polar bear responses to declines in summer sea ice (July-September) are concerned.
CO2 has been claimed to be the driver for coral reef dies off (and almost every other problem). This report is debunks the theory in the case of Caribbean coral reefs.
Hot on the heels of the frogs not being killed off by climate change debacle (see here ), The Australian reports that the barrier reef has the ability to adapt to changes in climate. Why this comes as a shock to anyone is beyond me, given that parts of the reef are millions of years old and would have gone through multiple ice ages, multiple interglacials, multiple climate optima and goodness knows what else, yet its still there.
Other peer-reviewed publications have demonstrated that prior claims about ecological effects from ocean acidification have been overblown , increased CO2 dissolution in the oceans increases calcification of shellfish and coral, and that corals evolved at a time when CO2 levels were 15 times higher than the present.
the concentration of enough CO2 to significantly reduce the oceans pH will not come from the atmosphere;
A paper published today in Biogeosciences finds that prior claims about the effects of ocean "acidification" on c alcifying plankton are highly exaggerated because the artificial laboratory conditions utilized do not correctly simulate the effects in naturalseawater. The authors find exposure of the plankton to "acidific ation" from elevated CO2 concentrations of up to 3247 ppm had no effect on the life cycle (population density, growth and reproduction) of calcifying plankton when natural buffering sediment was present in the experiment.
It??s highly unlikely the atmospheric levels of CO2 will reach 1,000 ppm in the next couple of centuries, but if they did, it appears that at least one major and widespread species of cold water coral can adapt within six months. Co2 feeds plant life above the water, and atmospheric levels were much higher during the time that corals evolved. That doesn??t guarantee anything, but suggests scientists could have been more cautious in predicting a disaster when they didn??t have the data.
Changing Waters: Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, who has since left, gives four succinct reasons why we should not fear that enhanced CO2 will cause the so-called ocean acidification and it is not a threat to creatures in the oceans: 1) higher concentrations of CO2 in the past; 2) buffering from elements such as calcium and magnesium; 3) biology of mollusks allow them to survive in freshwater that is quite acidic and 4) adding CO2 to saltwater aquariums promotes plant and coral growth. See links under Acidic Waters.
First, the ocean seems to becoming slightly less basic not more acidic. Next, the change is happening slow enough that marine life should be able to adapt, through natural selection if necessary. Warmists do believe in evolution, right? Finally, in this experiment, squid eggs were simply hatched in a tank with a 3-time less basic pH level anticipated in 100 years i.e., no chance for natural selection to operate.
Writing of corals, the authors say "it has been shown that it is possible for colonies to acclimatize to increased temperatures and high irradiance levels so that they are able to resist bleaching events when they occur." And they note, in this regard, that "threshold temperatures that induce coral bleaching-related mortality vary worldwide -- from 27??C in Easter Island (Wellington et al ., 2001) to 36??C in the Arabian Gulf (Riegl, 1999) -- according to the maximum water temperatures that are normal in the area, implying a capacity of corals and/or zooxanthellae to acclimatize to high temperatures depending on their environment."
While eco-alarmists would have you believe the oceans have "acidified" to dangerous pH levels, a paper published in Nature finds that the modern ocean pH of about 8.1-8.2 is actually the most alkaline the oceans have been over the past 250 million years. During this time corals, phytoplankton, and indeed most of the ocean biomass have evolved. The paper shows a mean pH of about 7.7 over the past 250 million years, whereas the alarmist and frequently incorrect IPCC predicts ocean pH will drop to 7.88 (~0.2 pH units) under a "business as usual" scenario by 2100.
The effects on calcification rates for all 18 species were either negligible or positive up to 606 ppm CO2. Corals, in particular seemed to like more CO2 in their diets
Pia Heinemann reports in Die Welt today, Ocean Acidification Does Not Lead To Species Die-Off ,on a new study appearing in the latest edition of Science. The study contradicts the assumption that ocean acidification leads to species die-off, surprising scientists. Abstract in Science here
This is the rst study showing a positive response in calcication to increasing pCO2 for the predominant reef-forming cold-water coral L. pertusa and, to our knowledge, for scleractinian corals in general. **
In light of the above-described findings plus their many previous findings that acidity drives divergence in embryonic acid stress tolerance and larval life-history traits (Rasanen et al ., 2003; Hangartner et al ., 2011; Hangartner et al ., 2012a,b), Egea-Serrano et al . feel confident in concluding that their results "provide strong evidence for simultaneous adaptation to acidic pH and increased invertebrate predator pressure in acidified ponds, whereby changes in the abiotic environment (pH) increase strength of selection via biotic interactions (predation)."
A paper published today in Global Change Biology finds that prior papers about the alleged effect ofocean acidificationon marine organisms are overblown because prior research has failed to consider that organisms can adapt over time to pH changes. According to the authors, nearly all of this work has focused on the effects of future conditions on modern populations, neglecting the role of adaptation.
The ocean acidification story depends only on a chemical hypothesis whereas biological factors can overcome this and create conditions that allow calcification to continue. This is corroborated by the historical record of millions of years of success in much higher CO2 environments.
This latter result, although seemingly strange, is anything but unusual; for the nine researchers report that various taxa of coccolithophores and sea urchins "show enhanced calcification in environments with higher pCO 2 ," citing the work of Iglesias-Rodriguez et al . (2008), Doney et al . (2009) and Ries et al . (2009). And they say that "different populations of Emiliania huxleyi have shown decreased, increased, or unchanged calcification in response to higher pCO 2 ," citing Fabry (2008).
They also estimate past pH of the oceans to have been more alkaline than now, even though no measurements were made at that time, and then they proclaim the contrivance to be a fact of science. All biology controls pH in extreme ways and has very wide tolerance for pH in environmentswide meaning several pH units, not the tenths being argued. For example, respiration generates ATP by creating a hydrogen ion dam and allowing the escaping protons to turn proteins.
Effects of Seawater Acidification on Phytoplankton Growth Rates (22 Feb 2011) Results indicated that marine phytoplankton are resistant to climate change in terms of ocean acidification, and do not increase or decrease their growth rates according to ecological relevant ranges of pH and free CO2" ... Read More
The next item is the dangerously acidic oceans. As a chemist, I think dangerously acidic is a strong acid (usually mineral acid) with a concentration that gets the pH below 2. The climate scientists seem to think that dangerously acidic is above 8, which us stupid chemists believe is basic. The article has the standard 26% more acidic, which represents a pH change of about 0.1 unit. Under this definition of more acidic, a decrease in pH from 13 to 12.9 is about an increase in acidity of 26%.