copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2019-06-28): Contrary to what this article implies, the long term global temperature rise is known to be mostly due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. A strong El Niño event helped set a new record in annual global surface temperature in 2015 (and likely again in 2016) by boosting global temperatures on top of the long-term warming trend. [...] In reality, 2014, 2015, and 2016 have been the three warmest years on record not just because of a large El Niño, but primarily because of a long-term warming trend driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases. The modest decline in temperatures in recent months from the peak of the El Niño event is completely in line with what has happened during past large El Niño events and was expected by scientists. [...] The discussion in the article of a disagreement among scientists as to whether the record-breaking global heat in 2015 and again in 2016 was "due to El Niño" vs. "due to global warming" is completely bogus. Both global warming and El Niño, added together, produced these records. El Niño by itself could never have produced such a warm planet as we have now. Everyone, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, has been pointing out for some time that temperatures would dip for a while once the El Niño faded, but that’s just a bump on the road to a warmer and warmer planet.
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2010-06-03): In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes unrelated to human activity. These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. [...] In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes not related to human activity. Most often, global climate has changed because of variations in sunlight. Tiny wobbles in Earth’s orbit altered when and where sunlight falls on Earth’s surface. Variations in the Sun itself have alternately increased and decreased the amount of solar energy reaching Earth. Volcanic eruptions have generated particles that reflect sunlight, brightening the planet and cooling the climate. Volcanic activity has also, in the deep past, increased greenhouse gases over millions of years, contributing to episodes of global warming. [...] These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments.
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2019-07-30): Why does CO2 drive global warming when there is only 0.04% of it in the atmosphere? And why isn’t water vapor the major driving factor? [...] Earth absorbs energy from sunlight, but as the surface warms, it also emits energy in the form of infrared radiation (which we know of as heat) out into space. Water vapor and CO2, however, act like a cap, making it more difficult for Earth to get rid of this energy. Without gases like these to absorb the energy, our planet’s average surface temperature would have been near zero degrees Fahrenheit. [...] The burning of fossil fuels affects the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Before the industrial revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 288 ppm. We have now reached about 414 ppm, so we are on the way to doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by the end of this century. Scientists say that if CO2 doubles, it could raise the average global temperature of the Earth between two and five degrees Celsius. We are already increasing the amount of energy that bounces back to the Earth. Because of the greenhouse effect, this is causing global warming with its many destructive impacts.
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2017-02-14): Though El Niño is not caused by climate change, it often produces some of the hottest years on record because of the vast amount of heat that rises from Pacific waters into the overlying atmosphere. Major El Niño events—such as 1972-73, 1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16—have provoked some of the great floods, droughts, forest fires, and coral bleaching events of the past half-century. [...] When deciding whether the Pacific is in an El Niño state, the climatologists at NOAA examine sea surface temperatures in the east-central tropical Pacific—referred to as the Niño 3.4 region (between 120° to 170° West). An El Niño is declared when the average temperature stays more than 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average for five consecutive months. In 1997-98 and 2015-16, sea surface temperatures rose more than 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average. [...] El Niño is the largest natural disruption to the Earth system, with direct impacts across most of the Pacific Ocean. Indirect impacts reverberate around the globe in patterns that scientists refer to as "teleconnections." Scientists are actively trying to understand how these changes in weather patterns in one area can alter the movement of air masses and winds in areas adjacent to and even far away from the source. According to the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, El Niño-Southern Oscillation is responsible for as much as 50 percent of year-to-year climate variability in some regions of the world.
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2024-10-07): The year 2023 marked the driest year for global rivers in over three decades, according to the State of Global Water Resources 2023 report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which signaled critical changes in water availability in an era of growing demand. The report also highlights that 2023 was the hottest year on record, marked by prolonged droughts and widespread floods, driven by both the La Niña to El Niño transition and human-induced climate change. [...] The supply of electricity from clean energy sources must double within the next eight years to limit global temperature increase. Otherwise, there is a risk that climate change, more extreme weather and water stress will undermine our energy security and even jeopardize renewable energy supplies, according to a new multi-agency report from the World Meteorological Organization. [...] Go green with pandemic recovery packages. That’s the message of the 2020 Emissions Gap Report. It predicts that green recovery could shave emissions by 25 per cent by 2030, bringing the world closer to Paris Agreement goals to limit global warming. Despite a recent dip in emissions from lockdowns and slowing economies, temperatures are still rising at a record clip.
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2024-02-29): The long-term trend towards higher temperatures is being driven by man-made global warming. However, year-to-year rankings are likely to reflect short-term natural variability. In 2023, an emerging El Niño event combined with other natural and man-made factors discussed below to create a record-breaking warm year. By contrast, 2021 and 2022 had somewhat lower temperatures due to a persistent a La Niña event. The cyclic warming and cooling due to El Niño and La Niña is one of the largest sources of year-to-year internal variability in the global average temperature, often adding or subtracting 0.1 °C from the global average. 2023 was a highly unusual year in several respects, including record warmth in most ocean basins and a large deviation from the historical trend. Warmth in 2023 greatly exceeded expectations, and was much stronger than normal this early in an El Niño. Some studies have recently argued that the pace of global warming may be accelerating, and some of the evidence for this is discussed below. However, given historical variability in surface temperatures, it still remains too early to conclude whether or not the pace of surface warming has increased. [...] - New national record high annual averages for an estimated 77 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, and Mexico - Record annual average warmth in both the land-average and ocean-average - Record warmth in most ocean basins, including once-in-a-century levels of warmth in the North Atlantic - Record low Antarctic sea ice during the Antarctic winter - An emergent strong El Niño event, contributing significantly to the record warmth
Claim: El Niño drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions. (David Rose, 2016-11-26)
Evidence (2022-01-31): The combination of all radiative forcings generally matches longer-term changes in observed temperatures quite well. There is some year-to-year variability, primarily from El Niño events, that is not driven by changes in forcings. There are also periods from 1900-1920 and 1930-1950 where some larger disagreements are evident between projected and observed warming, both in this simple model and in more complex climate models. [...] The combination of all forcings generally matches observed temperatures quite well, with short-term variability around the grey line primarily driven by El Niño and La Niña events. There is a wider variation in temperatures prior to 1850, reflecting the much larger uncertainties in the observational records that far back. [...] Some uncertainty remains due to the role of natural variability, but researchers suggest that ocean fluctuations and similar factors are unlikely to be the cause of more than a small fraction of modern global warming.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2019-12-23): Misrepresents source: The Harvard study mentioned does not make this claim, and in fact explicitly explains that this claim is false. The claim conflates local warming due to air mixing with global warming that results from a change in the whole Earth’s energy budget.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2023-11-09): "Wind beats coal by any environmental measure, but that doesn’t mean that its impacts are negligible," said David Keith, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the papers. "We must quickly transition away from fossil fuels to stop carbon emissions. In doing so, we must make choices between various low-carbon technologies, all of which have some social and environmental impacts." [...] To estimate the impacts of wind power, Keith and Miller established a baseline for the 2012‒2014 U.S. climate using a standard weather-forecasting model. Then, they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind turbines to meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found this scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by 0.24 degrees Celsius, with the largest changes occurring at night when surface temperatures increased by up to 1.5 degrees. This warming is the result of wind turbines actively mixing the atmosphere near the ground and aloft while simultaneously extracting from the atmosphere’s motion. [...] The Harvard researchers found that the warming effect of wind turbines in the continental U.S. was actually larger than the effect of reduced emissions for the first century of its operation. This is because the warming effect is predominantly local to the wind farm, while greenhouse gas concentrations must be reduced globally before the benefits are realized.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2020-10-20): Wind energy is a virtually carbon-free and pollution-free electricity source, with global wind resources greatly exceeding electricity demand. Accordingly, the installed capacity of wind turbines grew at an annualized rate of >20% from 2000 to 2019 and is projected to increase by a further 50% by the end of 2023. In this Review, we describe the factors that dictate the wind resource magnitude and variability and illustrate the tools and techniques that are being used to make projections of wind resources and wind turbine operating conditions. Natural variability due to the action of internal climate modes appears to dominate over global-warming-induced non-stationarity over most areas with large wind energy installations or potential. However, there is evidence for increased wind energy resources by the end of the current century in northern Europe and the US Southern Great Plains. New technology trends are changing the sensitivity of wind energy to global climate non-stationarity and, thus, present new challenges and opportunities for innovative research. The evolution of climate modelling to increasingly address mesoscale processes is providing improved projections of both wind resources and wind turbine operating conditions, and will contribute to continued reductions in the levelized cost of energy from wind power generation. [...] Smoucha, E. A., Fitzpatrick, K., Buckingham, S. & Knox, O. G. Life cycle analysis of the embodied carbon emissions from 14 wind turbines with rated powers between 50KW and 3.4Mw. J. Fundam. Renew. Energy Appl.6, 1000211 (2016).
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2019-04-11): A Harvard University study suggests that, under certain conditions and in the near term, increased wind power could mean more climate warming than would be caused by the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity. The study found that if wind power supplied all U.S. electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 ˚C, which could significantly exceed the reduction in U.S. warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation’s electricity sector this century—around 0.1 ˚C. The warming effect depends strongly on local weather conditions, as well as the type and placement of the wind turbines. According to the Harvard researchers, the findings closely matched directly observed effects from hundreds of U.S. wind farms. In the Harvard scenario, the warming effect from wind was 10 times greater than the climate effect from solar farms, which can also have a warming effect. The Harvard University researchers also concluded that the transition to wind or solar power in the United States would require 5 to 20 times more land than previously thought. [...] The Harvard researchers found that the warming effect of wind turbines in the continental U.S. would be larger than the effect of reduced emissions for the first century of its operation. This is because the warming effect is predominantly local to the wind farm, while greenhouse gas concentrations must be reduced globally before the benefits are realized. The direct climate impacts of wind power are instant, while the benefits of reduced emissions accumulate slowly.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2023-04-11): "When you stop adding more fossil fuels to generate your electricity, you start seeing a fall in emissions," said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, the report's lead author. [...] "We now have reached this next turning point of starting to see a new era of falling fossil fuel power sector emissions. We know that wind and solar are the answer and we've just got to get on with a roadmap for building them as quickly as possible," said Dave Jones, from Ember, one of the report's authors.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2024-10-08): "Wind beats coal by any environmental measure, but that doesn't mean that its impacts are negligible," says senior author David Keith, an engineering and public policy professor at Harvard University. "We must quickly transition away from fossil fuels to stop carbon emissions. In doing so, we must make choices between various low-carbon technologies, all of which have some social and environmental impacts." "Wind turbines generate electricity but also alter the atmospheric flow," says first author Lee Miller. "Those effects redistribute heat and moisture in the atmosphere, which impacts climate. We attempted to model these effects on a continental scale." [...] "The direct climate impacts of wind power are instant, while the benefits accumulate slowly," says Keith. "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has -- in some respects -- more climate impact than coal or gas. If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas."
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2019-12-04): BOSTON – A new study finds that the amount of climate and health benefits achieved from renewable energy depends on the country where it is installed. Countries with higher carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and more air pollution, such as India, China, and areas in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, achieve greater climate and health benefits per megawatt (MW) of renewable energy installed than those operating in areas such as North America, Brazil, and parts of Europe. The study in Palgrave Communications by the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard C-CHANGE) offers a new method for transparently estimating country-level climate and health benefits from renewable energy and transportation improvements that companies, investors, and policymakers can use to make strategic decisions around achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [...] "This new global model allows us to estimate benefits from renewables at the country-level, both from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and including the massive health benefits achieved from reductions in air pollution. That hasn’t been done before in the sustainable investment world," said lead author Jonathan Buonocore, a research associate at Harvard C-CHANGE. "For example, the results show that a wind turbine or solar panel can save 30 times more lives if it is placed in India— where air pollution is often a major public health issue—than if that same turbine or panel is placed in the U.S., and climate benefits will be about twice as high."
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2023-10-03): The study looks at what would happen if the United States tried to obtain all of its energy from wind turbines. It found the mixing of warmer air and cooler air results in a temperature increase of 0.54 degrees Celsius (0.97 degrees F) in the areas where the wind turbines would be located. The amount of warming experienced in some regions would be even greater, as Southwestern Minnesota could see a temperature increase of 0.6-0.8 degrees C due to wind turbines, while Northeastern Minnesota would see an increase of 0.3-0.5 degrees C. The study demonstrated that the warming impact of wind turbines is immediate, and highly localized. Although the benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions are global, the temperature impact is local. [...] Miller and Keith calculated the global warming avoided if the US, and every other country, eliminated its power-plant emissions by 2080, the avoided warming in the US in 2100 would actually be roughly equivalent to the added local warmth caused by the wind turbines.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2018-10-04): "Wind beats coal by any environmental measure, but that doesn't mean that its impacts are negligible," said David Keith, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the papers. "We must quickly transition away from fossil fuels to stop carbon emissions. In doing so, we must make choices between various low-carbon technologies, all of which have some social and environmental impacts." [...] The Harvard researchers found that the warming effect of wind turbines in the continental U.S. was actually larger than the effect of reduced emissions for the first century of its operation. This is because the warming effect is predominantly local to the wind farm, while greenhouse gas concentrations must be reduced globally before the benefits are realized. [...] "The direct climate impacts of wind power are instant, while the benefits of reduced emissions accumulate slowly," said Keith. "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has — in some respects — more climate impact than coal or gas. If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power has enormously less climatic impact than coal or gas.
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2024-01-10): The study, which looked at just the United States, said that the turbines would cause more warming in the short term this century than the carbon dioxide America spews into the atmosphere would. [...] Wind advocates emphasized that the Harvard study doesn’t show turbines causing global warming, just local heating. [...] "The climate effect of burning fossil fuels is cumulative," Caldeira said in an email. "The longer you run a coal plant, the worse the climate change gets. In contrast, the climate effect of wind turbines is what it is. You build the wind turbine. Climate is affected. But as long as you run the wind turbine, the climate change doesn’t get any worse. So in the long run, as far as the climate is concerned, wind turbines are obviously better than fossil fuels."
Claim: Harvard study finds that wind turbines create MORE global warming than the fossil fuels they eliminate (Ethan Huff, 2019-12-23)
Evidence (2018-10-04): But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. [...] "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has—in some respects—more climate impact than coal or gas," coauthor David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, said in a statement. "If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas." Specifically, the "avoided warming" achieved by eliminating fossil-fuel sources could surpasses any warming from wind in about a century in the studied scenario, as emissions reductions accumulate.