I’ve started to wonder whether alarmists have any evidence left. So I started trawling alarmist sites to see just what they do actually cite as evidence.
Cited by Alarmists
- Increasing CO2
→ Proven - Rising global temperature – They claim rising temperatures. However whilst 20th century warming is highly likely, the satellite record shows no recent warming. There is overwhelming evidence of one-way bias when calculating global temperature from ground stations. It is my assessment that those organisations who are most alarmist show the highest warming. This very strongly suggests that it is only the bias introduced by human upjustments that is causing any perceived warming.
→ (very likely) busted. - Antartic ice
Reading the following articles I cannot see any stable long term metrics for Antarctic ice. The one with the longest period (1992-2011) shows an increase. That from 2009-2011 shows a gain, 2003-2009 gain, another 2010-12 show a decrease. link, link, link
Another site suggests very mild melting from 1979-2009 link
In contrast this one in the notoriously alarmist site called “Nature” suggests a decrease: link
This is very difficult to judge as there is too little evidence.
→ Possible, but certainly not proved. - Greenland Ice
This appears to be a credible claim link, link
→ Credible claim - Glaciers
On this site there is apparent decrease in Glaciers 1960-2006. However the data stops a long time ago in 2006 and I cannot find anything more up to date. This is typical alarmist behaviour when there is a contrary trend. The refreezing of Asian glaciers (link) would suggest this is the reason we don’t see more recent data. However even if the trend is toward refreezing, this doesn’t mean a total reversal.
Some old evidence of melting pre 2006.
→ Current status is unknown. - Snow line retreating
This claim is nonsense (link)
→ Busted
Those trends which are real and not cited by alarmists
- General greening of the planet (link, link)
- Record harvests (link)
- Decreasing Hurricane (link)
- (possible) Decreasing winter deaths (link showing just England/wales link)
- Reducing “U.S. Climate extremes index 1900-present(link)
- Reducing “U.S. Count of strong to violent Tornadoes (F3+) 1954-2012(link)
Those trends which are secondary as they are known to be directly affected by temperature.
Note, these are general trends as in “later period is higher than early period”. However it is not possible to say whether there has been an upward trend since 2000.
- Increasing Global precipitation (1901-2009) (link)
- Increasing number of one-day extreme precipitation (link)
- Increasing “lower 48 states with hot daily low temperature 1910-2008) (link)
One’s that don’t stand scrutiny:
- Sea ice – Global Sea ice shows absolutely no trend from 1979-2015 (however the trend is different in each hemisphere – but the total is the only value that really counts here). (link)
- Polar bears – are doing fine. (link)
- Sea level – been rising pretty constantly since 1860 (link). If there is a link to temperature far from supporting alarmist theories, it would suggest that recent warming (1970-2000) was smaller than warming from 1910-1940 & much smaller than warming from 1850-1880. (Busted)
- Snow is not disappearing as in “children won’t know what snow is”.
- There is no increase in droughts, floods, rain, severe weather (not even most alarmists cite these)
Summary
CO2 level continues rising. Global temperature rose in 20th century which appears to be associated with a small increase in precipitation. There is clear evidence of bias in the compilation of surface station temperature figures and so only the Satellite data can be relied on as indicating surface temperature. This shows no significant warming in 21st century.
It is likely Arctic ice has been decreasing and possibly (but by no means certain) Antarctic ice & global glaciers have also decreased. There has been general greening of the planet with record global harvests. Hurricane levels and tornadoes have decreased.
There is no evidence for increasing extreme weather, reducing snow, reduction in overall polar bear numbers or any similar claims.
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