228 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2019
  2. Dec 2018
    1. This is the third station at the South Pole, I’m sure some of you know what happened to the other two stations[…] They were buried by snow.

      Rasmus Benestad: The amount of snowfall increases with temperature as long as the temperature is below 0C—above this temperature, it turns into rain. The Antarctica is still well below the freezing point, and increased temperatures are expected to give increased snowfall because the air is capable of holding more moisture. Likewise, the sea-ice around the Antarctica form during winter, when the temperatures still are below freezing, and are therefore not a good indicator for the global warming. The sea-ice extent is more strongly influenced by the salinity of the surface water, ocean currents and winds. The Antarctic is a continent surrounded by oceans, and there is little sea-ice in summer when the temperatures are higher. The Arctic, on the other hand, is an ocean surrounded by continents, and has sea-ice both during winter and summer. In the Arctic, there has been a decline in the sea-ice, primarily during summer when the temperature go above the freezing point.

    2. Where we have a glacier today, a thousand years ago we had a forest. It was warmer a thousand years ago than it is today.

      Rasmus Benestad: The statement "it was warmer a thousand years ago than it is today" or 5,000 years ago has no good evidence—the discussion about Mendenhall glacier and how it reached a forest has a local perspective and is more complicated. Glaciers respond to not just temperature, but also precipitation and the wind directions. It shows that there are local/regional variations in climate and that the climate is sensitive to changing forcings/factors.

    3. Temperatures cooled from about 1940 to 1975, and then they rose from about ’75 to about 2005 or so, and since then they’ve been flat or cooling.

      Rasmus Benestad: The temperature curve from the amateur website Climate4You.org is misleading as it hides the time scales important for the case of climate change. Rather than showing a subselection of the monthly mean HadCRUT3 data, a better choice would be to show the annual mean values of the HadCRUT4 for the entire common period—also up to 2018. Also, there has not been any recent cooling—see https://physicsworld.com/a/pause-in-global-warming-was-never-real-scientists-say/

    4. Our temperatures in Chicago vary from about -5 Fahrenheit to 95 Fahrenheit every year[…] I’m going to superimpose on this the amount that global surface temperatures have risen in the last 130 years[…] That’s what climate scientists tell us is a coming calamity

      "Goreham confuses local and global temperatures when comparing the temperature variations in Chicago with the change in the global mean temperature. This is equivalent to comparing apples with bananas, two different types of quantities with different statistical characteristics." - Rasmus Benestad

  3. Nov 2018
  4. Oct 2018
    1. A growing number of scientists now believe solar activity is the real culprit behind so-called climate change.

      This claim is inconsistent with science:

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    1. Scientists say halting deforestation 'just as urgent' as reducing emissions

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral' to 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  5. Sep 2018
    1. Hurricane Florence is not climate change or global warming. It's just the weather.

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low' to 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  6. Aug 2018
    1. Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Domino-effect of climate events could move Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  7. Jul 2018
    1. Spring Is Springing Sooner, Throwing Nature's Rhythms Out Of Whack Spring Is Springing Sooner, Throwing Nature's Rhythms Out Of Whack Listen· 7:02

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Global warming could be far worse than predicted, new study suggests

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Scorching Earth: Global warming to blame for all-time heat records being set worldwide, as experts warn stifling temperatures will continue to soar

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  8. Jun 2018
    1. Ross McKitrick: All those warming-climate predictions suddenly have a big, new problem

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Hurricanes Are Moving Slower—And That's a Huge Problem

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  9. May 2018
    1. In a Warming West, theRio Grande Is Drying Up

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit its highest level in 800,000 years and scientists predict deadly consequences

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  10. Apr 2018
    1. Not all scientists agree on cause of Great Barrier Reef damage

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. A Startling New Discovery Could Destroy All Those Global Warming Doomsday Forecasts

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  11. Mar 2018
    1. The Arctic’s carbon bomb might be even more potent than we thought

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Polar bears keep thriving even as global warming alarmists keep pretending they’re dying

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  12. Feb 2018
    1. Satellite observations show sea levels rising, and climate change is accelerating it

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  13. Jan 2018
    1. Scientists Announce That The Great Barrier Reef is Officially “Terminal”

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral' to 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. An Iceberg the Size of DelawareJust Broke Away From Antarctica

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Heart-Wrenching Video Shows Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef

      Overall scientific credibility: 'debated', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Arctic’s Winter Sea Ice Drops to Its Lowest Recorded Level

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Global Warming Study Canceled After Humiliating Discovery

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The Sea Level Around Florida Is Rising Six Times Faster Than Average

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral' to 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  14. Dec 2017
    1. STUDY: Satellites Show No Acceleration In Global Warming For 23 Years

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  15. Nov 2017
    1. The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming

      Overall scientific credibility: 'mixed', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Climate change might be worse than thought after scientists find major mistake in water temperature readings

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  16. Oct 2017
    1. More acidic oceans 'will affect all sea life'

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  17. Sep 2017
    1. Climate Change Is Complex. We’veGot Answers to Your Questions.

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Climate Scientists: Climate Models Have Overestimated Global Warming

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Has Climate Change Intensified 2017’s Western Wildfires?

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  18. Aug 2017
    1. Did Climate Change Intensify Hurricane Harvey?

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Alaska’s PermafrostIs Thawing

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Global Ocean Circulation Appears To Be Collapsing Due To A Warming Planet

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low' to 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  19. Jul 2017
    1. 2017 is so unexpectedly warm it is freaking out climate scientists

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. DELINGPOLE: ‘Nearly All’ Recent Global Warming Is Fabricated, Study Finds

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The American South Will Bear the Worst of Climate Change’s Costs

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  20. Jun 2017
    1. 95-Degree Days: How Extreme Heat Could Spread Across the World

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in

      Scientists analyzed this claim and concluded it is Incorrect:

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    1. Trump should withdraw from Paris climate pact

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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  21. May 2017
    1. Key Findings

      See scientists' annotations of key findings below

    2. Historically, increases in atmospheric CO2 followed increases intemperature, they did not precede them. Therefore, CO2 levels could nothave forced temperatures to rise.
    3. Solar forcings are not too small to explain twentieth century warming. In fact, their effect could be equal to or greater than the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.

      Scientists who analyzed this claim found it incorrect:

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    4. Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level, in the absence of other forcings and feedbacks, would likely cause a warming of ~0.3°C to 1.1°C, almost 50 percent of which must already have occurred.

      Scientists who analyzed this claim found it misleading:

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    1. Racing to Find Answers in the Ice

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to 9 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. Right now, the shelf works like a giant bottle-stopper that slows down ice trying to flow from the land into the sea. If it collapses, the ice could flow into the ocean more rapidly, an effect that has already happened on a much smaller scale in other areas of Antarctica. The most vulnerable parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet could raise the sea level by 10 to 15 feet, inundating many of the world’s coastal cities, though most scientists think that would take well over a century, or perhaps longer. They are worried about a possible rise of as much as six feet by the end of this century.
    3. The warmer water seems to be doing the most damage to a series of glaciers that flow into a region of West Antarctica called the Amundsen Sea. Satellites have identified the most rapid loss of ice there, raising a critical question: Has an unstoppable collapse of the ice sheet already begun?
    4. But the story is not straightforward, and the warmer water attacking the ice has not been linked to global warming — at least not directly. The winds around the continent seem to be strengthening, stirring the ocean and bringing up a layer of warmer water that has most likely been there for centuries. Are those stronger winds tied to human-caused global warming? Some scientists think so, but others say the case is unproven. “We’re not sure because we don’t have enough data, for long enough, to separate signal from noise,” said Eric J. Steig, a scientist at the University of Washington who has studied temperature trends in Antarctica.
    5. The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration. Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.
    6. Already, scientists know enough to be concerned. About 120,000 years ago, before the last ice age, the planet went through a natural warm period, with temperatures similar to those expected in coming decades. The sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than it is today, implying that the ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica must have partly disintegrated, a warning of what could occur in the relatively near future if the heating of the planet continues unchecked.
    7. Though the role of global warming is unclear now, it is likely to be a factor in the relatively near future. Many experts think warmer air temperatures could start to weaken the ice of West Antarctica from above, even as warmer ocean water attacks it from below. The warmer water seems to be doing the most damage to a series of glaciers that flow into a region of West Antarctica called the Amundsen Sea. Satellites have identified the most rapid loss of ice there, raising a critical question: Has an unstoppable collapse of the ice sheet already begun?
    8. But the story is not straightforward, and the warmer water attacking the ice has not been linked to global warming — at least not directly. The winds around the continent seem to be strengthening, stirring the ocean and bringing up a layer of warmer water that has most likely been there for centuries. Are those stronger winds tied to human-caused global warming? Some scientists think so, but others say the case is unproven. “We’re not sure because we don’t have enough data, for long enough, to separate signal from noise,” said Eric J. Steig, a scientist at the University of Washington who has studied temperature trends in Antarctica.
    9. Incorporating recent advances in the understanding of how ice sheets might break apart, they found that both West Antarctica and some vulnerable parts of East Antarctica would go into an unstoppable collapse if the Earth continued to warm at a rapid pace. In their worst-case scenario, the sea level could rise by six feet by the end of this century, and the pace could pick up drastically in the 22nd century. Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard do not claim that this is a certainty — they acknowledge that their analysis is still rough — but they argue that the possibility should be taken seriously.
    10. Remote as Antarctica may seem, every person in the world who gets into a car, eats a steak or boards an airplane is contributing to the emissions that put the frozen continent at risk. If those emissions continue unchecked and the world is allowed to heat up enough, scientists have no doubt that large parts of Antarctica will melt into the sea. But they do not know exactly what the trigger temperature might be, or whether the recent acceleration of the ice means that Earth has already reached it.
    11. Recent computer forecasts suggest that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high level, parts of Antarctica could break up rapidly, causing the ocean to rise six feet or more by the end of this century. That is double the maximum increase that an international climate panel projected only four years ago. But those computer forecasts were described as crude even by the researchers who created them. “We could be decades too fast, or decades too slow,” said one of them, Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “There are still some really big question marks about the trajectory of future climate around Antarctica.”
    12. The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration. Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.
    1. The ‘ancient carbon’ of Alaska’s tundras is being released, starting a vicious warming cycle

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral', according to 3 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. “Because it’s getting warmer, there’s more CO2 coming out which means it’s going to get warmer which means there’s more CO2 coming out,” explained Harvard researcher and lead author Roisin Commane. “And it will just run away with itself.”

      Róisín Commane, Research Associate, Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences:

      "I spoke with Henry Fountain (New York Times), Chris Mooney (Washington Post), Oli Milman (Guardian) and Bob Berwyn (Inside Climate News) about the PNAS paper and I think they all did a great job condensing my attempts at communicating the message of the paper. The radio chat I did with a local NPR station in Juneau, AK (which I think is the source of this article) was probably the least comprehensive attempt - I tried to make things as simple as possible and didn't realize that the quote would sound so off when taken outside of that context. I think the written articles better conveyed the essence of the paper compared to what I tried to say in the radio piece."

    1. Global Quackery: Earth Has Not Warmed For Past 19 Years, New Study Finds

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. Scientists are also expecting a “huge reduction” in solar activity for 33 years between 2020 and 2053 that will cause thermometers to crash.

      this argument has previously been commented on in this Climate Feedback review: http://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/the-telegraph-dan-hyde-earth-heading-for-mini-ice-age-within-15-years/

    3. "Experts told Daily Star Online planet Earth is on course for a “Little Age Ice” within the next three years thanks to a cocktail of climate change and low solar activity," the Brit paper writes on Monday. 

      The following is extracted from this tabloid article.

    1. Another Arctic ice panic over as world temperatures plummet

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to 7 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. as charted by our friend Paul Homewood on his blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, with the news

      refers to this blog post

    3. As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.
  22. Apr 2017
    1. How a Melting Arctic Changes Everything

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 5 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. From extreme drought to record rain: Why California's drought-to-deluge cycle is getting worse

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to 4 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. It’s been warming for hundreds of years! And we can’t explain all of that, you know, due to human causes.

      Valerie Trouet, Associate Professor, University of Arizona:

      The first sentence is a very general statement (what is “it”?), but I’m assuming Dr. Curry means Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, or global average temperatures. None of these have been warming for hundreds of years, as she claims, but the available proxy data show a warming since approximately 1850 (see Fig. 5.7 in IPCC AR5 and Fig. 4b in PAGES2Kconsortium, 2013*, below). These results are based on paleoclimate data, not on models.

      As to Dr. Curry’s 2nd statement, no one claims that all past warming is due to human causes. More important, however, is that the warming since 1850 cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone, without human causes. Only by including anthropogenic CO2 emissions as a forcing (in addition to the other external forcings) can models replicate the recent warming that is shown in the data.

    2. “It is an empirical fact that the Earth’s climate has warmed overall for at least the past century. However, we do not know how much humans have contributed to this warming and there is disagreement among scientists as to whether human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases is the dominant cause of recent warming, relative to natural causes”

      Gavin Schmidt, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

      There is indeed overwhelming evidence for warming in the last century. Curry’s claim that no one knows the attribution of this to human impacts is not a valid description of the state of knowledge. There are indeed plenty of studies that use statistical or model-based fingerprints to assess this and they overwhelmingly find a dominance of human activities over natural forcings or internal variability. For the more recent period (1950 onwards) the claims are even stronger—that effectively all the warming is caused by human activity with only a ~10% uncertainty due to internal variability. One can always find something to disagree with in such a statement, but disagreement in the absence of any quantitative result to the contrary is not worth much. Curiously, the paper* that Curry cites to claim a low sensitivity assumes that all the warming is human caused.

      • Lewis and Curry (2015) The implications for climate sensitivity of AR5 forcing and heat uptake estimates, Climate Dynamics
    3. “Current global climate models are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of recent warming or for predicting global or regional climate change on timescales of  decades to centuries, with any high level of confidence.

      Reto Knutti, Professor, ETH Zürich:

      This statement is at odds with just about every detection and attribution study, every climate model, and basic physical principles of the global energy budget. The trend in natural forcing (solar and volcanic) from about 1950-2000 is nearly zero and can therefore not explain the observed warming. Natural variability is much smaller than the observed warming. In a recent study* we showed that “even if models were found to underestimate internal variability by a factor of three, it is extremely unlikely that internal variability could produce a trend as large as observed.” This leaves anthropogenic forcings as the main drivers, and we understand why: it is the physics of the greenhouse effect, which have been known for more than a century.

      In terms of projections, confidence is high for large scale temperature trends, ocean acidification, or sea level rise over multiple decades, but of course lower for other local impact-relevant quantities. But the fact is that even projections made decades ago with much simpler models were remarkably accurate*.

      As Kevin Trenberth and I argued in a recent post, an important question to me is whether as a society we are better off with imperfect predictions than with no predictions at all. If we absolutely want to go down a potentially likely path, it would be smarter to have an imperfect map than no map at all.

      • Huber and Knutti (2012) Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth’s energy balance, Nature Geoscience
      • Stouffer and Manabe (2017) Assessing temperature pattern projections made in 1989, Nature Climate Change
      • Fischer and Knutti (2016) Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early models, Nature Climate Change
      • Allen et al (2013) Test of a decadal climate forecast, Nature Geoscience
    4. “There is little scientific basis in support of claims that extreme weather events – specifically, hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes – and their economic damage have increased in recent decades due to the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, since 2013 the world and the United States have had a remarkable stretch of good fortune with respect to extreme weather, as compared to the past.”

      James Elsner, Professor, Florida State University:

      While there is little scientific evidence that there will be more (or fewer) hurricanes or more hurricanes hitting the U.S., there is strong theoretical and statistical evidence that the strongest hurricanes are getting stronger as the oceans heat up due to global warming from the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, there is statistical evidence that the magnitude of economic damage in the U.S. from hurricanes increases with rising ocean temperature.

    5. “There is little scientific basis in support of claims that extreme weather events – specifically, hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes – and their economic damage have increased in recent decades due to the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, since 2013 the world and the United States have had a remarkable stretch of good fortune with respect to extreme weather, as compared to the past.”

      Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT:

      Most of the published scientific work concerns the expected response of tropical cyclones to climate change and anticipates that such storms will become stronger and perhaps less frequent, but at a rate that should not be formally detectable until mid-century. Yet there is clear satellite-based evidence (e.g. Elsner et al., Nature, 2008; Kossin et al. J. Climate, 2013)* of increasing incidence of the strongest storms, as theory dating back to 1987 predicted.

    1. south Florida are experiencing regular episodes of water in the streets.

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 4 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. One graph compiled in 2015 by the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact

      graph:

      This oft-used range of estimates puts a 6-10in rise by 2030 as a likely scenario (Credit: Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact)

    1. current globalclimate models are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of recentwarming or for predicting global or regional climate change on timescales of decades to centuries, with any high level of confidence.
    2. Itis an empirical fact that the Earth’s climate has warmed overall for at least the past century.However, we do not know how much humans have contributed to this warming and there is disagreement among scientists as to whether human-caused emissionsof greenhouse gasesisthe dominant cause ofrecentwarming, relative to natural causes.
  23. Mar 2017
    1. One of the most troubling ideas about climate change just found new evidence in its favor

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Record-breaking climate change pushes world into ‘uncharted territory’

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to 8 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 4 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. Within a decade, certain kinds of branching and plate coral could be extinct, reef scientists say, along with a variety of small fish that rely on them for protection from predators.

      John Bruno, Professor, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

      I think it is very unlikely any corals would be extinct in a decade. The problem isn't threat of extinction, its loss of habitat for other critters when corals bleach and die. The corals become less dense, but there will still be many millions of colonies for most species.

    3. If water temperatures stay moderate, the damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef may be covered with corals again in as few as 10 or 15 years.

      John Bruno, Professor, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

      First, they aren't moderate now. If they were to decrease and not exceed the bleaching threshold for another few decades, there would be some coral recovery. Second, 10-15 years is a big stretch. There would be some recovery, but not total recovery, especially of very long-lived slow-growing species.

    4. An additional kick was supplied by an El Niño weather pattern that peaked in 2016 and temporarily warmed much of the surface of the planet, causing the hottest year in a historical record dating to 1880.

      John Bruno, Professor, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

      This is a very common misconception even among scientists. The warming, bleaching, and coral loss is 100% due to greenhouse gas emissions not the ENSO cycle and the fact this we were in a peak of the El Nino phase in early 2016. The GBR has experienced El Nino events for thousands of years, yet bleaching wasn't observed there until 1998 when ocean warming pushed ocean temperatures just above the bleaching threshold.

    1. more than 100 per cent of the warming over the past century is due to human actions. How can it be more than 100 per cent? Because without us the planet would likely have cooled very slightly thanks to natural factors such as volcanic emissions and orbital changes.

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    1. carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming

      Scientists analyzed this claim and conclude it is completely inconsistent with the science:

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    1. Earth heading for 'mini ice age' within 15 years

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low' to 'very low', according to the 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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  24. Feb 2017
    1. Scientists: Here's What Really Causes Climate Change (And It Has Nothing To Do With Human Beings)

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low' to 'very low', according to 4 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Here’s why it's so frickin’ hot right now window.variationsTitleElem = $('article header h1.title');

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to 3 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The Alarming Thing About Climate Alarmism

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low' to 'low', according to 7 climate scientists who evaluated this article.

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      This evaluation features contributions by MIT Prof. Kerry Emanuel (see annotations below) and by Wesleyan University Prof. Gary Yohe (see his comments on the article)

      karmour:

      The article contains numerous scientific errors, does not provide references for some of its key claims, and ignores much of the published literature on the subjects discussed. It appears that many details have been cherry-picked or misconstrued in service of making a political point.

      anonymous reviewer:

      The author tries to rebut the narrative "that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse". In doing so, he erects a straw-man, cherry-picks studies and misrepresents current climate science. Furthermore, the logic that since things are not 'worst-than-we-thought', we shouldn't take action and do the things we would do if things were simply 'bad', is lost on me…

      emvincent:

      The article is imprecise, for instance, about who the “doomsayers” and the “alarmists” are: since the core of the argumentation is about them, a definition of who they are and what they argue exactly cannot be avoided. It is also vague in its conclusion: “we need balance”, here again what exactly is meant by balance should be made clearer.

      jgdwyer:

      Tries and fails to make a convincing case for why humans need to worry about climate change less than they currently do.

      bmv:

      Although this author appears to have read parts of the IPCC report and carefully selected the facts which support his narrative, he presents information in a very misleading way, and some of his statements (e.g. "despite endless successions of climate summits, carbon emissions continue to rise") do not support his thesis that action on climate change is alarmist and unnecessary. His conclusion that "climate change is not worse than we thought. Some indicators are worse, but some are better" suggests a false equivalency between the indicators that are "worse" and those that are "better".

      drchavas:

      The author on multiple occasions presents blatantly inaccurate information and otherwise uses selective information to argue his point, which is highly misleading.

    1. El Niño, explained: Why this year's could be one of the strongest on record

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high' to 'high', according to 5 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Scientists have just detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans linked to a warming climate The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! Sign up *Invalid email address Got it Got it

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. What California’s Dam Crisis Says About the Changing Climate

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to 3 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. The big melt: Global sea ice at record low

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high', according to 5 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Dr John Bates’s disclosures about the manipulation of data

      Update: Dr Bates contradicts The Daily Mail allegations of fraud:

      "The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was," he said.

      source: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060049630

    2. world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

      4 scientists analyzed this article and show its conclusions are unsupported

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  25. Jan 2017
    1. U.S. scientists officially declare 2016 the hottest year on record. That makes three in a row. The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! Sign up *Invalid email address Got it Got it

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 12 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. There was, he said, an ‘inherent bias’ in scientific journals which predisposed them to publish ‘doom and gloom stories’.

      Howard Browman, Principal Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research:

      The words "inherent bias" do not appear in my article. Rather, I refer to "publication bias". In research, an "inherent bias" is one which is inextricably tied to the core nature of the phenomenon being studied and cannot, therefore, be eliminated by increasing the sample size or choosing a different estimator. "Publication bias", on the other hand, refers to the general (across all of science) phenomenon by which studies presenting positive results - supporting the hypothesis being tested - are more likely to be published than those reporting negative results. This sometimes creates a situation where published studies may be systematically different from unpublished studies - for example, studies showing an impact of ocean acidification might be published more easily and in higher profile journals than studies showing no impact. However, I only allude to this possibility in the introduction; I do not assess it quantitatively (something that would, in fact, be very difficult to do). Finally, the words "doom and gloom" do not appear in my introduction.

    3. The impact on calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival of calcifying marine species when pH is lowered up to 0.3 units (beyond what is considered a plausible reduction this century) is beneficial, not damaging. Marine life has nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification.

      Ken Caldeira, Senior Scientist, Carnegie Institution for Science:

      There is much evidence available to falsify this statement. Many experiments have shown substantial negative biological responses at these levels of pH change. Of course, some organisms are relatively unaffected by these levels.

      An older review that is available here without a paywall: http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta/2007%20Bio%20585%20pdfs/Langdon%202000%20(Review-CO%5E2%20&%20Calcification).pdf

    4. First, marine species that calcify have survived through millions of years when CO2 was at much higher levels; second, they are more than capable of adapting — even in the short term — to environmental change; third, seawater has a large buffering capacity which prevents dramatic shifts in pH; fourth, if oceans do become warmer due to ‘climate change’, the effect will be for them to ‘outgas’ CO2, not absorb more of it.

      Ken Caldeira, Senior Scientist, Carnegie Institution for Science:

      Many marine organisms respond to changes in calcium carbonate mineral saturation states. These depend not only on pH, but also on factors including amounts of carbon and calcium in the ocean. One of the most important factors is ocean alkalinity, which varies on time scale of many thousands of years. In the geologic past, when atmospheric CO2 was high, ocean alkalinity was also high, and so carbonate mineral saturation states could remain high.

      Unfortunately, on the timescale of centuries or decades, changes come to fast for the ocean's natural processes to buffer ocean carbonate mineral saturation states.

      Directlly comparing effects of high co2 levels that developed in the geologic past over many millions of years with high co2 levels developing today over decades and centuries shows a fundamental lack of understanding of well-established global geochemical cycles. This open access article explains some of the relevant chemistry: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JC011364/full

    5. there has been no reduction in oceanic pH levels in the last -century.

      Ken Caldeira, Senior Scientist, Carnegie Institution for Science:

      This statement just flies in both the face of observational facts and a basic understanding of chemistry. I would love to hear a cogent explanation of how atmospheric CO2 levels could rise over the course of a century without producing a decrease in ocean pH.

      Observations near Hawaii and several other open ocean environments show clear decreasing trends in ocean pH. See, for example, http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ocean-acidification/assessment

      It is one thing to challenge future projections, but rejecting well-established scientific facts is another thing entirely.

      Figure: Decline in pH measured at the Aloha station as part of the Hawaii Ocean time-series. Source

    6. The impact on calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival of calcifying marine species when pH is lowered up to 0.3 units (beyond what is considered a plausible reduction this century) is beneficial, not damaging. Marine life has nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification.

      Richard Feely, Senior Scientist, NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory:

      The Idso meta-analysis described by Delingpole was never published. It does not take into account the proper method of proportional scaling analysis. It does not demonstrate how negative effects will impact ecosystem services and food-web processes that can have an affect on economically import fish and shellfish. It does not address the impacts we are already seeing on important fish food, such as pteropods (see Bednarsek et al., 2012, 2014; Feely et al., 2016). There are several highly credible published meta-analysis studies (Kroeker et al. ,2013; Wittman & Pörtner, 2013; and Busch and McElhany, 2016, that have told a much different story than Idso's unpublished work. Delingpole failed to even mention these other studies, which show very significant impacts on several marine taxa. In summary, the Delingpole’s article demonstrates a complete lack of appreciation of scientific literature on this topic and the proper choice of scientific methods for data analysis and synthesis that leads to a more accurate understanding of the present-day and future impacts of ocean acidification.

    7. When Wallace plotted a chart of his own, incorporating all the available data, covering the period from 1910 to the present, his results were surprising: there has been no reduction in oceanic pH levels in the last -century.

      Richard Feely, Senior Scientist, NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory:

      Michael Wallace contacted Chris Sabine and myself several years ago and asked how to get access to historical pH measurements in the oceans so he could determine long-term trends of global ocean pH for himself. We directed him to both modern (as published in Feely et al., 2008) and historical pH measurements archived at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov) formerly called the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). We cautioned him that the earlier data sets prior to 1989 had significant issues with data quality as described in the document that went along with the data set was obtained from NCEI. Mr. Wallace went on to perform his analysis of the historical data without regard for the oceanographic community's concerns about the data quality or for the proper methodology to perform this kind of analysis. He chose to publish his results within the context of an interview written by Marita Noon in the Farmington Daily Times. This was quickly picked up by a number of authors who republished those results in a number of internet blogs including several blogs by James Delingpole, Anthony Watts and Thomas Lifson. We responded by correcting the record by formally restating our concerns about Mr. Wallace's incorrect use of the historical data on our internet website (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Quality+of+pH+Measurements+in+the+NODC+Data+Archives). In short, Wallace's chart does not show any kind of useful trend in global ocean pH because the data he used, and how he used them, were not appropriate for this kind of analysis. In the first place, the pH measurements prior to 1989 were not reliable enough to detect small pH changes over that period. In addition, companion meta data on sensor calibration, pH scales and temperature corrections were not available. Finally, the data were so limited that no meaningful global averages could be determined. The article by Mr Delingpole in the Spectator failed to address these important issues, as Philip Williamson correctly points out in his response to the article.

    8. Howard Browman, a marine scientist for 35 years, has published a review in the ICES Journal of Marine Science of all the papers published on the subject. His verdict could hardly be more damning. The methodology used by the studies was often flawed; contrary studies suggesting that ocean acidification wasn’t a threat had sometimes had difficulty finding a publisher. There was, he said, an ‘inherent bias’ in scientific journals which predisposed them to publish ‘doom and gloom stories’.

      Howard Browman, Principal Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research:

      The following decomposition of this excerpt from Mr. Delingpole's article in The Spectator identifies inaccuracies in reporting that lead to misrepresentation of the content and intent of my article. Importantly, Mr. Delingpole never contacted me to verify that his reporting on my article was accurate. Nor was I contacted by the UK's Independent Press Standards Organisation during their investigation of the accuracy of Mr. Delingpole's article in The Spectator.

    9. Howard Browman, a marine scientist for 35 years, has published a review in the ICES Journal of Marine Science of all the papers published on the subject.

      Howard Browman, Principal Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research:

      The article that Mr. Delingpole is referring to is not "a review", but an introduction to a special theme issue on the topic of ocean acidification. The word "Introduction" appears in bold-type immediately above the title. The introduction does not review all of the nearly 4000 articles on the subject. Rather, it presents an overview of the sub-set of research dealing with biological/ecological effects of ocean acidification.

    10. His verdict could hardly be more damning.

      Howard Browman, Principal Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research:

      On p. 530 of the introduction, I state: "Although I call for a more sceptical scrutiny and balanced interpretation of the body of research on OA, it must be emphasized that OA is happening and it will have effects on some marine organisms and ecosystem processes." Readers can decide for themselves whether this can be interpreted as a verdict that "...could hardly be more damning."

    11. The methodology used by the studies was often flawed;

      Howard Browman, Principal Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research:

      My introduction does not present a quantitative assessment of the frequency of occurrence of methodological flaws in the ocean acidification literature.

  26. Dec 2016
    1. Arctic ice melt 'already affecting weather patterns where you live right now'

      Overall scientific credibility: 'neutral' to 'high', according to 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. Another consequence of the fast melting Arctic raises the possibility that there may be even worse extreme weather to come, according to a few scientists: titanic Atlantic superstorms and hurricanes barreling across Europe.

      Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles:

      "This statement does not accurately describe an outcome that is widely supported in the scientific literature. It is certainly true that Arctic sea ice is decreasing at a rapid rate, and that further sea ice loss is highly likely in the future. It is also plausible, and supported by existing research, that present and future sea ice loss may alter the atmospheric circulation in ways that affect the likelihood of certain kinds of weather events*. But the claim regarding "Atlantic superstorms" and "hurricanes barreling across Europe" seems fairly hyperbolic."

    3. The jet stream forms a boundary between the cold north and the warmer south, but the lower temperature difference means the winds are now weaker. This means the jet stream meanders more, with big loops bringing warm air to the frozen north and cold air into warmer southern climes.

      Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles:

      "The statement regarding what the jet stream is (a "boundary between cold north and warmer south") is essentially correct, and there is indeed evidence that the north-south temperature difference has decreased in some regions.[1] But there remains considerable scientific uncertainty regarding whether the jet stream is actually "meandering more" in a general sense, and whether these large jet stream meanders are actually caused by sea ice loss.[2-3]"

      1. Francis and Skific (2015) Evidence for a wavier jet stream in response to rapid Arctic warming
      2. Barnes and Screen (2015) The impact of Arctic warming on the midlatitude jet‐stream: Can it? Has it? Will it?;
      3. Screen and Simmonds (2013) Exploring links between Arctic amplification and mid-latitude weather
    4. Severe “snowmageddon” winters are now strongly linked to soaring polar temperatures, say researchers, with deadly summer heatwaves and torrential floods also probably linked.

      Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles:

      "Arctic temperatures have certainly been much higher than the long-term average in recent years, and the extreme warm anomalies this autumn and early winter have been particularly noteworthy. Further, there is a growing body of evidence linking Arctic sea ice loss and/or polar-amplified atmospheric warming to changes in mid-latitude atmospheric circulation*. However, this subject represents a very active area of research and there remains genuine scientific uncertainty regarding specific linkages between ongoing Arctic sea ice loss and specific kinds of extreme weather (like the heatwaves, floods, and snowstorms mentioned here). Moreover, the effects under consideration would likely have different regional manifestations. Therefore, the above statement overstates scientific confidence in such linkages and is overly broad in a geographic sense."

    1. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has worst coral die-off ever

      Overall scientific credibility: 'high' to 'very high', according to 5 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to 7 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. Amid higher global temperatures, sea ice at record lows at poles

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very high', according to 5 scientists who analyzed this article.

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  27. Nov 2016
    1. Box 5.1, Figure 1 illustrates the polar amplification phenomenon for three different periods of the Earth’s climate history using tem-perature reconstructions from natural archives and climate model simulations for: (i) the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO, 54 to 48 Ma) characterised by CO2 concentrations of 1000 to 2000 ppm (Section 5.2.2.2) and the absence of continental ice sheets; (ii) the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (MPWP, 3.3 to 3.0 Ma), characterized by CO2 concentrations in the range of 350 to 450 ppm (Section 5.2.2.2) and reduced Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets compared to today (see Section 5.6.1), (iii) the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 to 19 ka), characterized by CO2 concentrations around 200 ppm and large continental ice sheets covering northern Europe and North America.
    1. The Phony War Against CO2

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to 6 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    1. About Those Non-Disappearing Pacific Islands

      Overall scientific credibility: 'low', according to 12 scientists who analyzed this article.

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  28. Oct 2016
    1. Hillary Clinton Boards The Climate Crisis Train To Nowhere

      Overall scientific credibility: 'very low', according to 8 scientists who analyzed this article.

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    2. As a climate researcher, I will agree that humans have likely contributed to a portion of recent warmth. I am not a denier of either natural or human-induced climate change. But the observed warming as monitored by satellites (our only truly global monitoring system) has been only about half of what computerized climate models say should be happening.

      Peter Gleick, President-Emeritus and Chief Scientist, Pacific Institute:

      "This is both wrong, and self-aggrandizing, since Spencer’s professional focus is satellites. I’d also point out the consistent errors in his interpretation of satellite data has resulted in his team having to recompute their data many times to correct for flaws. But more important, there are many, many monitoring systems that show climate change (not just “observed warming”), and these observations are well aligned with model projections.

      See, for example, this explanation from Skeptical Science and the Wikipedia page on the UAH satellite temperature dataset"

    3. Sea level rise, which was occurring long before humans could be blamed, has not accelerated and still amounts to only 1 inch every ten years. If a major hurricane is approaching with a predicted storm surge of 10-14 feet, are you really going to worry about a sea level rise of 1 inch per decade?

      Peter Gleick, President-Emeritus and Chief Scientist, Pacific Institute:

      "A major storm that has a sea-level higher than it would otherwise have been without climate change will simply be more damaging. It doesn’t matter that current SLR changes are slow. Sandy’s storm surge hit at high tide – a tide that was higher than it would otherwise have been because of human-caused climate change. Some estimates are that damages were many billions of dollars higher as a result."