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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.

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.

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/

"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

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Scientists analyzed this claim and concluded it is Incorrect:

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

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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."

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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/

The following is extracted from this tabloid article.

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refers to this blog post

this argument has largely been commented on in this Climate Feedback review: http://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/stunning-new-data-indicates-el-nino-drove-record-highs-global-temperatures-david-rose-daily-mail/

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

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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.

• Pages 2k Consortium (2013) Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia, Nature Geoscience

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

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

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.

• Elsner, J. B, J. P. Kossin and T. H. Jagger (2008). “The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones”. In: Nature 455.7209, pp. 92-95
• Elsner, J. B. (2007b). “Granger causality and Atlantic hurricanes”. In: Tellus A 59.4, pp. 476-485.
• Jagger, T. H, J. B. Elsner and R. K. Burch (2011). “Climate and solar signals in property damage losses from hurricanes affecting the United States”. In: Natural Hazards 58.1, pp. 541-557.

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.

• Elsner et al. (2008) The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones, Nature
• Kossin et al. (2013) Trend Analysis with a New Global Record of Tropical Cyclone Intensity, Journal of Climate

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

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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)

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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

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Scientists analyzed this claim and conclude it is largely consistent with the science:

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

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

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

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Scientists analyzed this claim and conclude it is largely consistent with the science:

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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.

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

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

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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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."

• Overland et al. (2016) Nonlinear response of mid-latitude weather to the changing Arctic;
• Kug et al. (2015) Two distinct influences of Arctic warming on cold winters over North America and East Asia;
• Zhang et al. (2016) Persistent shift of the Arctic polar vortex towards the Eurasian continent in recent decades

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

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."

• Francis and Vavrus (2012) Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes;
• Cohen et al. (2014) Recent Arctic amplification and extreme mid-latitude weather;
• Overland et al. (2016) Nonlinear response of mid-latitude weather to the changing Arctic

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

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

Find more details in the annotations below and in Climate Feedback's analysis

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

Find more details in the annotations below and in Climate Feedback's analysis

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

Find more details in the annotations below and in Climate Feedback's analysis

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

Find more details in the annotations below and in Climate Feedback's analysis

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

Find more details in the annotations below and in Climate Feedback's analysis

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"

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."

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

"There are many scientific papers, going back years now, that show the influence of climate changes on the western US droughts. The fact that there have been “mega-droughts” in the past is irrelevant to whether climate changes are now influencing current droughts.]

See:

• Swain et al (2014) The Extraordinary California drought of 2013/2014: Character, Context, and the role of climate change Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

• Mann and Gleick (2015) Climate change and California drought in the 21st century Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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

"This is simply false. Observations of a vast range of human-induced climate change are extensive, documented, and undeniable, from changes in temperature to losses of Arctic ice and glacier extent to sea-level rise to precipitation patterns to sea-surface temperature. This claim by Spencer is egregiously wrong."