Joseph D’Aleo, CCM Link
This document is an update of an earlier version contained in the following filings with EPA: here (see pages 17-21), and here (see pages 20-24).
with satellites that would not have been seen and counted in the pre-satellite era. See 2020 season similarity to late 1800s here. See a perspective on deadly 2021 CAT4 hurricane Ida and a similarity to Camille in 1969 here. See the summary on 2018 here.
Fact Check as of: 11/17/22
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Claim: Tornadoes have been increasing as the world has warmed due to human influences.
Fact Check: More active months and seasons occur when unseasonable cold spring patterns are present. Warmer cycles feature fewer big tornado seasons. The number of strong tornadoes has declined dramatically over the last half century. That will reverse as we go into the next cold phase. Even with a major, deadly outbreak and long track storm in December, 2021, the year ended in the lowest 25th percentile for tornadoes. Through October, 2022 also fell in the lower 25th percentile for tornadoes with no level EF% major tornadoes now for the last 11 years, the longest stretch in the entire record despite better detection. A return to more active seasons would eventually occur as the earth cools with the colder Pacific and low solar. See how the 2022 started strong early but has quieted to below the 25th percentile here
Fact Check as of: 01/05/23
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Claim: Droughts and Floods are becoming more severe worldwide due to global warming.
Fact Check: Droughts and floods here has shown no statistically significant trends. Each year wet and dry areas are seen but their locations change, related to ocean warm and cold pools that drive atmospheric patterns that persist for months at a time. This year, the Atlantic and Pacific ocean configurations supported drought issues in the central which verified. See details here. See how claims that drought from climate change is causing Lake Mead water levels to plunge us wrong on both counts here. See Viv Forbes reports on La Nina floods in Australia in Floods and Droughts are Nothing New here.
Fact Check as of: 10/16/22
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Claim: Wildfires are increasing due to drought and increasing heat.
Fact Check: Wildfires diminished very rapidly in size and numbers after the very active 1800s. The increase in damage in recent years is due to population growth in vulnerable areas and poor forest management. See details here. See Australia Wildfire story here. See this analysis that shows how public lands are ablaze but private lands are not because they are properly managed here. See A Growing Sea of Snags: North Umpqua River Wildfires, 2002-2022 - Risks and Recommendations here.
Fact Check as of: 12/28/22
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Claim: Snow is decreasing as the earth warms, threatening the winter sports industry.
Fact Check: This is one claim that has been repeated for decades even as nature showed very much the opposite trend with unprecedented snows even to the big coastal cities. Every time they repeated the claim, it seems nature upped the ante more. Alarmists have eventually evolved to crediting warming with producing greater snowfall, because of increased moisture but the snow events in recent years have usually occurred in colder winters with high snow water equivalent ratios in frigid arctic air. The eastern United States as an example had 28 high impact winter snowstorms in the 10 years ending on 2019/20. No prior ten-year period since 1950 had more than 10. Winters in the last decade or so produced snow records and snowcover that lasted well into the spring. Snowcover in the Northern Hemisphere, North America and Eurasia has been increasing since the 1960s in the fall and winter but declining in the spring. However, as NOAA advised around 2000 might be the case, snowcover measurement methodology changes (automated instead man/machine) at the turn of this century may be responsible for most of the warm season differences. “Warming is not causing snow to disappear.” See more here.
Below are a series of fact checks of the 13 most common climate claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The contributors of these reviews are all recognized experts in the relevant fields. For each claim, a brief summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided along with a link to the full text and graphical support of the rebuttal and the names and the credentials of the authors of for each rebuttal.
A paper just issued here “A Critical Assessment of Extreme Events in Trends in Times of Global Warming”, Gianluca Alimonti et al., European Physical Journal Plus, 2022 reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable. “None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.”
Also Ralph Alexander With GWPF has issued a report Extreme Weather, the IPCC’s Changing Tune. This paper compares empirical observations of extreme weather events with their coverage in the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The conclusions of AR6 are contrasted with observational data described in recent research papers and reports, particularly in relation to droughts, tropical cyclones, heatwaves (including marine heat waves) and cold extremes. The paper also covers major floods, tornadoes, wildfires and coral bleaching, with a short update of the discussion of disaster risk analysis.
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Claim: The globe has experienced among the warmest ever month or year in the entire record back to the 1800s. This claim is recurrent - often monthly.
Fact Check: These claims are totally unsupported by any credible analysis of raw global surface temperature data and its availability. Moreover, this Global Average Surface Temperature Data invalidation alone, invalidates the EPA 2009 GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding as well as the subsequent EPA Findings’ claimed link between rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the other Climate Alarmist claims - which are also independently invalidated below by relevant empirical data. Thus, all such climate alarmist claims are in reality just politically driven fictions. See details here. See more details here. See a Timeline of Surface Data versions here
See Bombshell report: 96% of U.S. Climate data is Corrupted:
Satellite data for the lower troposphere shows a fraction of the warming of the surface stations. The greenhouse theory say the heating should be greater in the tropical atmosphere where greenhouse gases are theorized to be trapping the heat (tropical hot spot).
John Robson from Climate Discussion Nexus shows this very well in this video.
And here:
Claim: Heat Waves are more frequent and extreme. Heat waves kill people and greenhouse gases are to blame.
Fact Check: Heat waves like cold waves are a normal part of our global climate. Heat Waves have been decreasing since the 1930s in the U.S. and globally. See details here. See a summary of summer sizzle in 2022 here. See Dr. Cliff Mass’s excellent 2021 post “Flawed Heatwave Report Leads to False Headlines in Major Media Blogpost. “Last week we witnessed a major failure in science communication regarding the Northwest heatwave. A failure that misinformed you and millions of others, and a failure that highlighted glaring weaknesses in the media’s ability to cover important scientific issues. And it revealed the disa
Fact Check as of: 08/04/22
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ppointing behavior of some members of the scientific community.” See full detailed analysis here. Roger Pielke Jr, tells “What the media won’t tell you about U.S. heat waves here. See this why amplified patterns, a feature of cooling climates, are behind the warm and cold extremes in 2021 and again this year here. here. Cold not heat is the real threat. Cold kills up to 20 times or more than heat globally and has disastrous economic impacts. See details on why cold not heat is the main danger to humanity here. See more recent mortality studies that show a statistically significant excess mortality for cold over heat here.
Fact Check as of: 09/16/22
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Claim: Hurricanes have been increasing in number and/or extremity.
Fact Check: Even with a few very active seasons, the last decade ended was the second quietest for landfalling hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes in the U.S since the 1850s. 2020 saw a record 30 named storms and many Gulf impacts like the late 1800s and active periods this past century, but the Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index (ACE) ranked only 13th highest in 2020. The 1860s and 1880s had the most landfalling hurricanes and major hurricanes. See a perspective on Major Hurricane Ian here. See summary through 2022 here. See this June 2021 NOAA study that though 2020 was technically a record, modern technology is likely a reason including the ability to see storms over the open oceans of the central and eastern Atlantic
Fact Check as of: 12/28/22
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Claim: Sea levels are rising at an alarming rate threatening coastal cities
Fact Check: The rate of global sea level rise on average has fallen by 40% the last century. Where today, it is increasing - local factors such as land subsidence are to blame. See details here. See how sea level trends are being adjusted here. to better fit the theory. See how between 1985 and 2015, satellite observations indicate the world’s coasts gained 13,565 km2 more land area than they had lost to the seas (Donchyts et al., 2016).
Fact Check as of: 03/10/23
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Claim: Ice in the arctic, Greenland and Antarctic is melting at an alarming rate.
Fact Check: The polar and glacial ice varies with multidecadal cycles in ocean temperatures. Current levels are comparable to or above historical low levels. Arctic ice returned to higher levels with a very cold winter in 2019/20. Ice was highest level since 2013. See details here . See update here on the AMO, PDO ocean cycles, the Solar cycles and Arctic temperatures. See here how the South Pole had its coldest winter on record last season (with readings averaging -78F at the South Pole Vostok station!). Records began in 1957 here. Note the polar ice is this season (2021/22) is the 16th lowest on record with a nice rebound. NSIDC continues to hide data before 1979 which shows the changes are cyclical.
The alarmists jump on any yearly anomalies if they suit their theories. See the latest claims here. See the real story here and here. See the Alaskan winter temperature extremes that are characteristic of La Ninas with long brutal cold spells and warm spikes. The media ignore the extreme cold but focus on the warm days shown here. Also see the failures of the arctic’s demise in this post on “Is the Arctic Ice to Disappear?” in Human Progress here. See how the polar bears are thriving even in the warmer periods here.
See Tony Heller’s check on NYT’s Paul Krugman’s latest flawed article on the heat and Norway warmth.
Fact check as of: 06/16/22
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Claim: Climate change is endangering food supply.
Fact Check: The vitality of global vegetation in both managed and unmanaged ecosystems is better off now than it was a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, or even a mere two-to-three decades ago thanks in part to CO2. A greening of the planet has resulted and the Sahara desert has shrunk by 8%. CO2 has reduced the vitality of plant life and reduced the water need. A greening of the planet has resulted and the Sahara desert has shrunk by 8%. CO2 has reduced the vitality of plant life and reduced the water need. See the update here. See also in Science how growing forests provide conflicting effects on the temperatures here. See Patrick Moore’s interview here.
Fact Check as of: 09/26/21
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Claim: Carbon pollution is a serious and growing health hazard.
Fact Check: The term “carbon pollution” is a deliberate, ambiguous, disingenuous term, designed to mislead people into thinking carbon dioxide is pollution. Thanks to the use of clean burning natural gas and other measures, the amount of particulate matter and other criteria pollutants identified by the EPA have declined over 77% and are well below the standards set. The United States had in 2020 the cleanest air in the world according to NASA and the World Health Organization (WHO). See details here. See this detailed scientific proof that Particulate Matter in Indoor/Outdoor Air Does NOT Cause Death here.
Fact Check as of: 01/29/23
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Claim: Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are causing ocean acidification, which is catastrophically harming marine life.
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Fact Check: Ocean acidification (really only slightly reduced alkalinity) is often found to be a non-problem, or even a benefit. Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated the robustness of multiple marine plant and animal species to ocean acidification when they are properly performed under realistic experimental conditions. See more here. See also Peter Ridd’s recent finding of a New Record High Coral Cover of the Great Barrier Reef here.
Fact Check as of: 02/03/19
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Claim: There is a 97% Consensus of the world’s scientists that climate change is serious and man-made.
Fact Check: The claim of a 97% scientific consensus is a contrived fiction. CO2 is not a pollutant but a beneficial gas, particulate matter is. But as shown above, small and large particulate matter is not an issue. As also shown above all the claims of dangerous effects on the climate are also shown to be exaggerated or outright falsifications. See details here.
Fact Check as of: 11/22/22
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Each section details claim and links to a detailed scientific analysis with supporting graphics and links.
See how the global deaths related to all the extremes have declined dramatically the last century.
See Professor Ole Humlum’s review or the State of the Climate using real data here:
It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere again and the mainstream media in the United States are shouting once again that the summer heat is being driven by anthropogenic global warming. Is it?
We recognize that climate changes because climate always changes. Different characteristics may be in place during one year that make it warmer, or colder, than other years. This year, we are experiencing our third consecutive year of La Nina - a substantial cooling of the waters in the central Pacific Ocean due, in part, to a significant increase in winds across the tropical Pacific Ocean. Changing the surface temperature of this large area of tropical waters creates changes in upper atmospheric weather patterns that affect us here in the United States. This year is the strongest La Nina of the recent three-year pattern.
According to Joe D’Aleo of Weatherbell, strong La Nina events have caused hot and dry conditions across the central United States and into the Eastern Seaboard. So, yes, this is what we are experiencing and scientists know exactly why we are experiencing it.
Here is the long term summer average for La Ninas
Here was 2022:
Despite the heat, we are not experiencing the warmest period in all of human history. In fact, we are not experiencing the warmest period in even the last century. A quick perusal of the website of the Environmental Protection Agency (https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves ) - not an organization one would interpret as being a member of the ‘climate denier’ posse - shows that the United States Annual Heat Wave Index was five times higher in the 1930s (i.e., the Dust Bowl era) than at any time between 1895 and 2020. Using data from the US Global Change Research Program (an organization that I briefly headed), the index describes trends in multi-day extreme heat events across the contiguous 48 states. And if we look at the last eighty years (i.e., the post-Dust Bowl era), no trend exists in this Heat Wave Index.
One thing science can say is that the heat we have been experiencing has been caused by the onset of summer and it will diminish as autumn sets in.
David R. Legates, Ph.D. (Climatology), retired Professor of Climatology and Geography/Spatial Analysis at the University of Delaware, is Director of Research and Education for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
It’s hot. Real hot. Heat waves in the United States surely must be the most visible and impactful sign of human caused climate change, right? Well, actually no. Let’s take a look at what the U.S. National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say about heat waves in the United States. What they say may surprise you.
Before proceeding, let me emphasize that human-caused climate change is real and significant. Aggressive policies focused on both adaptation and mitigation make very good sense. So too does being accurate about current scientific understandings. The importance of climate change does not mean that we can ignore scientific integrity - actually the opposite, it makes it all the more important. So let’s take a close look at recent assessment reports and what they say about U.S. heat waves.
The figure below comes out of the most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA). It shows the frequency (top) and intensity (bottom) of heat waves in the U.S. since 1900. The bottom figure is actually based on a paper that I co-authored in 1999, which serves as the basis for an official indicator of climate change used by the Environmental Protection Agency.
US heat wave frequency (top) and intensity (bottom) since 1900, from the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment. Source; USNCA 2017
There are a few things that jump out from these figures. One is that heat waves of recent decades have not reached levels seen in the 1930s, either in their frequency or intensity. The NCA observed that the IPCC (AR5) concluded that “it is very likely that human influence has contributed to the observed changes in frequency and intensity of temperature extremes on the global scale since the mid-20th century.” But at the same time, the NCA also concluded,
In general, however, results for the contiguous United States are not as compelling as for global land areas, in part because detection of changes in U.S. regional temperature extremes is affected by extreme temperature in the 1930s.
The more recent IPCC AR6 concurred. The complex figure below (which I consolidated from the even more complex IPCC AR6 Figure 11.4) indicates low confidence (~20%) for the detection of trends in extreme heat and the attribution of those trends to human causes for both central and eastern North America (CNA and ENA). In western North American (WNA) detection is judged likely (>66%) but with low confidence in attribution.
Annotated version of IPCC AR6 Figure 11.6, showing confidence levels in detection and attribution for extreme heat, cold and precipitation for 3 regions in North America, West, Central and East. Source: IPCC 2021
The extreme temperatures of 1930s present a challenge for the detection and attribution of trends in heat waves in the United States. That means that consumers of climate reporting need to have their antennae up when reading about heat waves. It is true that if analysis of data begins in the 1960s, then an increase in heat waves can be shown. However, if the data analyses begins before the 1930s then there is no upwards trend, and a case can even be made for a decline. It is a fertile field for cherry pickers.
Even though U.S. heat waves have increased since the 1960s, societal vulnerability has decreased over that time. The figure below presents mortality risk in “extreme heat events” across the U.S. since the 1970s, showing an overall decline. This is good news, because it shows that the climate can become more extreme, but society has significant adaptive capacity.
Relative risk by region for total mortality on “extreme heat event” days versus non-extreme heat event days. National total is shown in the bottom right figure. Source: Sheridan et al. 2021
Make no mistake, looking to the future, the IPCC projects an increase in heat waves around the world, including in the United States. Here is what the IPCC projects for the future:
In summary, it is virtually certain that further increases in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes, and decreases in the intensity and frequency of cold extremes, will occur throughout the 21st century and around the world. It is virtually certain that the number of hot days and hot nights and the length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heatwaves compared to 1995-2014 will increase over most land areas. In most regions, changes in the magnitude of temperature extremes are proportional to global warming levels (high confidence).
How bad things get is a function of how quickly mitigation occurs. Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide is thus not about the weather this year or next, but about what happens later this century.
But regardless how fast we achieve net-zero carbon dioxide, there is good reason to believe that the societal impacts of extreme heat are manageable, and across different scenarios. For instance, according to the World Health Organization, even with increasing heat waves, mortality does not have to increase. Assuming adaptative responses (like air conditioning), the WHO concludes that future “attributable mortality is zero.” The importance of adaptation to reducing vulnerabilities to extreme heat is a robust finding across the literature.
The climate is changing, there is no doubt. In many places around the world the signal of these changes has been observed in the occurrence of heat waves. But the United States is not among those places—not yet.
But so what? If climate change is real and responding to it is important, why does it matter if we incorrectly attribute today’s weather to climate change? Maybe such incorrect attribution will be politically useful?
I can think of two reasons why it matters.
First, our assessment of risk can be skewed. If we think this week’s heat wave is a novel event juiced by climate change, rather than within the bounds of observed variability, then we are fooling ourselves. If electrical grids fail and people die this week, that will mean that we are not even prepared for the present. We need only look back to the 1930s to understand that we are also not prepared for the past, much less a more extreme future. Casual claims of detection and attribution can mislead.
Second, sustained support for action on climate will require also sustaining public and policy maker trust in science and scientific institutions. Claims that go well beyond scientific understandings place that trust at risk. A scientific consensus doesn’t exist only when it is politically useful - it also exists when it is politically unwelcomed. Accurately producing and reporting on scientific assessments surely helps to foster trust in experts and the institutions that they inhabit.
The scientific community and the journalists who report on its findings would do well to call things straight, rather than make a mockery of climate science by quickly claiming that every weather event that just happened was due to climate change.
See here even more recent mortality data that suggests cold is the real danger and killer.