Tag Archives: IPCC’s AR6

Hurricane Daniel and the Medicanes: A Dive into Science

From Watts Up With That?

Introduction

The media’s recent fascination with Hurricane Daniel and the phenomenon of “Medicanes” has sparked a flurry of discussions, with many attributing these rare supercharged Mediterranean storms to anthropogenic climate change. But before jumping to conclusions, it’s essential to delve into the science and understand the broader context.

Understanding Medicanes

Medicanes, a portmanteau of “Mediterranean” and “hurricanes,” are rare tropical-like cyclones that form in the Mediterranean Sea. The recent Yahoo News article highlights the intensity and potential devastation of these storms, with Hurricane Daniel serving as a prime example.

They have the characteristics of both tropical and extratropical cyclones and are fueled by the contrast between the warm sea surface and cooler air from the north.”

The Climate Change Connection

The article from the AFP suggests a link between the increasing intensity of these storms and anthropogenic climate change. The argument hinges on the premise that warmer sea surface temperatures, resulting from human-induced global warming, are supercharging these Medicanes.

“The Mediterranean Sea is warming at a rate 20% faster than the global average, making the formation of these storms more likely.”

IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 Report: What Does It Say?

To understand the broader context, one must turn to the comprehensive assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the AR6 Working Group 1 report. This document provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of the climate and the potential impacts of anthropogenic activities.

Upon examining the report, a few key points emerge:

Tropical Cyclones: The report states that while there is evidence of an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones over the last four decades, there is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) positive trends in the global number of very intense tropical cyclones.

Regional Variability: The report emphasizes the significant regional variability in tropical cyclone trends, with some basins showing increases and others showing decreases in various measures of tropical cyclone activity.

Attribution to Human Influence: The report concludes that there is only medium confidence in the attribution of the global-scale observed increase in the proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes since the early 1980s to human influence.

Rebutting the Assertions

Given the findings of the IPCC’s AR6 report, several assertions in the Yahoo News article can be addressed:

Mediterranean Sea Warming: While the Mediterranean Sea may be warming at a rate faster than the global average, it’s essential to differentiate between regional variability and global trends. The IPCC report emphasizes the significant regional differences in tropical cyclone trends.

Linking Medicanes to Global Warming: The article’s suggestion that anthropogenic climate change is directly responsible for the increased intensity of Medicanes is not supported by the IPCC’s findings. The report indicates low confidence in long-term trends of very intense tropical cyclones and only medium confidence in attributing the observed increase in Category 4 or 5 hurricanes to human influence.

Conclusion

To mix metaphors, Hurricane Daniel and the phenomenon of Medicanes are low hanging fruit for alarmist ambulance chasers. The rarity of Medicanes precludes the ability to identify any trend in their intensity and the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 contradicts the overwhelming majority of claims by alarmist activist scientists and politicians.  Previously I wrote an entire post about how attribution of extreme weather is nothing but an exercise in the Texas Sharpshooter logical fallacy.

Wasting Time with Climate Science?

From Watts Up With That?

Opinion by Kip Hansen — 1 August 2023

Here I ask a simple question.  Are we all wasting our time with climate science?  Reading about it, writing about it, worrying about it, fighting about it, arguing about it.

To my horror, I discover that I have been involved in this enterprise for far more than a decade, originally writing from the Caribbean where my wife and I were living on our sailing catamaran while doing various humanitarian projects.   Not quite as long as Anthony Watts, who started WUWT in 2006, but nearly.

Anthony’s efforts led him to be the owner and host of the world’s most viewed website on climate.  Given that WUWT represents the “minority report” on climate, that is a heck of an achievement.  Yet the jury is still out on how much of an impact on climate policy and public opinion this site, and the dozen or so other high impact climate skeptic websites, blogs, podcasts, etc.,  have made and will make.   

Much of the “climate science” being done, at least that small portion that reaches the public eye by appearing in the mass media, falls into that category which the honorable Dr. Judith Curry long ago labelled “climate science ‘taxonomy’” – “‘taxonomy’, i.e. research that is neither useful nor contributes to fundamental understanding”.  That type of so-called climate science is turned into climate alarm in spades, in diamonds, in hearts and in clubs – the whole deck.

I am speaking of the nonsense one reads and hears from NPR, PBS, BBC, NBC, AP, CNN, Reuters, ABC, the NY Times,  the Guardian, the Washington Post – many of whom have openly joined themselves into propaganda cabals ( and this one) dedicated to spreading misleading information about climate and climate change.  [A new one has just been announced: GRIST and AP. ]  Even when a media organization is not directly associated with one of these collaborative misinformation outlets, their editors and journalists have to face the wrath of those that are – there are few working journalists willing to fight the tide on climate alarmism.

Even the IPCC-boosting Pielke Jr. has been blasting the media for repeating absolutely false narratives on extreme weather — the very same media that repeats endlessly the mindboggling crazy pronouncements of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres — “the era of global boiling has arrived.”

CLINTEL, has just published an extremely valuable book, “The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC“, widely available, in softcover and eBook formats.  The book examines the IPCC’s AR6 and documents biases and errors in the Working Group 1 (Scientific Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports.  [Disclosure: I contributed one of the chapters – thus have a conflict of interest.]

We see the forked-tongued enemy.  A two-pronged approach.  First, the underlying science is slightly warped, slightly biased, misleadingly reported in the latest IPCC Assessment Report (AR6) WG1 and WG2.  A lot of this is simple confirmation bias and forced-consensus biasing.   The truth in is there, but one needs to dodge the rhetoric and look only at the data itself, which is mostly correct.   And then, the Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs)  wildly misrepresent what the science sections have said and transmogrify it into something barely recognizable. 

From the SPMs, the politicians, media moguls, the Davos Crowd, the Green-New-Dealers, the Great Reset-ers, turn the SPM political opinions into outright lies and give the media propaganda cabals their marching orders.

And then, here we are.  Here I am.  I have written about 100 essays and opinion pieces here since 2020 alone.  I’ve been at it more than a decade.  There are a few dozen of others like myself who have researched and written endlessly, both in books and on the ‘Net,  to expose the lies, the disinformation, the misinformation, and the slimy political-shenanigans behind the efforts to “decarbonize” the economy of the world in the name of fighting global cooling, global warming, climate change, the climate crisis.

Every few years we see a slight shift towards the climate skeptic way of thinking in the general populace – and recently, a few nudges in our direction from governments.  The UK will drill-baby-drill to supply its own energy needs from its own resources.  Japan is re-opening nuclear power plants and building new ones.  In November last year, General Motors announced that it will stick with internal combustion engines.  India, the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter and the world’s most populous country , is planning for an expansion of its oil and gas sectors (even as it aims to hit net zero by 2070).   Those living in the real world realize that as Africa grows itself into prosperity, into the world of middle-class nations, it will do so on the back of coal and petroleum produced electricity.  Even relatively well-developed South Africa has acknowledged it needs to continue to burn coal for the present and foreseeable future.

I hope that readers see the obvious contrasts between the “reality” presented daily in the world’s mass media and what is actually happening in the world.  A large percentage of the material appearing on this website points out those contrasts, every single day.  Heartland, the CO2 Coalition, Clintel and other international climate skeptical organizations do so in print and through broadcasts, podcasts, YouTubes and interviews on wide-reaching news outlets. There are many climate skeptic oriented bloggers doing good work. Some of the “good news” is getting out there. 

Is what we do worthwhile?   Yes — It is always worthwhile to do what is right, to do what is good, to tell the truth, to fight the good fight against falsehoods and lies. 

But are we making an impact?  I can no longer tell – I am having a little bit of a “I think I’m burnt-out” stage.  I see a news article about a topic, and I think, “That’s utter claptrap, I’ll write about that.” Only to discover that I’ve already written about it a half-dozen times and really have nothing further to say than what I have already said.   I sometimes fear I just don’t have anything more to say, at all – and when I teach Public Speaking, I tell students, “If you don’t have anything to say —  don’t get up to speak or if you are already up, sit  back down.”

So, my question for the day, and please do comment, I promise not to get mad at you…..

Should I just sit back down and shut up? 

or

Should I keep banging away, just because ‘someone has to’?

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Author’s Comment:

I guess the same question applies to all of us here….

This is, I hope obviously, a piece meant to stimulate discussion.  So, please, please, discuss.

On Pielke Jr.:  I like Pielke Jr.  He does good work.  He tells the truth as he sees it.  He is one of the most effective of the “climate skeptical voices”, albeit in his own way.  He is an IPCC-booster but even he thinks it needs serious reform. He has paid a heavy price for his temerity.  Read his substack.

And yes, I do think that there is also some nonsense published here – some even written by me.  That’s the price we pay for freedom.  But, the way I see it, we err in an honest search for truth.

I don’t expect to take too much of a role in the discussion, I have said what I have to say above. But, if your start a comment with “Kip…”, I’ll try to reply.

Thanks for reading.

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Debunking Lomborg

From Climate Scepticism

By JOHN RIDGWAY

What do you know about Bjorn Lomborg? More than me I’m guessing. I know he wrote a book that is very popular with climate sceptics and is universally derided by those who are not. I know that debunking Lomborg is now big business, with a turnover likely in excess of the GDP of most South American countries. And I know he is famous for pushing the following graph depicting the fall in climate-related deaths since 1920:

The graph has been referenced more than once here on Cliscep, so it should be of considerable interest and concern to learn that there is also a ‘fact-checking’ video doing the rounds that, according to those who have no time for Lomborg, does a pretty good job of debunking him. As I say, I am no student of Lomborg and so I am in no position to offer a sweeping judgment regarding his position within the climate change debate; I’ll leave that sort of grandstanding to the likes of Wikipedia and DeSmog. But, given the importance and notoriety of his analysis on climate-related deaths, I thought I would at least take the time to view the debunking video and report on just how good a job it does in adding to the legend of the debunked ‘denier’. In so doing I think I learned a thing or two about just how easy it seems for self-satisfaction to overcome the average fact-checker and, more to the point, just how breathtakingly hypocritical they can be.

If you take a stand then you have to stick to it

The first theme of the debunking is based upon the old chestnut of cherry-picking. The problem is that Lomborg conveniently chooses to start his graph at 1920, which happens to be the high point of the EM-DAT dataset upon which the graph is based. Had he commenced from the start of that dataset the graph would have shown a lower climate-related death rate leading up to the 1920 maximum. Indeed, the earliest version of the Lomborg graph did just that. Whilst it still conveyed the message of a significant drop in climate-related deaths up to the present day, it also invited people to ask the rather awkward question, ‘but what is that at the start?’ It seems a bit sly of Lomborg to subsequently drop this inconvenient section of the data, but does pointing this out debunk Lomborg? Certainly not in my book. With or without the pre-1920 data, there is nothing in the graph to suggest an increase in climate-related deaths in recent years. The opposite is still clearly the case, and that has to remain the point. At worst this is an awkward detail for Lomborg and at best it is an irrelevance.

But he’s cherry-picking, the video screams, and that’s exactly the sort of dirty trick that deniers are supposed to pull. Besides which, the video continues, had you not noticed that the fall in deaths only shows up when one looks at global data? If one focusses in on the USA the data definitely shows an increase. So take that Lomborg! In fact, all you have to do is ignore the data from China and the Indian subcontinent and you get a completely different graph showing a marked recent increase.

It turns out that the real sleight of hand pulled by Lomborg wasn’t to cherry-pick from post 1920 data but to then fail to cherry-pick his countries. Sneakily, he insisted on using global statistics to analyse a global phenomenon. He somehow felt that including the most populace and traditionally most vulnerable countries of the world was perfectly okay. The swine!

I just wonder whether the maker of this debunking video has the slightest understanding that you can’t accuse someone of cherry-picking only then to make cherry-picking a central pillar of one’s own debunking argument. It just beggars belief. Can the hypocrisy get any worse? Well let’s look at the second theme of the debunking to see if it can.

And if you take another stand then you have to stick to it also

As if using global statistics to analyse a global issue wasn’t bad enough, Lomborg also chose to define deaths caused by floods, droughts, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures as climate-related. But, according to the debunking video, this was highly misleading since the events that were driving the data were not purely climate events. The video goes through them all and, in every case, is able to point to other factors (usually caused by human conflict or failed policy) that contributed to the death toll. Maybe it would have been more appropriate for Lomborg to point out that deaths resulting from conflict had dropped dramatically since 1920.

As with the accusation of cherry-picking, this is actually a valid point, but it is again overplayed and is groaning with hypocrisy. The reality is that very few supposedly natural disasters can be placed purely in such a category since there are nearly always human-related causations that have to be taken into account. Even the non-climate related disasters that Lomborg references will have been affected in that way. For example, just how many deaths have been caused by an earthquake will be a function of both its strength and just how earthquake-resistant the buildings will have been. And yet we still refer to the deaths as earthquake-related rather than construction-related. And we don’t whine when someone does so but fails to point out the human negligence involved. So saying that Lomborg is misleading his audience is a bit rich, particularly when you take into account that no matter how many human-related causations were behind the death tolls of recent climate events, all the deaths were counted as climate-related. The rule seems to be that when the statistics are dropping it is due to trends in the human-related causations, but when they are rising, it is entirely due to the trends in climate.

So it is fine to pick up Lomborg on this point, but if you do so then you are going to have to stop objecting to those who point out the major role of deforestation in Pakistani flooding, or the role that an epidemic of arson has had on Australian wildfires. Either you take a sophisticated view regarding causation or you don’t. You can’t just switch sophistication on and off just to suit your ‘debunking’ arguments.

And try not to get desperate

The only other supposedly debunking argument I can discern in the video is one taking issue with Lomborg’s claim that the drop in climate-related deaths is entirely positive. Yes, asserts the video, but at what cost? All these protections that have come with greater economic wealth have also resulted in greater financial loss when disaster strikes – just ask the insurance companies. And we all know that money is fungible – every pound spent on sea defences or to rebuild houses is a pound less for cancer research.

‘Specious’ is the word that comes to mind here. ‘Naïve’ is another. You just can’t do that. You can’t play the cancer card unless you can directly relate the two revenue streams and provide statistics that unequivocally show that death rates due to cancer are a lot higher because of the redirection of funding. Sure, cancer deaths are on the increase, but this trend is easily explained in terms of a growing and aging population that is not dying as much from other things that would have traditionally got you before cancer had the chance. The attempt to allude in this way to a hidden climate-related death toll is just downright desperate. The less said about this one, the better.

A call to arms

The only reason I have brought up this debunking video now is because it indirectly relates to the recent evaluation of IPCC’s AR6 published by the Clintel group. In fact, I had not even heard of this video until Dr Ken Rice referenced it in the latest post on his ATTP blog. The article dismisses the Clintel report as a litany of the same old heavily debunked arguments offered by climate ‘deniers’ and, in passing, Dr Rice adds a comment citing the Lomborg graph as another example of the sort of stuff that has already been thoroughly debunked (he actually says of the debunking video, ‘I thought this was a pretty good debunking of Lomborg’s graph’). I know that there are differences of opinion here on Cliscep regarding whether there is still much to be gained by arguing against the science used to justify Net Zero. I say that there is, and I will continue to say this whilst there are still people such as Dr Ken Rice who feel that the video I have just reviewed does a pretty good job of anything.