A recent article at Forbes, “Four Kinds Of Killer Weather Extremes: An Achilles Heel Problem For Climate Predictors,” is a mixed bag of correct and incorrect claims about climate change and the issue of warming impacts. Forbes is right that available data doesn’t show extreme weather is getting worse, but incorrect on a number of other assertions, like that coral reefs are in danger.
To start, writer Ian Palmer describes the so-called Exxon Knew scandal, citing some of the predictions that models built by ExxonMobil back in the 1980s spat out concerning carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. This narrative about the fuel giant ignores the fact that there were other studies being done internally that showed differently, arguing the opposite. Even within the warming theory presented by certain Exxon scientists, they acknowledged a high degree of uncertainty, concerning their findings. The popular scientific consensus just prior to the 80s was that a mini-ice ace was imminent.
Exxon did not “know” or hide anything, and Palmer makes the point that Exxon’s model outputs “were about global warming, not climate change,” and that predicting the downstream effects of climate change on weather and other systems is “another big step, and is fraught with uncertainties.”
He writes [Emphasis mine] :
If the world were sensitive to 0.2C or 0.5C, or even 1.0C global warming, climate change indicators should show up in long-term data trends.
…
There do exist worldwide consequences of global warming. These direct indicators include Arctic and Antarctic ice melting, glaciers retreating, sea levels rising, corals bleaching, and some biodiversity habitats changing. These have been serious, but not generally associated with human lives lost, destroyed infrastructure, famines, mass migrations, or government collapse.
Each of these direct indicators, on a global basis, have worsened in the last 50 years, and long-term data have proven this. For example, coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has reached an all-time high.”
While it is true that there has been, as should be expected upon exiting a cold period, changes to certain habitats and melting ice, however this is wildly exaggerated in the media. He is also flat wrong that coral reefs are more in danger of bleaching now than if it were colder and with a lower CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. He’s also wrong about the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) being endangered by recent bleaching occurrences, in fact the GBR is thriving.
Regarding coral reefs, it’s important to first note that coral bleaching is not coral death. At the same time as media and Palmer are pushing the line that the Great Barrier Reef has an all-time high for bleaching, data show that, in the aftermath of the bleachings, the living coral cover of the reef set repeated records for the highest levels ever since records began in 1985. It is in the best shape it has been in recent decades. Bleaching is caused by a variety of factors, including cold snaps and chemicals in sunscreen, and cannot be exclusively contributed to warm waters (in which corals thrive) or dissolved CO2. Also, as discussed in a number of Climate Realism posts, corals are doing well globally, regularly adapting to bleaching, with new coral being discovered all the time, sometimes in unexpected locations.
Concerning metling ice at the poles, while ice melt may appear to be alarming, the truth is more complicated, and the overall ice mass of those locations has hardly budged. There is a long-term melting trend, but this predates the industrial revolution and will continue so long as we do not slide back to the temperatures of the little ice age.
It is certainly true that average global sea level is rising, but this effect is not distributed evenly across coastlines, is not outside the natural range and rate of rise since the Earth began to come out of the last glacial period, and Palmer correctly admits that this is not associated with loss of life, despite what the media often asserts. Sea levels have already risen more than 400 feet since the last ice age, and tide gauge data does not indicate that there is any alarming acceleration in the rate of rise. This is covered succinctly in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise, here. There is no reason to believe, again, that seas will cease to rise if humans stopped burning fossil fuels.
Palmer goes on to describe four “killer weather extremes of droughts, wildfires, floodings, and hurricanes.”
This is where his analysis is spot on. Palmer writes:
But the four killer weather extremes have not worsened in the past 50 years. Long-term data such as hurricanes show numbers of worldwide events that, although fluctuating, reveal no long-term trend. The events were reliably recorded and carefully counted.
It’s the same for global tally of droughts, wildfires, and floodings. On a global basis, none of these four killer weather extremes have worsened over the past 40-50 years — even though global temperature has risen by 1.0 C degrees in this period.
Palmer’s statement is accurate, going on to muse that if these disastrous weather types, which really do pose immediate threats to human health, are not increasing, “why should the world be worried about future worsening?”
He hangs on to the idea that the “urgency” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is “still significant” based on the earlier direct indicators of climate change, but says it “is not as dire as often presented by climate modelers, the media, and the press.”
Most surprising, Palmer ends the article by admitting that the oil and gas industry thus cannot be blamed for worsening weather extremes, though he does assert that they “may be culpable for direct indicators of global warming.”
The debate over the degree to which human emissions of carbon dioxide influence even those direct indicators of warming, however, is still ongoing, especially since human activity accounts for just 3.4 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today. Many of the alleged solutions to the problem, like ceasing the use of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation, would result in far more dire consequences for civilization, human life, and health than the slow rise of the seas or shifting habitat zones, such as widespread famine, the loss of many modern medicines and medical technologies, and reduced availability of lifesaving electric power.
The Forbes article is a mix of truth and nonsense, meriting kudos for the facts it tells and disapprobation for its misleading portions. Forbes should get some credit for running an article, a large portion of which presents facts that buck the prevailing narrative that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. Had it followed normal recent mainstream media practice, it would have stifled any discussion of data which make it clear that extreme weather is not getting worse, and stuck to the speculation that climate change is going to get us if we don’t stop using fossil fuels.
