Joseph D'Aleo: Climate Alarmist Claim Rebuttals

Alarmist Claim Rebuttal Overview - with updates through 08/04/20.

Below are a series of rebuttals of the 11 most common climate alarmists’ claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The authors of these rebuttals are all recognized experts in the relevant fields.

For each alarmist claim, a summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided below along with a link HERE to the full text of the rebuttal, which includes the names and the credentials of the authors of each rebuttal.

• Heat Waves – have been decreasing since the 1930s in the U.S. and globally.
• Hurricanes – this decade just ended as the second quietest for landfalling. hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes in the U.S since the 1850s.
• Tornadoes – the number of strong tornadoes has declined over the last half century. More active months occur when unseasonable cold spring patterns are present.
• Droughts and Floods – there has no statistically significant trends
• Wildfires – decreasing since the very active 1800s. The increase in damage in recent years is due to population growth in vulnerable areas and poor forest management.
• Snowfall – has been increasing in the fall and winter in the Northern Hemisphere and North America with many records being set.
• Sea level – 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.
• Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland Ice – the polar 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.
• Alaska July 2019 heat records/ winter 2019/20 cold – the hot July resulted from a warm North Pacific and reduced ice in the Bering Sea late winter due to strong storms. Record ice extent occurred with record cold in 2012. 2019/20 has been the third coldest winter in Fairbanks since the Great Pacific Climate Shift in the late 1970s.
• “Ocean Acidification” – when life is considered, ocean acidification (really slightly reduced alkalinity) is a non-problem, or even a benefit.
• Carbon Pollution as a health hazard – carbon dioxide (CO2) is an odorless invisible trace gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet. CO2 is not a pollutant.
• Climate change is endangering food supply – 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.
• There is a 97% consensus that climate change is man-made – a 97% consensus is a convenient fiction meant to bypass the scientific method and sway public opinion and drive societal changes and policies that support political agendas.

 Note - to see the independent reports supporting these findings please click HERE.

Joseph D'Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow, is a certified consultant meteorologist and was the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel. He was chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting.