Debunking Climate Claims

This is planned as a monthly exercise, debunking climate propaganda in an ongoing series. Here is March 2023.
Climate Fact Check: March 2023 Edition
Guest Blogger
Ten pieces of climate propaganda from March 2023 exposed and debunked. . . .

Here are two examples:

 

Figure 1. This figure shows the frequency of strong to violent tornadoes (tornadoes registering EF3 or stronger) has been declining since the early 1970s. Sources: Graph by Anthony Watts using official NOAA/Storm Prediction Center data. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Historical Records and Trends, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology/trends, Graph data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center website, https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm

 

The *cough* evidence *cough* that shows climate change is already impacting our lives
Guest Blogger
Do the i’s readers actually believe this gibberish?

 

One.
Just one.

 

Here's another one.
CNN Peddles Alarm About Western Antarctica Melting
CLIMATE MODELS OCTOBER 30, 2023
A recent article posted by CNN claims that western Antarctica is melting rapidly and can’t be stopped, due to human-caused global warming, which will result in a dangerous rise ocean levels. This is false. While the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has seen more melting than other parts of the continent, it is due not to climate change but rather to localized temporary weather conditions and ongoing subsurface volcanic activity below the ice sheet. Indeed, outside of West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula, the larger part of the continent has gained ice mass in recent decades and has actually experienced a cooling trend. . . .

 

Would love to see the link to the article that you are getting this from.

 

The link to the article is right there in the text.
The article, “Rapid melting in West Antarctica is ‘unavoidable,’ with potentially disastrous consequences for sea level rise, study finds,” says that West Antarctica’s ice shelves are melting rapidly, and probably can’t be stopped. CNN claims this will lead to “potentially devastating implications for sea level rise around the world,” citing a recent study in Nature Climate Change. The study’s authors claim that even if the world were to meet emissions and warming targets, like limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial global average temperature, the WAIS will still experience “substantial ocean warming and ice shelf melting[.]”

 

And this is what the cherry pickers do - pick holes in news articles because they cannot challenge the science

 

I see you are still attacking the messenger rather than discussing the substance.

 

Got it backwards. AGWarriors are the ones choking off disagreement or research papers that question any facet of AGW supremacy. Science has been polluted by LW politics, excess careerism and shadowy funding.

 

Whoops, I did miss that link. Sorry about that. So I read the study (well, kind of did deep skim as these studies are mind-numbingly boring), but the only place that mentioned the word "volcanic" is this sentence here, " The core Historical experiment (10 members) followed historical external forcing from 1920–200514, considering both anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, aerosols, land use change) and natural (solar, volcanic) sources." Which basically says they looked at all possible forces before coming to a conclusion. Nowhere does it say that subsurface volcanic activity was responsible for the ice sheet melting.

As for the weather, this is what they study had to say, "Conversely, increased snowfall in a warmer climate could offset sea-level rise. We do not consider these processes in our study, but they could introduce a stronger sensitivity to the climate forcing scenario." On the other hand the study does say, "...continued ocean warming will accelerate the rate of mass loss and will trigger more impacts of sea-level rise on timescales which are immediately policy-relevant" and "The opportunity to preserve the WAIS in its present-day state has probably passed, and policymakers should be prepared for several metres of sea-level rise over the coming centuries." Ultimately what the study is telling us is that we are pass the tipping point for the WAIS. Even if we were able to have zero emissions, it is going to melt, however, if global warming gets worse, the melting will accelerate.

So now I'm confused. How did CNN lie when they made the headline, "Rapid melting in West Antarctica is ‘unavoidable,’ with potentially disastrous consequences for sea level rise, study finds"?

 

The lie is attributing the melting to global warming. Please see the link in this paragraph.
"The study’s authors considered most WAIS melting to be due to “basal melting,” due to warm ocean currents that heat the ice from below. It is notable that they do not consider subsurface geothermal heating from volcanic activity below the ice as a potential contributor, especially since several recent studies suggest that the WAIS, particularly around the Thwaites glacier, sits on top of a large number of subsurface volcanoes which are believed to be contributing to melting below the ice and localized increased water temperatures."

 

I am “attacking” the underpinning premise and sorry if you cannot see that

 

You obviously didn't read study, or understand what the authors were saying. The study outright assumes that global warming is responsible for the WAIS melting, it just shows that the ocean currents are already warm enough to continue the melting, even there isn't any more warming in the atmosphere and the best we can do at this point, is not make it worse.

As for the subsurface volcanoes, please show a study that shows these are melting the ice sheet instead of the warm ocean currents.

 

That, I'm afraid, is just nonsense to dodge the substance.

 

Do you think it's merely coincidence that the melting occurs in the area of the volcanoes and only in the area of the volcanoes? Elsewhere in Antarctica ice is expanding.

 

Poor BB can't actually discuss the substance, only shift the discussion away from the science and land it on claims of authority to abuse your posting.. In other words... The church of AGW says, so JH can't be listened to.. It's about that superficial from my view.

But do the analysis. If, as BB continues to profess that man can and should manipulate the climate, and his brand of "solutions" would somehow effect the nature of the climate, it should be reasonable to ask BB and others what the optimal end state should look like. And why, if the future outcome is continued stasis for the climactic conditions that already exist, why they would insist on continuing to demand that so many folks die from cold injuries. The policy logic here sucks. It's as if they never expected anyone to challenge their orthodoxy, much less ever tried to develop outcomes discussions based on their brand of stupid.

 

This has been known for years now and the newer published papers are more confident in their assments on the Volcanoes causing the observed melting, from AGU:

Geothermal Heat Flow and Thermal Structure of the Antarctic Lithosphere

Abstract High-quality maps of Geothermal heat flow (GHF) are crucial when modeling ice dynamics, shape, and mass loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is one of the largest potential contributors to sea level rise. The determination of GHF remains challenging, as in situ data are sparse and geophysical models exhibit large discrepancies in amplitude and resolution, especially on regional scales. Using a novel approach implementing a joint inversion of gravity and seismic tomography data with various geophysical and mineral physics information, we estimate the 3D thermal lithospheric structure and present a new GHF map. The resulting surface heat flow correlates with the location of subglacial volcanism and can represent a boundary condition for accurate ice dynamics models that can explain observed acceleration in the ongoing ice mass loss. Absolute values are within the range of other seismology-based methods and are much lower than those obtained using for example, magnetic data. High uncertainties remain in the parametrization of the upper crustal structure and thermal parameters

LINK

bolding mine

 

Nature Communications

Evidence of an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier

Tectonic landforms reveal that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) lies atop a major volcanic rift system. However, identifying subglacial volcanism is challenging. Here we show geochemical evidence of a volcanic heat source upstream of the fast-melting Pine Island Ice Shelf, documented by seawater helium isotope ratios at the front of the Ice Shelf cavity. The localization of mantle helium to glacial meltwater reveals that volcanic heat induces melt beneath the grounded glacier and feeds the subglacial hydrological network crossing the grounding line. The observed transport of mantle helium out of the Ice Shelf cavity indicates that volcanic heat is supplied to the grounded glacier at a rate of ~ 2500 ± 1700 MW, which is ca. half as large as the active Grimsvötn volcano on Iceland. Our finding of a substantial volcanic heat source beneath a major WAIS glacier highlights the need to understand subglacial volcanism, its hydrologic interaction with the marine margins, and its potential role in the future stability of the WAIS

9 page PDF Link

 

Thank you!

 

Thanks for the link!

 

Are you implying that the authors of the paper were lying since they said that they took volcanic activity into account?

 

I'm implying that they overstated the degree to which they took volcanic activity into account. The word "lying" would require me to see into their motives, which I cannot do.

 

And where is your proof of this? Do you have a counter-study that show that they were wrong?

 

Two have already been presented and linked here in #18 and #19.