Sorry @GWrightsone, but when you ignore large parts of evidence & data, your claims cease being 'facts', and become blatant cherry picking.
Wrightstone refuses to respond to criticisms of his claims. So, here's a big thread on his recent @AAPG Explorer article. @AAPGPresident
Wrightstone refuses to respond to criticisms of his claims. So, here's a big thread on his recent @AAPG Explorer article. @AAPGPresident
He claims that “climate models over predict warming … by 2.5 to 3 times too much”. Really? Lets look at the famous 30yr old model by Hansen. Predicted radiative forcing 1.1W/m2 – observed 1.05W/m2. V Accurate. Predicted temp increases and locations are a remarkable match too! 
On modeling predictions, isn’t it strange that those disputing AGW never mention how accurate predictions not involving increased anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been. This is probably why….
Next: “… the Southern Sahara ... is turning to lush grassland”. Hmm, how odd that he fails to mention that rainfall in the Saheel is reducing due to climate change, causing the Sahara to expand southwards. He must think desertification is good! journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JC…
Claims increased CO2 is causing “decreasing forest fires, droughts and intense heat waves”. Lets look at heat waves. Hmm, nope! Heat waves have been increasing globally. So, that is wrong. For example, see Mora et al., 2017.
Lets look at droughts. Droughts have decreased in some places, but the global trend is still increasing according to MODIS. See Orvos et al., 2015.
Fires. These are more complicated as they are also influenced by improved management practices. IPCC notes they've increased in some areas, & decreased in others, but long term prediction is for increase. Bet the Western US doesn’t think fires decreasing! ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ta…
In fairness, @GWrightstone does briefly acknowledge that there will be (and has been) increased flooding, but quickly moves on to suggest this is trivial. I’m sure that folks losing their home to increased flooding agree!
Wrightstone argues that CO2 is responsible for global decrease in deaths.I guess he’s not considered this may have more to do with improved engineering & medical tech? “effects warming & increased CO2 have been overwhelmingly positive” - ignores that damage caused has increased.
Gasparrini et al. 2015 also highlights in its discussion that it's datasets more in cooler climate regions, & not relevant to developing world. Deaths are dominated by heat events in lower latitudes. Oh, & don’t forget that warming will increase hot & cold extreme weather events!
It is also odd how @GWrightstone cherry-picks only deaths. Does he think that increased water-borne infectious diseases are good? What about increased transmission season & range of malaria or dengue? Are increased respiratory issues a positive? unfccc.int/news/climate-c…
He loves the ‘CO2 is plant food’ mantra, but ignores the limit to how much Nitrogen can be maintained under higher CO2, limiting greening (e.g. Bloom et al., 2010). He also ignores that crops are less nutritious (Myers et al., 2014) & impacts on bee colonies (Ziska et al., 2016).
Then Wrightstone starts on the ‘past climate changes have been bigger’ mantra. This is first the classic logical fallacy that falsely believes that if prior climate changes occurred before humans, then how can humans be responsible for current changes? Yeah, well….
Claims there were 9 similar periods in last 10000yrs that “all had significantly warmer temps”. Nope! Common fallacy related to assuming Greenland temps are global & wrongly stitched temp data together. Current temps hottest in past 10000yrs. Nice summary: skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337
I should also point out rate of change. Those using the ‘CO2 has been higher in the past’ fallacy always ignore rate. Current CO2 increases are considered most rapid in geological time (theconversation.com/mass-extinctio…).
Us geologists have looked at a lot of times when greenhouse gases rose sharply, triggering sharp temp increases. Like the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum and Large Igneous Province events. You know what they also were - extinction events. Sounds all positive and rosy to me!
“records show sea level higher than today in the Medieval Warm Period”. Um, no, complete fallacy. Really not even close. See Kemp et al. 2011. pnas.org/content/pnas/e…
Wrightstone claims: “Sea level rise has been fairly constant …. Since the early 1800s”. Well, no, not unless you think that a clear trend of increasing rate is “constant”! For example, see pnas.org/content/115/9/…
Wrightstone claims that the Paris accords would “… only decrease warming by less than 0.5degF”. Classic ‘half-truth’ fallacy. The idea is to limit warming. A drop by 0.5F would be really awesome! Much better than the significant increase in temp gained by doing nothing.
Now, remember folks, all this argues that CO2 is not increasing temps. But, don’t forget that we measure the impact of GHGs directly. We can see that less and less energy is escaping our atmosphere – and is being blocked by GHGs.
We know that it is GHGs and not things like the sun. Solar irradiance is decreasing.
We can test the GHG in many ways. Increasing GHGs predicts that the troposphere warms, but the stratosphere cools – as observed.
Increased GHGs predicts that nights should warm faster than days – as is observed.
Anthropogenic climate change is a testable theory that is observed directly. Every argument against it has been found to be essentially cherry-picking and/or logical fallacies. Indeed, there are major errors in all papers arguing against it. link.springer.com/article/10.100…
So, I conclude by asking why the @AAPG is presenting the false claims & cherry-picked arguments of @GWrightstone . Why are they not featuring the HUGE body of research in earth science that contradicts these claims?
