Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2

Here is my latest article, published moments ago on Research Gate.

Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2

By D. G. Rancourt, PhD
Research Gate, May 2016
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2059.6087

Summary: In this critical review of the scientific literature about fire, I describe how the false notion of a link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2 was ignited in 2006 by a fatally flawed article promoted in the science-trend-setting magazine Science, and spread like wildfire through the scientific literature and beyond, driven in part by high winds of climate modelling extravagance, while fortunately leaving large unburnt patches. There is no evidentiary basis for such a link. On the contrary, established knowledge about forest fires leads to the conclusion that dedication to teasing out such a link is preposterous: In the present circumstances starting in approximately 1900, the dominant effect is direct human impacts on land use, which causes global fire occurrences to be dramatically less than from the known long-term natural cycles (modern fire deficit). No special circumstances or regions have been correctly identified where forest fire behaviour can be attributed to CO2. Canada’s recent Fort McMurray fire is no exception. The claimed 7 g mean birth weight loss arising from mothers’ general exposure to CO2-driven southern California wildfires, like all such claims, is a product of statistical and conceptual overenthusiasm. I use concepts from the animal-behaviour scientific literature to explain how some scientists and their followers can get so carried away.

Read the entire article HERE.

Backed up here: https://archive.ph/gAjLs  

There are no increased dry and wet episodes from industrial CO2

Hello warmist enthusiasts. This new article is of note. Hard science published in the top journal shows that there is no increased high-intensity weather events periods or regional climate changes associated with industrial-era CO2. That little hypothesis based on creative toy models does not hold up to the actual data.

Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries (link)

• Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist,
• Paul J. Krusic,
• Hanna S. Sundqvist,
• Eduardo Zorita,
• Gudrun Brattström
• & David Frank

Nature 532, 94–98 (07 April 2016) doi:10.1038/nature17418

Abstract: "Accurate modelling and prediction of the local to continental-scale hydroclimate response to global warming is essential given the strong impact of hydroclimate on ecosystem functioning, crop yields, water resources, and economic security. However, uncertainty in hydroclimate projections remains large, in part due to the short length of instrumental measurements available with which to assess climate models. Here we present a spatial reconstruction of hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries across the Northern Hemisphere derived from a network of 196 at least millennium-long proxy records. We use this reconstruction to place recent hydrological changes and future precipitation scenarios in a long-term context of spatially resolved and temporally persistent hydroclimate patterns. We find a larger percentage of land area with relatively wetter conditions in the ninth to eleventh and the twentieth centuries, whereas drier conditions are more widespread between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Our reconstruction reveals that prominent seesaw patterns of alternating moisture regimes observed in instrumental data across the Mediterranean, western USA, and China have operated consistently over the past twelve centuries. Using an updated compilation of 128 temperature proxy records, we assess the relationship between the reconstructed centennial-scale Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate and temperature variability. Even though dry and wet conditions occurred over extensive areas under both warm and cold climate regimes, a statistically significant co-variability of hydroclimate and temperature is evident for particular regions. We compare the reconstructed hydroclimate anomalies with coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model simulations and find reasonable agreement during pre-industrial times. However, the intensification of the twentieth-century-mean hydroclimate anomalies in the simulations, as compared to previous centuries, is not supported by our new multi-proxy reconstruction. This finding suggests that much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately, and highlights the importance of using palaeoclimate data to place recent and predicted hydroclimate changes in a millennium-long context."

Anthropogenic CO2 predicted to postpone the next ice age by at least 100,000 years --Nature article

Commentary by Denis Rancourt


Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is a leading member of the global-warming scientific elite:

"In 2012, he was the lead-author of a report commissioned by the World Bank on possible impacts of a 4 degrees Celsius warming towards the end of the 21st century. This report received a lot of attention worldwide. That same year, Schellnhuber presented the keynote at the gala dinner that opened the high-level segment of the world climate summit COP18 in Doha, Qatar. In the presence of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and UNFCCC's boss Christiana Figueres, a few days later Schellnhuber signed an agreement with the Qatar Foundation to jointly create a Climate change research institute in Qatar - a remarkable step as the country's wealth for decades had been based on exporting fossil fuels." [Wikipedia]

His recent 2016 co-authored paper in Nature contains the conclusions:

"moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years"

and

"our results suggest that anthropogenic interference will make the initiation of the next ice age impossible over a time comparable to the duration of previous glacial cycles."

I would say that those consequences of an increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere -- to the extent that the climate models can reliably be used for climate predictions -- are significant benefits to both humans and the planet, which far outweigh any negative consequences that have been projected and imagined.

Whereas it is difficult to establish a causal link between increased CO2 and any specific human suffering or environmental disaster, there can be no doubt that an ice age is a change in climate and that an ice age would be negative for life on Earth.

To be specific, there is a scientific consensus that an ice age would create large population migrations and associated political tensions possibly leading to wars, global loss of forests, a large drop in global mean surface temperature, massive loss of biodiversity over extended regions, collapse of agriculture, heightened threats to endangered species, loss of bees, perturbed migration patterns, and so on.

Few animal species would benefit from an ice age. The exceptions being cold-region animals such as polar bears.

Although fossil fuel extraction is largely motivated by state power and corporate profit, an unintended side affect may be to have postponed the certain environmental mega disaster of the next ice age, if we can believe climate modellers?

I think we should use some of the next thousand years or so to develop democracy and diplomacy tools (plenty of opportunity for development in those areas) just in case the modellers don't have all the details worked out yet and some of that unavoidable cooling starts to kick in sooner than expected. We know it's coming, modellers or no modellers.