Climate Hyperbole Shouldn’t Supersede Climate Policy that is Responsible and Sensible
By Michael R. Arndt and Dr. Karl Svozil
Many enthusiastic climate change and environmentalists offer up unproven generalities of our current
climate and a future climate state(s) that are hypothetical and highly uncertain. We would like to offer
some facts and thoughts on the issue that are a bit more specific. We are in no way attempting to refute
anthropogenic climate change, just the assumptions of unfounded truth that are often made. We are
trying to bring some perspective to generalized statements often heard that have no proven current
scientific basis that confirms their reality.
Generalized statements and catchy phrases about severe storms, floods, wildfires, crop failures,
localized weather events, and droughts are scare tactics often used to substantiate climate change
extremism. They certainly don't warrant taking extreme actions based on uncertain, unproven science
either as documented in the IPCC reports. There is virtually no proof that these events are happening at
any rate that is more severe since the mid 20th century in the eyes of the IPCC, the world's most
authoritative source of scientific information on climate change.
The following summary from IPCC AR5 Chapter 2, Changes in Extreme Events states:
"In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of
trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale."
Events like the Australian and California wildfires and drought are being unfairly labeled as climate
causalities without conclusive evidence when they are more likely natural or in the case of wildfires
anthropogenically induced events (i.e. arson, campfires accidents, downed power lines, ill conceived
forestry management etc.) not related to anthropogenic climate change. It's not unusual at all for
California and western US to have droughts and extreme climate variability.
California has a long history of droughts. El Nino (wet) or La Nina (dry) and atmospheric blocking
weather patterns that can be persistent are well documented. In addition, ocean/atmospheric
interaction of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) and Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) can have a significant impact in the western part of the US. We have
been lucky the last 500 years with alternating periods of drier and wetter than normal conditions which
have usually lasted 25 years or less. Between 800 and 1300 AD we had centuries of drought there.
Droughts in the western US are nothing more than normal, natural, irregular recurring events mostly
unrelated to current anthropogenic climate change.
Droughts are also quite common in portions of Australia but not well understood or documented.
Although it's possible that droughts in parts of Australia have increased there is no proof that climate
change has caused it. According to the IPCC, globally droughts are generally unchanged since the mid
20th century. The recent drought and associated wildfires were mostly caused by a Sudden
Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event, a breakdown and reversal of winds of the Antarctic polar vortex, a
rather unusual, even rare, occurrence caused by planetary waves, also known as Rossby Waves. The
SSW also affects the natural Antarctic ozone chemistry. While occurring regularly in the Northern
Hemisphere, in the Southern Hemisphere these are natural irregular recurring events unrelated to
climate change. The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) positive phase, an irregular natural occurrence, also
served to amplify these events. These events also affected the Antarctic climate. While some say the
IOD has increased since the 1960’s, once again there is no conclusive scientific proof that climate change
has caused it. It’s most likely due to thermocline dynamics and decreased zonal equatorial wind
feedbacks. It’s simply multidecadal variability that’s been happening for hundreds of thousands of years
during interglacials. At this time anything to the contrary is hypothetically based on numerous models
that don’t even agree. Some models say climate warming should decrease the effects of this oscillation
but those tend to be ignored. No doubt this drought is serious but to blame it on climate change due to
simple correlation is a stretch and disingenuous when past history is poorly understood due to lack of
historical and observational records.
In California, damage from wildfires is certainly higher attributable to building in and near wildfire zones
and downed timber along with natural and human planted dried vegetation can add to the spread and
intensity. More than 80% of the current wildfires there are human-ignited i.e. campfires, downed power
lines etc. Any perception that global warming is causing more and bigger fires is downplaying the human
element involved in starting, spreading and damage from wildfires and making the easy assumption that
climate change is the culprit.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, or PNAS, found that 84
percent of wildfires are ignited by humans, whether through downed power lines, careless campfires, or
arson.
“Human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season,
dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for
nearly half of all area burned. “ the paper reported.
According to a 2016 NCBI study 'Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in
a changing world', Stefan H. Doerr and Cristina Santín
"Analysis of charcoal records in sediments and isotope-ratio records in ice cores suggest that global
biomass burning during the past century has been lower than at any time in the past 2000 years."
The following summary from IPCC AR5 Chapter 2, Changes in Extreme Events states:
"In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest
more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since
the middle of the 20th century, owing to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the
trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4
conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.
However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and
West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950."
The ‘tipping points’ referred to in catastrophic climate warming scenarios are mostly arbitrary and
hypothetical. Social, political, and other indirect tipping points are tenuous and unsubstantiated by
empirical observation of human behavior under those circumstances. Regional tipping points are
estimations by experts with no definitive, conclusive science to back up their 'guesstimate'. They are
simply ‘expert’ opinions. The odds, timing, and significance of any ‘tipping points’ are unknown. These
are not the realistic scientific evidence on which we should base climate policy. For example, one of
these ‘tipping points’ is the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). This would add several
meters to sea level yet will need at least several centuries and maybe several millennia for this to come
to pass. Additionally, it's not unusual for the WAIS to collapse from natural causes during an interglacial.
It’s possible, and maybe even likely, that the WAIS is destined for collapse from the current interglacial
regardless of any anthropogenic warming. A climate tipping point doesn’t mean immediate or even
catastrophic consequences, it simply indicates a point where scientists ‘think’ climate processes will
begin a slow systematic change that may or may not cause adverse climate related events in
multidecadal, centennial or even millennial timescales. Abrupt changes have occurred numerous times
in recent paleoclimatic history, most notably during the last glacial period of the Pleistocene (~110,000-
12,000 YBP), sometimes regularly, i.e. the Dansgaard–Oeschger (D/O) events, also called Bond events,
and the less frequent Heinrich cold events (stadials), and sometimes irregularly and unexpectedly, i.e.
Younger Dryas, Bolling-Allerod, and the 8.2K Cooling Event. These have happened naturally and are still
not well understood. In light of the current interglacial, trying to predict WHEN any like occurrence could
happen is virtually impossible and quite literally guesswork. It's very unlikely, barring a complete
thermohaline/AMOC disruption from ice sheet melting on a severe scale, i.e. a Meltwater Pulse event
that spurs multiple cascading catastrophic events, that any consequence from a tipping point would be
sudden and catastrophic.
The following summary from IPCC AR5 WG1, Chapter 13, Sea Level Change states:
“In summary, ice-dynamics theory, numerical simulations, and paleo records indicate that the existence
of a marine-ice sheet instability associated with abrupt and irreversible ice loss from the Antarctic ice
sheet is possible in response to climate forcing. However, theoretical considerations, current
observations, numerical models, and paleo records currently do not allow a quantification of the timing
of the onset of such an instability or of the magnitude of its multi-century contribution.”
The climate system is inherently complex and chaotic. The weather and ultimately the climate is in a
constant state of instability and highly nonlinear where multiple components are interacting with the
environment and each other randomly and concurrently. Climate models are trying to project an
uncertainty, the future climate, while having numerous uncertainties themselves and likely many
atmospheric factors we don't understand or even know about yet. Paleoclimatological records show
that abrupt climate events can happen without warning and conversely, surprisingly unexpected and
conflicting results are also likely to happen with anthropogenic forcing as well. Nonlinearity and chaos
do not necessarily mean a future climate event or state will be more or less adverse but it does mean
erratic, unpredictable, and unexpected outcomes and reinforces the uncertainty and unknowns of our
understanding. There are no absolutes or certainties that can accurately be projected with our current
knowledge and methods. There is only non-linearity, chaos, and ultimately uncertainty. That makes
determining future reality within a reasonable amount of accuracy, even with the use of wide ranges of
variability, not only difficult but conditional, tentative, and inconclusive.
IPCC Third Assessment Report, Advancing Our Understanding, Chapter 14 Executive Summary states:
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability
distribution of the systems future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.
Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the
application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.”
Uncertainty, of course, does not mean do nothing. Undoubtedly there is anthropogenic involvement
with our current warming and reasonable means should be employed to limit greenhouse gases and
pollutants and otherwise, be good stewards of the planet. Uncertainty further enhances the need for a
realistic risk assessment climate policy that is sensible, flexible and progressive but not oblivious to
current and future reality either socially, economically, politically, or scientifically. It is important and
useful to develop regionalized and localized vulnerability strategies relative to future climate states. As
delineated in the study “NONLINEARITIES, FEEDBACKS AND CRITICAL THRESHOLDS WITHIN THE EARTH’S
CLIMATE SYSTEM”, a well executed vulnerability strategy includes all aspects of environmental risks and
identifies any specific regions and localities that may be more susceptible to any particular type of
environmental disruption caused by changes in climate. We can use the tools of climate models, paleo
records, historical knowledge, and past abrupt worst case scenarios and apply them to current social,
economic, and political conditions to develop a workable vulnerability strategy.
Accordingly, we need a reasonable, responsible, targeted, vulnerability-focused, well crafted climate
policy that realizes and understands the needs of today and the immediate future as well as preparing
us for the uncertainties of the distant future. We cannot let zealous alarmism guide climate policy. We
must act in a sensible, rational way and with enough foresight to devise a carefully considered plan of
action and not take extreme highly emotional and politically motivated extreme actions that could cause
more harm to society than good.
Finally, we need to realize the non-linear, chaotic aspects of climate components and understand the
complexities and uncertainties of the future climate and elect leaders who would calmly and rationally
evaluate climate policy in light of reality and reason, not extreme hypothetical conjecture based on the
most extreme climate state scenarios. Climate hyperbole shouldn’t supersede climate policy that is
responsible and sensible.
Michael R. Arndt, retired former employee of NOAA-NWS and the DOD U.S. Army Atmospheric Sciences
Laboratory
This opinion piece was primarily written by Michael R. Arndt, Enola, PA, retired former employee of The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-National Weather Service (NOAA-NWS) and the DOD
U.S. Army Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory (ASL), and reviewed, edited, updated, and endorsed for
publication by Dr. Karl Svozil, Vienna, Austria, Ao. Univ. Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics
of the Vienna University of Technology. Alumni of the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical
Computer Science of the University of Auckland and noted theoretical physicist and author of more than
one hundred scientific research papers and several books on theoretical and quantum physics.
Any views or opinions represented on this opinion piece do not represent those of people, institutions
or organizations that the owner(s) may or may not be associated with in professional or personal
capacity unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic
group, club, organization, company, or individual.