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7 Myths About Climate Change
hardhat
Member Posts: 8,344
in Tug Tavern
Myth 1. “Small islands are doomed by rising sea levels”
We constantly hear Micronesia, the Maldives or Seychelles or something is going to be flooded and they’re only like a metre or two metres above sea level…What happens is most of these islands are coral islands, so they have actually occurred because they break off dead coral when there’s storms and wash it ashore. That accretes to the island and makes the island higher. At the same time, of course, a sea level rise makes the island lower. But it turns out that at least for now, and probably in the foreseeable future, the accretion is higher than the sea level rise.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 2: “Extreme weather events are killing more people”
If you take a graph of how many people die from climate related disasters, we have good data for that for the last 100 years. In the 1920s, about half a million people died each and every year from climate disasters. A lot of them were floods and droughts, especially in China and India that you’ve never heard of. What’s happened since then is that it’s declined dramatically. So in the 2010s, we were down to 18,000 deaths, so about 96% reduction in deaths. And last year, it was down to 14,000 or so in 2020. And in 2021, we don’t obviously have the whole year yet, but it looks like 2021 is set to be even lower at about 6000.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 3: “Climate lockdowns are a good solution”
The first thing to realise is despite the fact that we shut down the entire world in 2020, we still emitted almost as much. We probably cut our emissions about 6% globally. That’s because we still have to heat our homes. We sat at home and Zoomed instead and used electricity in that way. So when you shut down one thing you end up doing something else. And so yes, you can cut your emissions a little bit. But it turns out that it’s really hard to shut down dramatically. For example, when China was most shut down, it still emitted 84% of its normal emissions.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 4: “Electric cars don’t harm the environment”
Electric cars are being sold as net zero. But what they actually are is that they’re zero when they’re driving. But much of the energy that you tank up your car, unless you live in Norway, is basically fossil fuel. And of course, most of the battery is produced in China or somewhere else where it emitted a lot of co2 typically from coal fired power plants.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 5: “Polar bears are going extinct on melting ice caps”
First of all, remember the polar bears lived through the last time there was probably no ice in the Arctic, which was five to eight thousand years ago. So clearly, it’s not the end of the world for them. But also, and we need to recognise we’re still seeing a trending upwards of polar bears…We’ve probably gone from somewhere between five and ten thousand polar bears, up till today, where we have about 25,000 polar bears
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 6: “Stop eating meat to save the planet”
The reality is that going meat free is only going to do a little bit for climate. We often hear that, ‘Oh, it’s 50% of your food intake’, and you only hear the 50% so you can apparently reduce 50%. But it’s only 50% of your food emissions. So the reality is, when you look at the total impact it’s about 4%.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 7: “Wildfires are getting worse, and proof of climate change”
We’ve actually seen that wildfire has been declining in amount of burnt area pretty much every year since 1900…Overall, Australia for instance had one of its lowest burns ever. It used to burn in the early 1900s about 12% of the area of Australia every year. It went down to about 6-8%, typically in the early 2000s. In 2019/20 it burned a little less than 4%.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
https://unherd.com/thepost/bjorn-lomborg-7-myths-about-climate-change/
We constantly hear Micronesia, the Maldives or Seychelles or something is going to be flooded and they’re only like a metre or two metres above sea level…What happens is most of these islands are coral islands, so they have actually occurred because they break off dead coral when there’s storms and wash it ashore. That accretes to the island and makes the island higher. At the same time, of course, a sea level rise makes the island lower. But it turns out that at least for now, and probably in the foreseeable future, the accretion is higher than the sea level rise.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 2: “Extreme weather events are killing more people”
If you take a graph of how many people die from climate related disasters, we have good data for that for the last 100 years. In the 1920s, about half a million people died each and every year from climate disasters. A lot of them were floods and droughts, especially in China and India that you’ve never heard of. What’s happened since then is that it’s declined dramatically. So in the 2010s, we were down to 18,000 deaths, so about 96% reduction in deaths. And last year, it was down to 14,000 or so in 2020. And in 2021, we don’t obviously have the whole year yet, but it looks like 2021 is set to be even lower at about 6000.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 3: “Climate lockdowns are a good solution”
The first thing to realise is despite the fact that we shut down the entire world in 2020, we still emitted almost as much. We probably cut our emissions about 6% globally. That’s because we still have to heat our homes. We sat at home and Zoomed instead and used electricity in that way. So when you shut down one thing you end up doing something else. And so yes, you can cut your emissions a little bit. But it turns out that it’s really hard to shut down dramatically. For example, when China was most shut down, it still emitted 84% of its normal emissions.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 4: “Electric cars don’t harm the environment”
Electric cars are being sold as net zero. But what they actually are is that they’re zero when they’re driving. But much of the energy that you tank up your car, unless you live in Norway, is basically fossil fuel. And of course, most of the battery is produced in China or somewhere else where it emitted a lot of co2 typically from coal fired power plants.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 5: “Polar bears are going extinct on melting ice caps”
First of all, remember the polar bears lived through the last time there was probably no ice in the Arctic, which was five to eight thousand years ago. So clearly, it’s not the end of the world for them. But also, and we need to recognise we’re still seeing a trending upwards of polar bears…We’ve probably gone from somewhere between five and ten thousand polar bears, up till today, where we have about 25,000 polar bears
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 6: “Stop eating meat to save the planet”
The reality is that going meat free is only going to do a little bit for climate. We often hear that, ‘Oh, it’s 50% of your food intake’, and you only hear the 50% so you can apparently reduce 50%. But it’s only 50% of your food emissions. So the reality is, when you look at the total impact it’s about 4%.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
Myth 7: “Wildfires are getting worse, and proof of climate change”
We’ve actually seen that wildfire has been declining in amount of burnt area pretty much every year since 1900…Overall, Australia for instance had one of its lowest burns ever. It used to burn in the early 1900s about 12% of the area of Australia every year. It went down to about 6-8%, typically in the early 2000s. In 2019/20 it burned a little less than 4%.
- Bjorn Lomborg, UnHerdTV
https://unherd.com/thepost/bjorn-lomborg-7-myths-about-climate-change/
Comments
Methane is very different. It does not have a lifespan of 1,000 years; it has a lifespan of 10 years. So, after a decade, it's gone. There's a process — and that really makes methane very different from the other gases — there's a process that destroys methane, and that's called hydroxy-oxidation. What that really means is that, if you were to be the owner of a dairy or a beef operation, and let's say you've been in the business for 50 years with 1,000 animals, then, 50 years ago, your thousand animals put out methane. For the first ten years, that methane was new because you just started that business.
After that, you did not add any new methane to the atmosphere, because anything that's emitted is also being destroyed. After ten years, that gas is gone. All the emission inventories and all the media output that you hear assumes that all the methane that's generated by, let's say, cattle, adds up, but it doesn't. At the rate it's emitted, it's being destroyed. That makes methane very, very different from the other gases. This is critical to know.
What this means is, if a country like Ireland, New Zealand or the United States keeps their livestock herds steady, then they keep their methane steady. If they keep their methane steady, then they are not increasing global warming. So, do we increase global warming with our livestock herds? The answer to that is no, as long as we don't increase herd sizes.
https://www.alltech.com/podcast/frank-mitloehner-cattle-climate-change-and-methane-myth
https://carolinestocks.medium.com/debunking-the-methane-myth-why-cows-arent-responsible-for-climate-change-23926c63f2c0
We need to abandon using natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power because they're bad for the environment and switch to solar and wind power.
sheepunicorns.Maybe you should try the football board
Oops our bad
Snake River salmon runs are increasing. Apparently nobody told the governor.
These basic truths, backed up by the actual scientific data need to be repeated because Governor Inslee and many on the environmental Left are not being honest about the state of rising salmon populations in the Snake.
For example, on October 14th at the Washington Conservation Voters’ virtual fundraiser, the governor said, “We know the salmon are on the verge of extinction.” This statement is simply incorrect.
The 2021 Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook run was 27 percent larger than in 2020 and 55 percent larger than in 2019, the low point of the recent natural cycle. These cycles are regular, which is why in 2019 I wrote, “Some people point to low runs in 2019 on the Snake as evidence that we need to remove the dams. Salmon populations run in a cycle, however, and we are seeing the same low runs across the region.” That prediction has proven correct.
The governor says he is hiring a contractor to produce a report about the dams that will be released next summer. The governor did the same thing just two years ago, paying $397,000 in public money to hire a contractor who produced a report on the Snake River dams. To ensure the new report delivers the desired answer, the focus of the study is being narrowed to examine, in the governor’s words, “how to replace those services” provided by the dams, not whether those services, so essential to the people of our state, even need to be “replaced”.
Any study based on the false premise that Snake River Chinook are near extinction, however, will be based on politics not science.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html