The internet is filled with various interpretations of climate change facts, leading to confusion. This is part 3 of a three-part series that aims to focus on the practical implications of climate change, emphasizing the importance of understanding its causes and consequences.


Yury

<h2>Who benefits from &ldquo;global warming&rdquo;?</h2>
And they also talk about the &ldquo;global conspiracy of climatologists&rdquo;, and that &ldquo;corporations" benefit from the idea of global warming&rdquo;. What can be said about this?
<h3>Climatologists benefit from global climate change</h3>
Undoubtedly, any powerful socio-economic process, such as the impact of climate change, is beneficial to many parties. Climatologists benefit from climate change in the sense that it enables research funding. This gives jobs to 3,000 international reporters and tens of thousands of lesser climate scientists. In turn, the redistribution of specialists from other sciences to climatology, and mainly to the topic of global warming, increases the number of those who are vitally interested in continuing climate research.
Climatologists are followed by officials and environmentalists from private companies. In Norway, there are up to 5 such near-climate jobs per climatologist-scientist. They all also benefit from attention to climate change.
However, it must be admitted that both scientists and officials do not care whether there is cooling or warming, because any change requires research and monitoring. So, it doesn&rsquo;t make much sense for them to hold on to the idea of global warming &mdash; it&rsquo;s the data and model calculations that convince them that the climate system works exactly the way it works.
They are followed by politicians who make a career out of this activism. There are energy companies receiving subsidies, there are companies selling green products. They are, to a considerable extent, interested in warming. But, at the same time, there are a large number of rich companies that are interested in the absence of warming. Therefore, we can say that there is a struggle for interests. Common sense still wins in this fight. Even if the company made its capital on greenhouse gas emissions and is ready to fight for its profit to the last, the company will also be concerned about the safety of its property. As evidence of the impact of global warming accumulates, even the most conservative companies are beginning to overestimate their risks. The hurricane that hit the U.S. oil capital Houston in 2017 left many wondering if they were doing themselves harm.
At present, we can safely say that, on the contrary, the idea of the absence of global warming is beneficial only to freaks, even if Trump is among them, who express it only for the sake of small momentary benefits from personal interest.
<h3>And what can we do about it?</h3>
Can humans prevent global warming? What measures need to be taken? Or do you need to calm down?
The nature of global warming is such that changes in the balance of heat and composition of our atmosphere are irreversible, at least on a scale of centuries. This is not pollution that could be cleaned, and everything returned to its previous state. This is not a temporary effect that could be removed, and everything would be as before after a while. Experiments with climate models show that even if it were possible to somehow miraculously remove all the carbon dioxide accumulated by mankind in the atmosphere, the climate would still not return to its historical norms. This is also why climate change is of such concern to specialists. For the same reasons, geoengineering solutions can do little to help. They are not only expensive and technically complicated but also lead to the greatest changes in completely different areas, not where the greatest changes from climate warming are observed. As a result, humanity risks getting additional problems, rather than mitigating the problems of warming.
So, the potential that was laid down by past gas emissions is already irreversible. Humanity must somehow adapt, and, of course, try not to increase its impact on the climate in the future. Figure 12 shows how much carbon dioxide humanity can still emit before reaching the conditional limit of 1.5 degrees of warming when powerful mechanisms of global change (melting ice sheets, shifting ecological zones, and rising sea levels) are launched, which will make adaptation extremely expensive for any one country.
Figure 12. Dependence of the change in the Earth&rsquo;s temperature on the amount of carbon dioxide accumulated due to human activities.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/50d063680348937e482329a6ea89d47ebf7b894e.png?" alt="Dependence of the change in the Earth&rsquo;s temperature on the amount of carbon dioxide accumulated due to human activities" />
Alas, the reality is that we need to cut emissions now, and by 2050 we need to get rid of almost all greenhouse gas emissions that are not related to food production.
Figure 13. Electricity production (for selected countries) from renewable energy sources without greenhouse gas emissions.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/81b571e90f2eeda6cf05cd6833b1850ed11685f8.png?" alt="Electricity production (for selected countries) from renewable energy sources without greenhouse gas emissions" />
But can we do it?&nbsp;We can&rsquo;t stop life. Surprisingly, the process has already begun. Figure 13 shows how rapidly non-GHG energy production is growing. For 10 years, the share of energy without such emissions has increased by 3&ndash;10 times in different countries. In 2017, on certain days, up to 93% of all electricity in Europe was produced from such sources. Moreover, electricity prices on the wholesale market already in 2018 became negative three times in Germany and Denmark (the last time on January 3, 2018) due to the overproduction of wind farms. The collapse of power generation at thermal stations in the UK is also indicative, the share of which in the electricity market has decreased from the lion&rsquo;s share to an insignificant part in just 5 years.
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Future Thought Leaders is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of rising Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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Myths about climate change (Part 3)

The internet is filled with various interpretations of climate change facts, leading to confusion. This is part one of a three-part series that aims to focus on the practical implications of climate change, emphasizing the importance of understanding its causes and consequences.

<h2>Warming is real, so what?</h2>
The weather forecast is for rain today. They lie, of course, but it will not be superfluous to take an umbrella with you!
Weather anomalies come and go, and climate change is slowly but inexorably changing our environment and our lives, and ultimately our society itself. The fact that everyone understands the weather is not surprising, after all, we all have more or less complete traditional knowledge about the environment. However, neither this understanding of ours, nor our skepticism towards weather forecasters and their forecasts, nor even the amateur forecasts of some especially &ldquo;understanding&rdquo; comrades, do not prevent us from listening and even following official weather forecasts.
Everything changes as soon as we change &ldquo;weather&rdquo; to &ldquo;climate&rdquo;. Now the confidence of &ldquo;understanding&rdquo; reaches incredible heights! Indeed, the valuable suggestions of the masters of the pen and economic advisers, if followed, will not cause immediate damage, like a lightning strike on an airplane, but more distant damage can be much more serious.
For example, insufficient accounting for warming (and neglect of the temperature regime of the soil) in the cities of the Far North led to the fact that up to 70% of buildings in them were damaged by permafrost thawing (<a href="https://ges.rgo.ru/jour/article/view/173/171">Grebenets et al, 2012</a>;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259762391_Changes_of_foundation_bearing_capacity_due_to_climate_warming_in_northwest_siberia">Streletskiy et al., 2012</a>).
Alas, there is a difference in the disputes over the construction of the pyramids 5000 years ago and the construction of nuclear power plants now. The difference is that an alternative opinion on the second question can affect the health and life of any listener. In the same way, disregard for the &ldquo;official knowledge&rdquo; of climatologists will affect every, even uninterested citizen. It will not be reflected immediately, but on a large scale and is awfully expensive.
Ask yourself, do you want to risk your property or health by rejecting the results obtained by &ldquo;official scientists&rdquo; out of the blue, even if there is some possibility that they are inaccurate and may be incorrect somewhere?
<h2>What are we risking by neglecting the harmful &ldquo;official knowledge&rdquo;?</h2>
How will global warming affect our lives? On the economy? On what else? What does this mean for people? Well, think about it, it will be a little warmer.
It is true that the climate has changed in the past, is changing now, and will change in the future, including for reasons beyond human control. Figure 9,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.realclimate.org/">taken from the well-known climate science site RealClimate</a>, shows climate change from a historical and geological perspective. Indeed, there were periods on Earth when the temperature was much higher and much lower than today. Even relatively recently, the last interglacial period was much warmer than the current climate. Moreover, even in our interglacial period, during the optimum, temperatures were higher. For example, only 6 thousand years ago in the Baltics, the climate was reminiscent of northern France, agriculture developed, and there was a rather large population compared to later eras (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14353-5">Warden et al., 2017</a>).
Figure 9.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/can-we-make-better-graphs-of-global-temperature-history/">Change in the global temperature of the Earth&rsquo;s surface over the past 550 million years</a>.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/a5f8e2419c9617894a372e632c5c70971ce31f08.png?" alt="" />
It would seem that there is no danger and there is no need to keep warming within 1.5 &deg;C of current temperatures. In reality, however, geopolitics and economics are involved. The world is divided into countries, and in each country cities, agriculture, roads, and the whole way of life are adapted to the existing climate. Deteriorating living conditions, natural disasters, and even relatively small shifts in climate norms lead to the need to pay with great damage and new investments, and often with lives.
We see an interesting example in Norway. Here, 99% of electricity is produced by hydroelectric power plants. Large reservoirs have been built in the mountains, in which water is kept from the autumn rains in order to produce electricity in abundance in winter when water accumulates in the form of snow and energy demand is greatest. Therefore, by the end of October, when snow falls in the mountains, the reservoirs are full to the brim. And now the climate is getting warmer, and rains, not snow, are increasingly coming in November and December. The water has to be dumped. Over the past few years, there has been so much rain in November that the release of water has led to the massive destruction of roads and buildings. The damage in autumn was compounded by damage in the spring, when, due to lack of snow (which had melted and been thrown off), there was not enough electricity, and enterprises were forced to stop production since it was too expensive to buy energy from Sweden.
Damage in less developed countries tends to be much greater. Look at Syria,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Climate-change-in-the-Fertile-Crescent-and-of-the-Kelley-Mohtadi/6b0f8225cc7f5bbebba123b3d7dfbb2548ec3db8?p2df">where years of drought led to mass migration, political instability, and civil war</a>.
<h2>How many greenhouse gases are emitted by hubon dioxide imans?</h2>
What is the role of human activity in what is happening to the climate on the planet? I have heard that there are relatively few greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by businesses. And that, they say, warming is a natural process that a person does not influence in any way.
There is no doubt that changes in the atmosphere come precisely from the greenhouse gases emitted by man. And not only and not even so much because these changes are consistent with changes in the economic activity of mankind, with the amount of coal, oil, and gas produced, but mainly because the isotopic composition of the burned carbon is consistent with the composition of the emerging carbon dioxide. And it is different from that of natural origin.
Let me explain. Humanity is changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere, mainly through CO2 emissions. At present, since about the 1920s, humanity is the main source of new CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, there is a CO2 cycle in nature. Plants and the ocean absorb (dissolve) CO2 from the atmosphere, and the processes of respiration, combustion, and evaporation bring it back. We know that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has changed within very narrow limits over hundreds of thousands of years. To find such a high CO2 content as we have now, i.e. 400 parts per million parts of air, we need to go back as much as 3 million years. Neither the advance and retreat of glaciers, nor changes in ocean level by a hundred meters, nor the eruptions or silence of volcanoes have led to such large concentrations of carbon dioxide over these millions of years. Thus, a lot of new CO2s are emitted to the atmosphere, and it is humanity that supplies it, which is established not by balance calculations, but by precise methods of isotopic analysis &mdash; &ldquo;old&rdquo; carbon from fossil fuels + &ldquo;new&rdquo; oxygen from the modern atmosphere. Currently, the increase in CO2 content in the air is 0.5% per year and fluctuates in line with economic activity. The crisis of 2008 is quite clearly visible in the figure below, as a slowdown in CO2 growth in 2009. The same figure shows that the increase in CO2 over five years overlaps the swing of the seasonal cycle (blue zigzag in the top graph), that is, the ability of boreal forests to absorb carbon dioxide in summer.
Figure 9b. The figure shows the change in the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 1958 to 2012. It is also commonly known by the popular name &ldquo;Killing Curve&rdquo;. On the top panel, the red line shows the global and yearly averages of carbon dioxide (CO₂) measurements, which are measured in parts of CO₂ per million parts of air. Data was collected by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA). The blue line shows the data of weekly satellite measurements of CO₂. Seasonal changes in the CO₂ content, which are associated with the summer activity of northern forests, are visible as small fluctuations (zigzags) of the blue line. The bottom panel shows year-to-year changes in the annual average CO₂ content. Positive values ​​mean an increase in the CO₂ content in the atmosphere.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/4c96e0076bcac3e7ec321c0267e16b6cea394e72.jpg?" alt="" />
In addition to CO2, humanity also emits other greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrogen oxides, halocarbons (halogen-substituted hydrocarbons), and others. But their combined influence is relatively small, and most importantly, they do not live long, that is, if emissions are stopped, then after some time, about 30 years, their influence will completely disappear.
The new CO2 that humanity has added to the air is changing the properties of the atmosphere in such a way that it requires the Earth to be warmer to maintain a balance between the flow of heat to and from the Earth. That is, it simply causes an increase in temperature, primarily in the atmosphere at altitudes of 3&ndash;6 km above the earth, and then at the surface. This is exactly what we are seeing. This is an especially important effect. As soon as someone especially &ldquo;understanding&rdquo; wants to offer something of his own, he must immediately explain how his temperature rises in this way, first at altitudes of several kilometers, and only then at the surface. A side effect of this high-altitude warming, but an enormously powerful one, is that the atmosphere begins to hold more than normal water vapor. His humanity hardly adds, he evaporates from the oceans on his own, as soon as the air has the opportunity to capture more of it. The ability of air to hold water vapor increases VERY rapidly with temperature. In the driest desert, at 40 degrees of heat, the air contains more water vapor than in heavy rain at +10. This feature is used in the tropics. In the Canary Islands, vineyards get their water from the fact that the cold soil at night squeezes it out of the warm air. Hoarseness is also formed on the windows of the car, which the owners have to clean in the morning. In the humid air of Norway, up to 2 cm of drizzle per night can settle on the glass of a car.
So, the upper atmosphere is warmed by CO2, and more water vapor from the oceans accumulates there, but water vapor itself is a powerful greenhouse gas. It amplifies 6 (six) times the initial warm-up from CO2. But water vapor lives in the atmosphere for only 4&ndash;8 days, that is, if you suddenly remove CO2 from the air, then additional heating from water vapor will disappear in a week. Thus, CO2 emissions are the very change that sets the earth's entire climate in motion. CO2 has a long lifespan (in terms of civilization), and it sets off a whole series of effects that lead to increased warming, acidification of the oceans, and, ultimately, irreversible climate change.
So, already emitted greenhouse gases are capable of warming the Earth&rsquo;s climate much more than we are seeing today. But part of this heating has not yet been assimilated by the Earth, and because of this, temperatures will continue to rise for many decades to come. And part of the heating is offset by cooling effects: deforestation, the release of dust and sulfate particles, some excess volcanic activity, and a lack of solar activity in recent decades.
<h3>Climate change consists of interrelated processes, and they can be predicted!</h3>
There is a widespread opinion among the public that any statement can be considered in itself, without connection with a complex of various consequences. This is not true. The processes in the Earth&rsquo;s climate system are interconnected. If we assume that the climate changes due to solar activity or the activity of cosmic rays, then in this case we would observe a certain set of interrelated changes in air temperature, precipitation, clouds, etc. However, what we observe is in good agreement only with the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, and badly with other popular hypotheses.
Some people think that climate change should be recognized only because there is a consensus (consent) regarding this hypothesis among 2&ndash;3 thousand climate scientists. In fact, whether scientists agree or disagree with the interpretation of the observations and the causes of the changes does not really matter. Experts, of course, having considered the problem, are more likely to come closer to the correct solution, but objective truth exists on its own, regardless of our subjective, even expert knowledge about it. Whether our understanding of the truth is correct, we are helped to understand the predictions of future changes. So, the understanding of climate cyclicity supporters is wrong, not because there are few of them, but because their forecast turned out to be wrong. Is the forecast of anthropogenic warming proponents, correct? Figure 10 below shows that yes! Modern climate models, together with scenarios for changes in the composition of the atmosphere (GHG emissions), predict changes in global temperature quite well, despite volcanoes and other random climatic influences. Note that the models are indeed quite poor at predicting the random component of climate variability over the forecast time interval from a year to a decade. This requires knowledge of the state of the ocean, and in the ocean, especially in the tropics, there are very few observations. Where observations in the ocean are sufficient (for example, in the North Atlantic), the models also have predictive power over a ten-year interval (see references&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15875">&Aring;rthun et al., 2017</a>). However, for longer time intervals, models predict changes quite accurately.
Let me remind you that&nbsp;climate is the average weather regime over 30 years of observations. That is, we observe the temperature on a thermometer outside the window every day or more often for 30 years, average it, and get one figure &mdash; the average climatic temperature outside your window. The average temperature does not mean that it is also observed most often. For example, you can have -30 in winter and +30 in summer, while the average will be zero, although this zero may have been observed only a couple of days a year.
Figure 10. Comparison of observed climate changes and climate model predictions (gray background) and their mean (black curve).
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/1c9566e5de1c35bc77d92290edf7354a86ac6f6a.png?" alt="" />
In practice, one often speaks of climate as an average weather regime, defining this average as convenient for anyone, say, over 10 or even 5 years. A 10-year average is usually used to discuss present-day warming, otherwise, the most interesting recent data would be excluded from the analysis.
At present, there is no doubt about the accuracy of global predictions, and they can be independently obtained and verified by leading scientific centers. The UK Met Office produced this forecast in Figure 11. The problem is to detail such forecasts for smaller regions where they would be extremely useful for decision-making. That is, we need to turn climate research into climate technologies and services. The task is not something new, but it has not yet been solved at the modern technical level.
Figure 11.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2017/2018-global-temperature-forecast">Changes in global air temperature and its forecast for 2018 according to the UK Met Office</a>.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/9b992987a7c0e617c56a68d52589b70804a0d67b.png?" alt="" />
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This article is also published on the&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/p/c1a7afbc5ad6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">author's blog</a>. Future Thought Leaders is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of rising Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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Myths about climate change (Part 2)

The internet is filled with various interpretations of climate change facts, leading to confusion. This is part one of a three-part series that aims to focus on the practical implications of climate change, emphasizing the importance of understanding its causes and consequences.


There is a huge amount of debate and discussion about climate change on the Internet. Some are written in a trendy way and give the right numbers and facts, but without having a targeted audience, look toothless. Others are too special. Still, others tendentiously interpret the facts, not understanding their deep physical relationship. 
If we exclude the meaningless cries of &ldquo;freaks&rdquo;, then the discussion of the third type dominates. Pulling this or that fact out of the whole, activists and skeptics start a verbal skirmish about its meaning. At the same time, ordinary people, if they listen to this skirmish, it is only with bewilderment because they do not see what problems this creates for them. The text presented below tries to focus on the practical significance of climate change, the importance of understanding its causes and consequences, and hence the possibility of predicting and taking the least costly countermeasures.
<h2>Everyone understands the climate!</h2>
<h3>&ldquo;Am I not seeing climate warming today?!&rdquo;</h3>
One has to hear arguments of this kind: &ldquo;Yesterday I went out into the street &mdash; frost is minus 20. And this is in March! I heard that this year the winter was the coldest in the last 100 years. And they still tell me about global warming!&rdquo; What is wrong with such reasoning?
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/f1f80d8e326108895348081dd22cf51bb89bb27a.png?" alt="Global surface air temperature anomalies" />
Figure 1. <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/">Global surface air temperature anomalies (until November 2017), according to NASA GISS data</a>.
A person coexists and exchanges chemicals with the environment and receives life resources from it. Everyday experiences tell people that winter is followed by spring, summer, and, finally, autumn. Winter is colder than summer and tends to bring temperatures below freezing, bringing snow and ice with it. The same experience tells a person that one winter is not like another, just as &ldquo;year after year does not fall.&rdquo; And this same experience, passed down from generation to generation, informs a person of the right models of behavior and decision-making, consistent with changes in the environment. It is by checking with such &ldquo;ordinary&rdquo; or, scientifically, &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; knowledge about the environment that a person judges change and unusual phenomena in nature.
Traditional knowledge is the backbone of climate-conscious people. Why check with the observational figures, if it is already clear that &ldquo;this winter is the coldest of all that I have seen.&rdquo; &ldquo;And my grandfather plowed already in March! And here you are telling us about warming,&rdquo; the interlocutor remarks with knowledge of the matter.
In fact, traditional knowledge, however useful it may be in everyday life, has little to say about the climate, even for those who &ldquo;sow and plow&rdquo;, not like modern city dwellers. Climatic processes unfold on spatial and temporal scales, often exceeding the horizons and life cycle of one person. A paradox arises. Against the background of interannual and interseasonal variability, a person is practically unable to notice climate change. However, a person is forced to still think about it, since the communities (for example, the state), of which he is a part, exist in the expanses and periods of time when these very changes become more than noticeable. A wonderful illustration that shows the variability of the weather in relation to climate change is proposed by an analogy using the walk of a person (climate) with a dog (weather) in Figure 2. And note that the dog is on a strap!
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/1b915664228eb5e4b3a68ecfc9831863a1613a48.png?" alt="illustration of the relationship between weather and climate" />
Figure 2.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vj-0imOLw">Frame from a video illustration of the relationship between weather (dog) and climate (human) during a walk (climate change)</a>
Studying the climate with numbers in hand shows that regional deviations from the general direction of change can be quite significant. Against the background of global warming, which is mainly determined by the tropical regions of the oceans (about half of the Earth&rsquo;s area), there are significant areas where winter temperatures can drop for the last 20&ndash;25 years, such as in Siberia, or rise even faster, as in the Arctic. Moreover, the recent acceleration of climate change is leading to increasingly unusual weather anomalies. Figure 3 shows huge (up to 20&deg;C above normal) winter heat anomalies in the Arctic and Eastern Europe and equally huge (up to 20&deg;C below normal) cold anomalies in America at the end of 2017.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/62a77e67b5d9903b1e8d59736a9fbfe6f0fd5eb2.png?" alt="Weather anomalies (air temperature)" />
Figure 3. Weather anomalies (air temperature) according to the CSFR data assimilation system at the end of December 2017.
From the same figure, it can be seen that large deviations of weather conditions from the usual for a given season and a given region (scientific &mdash; anomalies) cover only a limited area and a limited time interval. The next one &mdash; Figure 4 &mdash; shows changes in temperature anomalies since 1979 for seven regions centered on the middle Ob region of Western Siberia. For the smallest area (1), it is difficult to say anything definite about warming or cooling, since temperature changes from year to year to overlap long-term trends. However, as increasingly extensive territories are involved in the analysis, local features are extinguished by opposite features from neighboring territories, as can be clearly seen in Figure 3. Conversely, what is common in temperature changes in these territories is enhanced. It turns out that this is common and is a gradual increase in temperature, that is, global warming, and for the region (7), and this is the whole of Eurasia, which occupies a quarter of the Earth&rsquo;s surface, it is very clearly manifested.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/baf8194bda0c62686f615bd797d32a4ae5a52d66.png?" alt="Change in the average annual air temperature since 1979" />Figure 4. Change in the average annual air temperature since 1979 for territories of assorted sizes from centers in the middle Ob region of Western Siberia. The size of territories increases from the smallest region (1) to the largest region (7). Data were taken from ERA-Interim 3rd generation reanalysis. Author&rsquo;s edit.
<h2>Is global warming real?</h2>
<h3>Why climate change is so hard to notice</h3>
Why do you think that global warming is a reality? Where can we see its manifestations around us?
Climate change is a slow process and is still hardly noticeable against the background of interannual weather anomalies in most parts of the world (<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034009/pdf">Mahlstein et al., 2011</a>). First of all, climate change is noticeable where the weather itself changes little, that is, in the tropics over the oceans. But just there, there is nothing to demonstrate it, except for dry statistical figures. Figure 5 clearly demonstrates these difficulties. Public opinion studies have shown that people are much more willing to agree with the conclusions of climatologists about global warming if, in their memory, extremely warm years have happened relatively recently. In this sense, the exceptionally sweltering summer in central Siberia in 2010 and the Arctic regions in 2016 helped to seriously change the opinion of Eastern Europeans and Western Asians about climate processes.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/518df0d17630525e0ead19880502ee0983e52738.png?" alt="The expected year when the excess of observed climate anomalies becomes apparent" />
Figure 5. The expected year when the excess of observed climate anomalies becomes apparent to an outside observer, i.e. when the red line leaves the gray zone on graphs for different regions (<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034009/pdf">Mahlstein et al., 2011</a>). For the territory of Europe and Asia (top right), climate anomalies will become apparent by 2050, although some years (red background) are already showing anomalies that have never been observed before, for example, the heat wave of 2010. For tropical regions, climate change is already evident.
<h3>Where are the signs of climate warming obvious to everyone?</h3>
Nevertheless, there are regions in the world where climate change is more than evident. This is the Far North and the Arctic, although there are &ldquo;understanding&rdquo; people there who flatly refuse to believe their eyes. Figure 6 more than graphically shows the retreat of a glacier in Norway over 121 years. Moreover, the glacier managed to disappear even from the past in the mountains! Glaciers are retreating all over the world, although in some places some glaciers are growing due to more snow falling. The obvious fact that mountain glaciers are retreating is particularly important. It is climate warming due to carbon dioxide emissions that should lead, first of all, to the heating of the upper atmosphere (3&ndash;6 km above the Earth&rsquo;s surface), and only then to the surface itself. Neither the Sun, cosmic rays, nor natural climatic changes lead to such a cunning effect.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/ebddc020353202f0975c548d26101c453ff78016.jpg?" alt="Retreat of a glacier in Norway" />
Figure 6. Engabreen is a glacier in northern Norway (Mo I Rana). The photographs were taken from the same point in 1889 and 2010.
Figure 7 shows a much larger ice loss in the Arctic Ocean. And although the Arctic Ocean is still freezing, this ice is no longer the same. It is much thinner, and saltier and therefore melts and breaks faster.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/4126a61adca9d8cb480752953e7311cb3104243b.png?" alt="Sea ice loss" />
Figure 7. Age (white ice &mdash; old) and the position of ice in the Arctic Ocean according to Earth-sounding data from space.
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This article is also published on the <a href="https://medium.com/p/c1a7afbc5ad6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">author's blog</a>. Future Thought Leaders is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of rising Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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Myths about climate change (Part 1)

The topic of climate change and the nature of individual climatic extreme events should be based on the understanding that has already been achieved, and not on imaginary problems with calculating trends.

In January 2022,&nbsp;The European Physical Journal &mdash; Plus&nbsp;published&nbsp;<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">an article by four Italian researchers &ldquo;A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming&rdquo;</a>. And although the authors of the article are not in a hurry to deny global warming in general, focusing on heat waves, droughts, tornadoes, floods, and the productivity of basic crops, their work was suddenly taken up by people who believe that anthropogenic global warming does not exist, and the scientific consensus about it is the result of a conspiracy. They were joined by those who simply do not want global warming to happen. The article was joyfully spread across the Internet, and&nbsp;<a href="https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/09/climate-change-and-the-determinedly-blind-eye/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">declared &ldquo;an indictment of our era, saturated with thoughtless and idiotic belief in the speculative hypothesis of an impending climate catastrophe&rdquo;</a>.
<ol>
<li id="62d2" data-selectable-paragraph="">We must pay tribute to the supporters of the &ldquo;non-anthropogenic of global warming&rdquo;, it was still necessary to try to find such an article in a non-core and unknown to anyone journal.</li>
<li id="9896" data-selectable-paragraph="">What these very supporters of the &ldquo;non-anthropogenic of global warming&rdquo; found for themselves in the article remained unclear to me. The article does not touch upon the causes of global warming, nor does it deny it. The authors only conclude that the climate crisis to date is &ldquo;non-obvious&rdquo; in indicators of extreme events. Nothing follows from this conclusion, however. No one is suggesting that all extreme weather or climate events should show increasing trends.</li>
<li id="7561" data-selectable-paragraph="">The article considers 4 groups of such phenomena:</li>
</ol>
A. Heat waves (taken only in the summer season). Without any reason (not even a single graph), it is concluded that their intensity trends are not significant. This is a direct fraud on the part of the authors. The analysis of heat waves is not simple, but the work systematically shows an increase in their frequency and intensity.&nbsp;<a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EF002271" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">See for example. Jan Oldenborgh, G., Wehner, M. F., Vautard, R., Otto, F. E. L., Seneviratne, S. I., Stott, P. A., Hegerl, G. C., Philip, S. Y., &amp; Kew, S. F. (2022). Attributing and projecting heat waves is hard: We can do better. Earth&rsquo;s Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EF002271.</a>&nbsp;Yes, and at the philistine level, it is clearly visible.
B. Tropical cyclones and tornadoes, i.e. wind. Here the whole game is based on the introduction of corrections to the historical series of observations. The authors DO NOT describe what amendment methodology they use, they do not even provide references. Just as it is not clear, Fig. 2 they drew or copied from somewhere
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/bbe8dc0b207c789157c40dcc8d7f250da2345e34.png?" alt="" />
Figure 1: Figure 2 from the article under discussion by Italian scientists. Historical trend of normalized rates for the Atlantic Tropical Zone from 1880 to the present.
What is important, however, is that they assume that warming should lead to an increase in the frequency and strength of tropical cyclones, which is not the case. Changes in the strength of atmospheric currents, which, with climate warming, are shifting northward from areas of tropical cyclone formation, lead to a reduction in the number and strength of cyclones. This conclusion is reached by the same C.W. Landsea, whose early work they refer to. A detailed breakdown of trends and causes is here:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/tropical-cyclones-now-13-less-frequent-due-to-climate-change/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/tropical-cyclones-now-13-less-frequent-due-to-climate-change/</a>. The same can be said about tornadoes: these phenomena are associated with the interaction of large-scale flows with convective clouds. Tornadoes are everywhere in one form or another, but the American Midwest is notable for its particular frequency. The reason for this is the northern invasions through the Rocky Mountains. Accordingly, more rapid climate warming in the northern latitudes (and this is a fact) leads to weakening such invasions and weakening the strength of tornadoes.
C. Phenomena associated with precipitation (showers, floods, droughts). Here in the article, the trick of mixing in a bunch of everything is used. An analysis of observations and climate models clearly shows that the change in precipitation is associated with a shift in planetary centers of action &mdash; stable areas of high and low pressure. In Europe, the Mediterranean has drier weather, while northern Europe has wetter weather. The data presented in the article describes the same. At the same time, the shower form of precipitation becomes predominant if conditions for convection are created, and this is not at all necessary with climate warming. Rather the opposite. All this is described in the latest IPCC report. A good integral indicator of the ratio of precipitation and evaporation is river runoff, for which there are long and reliable series of observations, but for some reason, the authors are silent about this. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1495-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">See Bl&ouml;schl, G., Hall, J., Viglione, A., Perdig&atilde;o, R. A. P., Parajka, J., Merz, B., Lun, D., Arheimer, B., Aronica, G. T., Bilibashi, A., Boh&aacute;č, M., Bonacci, O., Borga, M., Čanjevac, I., Castellarin, A., Chirico, G. B., Claps, P., Frolova, N., Ganora, D., &hellip; Živković, N. ( 2019). Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods. Nature, 573(7772), 108&ndash;111.</a>
D. Grain yield. As in the three previous cases, misunderstanding the phenomenon's nature played a cruel joke on the authors. The fact is that the main grain-producing regions are located in such a way that negative phenomena in one of them are offset by positive ones in the other. In addition, the main crops, by definition, are resistant to bad weather &mdash; the entire thousand-year selection went in this direction. Therefore, their productivity is influenced rather by other factors, as Figure 7 shows. The productivity of natural ecosystems depends on climate change in very different ways, even for different plant species in ecosystems. However, the productivity of natural systems is also growing,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01309-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01309-2</a>.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/1f5b48768c2016c162fdbabdfe6c570f1eebce00.png?" alt="" />
Figure 2: Figure 7 from the article under discussion. Time series of average world yields (t/ha) of corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat for 1961&ndash;2019.
<h2 id="f48b">Conclusion</h2>
The article is a very limited review of some, more or less accidentally tugged, publications. The authors have no understanding of the scientific basis of climate change and its impact on various processes and phenomena. And in vain, if they did read the IPCC report, they could put their time and effort to better use, because there is no doubt that the report also contains lacunae, ambiguities, and even errors. That is why the topic of climate change and the nature of individual climatic extreme events has not been closed so far. But such a study should be based on the understanding that has already been achieved, and not on imaginary problems with calculating trends.
This article is also published in the <a href="https://medium.com/@erofeev.yury/global-warming-canceled-not-really-93a7c2edf3dd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">author's blog</a>. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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Yury Erofeev

Yury Erofeev

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