Those are old and discredited arguments. His argument is predicated on the idea that life can adapt to changing conditions. This is true. When life is confronted with the need to change as quickly as we are changing the planet's conditions, the historical record clearly shows the result is often mass extinction. I feel comfortable calling that "bad".
Secondly, this does nothing to address the fact that large portions of human infrastructure are built in areas that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Regardless of whether or not we CAN adapt, it will be enormously costly.
Sorry but I'll take the word of a reputable Biologist over your word.
"10. ARE THERE MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH THE REPORTS? Yes, in assumptions, use
of data, and conclusions.
11. My biggest concern about the reports is that they present a number of speculative,
and sometimes incomplete, conclusions embedded in language that gives them
more scientific heft than they deserve. The reports, in other words, are "scientificsounding," rather than clearly settled and based on indisputable facts. Established facts
about the global environment exist less often in science than laymen usually think.
12. The two reports assume and/or argue that the climate warming forecast by the
global climate models is happening and will continue to happen and grow worse.
Currently these predictions are way off the reality (Figure 1). Models, like all scientific
theory, have to be tested against real-world observations. Experts in model validation say that the
climate models frequently cited in the IPCC report are little if any validated. This means that as
theory they are fundamentally scientifically unproven.
3
Figure 1: Climate model forecasts comparedto real world temperature observations(From
John Christy, University of Alabama and Alabama State Climatologist. Reproduced with
permission from him.)
13. The reports suffers from the use term climate change with two meanings: natural
and human-induced. These are both given as definitions in the IPCC report and are
not distinguished in the text and therefore confuse a reader. (The Climate Change
Assessment uses the term throughout including its title, but never defines it.) There are
places in the reports where only the second meaninghuman induced---makes sense, so
that meaning has to be assumed. There are other places where either meaning could be
applied.
In those places where either meaning can be interpreted, if the statement is
4
assumed to be a natural change, then it is a truism, a basic characteristic of Earths
environment and something people have always know and experienced. If the
meaning is taken to be human-caused, then in spite of the assertions in the report,
the available data do not support the statements.
14. Some of the reports conclusions are the opposite of those given in articles
cited in defense of those conclusions.
For example, the IPCC 2014 Terrestrial Ecosystem Report states that there is medium
confidence that rapid change in the Arctic is affecting its animals. For example, seven
of 19 subpopulations of the polar bear are declining in number citing in support of
this an article by Vongraven and Richardson, 2011. That report states the contrary,
that the decline is an illusion.
In addition, I have sought the available counts of the 19 subpopulations. Of these,
only three have been counted twice; the rest have been counted once. Thus no rate
of changes in the populations can be determined. The first count was done 1986 for
one subpopulation.
1
The U. S. Marine Mammal Commission, charged with the conservation of this
species, acknowledges Accurate estimates of the current and historic sizes of polar
bear stocks are difficult to obtain for several reasonsthe species inaccessible habitat,
the movement of bears across international boundaries, and the costs of conducting
surveys.
2
5
According to Dr. Susan Crockford, out of the 13 populations for which some kind of
data exist, five populations are now classified by the PBSG [IUCN/SSC Polar Bear
Specialist Group] as stable (two more than 2009), one is still increasing, and three
have been upgraded from declining to data deficient. . . . That leaves four that are
still considered declining‐ two of those judgments are based primarily on concerns of
overhunting, and one is based on a statistically insignificant decline that may not be
valid and is being reassessed (and really should have been upgraded to data
deficient). That leaves only one population Western Hudson Bay where PBSG
biologists tenaciously blame global warming for all changes to polar bear biology, and
even then, the data supporting that conclusion is still not available.
3
Polar Bear Status (Source: Polar Bear Science Website.)
6
15. Some conclusions contradict and are ignorant of the best statistically valid
observations. For example, the Terrestrial Ecosystems Report states that terrestrial
and freshwater ecosystems have sequestered about a quarter of the carbon dioxide
emitted to the atmosphere by human activities in the past three decades (high
confidence). I have done the first statistically valid estimate of carbon storage and
uptake for any large area of Earths land,the boreal forests and eastern deciduous
forest of North America, and subtropical forests in Queensland, Australia. The
estimates of carbon uptake by vegetation used by IPCC and in major articles cited by
the reports are based on what can best be called grab samples, a relatively small
number of studies done at a variety of times using a variety of methods, mainly in oldgrowth areas. The results reported by IPCC overestimate carbon storage and uptake
by as much as 300 percent.
4
16. The report for policy makers on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability repeats
the assertion of previous IPCC reports that large fraction of species face
increase extinction risks (p15). Overwhelming evidence contradicts this
assertion. And it has been clearly shown that models used to make these forecasts,
such as climate envelope models and species-area curve models, make incorrect
assumptions that lead to erroneous conclusions, over-estimating extinction risks.
Surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period
encompassing several ice ages and warm periods.
5
Among other sources, this is
based on information in the book Climate Change and Biodiversityedited by Thomas
Lovejoy, one of the leaders in the conservation of biodiversity.
6
The major species
7
known to have gone extinct during this period are 40 species of large mammals in North
America and Northern Europe. (There is a background extinction rate for eukaryotic
species of roughly one species per year.)"
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