Historically, climate activists like to use 'climate change' as an immediate go-to cause for anything they can't explain or ignore data that don't fit their apocalyptic claims.
From 'where the rubber meets the road' department, comes the bombshell finding that flies in the face of claims about the universal boogeyman of 'climate change' killing salmon due to its supposedly water temperature in streams where they spawn. Last year, PBS and Popular Science were screaming about 'climate change' being the cause. 1
Examples:
– "Climate change is killing salmon in the Pacific Northwest," pbs.org, February 6, 2019
– Howard Hsu, "Climate change is cooking salmon in the Pacific Northwest," popsci.com, February 8, 2019
"It seems they were wrong, dead wrong," reports Anthony Watts. University of Washington research exonerates 'climate change' in the salmon killing caper and finds a surprise villain; an additive to automobile tires, not 'climate change.' In fact, the researchers specifically ruled out climate-driven temperature increase as a cause. 2
"Basically the process is like this: stormwater runoff carries tire wear rubber particles into streams from the nearby roads, where a chemical called 6PPD-quinone, a bi-product from the 6PPD preservative added on tires to prevent breakdown by ozone, leeches into the water. It has been determined that this chemical is highly toxic to salmon. Researches say they identified 6PPD-quinine as the 'smoking gun' behind salmon deaths in freshwater streams.
"We had determined it couldn't be explained by high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen or any known contaminant, such as high zinc levels," said co-senior author Jenifer McIntyre, an assistant professor at WSU's School of Environment, based in Puyallup. "Then we found that urban stormwater runoff could recreate the symptoms and the acute mortality.
High temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica get headlines, cold temperatures are ignored
This chemical is not limited to the Puget Sound region. The team also tested roadway runoff from Los Angeles and urban creeks near San Francisco, and 6PPD-quinone was present there as well. This finding is not surprising, the researchers said, because 6PPD appears to be used in all tires and tire wear particles are likely present in creeks near busy roads across the world. 1
High temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica get headlines, cold temperatures are ignored. In climate change, only hot temperatures qualify as climate. Cold temperatures are just weather. When is the last time you saw 'coldest ever' in a headline?3
Here's a scary scenario from Seth Borenstein: "Nearly impossible without man-made global warming, the Siberian heat wave is producing climate change's most flagrant footprint of extreme weather, a new flash study says. A two week study found the greenhouse effect multiplied the chance of the region's prolonged heat by at least 600 times, and maybe tens of thousands of times. The study, which has not gone through peer review, looked at Siberia from January to June, including a day that hit 100 degrees F (38 C)." 4
Others in the media also highlighted this issue. If only they had waited for two more weeks! Verkhoyansk became a poster child for climate change on June 19 and 20 because of a high temperature. On July 7 they had abnormal cold and enough snow to build snowmen and the locals were huddling around fires wondering where that 38C record went. 5
Anthony Watts pointed out how absurd this all was, especially since it also happened 100 years ago, before the climate change was even a glimmer in leftists eyes. And, because with 24 hour sunlight at the peak of the summer solstice, the area is bound to get hot, because there's no 'night' to cool off. Of course, that didn't stop opportunistic trough-feeding scientists from taking advantage of the situation, claiming it was all part of a disturbing pattern. 6
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Australia was literally on fire in December 2019
Australia was literally on fire in December 2019. Record heat made headlines in global media. So did the extreme rainfall in east Africa. Guess what climate alarmists blamed for both: man-made global warming.
But record cold in northern India at the same time didn't make headlines in any major media in the United States or the United Kingdom. 7
Why? Because it didn't fit expectations. It's a perfect example of climate alarmists' obvious bias that's seldom brought to light.
Almost all news articles about the Australian heat and wildfires ultimately blamed man-made climate change. But more than four-fifths of Australia's wildfires were caused by arson, not climate change. And what caused the extreme hot weather was not global warming but a phenomenon called Positive Indian Ocean Dipole (PIOD), which is an irregular oscillation of sea surface temperatures in which the western Indian Ocean becomes alternately warmer then colder than the eastern part of the ocean.
The same PIOD that caused Australia's heat (but not its wildfires) caused the year end floods in east Africa. It also caused extreme cold in northern India in the same month. Largely under reported in global media, the cold continued right through to the end of December. 7
Delhi, India's capital, recorded its second coldest December in 118 years
Delhi, India's capital, recorded its second coldest December in 118 years. But neither CNN or BBC headlines ever mentioned it. It runs contrary to their narrative. Winters are supposed to become warmer.
Though climate alarmists often claim Canada is warming twice as fast as the globe, the real untampered data show the 5 of 9 stations in Canada for which complete data exist, have had no warming trend in the month of March since 1986. Additionally, only one station shows a warming trend since 1998. Spring seems to be taking more time to arrive in Canada. 8
Record highs don't prove extreme global warming. It's no surprise that local record highs become more common during a warming period. The mercury has been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age, so it is nearly inevitable that new records will be set each year. The records are indeed one evidence of warming, but they're no evidence of its cause.
More importantly, the record highs apply only to the modern measurement era, after widespread temperature measurements began in the 1870s for much of the developed world and not until the mid-1900s for much of the rest of the world. They don't include the similar phases of steep temperature increases that would have occurred during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. 7
References
Anthony Watts, "Bombshell finding: automobile tires, not climate change—is killing west coast salmon," wattsupwiththat.com, December 10, 2020
Zhenyu Tian et al., "A ubiquitous tire rubber-derived chemical induces acute mortality in coho salmon," Science, December 3, 2020: eabd6951
Joanne Nova, "Jan 2020: coldest ever day in Greenland -65C comes, goes, no one notices," joannenova.com.au, February 20, 2020
Seth Borenstein, "Climate change makes freak Siberian heat 600 times likelier," apnews.com, July 15, 2020
P. Gosselin, "Polar ice surprises! Svalbard well over average, Arctic ice remains steady, Antarctic ice growing," notrickszone.com, April 28, 2020
Anthony Watts, "NOAA satellite records second largest 2- month temperature drop in history," wattsupwiththat.com, May 1, 2020
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
Historically, climate activists like to use 'climate change' as an immediate go-to cause for anything they can't explain or ignore data that don't fit their apocalyptic claims.
From 'where the rubber meets the road' department, comes the bombshell finding that flies in the face of claims about the universal boogeyman of 'climate change' killing salmon due to its supposedly water temperature in streams where they spawn. Last year, PBS and Popular Science were screaming about 'climate change' being the cause. 1
