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Earth melting into water
For the past few years the No Tricks Zone climate website has done the world a favor by summarizing and provide links to climate realist peer reviewed studies published each in during the year, meaning studies that cast doubt on or refute one or more of the critical claims made by the climate alarmist community concerning the causes, consequences, and/or possible responses to purported anthropogenic climate change.
This years list of publications was a real eye opener. In 2016, more researchers published more than 500 papers in peer reviewed journals disputing one or more so-called “consensus” climate claims.
Based solely on the number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals in 2016 disputing one or more claims made by anthropogenic warming alarmists, it would appear there is still an active debate over the causes and consequences of climate change. The climate blog No Tricks Zone provides links to more than 500 peer-reviewed papers published in 2016 supporting “a skeptical position on anthropogenic climate change alarm.”
Among the papers tracked, 132 indicate solar activity plays a significant role in weather and climate activity, while 90 link other natural factors like ocean current shifts, cloud formation, and volcanic activity to climate changes. Eleven papers specifically indicate at worst humans have a weak influence on climate, while 17 papers indicate current climate changes likely reflect natural variability.
Concerning the potential effects of climate change, 34 papers show no effect of increasing carbon dioxide on sea level rise, 15 argue the recent warming has led to less extreme, more stable weather patterns, and 10 papers demonstrate there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of hurricanes (3) or droughts (7).
One of those papers, published late in the year in Nature Communications showed claims global warming would cause a massive release of carbon dioxide and methane from peat bogs are grossly overstated. According to the research, even if the earth continues to warm, the vast bulk of greenhouse gases stored in peat – organic material found beneath marshes, swamps, and other soggy ground – will not be released into the atmosphere as assumed in climate models. Anthropogenic global warming theory asserts human greenhouse gas emissions will cause a general warming of Earth, with this warming causing a number of secondary effects, including the release of methane and carbon dioxide from peat, assumed to enhance or exacerbate warming.
Earth’s soils contain approximately 1,550 billion tons of organic carbon, 500 billion tons of which are trapped beneath northern peatlands around the world – an amount equivalent to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Researchers found substantially warmer temperatures did not result in the release of greenhouse gases from peat as predicted by climate models.
Under four simulations in which peat was exposed to temperatures 2.25°C, 4.5°C, 6.25°C, and 9°C higher than at present – the latter two temperatures well above what computer models project future temperatures should reach under expected greenhouse gas levels – the researchers found below two feet in depth, the peat did not break down or emit additional methane or carbon dioxide.
“We do see some breakdown of peat on the surface, but not below 2 feet deep, where the bulk of the carbon is stored,” Watts Up With That reports R.M. Wilson, Florida State University research scientist and lead author of the December 13, 2016 study, as saying.
Joel Kostka, professor of microbiology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, remarked, “If the release of greenhouse gases is not enhanced by temperature of the deep peat, that’s great news because that means that if all other things remain as they are, the deep peat carbon remains in the soil.”
