Extinction of all life on Earth scheduled for 2031-2051

[muriel_volestrangler]

85. Studies? We can dismiss this blogger ourselves

(As a side note, I am amazed at the number of DUers who suddenly think that one blogger can overturn the entire science of climate change a few months ago, but no-one noticed. When a single climate change denier claims they've come up with a theory about how there's no such thing as global warming, we rightfully point and laugh; when this guy claims all life on Earth will die within 40 years, it gets 46 recs. WTF, people?)

The blogger bases the fear about methane releases on a graph from Svalbard measurements - the graph generated on Nov 16 2010. He copied it from here: http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-gas-almost-works-more-methane/ (note the identical time stamp of 20:08pm).

Here's what the realistic NZ blogger said:

The graph comes from NOAA’s Earth System Research Labs Global Monitoring Division’s new data visualisation web page here (you’ll see a CO2 graph first, but click on the menu to the left of the graph to get the methane version). The readings for the last year are preliminary, and shown in brown. The last five data points are so far off the chart that they are almost certainly going to be rejected as being caused by local contamination. That’s happened before — the green dots show when — and at the moment other Arctic sites are not showing a similar rise. However, Svalbard is close to sea floor methane hydrate deposits that are known to be venting gas.

And, indeed, those data points have been rejected as local contamination - go there now, and you'll see the previous seasonal variation, with a steady long-term rise from the start at 1994, has continued.

So, that's his Figure 1 shown to be irrelevant. Figure 2 was derived from Figure 1 - he claimed this showed a temperature increase of about 0.25 centigrade in 3 months. Notice that these aren't actual temperature measurements - he's just claiming that an increase over 1 month of methane concentration (the figures which have since been shown to be local contamination, or similar) can be extrapolated indefinitely into the future. This is, of course, complete rubbish.

Figure 3 is what he gets when he extrapolates his guess of the temperature rise from the 1 month methane increase (which didn't happen anyway) over not just 3 months, but over years at the same rate. This is, of course, complete rubbish.

After this rubbish, the blogger then points to a 'personal communication' and a NOAA page that no longer works. So we have to take his word that there were "warming anomalies which exceed 10 to 20 degrees centigrade and cover vast areas of the Arctic at times" in Dec 2011. Even if that did happen (and there's no point whatsoever using it as a basis for some graphs unless "vast areas" can be quantified, or "10 to 20" made more accurate), to again extrapolate what happens in one area over a month to several years for the entire Arctic is, of course, complete rubbish. And that's Figure 4 debunked.

Figure 5 has "Gakkel Ridge earthquake frequency" included - what the fuck? The later figures just have some areas coloured in where where he thinks the methane releases will drive temperature increase.

But since the basis for it all is a one month anomaly at one measuring station, which has since been counted as a false reading, it is all based on a mistake. He's taken that one month error, and extrapolated it until the world has heated up by 14 degrees C, which he says will therefore be an extinction event.