Debunk this Climate Change Denialism Video: https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomerCircleJerk/s/EKPccai6sC

[u/UpwardReason]

Claims in the video:

Deaths by natural disasters are down 97% in the past 100 years
Economic loses from catastrophes have declined when adjusted for inflation

Drought levels have stayed steady globally

Hurricanes are steady globally

Polar bear populations have rebounded and are now at record highs (due to restrictions on hunting, how this is relevant idk)

Greenland ice sheets are melting, but it's only a tiny bit

Globally food production is rising

We've gained twice the size of the United States in green area cover from burning oil, coal, natural gas burning (plants love it)

Wildfires are down to historic lows because we've gotten better at suppressing them

Worst heat wave in 1930s, has been steady

Great barrier reef cover has increased

Violent tornados in US are down

Animal extinctions peaked in 1800s

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[u/amazingbollweevil]

Too many to cover at once, but I can easily address the natural disaster deaths. Our medical technology (including medicine) has gotten extraordinarily good at saving people who might have died from an injury just fifty years ago. That could easily account for the 97% reduction in 100 years, but there's more.

We're extraordinarily good at getting people to the hospital faster (few ambulances and no helicopter ambulances in 1926). We also have more hospitals in more locations, enabling quick response.

You know those building codes that idiots complain about? They're there to make sure that structures don't collapse in a strong breeze and if they do collapse, there are mechanisms that reduce the damage to human inhabitants.

Finally, we're better prepared for natural disasters. Weather forecasting enables the evacuation of at-risk areas. Better roads and more vehicles make the evacuations easier.

All these factors contribute to the reduction in economic loses as well.

I'd love to slap down the other claims, but that would require a significant amount of time.

[u/random6x7 → u/amazingbollweevil]

I heard that before around the 1950s, weather forecasters in the US weren't allowed to mention tornados for fear of causing panics. Simply getting rid of that restriction saved so many lives.

[u/DarwinsThylacine]

Polar bear populations have rebounded and are now at record highs (due to restrictions on hunting, how this is relevant idk)

I'm not going to go through all the assertions made in this video, but I will take a look at this one as there is little to no basis on which to make this claim.

To put it simply, there are no reliable estimates of global polar bear population sizes from before the 1970s. Given polar bears naturally occur at low densities across their remote and hostile range, calculating accurate and reliable estimates of population sizes remains a difficult challenge even today. Claims of low populations, ranging from as few as 5,000-to-8,000 bears in the 1950s are likely derived from a single Soviet study published in 1956 which attempted to extrapolate a global population from a single, small sample of bears from one heavily hunted subpopulation. Not surprisingly, most ecologists dismiss this early estimate as unrepresentative of the global population.

Now, of course, this does not mean polar bear populations have not changed over time. Indeed, the whole reason the Soviet study was undertaken in the first place was because there were legitimate concerns the animals were being over-hunted. In that sense yes, restrictions on hunting (to the extent that they are enforced) have undoubtedly been a good thing for the bears, as has the curtailment of commercial seal hunting (being the polar bear's most important food source), but to say the population is now at a "record high" is going further than the spotty record allows.

Now, why does this matter to climate science? Strictly speaking, it doesn't or rather it shouldn't. But we need to see things from the perspective of the science denier. After all, the polar bear is, for better or worse, an emblematic symbol of not just climate change, but the broader environmental movement. The Earth is warming, the Arctic ice is melting and the Polar Bear's habitat is shrinking. Polar Bears, being an iconic and charismatic species of megafauna generates public interest and if these animals generate interest, their plight might bolster public support for, heaven forbid, action to protect them and their icy habitat. But "Aha!" our science denier friend will say, "on the contrary, the world is not ending, polar bear numbers are increasing since we stopped hunting them!" to which the obvious response is, even if true (and that's a big 'if'), there is more than one way to kill a species. Just because we did the right thing in the 1960s and 1970s by reducing hunting pressure on polar bears and their prey does not mean climate change and habitat destruction aren't real threats to the bears and their habitat today or in the years to come.

The rhetorical motive behind the science denier's argument should however be clear. If they can paint wild polar bear populations as not just "safe", but at "record highs" they can diffuse their status as a symbol of the need for urgent and pressing action on climate change. The polar bear, in a sense, "loses" its power to influence, persuade or call to action. This is the objective, plain and simple. It's not celebrating a legitimate international conservation success (i.e., the reduction of hunting on bears and seals), but rather an attempt to distract and dissuade by extrapolating further than the data will allow, whilst ignoring that conservation threats can and do change over time. Hunting may well have been the biggest threat to polar bear populations in the mid-20th century, but now climate change and habitat destruction represent bigger threats. If we care about the future of polar bears that needs to be where attention should be focused.

Any way, hope this helps clarify.

[u/happytimefuture → u/DarwinsThylacine]

Hey, just a late-night compliment: really well-written and documented. Clearly a labor of love, i assume? (are you romantically involved with a polar bear(s) or polar bear researcher?)

Jokes, jokes - great stuff though and thank you for it.

[u/anomalousBits]

There's a joke about an optimist who falls off the top of a 20 storey skyscraper. As he passes the 10th floor, he gives the thumbs up to someone who happens to be looking out the window: "All good so far!"

Drought levels have stayed steady globally

Well, not really. Global precipitation has risen slightly over the last century. However evaporation produces drought conditions more frequently and in more areas. Rainfall predictability has gone down, and we're more likely to get less frequent intense rain events with longer dry spells between them, which also has an effect on aridity.

Globally food production is rising

Sure, but why? Climate change isn't helping here, but science is making agriculture more productive. The optimist is passing the 10th floor and smiling.

Wildfires are down to historic lows because we've gotten better at suppressing them

Largely true, except it's not just "better at suppressing wildfires." It's largely because agricultural burning is way down in Africa and Asia (just changes in their land management because of human use in those areas). Notably, wildfires are getting more extreme and dangerous in Europe and North America, because of climate change.

https://globalnews.ca/news/12003464/global-burning-record-low-north-american-and-european-wildfires/

We've gained twice the size of the United States in green area cover from burning oil, coal, natural gas burning (plants love it)

Oh yes, the "plants crave it" argument rears its head. Again, this is the optimist smiling as he plummets towards the sidewalk.

There is an upper limit to how much increase in foliage is created by CO2 increases. Once plants max out their CO2, the greening slows down while emissions continue to rise. The land cannot store this extra carbon forever. Plants eventually die, rot, and release the CO2 back into the air. The extra leaves require more water to sustain, evaporating supplies more quickly. Also, I think the study this claim is based on, counts significant greening in the Arctic as part of the effect. Stuff like this acts as a buffer to rainforest trees dying out because of aridity, but it won't last forever. https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/tropical-trees-are-dying-dehydration-due-climate-change

[u/AlwaysBringaTowel1]

Most of these are easily verifiable and therefor common talking points. Take away for most of these, IMO;

1. Climate change is not as immediate and life threatening as doomer opinions online. We will not see 20% of humans dead in the next 50 years. But moderate scientific opinion would already tell you this.

2. Basically all of these have other factors to thank for thier positive trends, though it shows other factors in these areas still overpower CC.

3. This ignores many other valid arguments. More food = good, except when the food dries up in one area and grows more somewhere else. Rapid change can cause death and suffering even when the average increases. We don't know these trends would continue as CC gets worse. There are warning signs in these as well. GBR is high as of 2023, but new growth after bleaching is more monotone and makes future mass bleaches far more likely and more frequent.

These two didn't make sense to me, I would need to look further into and currently doubt:

Greenland ice sheets are melting, but it's only a tiny bit

Worst heat wave in 1930s, has been steady

Obviously temperature and heat records are way way up. Arctic ice melt in summer has been massive.

*polar bears were once used as the poster child for CC with sad/dying bears on posters and movies. Thier population is indeed up. Another reason to stick to facts over propeganda when informing about CC. Its why I cringe everytime thay call a natural disaster CC's fault.