Andy May and Marcel Crocker
The full review of Phoma Destructiva is shown in indented form as a block quote. To view the original please go here. To view an abstract of our paper, please visit here. The official paper is still paid, to download the final submission of the full peer-reviewed paper for free, please click here or visit my ResearchGate page. Our paper was published on May 29, 2024, ranking 99.7% of all 26.5 million research papers, followed by Wiley.
To download a bibliography containing most of the articles cited in the discussion below, please visit here.
Below is our discussion of Destructiva's second review. His comments are indented, and the portion of his comments that quotes our first response ends with “about:”. Phoma's response follows his citations to us, and our responses follow block citations in ordinary text.
about: “The first part of the main criticism is actually a lengthy critique of Harvey Vinos's book Past, Present and Future Climate and has nothing to do with our paper.“
Incorrect. As shown in #1, the 18th, 19th, and 20th citations in the author's paper are to Vinós' book. The author uses the book to suggest that some anthropogenic warming may be due to “force of nature“:
“Since the development of atmospheric general circulation climate models and modern carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas warming hypotheses in the 1960s and 1970s (17), many natural climate oscillations have been discovered. These long-term climate fluctuations and resulting “climate regime shifts” (18) strongly suggest that natural forces (perhaps driven by cyclical changes in the sun) (19) are causing the observed changes since 1920 or earlier Recent global warming.“
We stand by our original assertion that the Phytophthora destructor argument has no merit. We made no predictions, and Vinos' predictions are not relevant.
about: “In the introduction to his critique, Phytophthora destructor writes: “The authors and the sources they cite may have underestimated anthropogenic global warming. We have no estimate of the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.”“
Authors have repeatedly attempted to attribute at least part of man-made global warming to non-human factors, as in the quote above from Vinos. Regardless of whether the authors provide precise quantitative estimates of anthropogenic warming, this is an underestimate of anthropogenic global warming. Attributing to X what Y actually caused is an underestimation of Y's impact, regardless of whether it provides a precise quantitative estimate of Y's impact.
We believe and provide evidence that “at least some of the anthropogenic global warming” is caused by non-human factors. “Some” is not an estimate. The dictionary definition of “estimate” is unambiguously “a rough calculation or judgment of the value, figure, quantity, or degree of…”
about: “The next section attempts to question the existence of all multidecadal ocean oscillations based on two papers by Michael Mann and co-author Mann et al. (2020) and Mann et al. (2021).“
Other papers cited include: Mann 2014, Clement 2015, Stolpe 2017 and Haustein 2019.Atlantic Decadal Oscillation (AMO)“The author discussed it in the paper. This unforced ocean circulation most likely does not exist, as shown by the fact that contrarians using it produced failed temperature trend predictions (#1).
“Unforced” and “forced” events are poorly defined climate model classifications whose definitions are very flexible and have little real-world meaning. Therefore, our paper does not use the terms “forced” and “non-forced”. Bringing up these terms is both a red herring and a straw man fallacy. Our paper uses the real-world terms “human” and “nature.” Forcing and non-forcing introduces unnecessary complexity and is just a naive attempt to distract from the actual issues discussed in our paper. The bottom line is that the AMO is a real oscillation that has been successfully traced back to 1600 AD, so it has continued from pre-industrial times to modern times and must have a natural component.
about: “In fact, he admits: “Based on available observational and modeling evidence, the most plausible explanation for the multi-decadal peak seen in modern climate observations is that it reflects a combined response to natural and anthropogenic forcing over historical periods.” ( Mann , Steinman, & Miller, 2020 ) We agree with this statement and it is consistent with our paper.“
No, this is inconsistent with the author's paper, as explained in #1, which cites Dr. Karsten Haustein and Dr. Peter Jacobs 2019, as well as Haustein 2019 and CarbonBrief. Likewise, if the observed peaks are forced rather than unforced, then they have already been taken into account and are not independent contributors to warming beyond the range of forcings already considered:
This contradicts the author's paper:
“What if the so-called anthropogenic warming from 1976 to the present is driven by natural cycles? This means the IPCC's calculations of human greenhouse gas impacts are too high […]“
Again, “non-forced” and “forced”. These are meaningless climate model terms. Mann wrote: “A combination of natural and man-made forcings in historical periods. Our paper contains, “What if the so-called anthropogenic warming from 1976 to the present is driven by natural cycles?” What's the difference? We all believe that both human-made and natural forces cause ocean oscillations, such as the AMO and “Climate Observations”. Hiding behind ill-defined terms like forced and non-forced does not change that fact.
about: “Anonymous critics of our paper then compared the predictions of Vinós (Wyatt & Curry, 2014) and others with those of the IPCC again. We are not making any predictions, we are simply citing observations.“
Prediction is the test of a causal hypothesis. The authors cite Dr. Vinos's hypothesis about what causes some of the observed warming. Therefore, it is best to evaluate the predictions of his assumptions to see if they fail. Similarly, Dr. Curry's failed prediction of warming based on AMO, and the successful prediction of IPCC based on anthropogenic greenhouse gas-driven warming.
We agree that predictions are an important part of the scientific process, but we do not make any predictions in the paper, and this is intentional. As for whether Vinos and Corey's predictions are correct, you don't know, I don't know, and neither does anyone else. The end of the forecast period is still more than a decade away. Don't say “failure” when you don't know.
about: “This criticism is typical of everything that is wrong with modern climate science. Phytophthora destructor builds on the apparent straw from the articles we cite, which have nothing to do with our argument that observations show no danger or net harm from climate change today, and then attacks his own straw, not our thesis. Unfortunately, this irrelevant straw man fallacy is common in climate science and is never credible.“
When I cite an author's paper and then directly address the content of the quote, it is not a straw man. The authors' paper shows that the warming is actually man-made but caused by other factors, such as natural oscillations, according to the citation. These suggestions remain in the paper even if the authors emphasize other arguments they make in the paper.
Your discussion of Vinos and Curry's alleged failed predictions is a straw man. Your discussion of “forced” and “non-forced” is a bait-and-switch straw man. We believe that the AMO is a natural oscillation and is responsible for modern warming, which is well supported in the literature and in our paper. You are free to disagree with our conclusions, but our conclusions are informed by the evidence and citations in our paper. You have provided no evidence that our conclusion is wrong, not even from any of your sources.
Mann wrote: “Based on available observational and modeling evidence, the most plausible explanation for the multi-decadal peak seen in modern times climate observations is that it reflects the A combination of natural and artificial forcing in historical times. (Mann, Steinman, & Miller, 2020). [Bold added]
So, it seems he agrees with us.
If you really believe that all modern warming is human-caused, as the IPCC does, that's fine, but that's inconsistent with the data we presented in the paper, and it's inconsistent with your sources.
Andy and Marcel
Relevant
