by Larry Kummer
The Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal arouse fears of extinction for other species, and humanity. Only the complicit silence of climate scientists makes this possible. Compare the alarmists’ claims with what scientists said in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Too bad that journalists don’t.
Climate hysteria goes mainstream. Climate scientists are silent.
The Extinction Rebellion – “Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making. …see how we are heading for extinction.” See their evidence here.
“If Politicians Can’t Face Climate Change, Extinction Rebellion Will” by David Graeber (prof anthropology at the LSE) in a NYT op-ed – “A new movement is demanding solutions. They may just be in time to save the planet.” Also see “Extinction Rebellion and Momentum join forces on climate crisis” by Martha Busby at The Guardian.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is interviewed by Ta-Nehisi Coates at an “MLK Now” event in New York. Video here.
“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’”
“Planet Earth Is Doomed. How Do I Go On?” by Liza Featherstone at The Nation.
“Andrew Samuels, a Jungian psychoanalyst and a professor at the University of Essex, tells me that therapists are increasingly hearing from patients who are deeply disturbed by climate change and are struggling to cope.”
“We Need Radical Thinking on Climate Change” by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones – “{The Green New Deal} would only change the dates for planetary suicide by a decade or so.”
“The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine – “Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: what climate change could wreak – sooner than you think.” Expanded into a book: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
“The five ways the human race could be WIPED OUT because of global warming.” By Rod Ardehali at the Daily Mail. H/t to the daily links at Naked Capitalism. Promo for Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
The media overflows with credulous stories about this hysteria. It must be having a bad effect on America. Activist Naomi Klein wants journalists to deliver even more alarmism and less science. There is almost no basis for these fears.
First fruits of the Extinction Rebellion’s climate hysteria: the UK parliament declares a “Climate Emergency.” Some say this puts the UK on a “war footing”, always a useful way to increase a government’s power over its people.
About the coming extinctions!
What does the IPCC Working Group II of AR5 say about extinctions? Its Summary for Policymakers gives a bold warning.
“Extinction risk is increased under all RCP scenarios, with risk increasing with both magnitude and rate of climate change.”
That is politics, meaningless rhetoric, not science. It tells us nothing about timing and magnitudes of changes compared to temperature increases. Turn to the full report for answers. First, the good news – they give a rebuttal to the hysteria about the mass extinctions supposedly occurring now due to climate change (more details here).
“{O}nly a few recent species extinctions have been attributed as yet to climate change (high confidence) …” {p4.}
“While recent climate change contributed to the extinction of some species of Central American amphibians (medium confidence), most recent observed terrestrial species extinctions have not been attributed to climate change (high confidence).” {p44.}
“Overall, there is very low confidence that observed species extinctions can be attributed to recent climate warming, owing to the very low fraction of global extinctions that have been ascribed to climate change and tenuous nature of most attributions. (p300.)
Looking to the future.
Much of the report discusses possible results of 4°C warming above preindustrial levels – as of 2018, we are now ~1°C above preindustrial (likely 0.8 – 1.2°C). Supposedly a raise of over 0.5°C will prove disastrous (i.e., over the 1.5°C red line). A further increase of 3°C is wildly improbable by 2065 (the visibility limit of reliable forecasting), and unlikely even by 2100 (i.e., that is in the middle of the range for the improbable RCP8.5 scenario).
WGI used a recent baseline for temperature comparisons: the average of 1986–2005. WGII measured from preindustrial temperatures, defined as before 1750 (WGI occasionally uses preindustrial, such as for historical analysis). Comparing with preindustrial has advantages for climate alarmists.
- It measures warming from close to the trough of the coolest period for thousands of years.
- There is no instrumental record for global temperatures in 1750.
- Most valuable, it allows conflating the natural warming from 1750 to WWII with the mostly anthropogenic warming (AGW) since WWII. So, to the public, all ill effects of this warming become effects of AGW.
What does WGII say about extinctions resulting from AGW? They give many scary findings. But, like the headline conclusion given above, most either lack meaningful details, or are given low confidence, or both.
“Models project that the risk of species extinctions will increase in the future due to climate change, but there is low agreement concerning the fraction of species at increased risk, the regional and taxonomic distribution of such extinctions, and the timeframe over which extinctions could occur.” {p67.}
“Within this century, magnitudes and rates of climate change associated with medium- to high-emission scenarios (RCP4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) pose high risk of abrupt and irreversible regional-scale change in the composition, structure, and function of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, including wetlands (medium confidence).” (p15.)
“From a global perspective, open ocean NPP {net primary productivity} will decrease moderately by 2100 under both low- (SRES B1 or RCP4.5) and high-emission scenarios (medium confidence; SRES A2 or RCPs 6.0, 8.5) …. However, there is limited evidence and low agreement on the direction, magnitude and differences of a change of NPP in various ocean regions and coastal waters projected by 2100 (low confidence).” (p135.)
“There is a high risk that the large magnitudes and high rates of climate change associated with low-mitigation climate scenarios (RCP4.5 and higher) will result within this century in abrupt and irreversible regional-scale change in the composition, structure, and function of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, for example in the Amazon (low confidence) and Arctic (medium confidence), leading to substantial additional climate change.” (p276.)
WGII discusses bad impacts on some specific kinds of creatures, such as corals. Nothing about extinction of humans. The 1,150 pages of WGII have a remarkable lack of specificity about what we can expect from the various scenarios. There is one exception, a paper that WGII cites 22 times. It was published ten years ago, with no mention of its replication or follow-up research. This is an example of what Andrew Revkin condemns as the “single study syndrome” (e.g., here and here).
“Fischlin et al. (2007) found that 20 to 30% of the plant and animal species that had been assessed to that time were considered to be at increased risk of extinction if the global average temperature increase exceeds 2°C to 3°C above the preindustrial level with medium confidence, and that substantial changes in structure and functioning of terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems are very likely under that degree of warming and associated atmospheric CO2 concentration. No time scale was associated with these findings.” (p278.)
“All model-based analyses since AR4 broadly confirm this concern, leading to high confidence that climate change will contribute to increased extinction risk for terrestrial and freshwater species over the coming century. Most studies indicate that extinction risk rises rapidly with increasing levels of climate change, but some do not. …There is, however, low agreement concerning the overall fraction of species at risk, the taxa and places most at risk, and the time scale for climate change-driven extinctions to occur.” (p300.)
AR5 describes the assessed likelihood of an outcome or a result: “virtually certain 99–100% probability, very likely 90–100%, likely 66–100%, about as likely as not 33–66%, unlikely 0–33%, very unlikely 0–10%, exceptionally unlikely 0–1%.”
Conclusions
The Left has incited hysteria about climate change for political gain (the Green New Deal is their maximum dreams given form). Their claims go far beyond consensus climate science, with little basis in the IPCC assessments. Climate scientists and their institutions have remained silent for years as the Left’s claims grew more extreme and less grounded in science. Turning these issues into an irrational crusade makes rational public policy far more difficult to achieve.
An ignored warning from 2010, a path not taken
Here is a remarkable op-ed in the BBC: “Science must end climate confusion” by climate scientist Richard Betts, 11 January 2010. He cautions about scientists exaggerating or misrepresenting climate science “if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda.”
Too bad climate scientists did not heed his warning.
Originally posted at Fabius Maximus.
Moderation note: As with all guest posts, please keep your comments civil and relevant.
Luverly……..It’s all coming to a head. The climate change pimple is about to burst.
From memory, the IPCC first informed us that 3°C was the catastrophe point, the 2.5°C, then 2°C, now 1.5°C.
So what happened? Did they get the science wrong when 3°C was first muted, and now it’s 1.5°C? So why is the ‘science’ no correct when it was wrong in the past?
The best thing that could happen for humanity is that we breach the 1.5°C limit asap at which point, life continues as normal. Then what does Extinction Rebellion have to cling to?
Sadly, climate sceptics must wish for just what we don’t want to happen, for the planet to cool, in order to demonstrate that climate change is natural and nothing humans can do can change that.
How much money, time and effort have we wasted on this subject over the last 40 years when there is only one, single, physical manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 that makes any meaningful difference to mankind, the planet has greened by 14% during 35 years of satellite observations.
Is there anything negative, anywhere on the planet, directly and observationally attributable to atmospheric CO2 which even approaches the benefit of greening?
Anything….just one thing from the climate alarmists that stalk this blog?
Perhaps you should read the attribution literature. In fact the developing countries are about to start reporting annual climate change damages, under the Paris Accord, and there will be plenty claimed. Your short cut challenge is about to be drowned in red ink. You need to think a bit more deeply.
They will be reporting weather damages, David, not climate change damages. Read anything by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. to get the skinny on weather related damages.
“Climate change damages” will be as hilarious as the Western governments counting ongoing foreign aid as green fund contributions.
David Wojick
I thought deeply, resurfaced and realised that one can couch climate change in whatever scientific terms one likes. The fact is, no one in human history has ever successfully, scientifically, by empirical means demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 causes the planets temperature to change.
I take your point that to the bureaucrats, red ink is the means by which to bury that inconvenient fact, but the fact remains, it’s still there.
Alas, I think the devotion of the faithful is easily able to withstand a few cavils based on rationality and scientific method. It would be nice if some of the reputable scientists would speak out.
The Informed Consumer,
Could you please give a link to the source of this figure:
“the planet has greened by 14% during 35 years of satellite observations”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/grl.50563
Thanks
There are enough tell-tales out there to put the scene in a better and wider perspective. From the collective output of many, much of it sound basic research, the natural cyclic changes puts the Earth near to a peak, happening around 2100CE.
The near millennial cycle appears to dominate. The earth is heading to a peak warming, and somewhere on the way or just past, is a trip point. One may look back on 8000 years of evidence to ‘see the trees’. See this link; it is supported by substantial proxy data: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/searching-evidence-update-2/
How will it effect humanity today, the next three generations, is another, yet unanswered, question. One thing is clear: we are no better than our ancestors. Except that for the past century we mastered the thermodynamic gas cycles. Will that help man preserve what he achieved or will it be his undoing?
Was this reply was intended to be to The Informed Consumer, rather than to me?
Sorry it took so long
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
“Is it the case that in general human civilisations did well in warm periods and not so well in cold periods?”
I understand that during the last ice age the planet had an atmospheric CO2 content of 180 ppm.
All meaningful plant life dies around 150 ppm. We were as close to mammalian extinction as I suspect we ever want to be.
At ~400 ppm atmospheric CO2 we are still only ~250 ppm away from certain death.
As it is known that plant life flourishes ~1,000 – ~1,200 ppm, personally, I am happy taking a risk with an uncertain future and increased atmospheric CO2, than I am with absolute, 100% certainty, of obliteration below 150 ppm.
I’m not sure if there is such a thing as common sense in science, but I’m happy to go with a gut instinct.
Again, sorry this was so late.
It is meant as a reply/addition/general comment based on the collective discussion in the above started by Informed Consumer.
RIE posted info on effect of CO2. Every Eddy cycle peak in the last 2k yrs was a warming. But did CO2 have anything to do with it? (perhaps from the book burning – ” Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China’s Qin Dynasty (213–210 BCE), the burning of the Library of Alexandria (c. 49), the obliteration of the Library of Baghdad (1258) — wiki )” :)
However in my link above the temperature anomaly polar versus equatorial indicated such alternations way back into the holocene. The rise and fall of civilisations were linked to that, and politics and religion appear to have little to do with that. Nature ruled, in some cases with a very heavy hand.
Is it the case that in general human civilisations did well in warm periods and not so well in cold periods?
It seems so in the last two millennia, a point that several have already spoken about, though it remains to be studied better and holistically what latitudes were effected and how. My brief study of the Med area appears so.
As per the pic in my earlier link which is based on archae/geological plus, from 6k to 2k was interspersed with much worse that just warming and cooling, and seems linked to the Eddy cycle. The evidence shows that each time that particular civilisation survived/revived and achieved better (reverse-engineering the remains indicate a tech achievement that is itself evidence of dire natural events). Until 2345bce, that brought total collapse and abandonment. The later followers copied the earlier, but now ignorance is evident.
We stand to lose far more today, whether be it by complacency, or wild panic.
Thank you.
You say “We stand to lose far more today, whether be it by complacency, or wild panic.”
By “complacency” do you you mean not acting to reduce global warming? If so, what is the evidence that global warming will be net harmful for the global economy and for ecosystems?
By “wild panic” do you mean implementing polices that are hugely expensive, slow global economic growth, and have virtually no impact on global warming?
“complacency” I mean skeptical ‘do nothing’; “wild panic” is what seems to be a ‘wild goose chase’ after CO2. We have varied historical evidence that adverse times occurred abruptly with dire results to humanity.
I linked to personal research, that for my homeland was very drastic. An ancient technology was lost (and I have stumbled on it recently) . For some reason Eddy cycle roots were drastic. Listen to the last 10min of this video re Antikythera mech, about the total loss of an engineering achievement the fruit of a long development. It was about 300bce; a root.
Link here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVA6TeUKYU&feature=youtu.be
Thank you for the video. I watched it all. Very interesting.
I also read your “Searching Evidence: Update 2 and 3”.
There are clearly many factors that cause civilisations to develop and decay. Warming climates seem to have been beneficial for agriculture and health. Cooling climates the opposite. But warming and cooling is only one factor, and I expect of negligible consequence to the industrial world.
I tend to agree with Michael Cunningham’s often repeated point that we don’t know what will happen in the future and the best we can do is to increase our resilience to whatever happens. One of Michael’s letters says:
“.. the future is uncertain, there will be unforeseen crisis, threats and opportunities, and the best policies would be those which increase our capacity to deal well with whatever befalls. This would involve expanding our capacity, resilience, entrepreneurship and innovation and winding back the dead hand of government, rather than market-distorting interventionist single-issue policies which cause great damage and have been demonstrated to have minimal impact on whether or not the Earth warms more.”
Agreed
Melitmegalithic
You mention the Antikythera mech. I have been interested in this for some years and there was an excellent programme about it a couple of years ago on I think UK Channel 4. It is a fascinating device.
The ancients were very much cleverer than we give them credit for.
Have you read a book called ‘We are not the first’ by Andrew Tomas?
It dates to 1971 so it is possible to read it then google some of the findings to see if they stand modern scrutiny. Tomas sometimes veers into Von Daniken territory, but mostly it is a fascinating collection of extraordinary things the ancients were aware of or had invented but shouldn’t have!
It is also apparent that climate catastrophes were suddenly unleashed on ancient civilisations and that climate does not gradually change
tonyb
Thanks, I’ll look it up. The technology behind the Antikythera mechanism did not arise overnight. There is a shallow learning curve to it, considering its from around 300bce. We know precious nothing.
But go further back the pre 3200bce. See Wiki: ‘solstice determination’, then look up a 4min video on how it was done. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIhT65GdjgI&t=12s
Recall Hesiod’s words: “(ll. 479-492) But if you plough the good ground at the solstice (19), you will reap sitting, grasping a thin crop in your hand, binding the sheaves awry, dust-covered, not glad at all; ” Determining the solstice was essential. An eye-opener.
melitamegalithic – Thank you so much. I had no appreciation of the significance of the antikythera mechanism. Probably skimmed the 1959 article and forgot it. The lecture is wonderful, and your references too. Bloody fascinating.
melitameg – when you say *“complacency” I mean skeptical ‘do nothing’*
I assume you are referring to inert and unthinking, possibly selfish and nihilistic folk. And do not refer to those rational types who hope do nothing ineffective, wasteful, and counterproductive. Skepticism, as we know, is the foundation of scientific method and reliable science. All the AGW (not GW) skeptics I know are strongly in favor of caring for the environment and doing – and paying for – whatever is helpful in that regard.
Skeptics are of course quite pleased to change their opinions when more facts come in. Keynes said to a critic, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Temperature is almost irrelevant on this time scale. And no great civilization collapsed due to chilly weather, Except perhaps the Viking outpost on Greenland – if we can call that a great civilization. The problem is water. Including with megadrought and the collapse of urban cultures in the last millennium in the US. Mainly ENSO related – indeed ENSO is of course a major factor for global hydrological variability. Megadrought that seem likely to recur soon with a retreat from the 20th century millennial El Niño intensity peak.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/moy-2002-wavelet1-e1530244572217.jpg
Note the Fourier analysis – not that I am much into these aperiodic ‘cycles’.
Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 11,000 odd years. It shows periods of high and low El Niño intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance some 5,000 years ago that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). Red intensity was frequently greater than 200. For comparison – red intensity in the 1998/99 El Niño was 99. It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
My professional advice is that the Americas spend a couple of trillion dollars becoming a water harvesting continent ASAP.
Holding back water in sand dams, terraces and swales, replanting, changing grazing management, encouraging perennial vegetation cover, precise applications of chemicals and adoption of other management practices that create positive carbon and nutrient budgets and optimal soil temperature and moisture. Restoring soil carbon stores increases agronomic productivity and enhances global food security. Increasing the soil organic content enhances water holding capacity and creates a more drought tolerant agriculture – with less downstream flooding. There is a critical level of soil carbon that is essential to maximising the effectiveness of water and nutrient inputs. Global food security, especially for countries with fragile soils and harsh climate such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, cannot be achieved without improving soil quality through an increase in soil organic content. Wildlife flourishes on restored grazing land helping to halt biodiversity loss. Reversing soil carbon loss is a new green revolution where conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.
Increased agricultural productivity, increased downstream processing and access to markets build local economies and global wealth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health and environmental impacts, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food thus avoiding respiratory disease and again reducing black carbon emissions. A global program of agricultural soils and ecosystem restoration is the foundation for balancing the human ecology.
What’s the cost/benefit ratio of balancing the human ecology?
Here’s some other collapses.
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/TheCollapseofCivilizations.pdf
“And no great civilization collapsed due to chilly weather”
That we know of. But how would we know if they collapsed? Fossils?
Grrrrrrrrrr…….Not Informed Consumer. HotScot.
Sometimes I hate WordPress!!!!
Try The Spectator for a change- the commonsense of some of its writers contasts hilariously with the scientific pretension of others.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-merry-month-of-may.html
That the great green crusade is not founded in fact is certainly true, but not necessarily helpful. These folks are not open to discussion, they are on the march. The question is what to do about it, which you do not address. Any suggestions?
It is truly amazing how propaganda or whatever you want to call it has molded our thinking and our perceptions. It makes us certain of being right, of having science and truth and God on our side so we pigeonhole information into pre-set categories defined by whatever narrative is circulating with the most power. I don’t mean to get off-topic and I’m not going to engage, but an example of how we irrationally accept “the truth” is simply by saying “Andrew Wakefield.”
Got a reaction? Of course you do! My contention is that you have that reaction not because you know the truth or because you see or understand but because you’re listening to the dominant narrative which, note carefully, has been carefully scripted to have an emotional component to it, and might even be extremely elaborate and justified with (biased) science. Does this sound at all familiar? Climate science can’t hold a candle to some other branches of research when it comes to bias and agenda.
For adventurous souls not afraid to go to the dark side: https://ahrp.org/laffaire-wakefield-shades-of-dreyfus-bmjs-descent-into-tabloid-science/
So my suggestion is that we get back to reason, hard cold facts as best as we can understand them, and an open-minded and dispassionate analysis of all the possibilities concerning what might be going on. Not going to happen, though; all this stuff depends heavily on that crucial emotional content and on demonizing those who disagree (to evoke that emotional reaction, of course.)
Reason, facts, and dispassionate analysis aren’t going to work with people who are captured by emotional arguments. Only emotional counter-arguments will work. The best that can be hoped for is the paralysis of emotional conflict – cognitive dissonance. The emotional arguments from the skeptical side must identify and communicate the real motives of the Green side, or at least the financial and social consequences of their dreams, in emotionally acceptable ways. The skeptic side with few exceptions such as Mark Steyn doesn’t seem to understand this.
Gary,
“Reason, facts, and dispassionate analysis aren’t going to work with people who are captured by emotional arguments.”
I disagree. This hysteria could be stopped tomorrow, ended as a substantial political and social force, if major climate scientists would speak out against it – saying that it goes far beyond anything in the IPCC’s work and peer-reviewed literature.
But that’s unlikely to happen. So in that sense, you are correct.
https://i.imgur.com/jiUHHov.png
Don132
So my suggestion is that we get back to reason, hard cold facts as best as we can understand them, and an open-minded and dispassionate analysis of all the possibilities concerning what might be going on.
Not going to happen, though.
No, it’s not.
Even if you wait till the end of time.
The problem is one of evolutionary etiology.
Intellect evolved to deceive and control (and for sexual display), not to discover or educate.
Most cerebral activity is directed to social maneuvering and subjugation of hominids by hominids. Discoveries, inventions and problem-solving are rare anomalies that create the false hope that society can be reason-based.
It never can.
That’s why science sits so uneasily in human society.
The truth is something we were never intended to find.
The apple we were never meant to eat.
They worried about catastrophic collapse 80 years ago as well.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017-11-08084107_shadow.png
Glaciers were shrinking 117 years ago
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AlpineGlaciersDisappearing_shadow.png
The Jacobshavn glacier, now growing, was shrinking over 100 years ago.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Image1824_shadow.png
1930……Greenland Ice Cap…..DEFINITELY disappearing..
That was definitely a definitely. Well, maybe not.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2019-04-16090548_shadow.jpg
Ceresco kid
You may remember my article here on the extraordinary arctic melting of the 1908 to 1940 period
https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/
I also wrote one on the 1820 melting of arctic ice. They contained hundreds of references from the leading scientists of the day. you must know by now that such things are purely ‘anecdotal’ and will be ignored.
In a nearby church is a memorial to local man Henry Forbes Julian, son in law of Wm. Pengelly, one of the victims of the Titanic disaster in 1912, caused by icebergs from the melting glacier at Jakobshavn Greenland. Historic sea surface temperature records indicate warm years in the Arctic from 1908, causing numerous icebergs that affected the shipping routes in 1912, as high temperatures increased the melting rate of the Greenland glaciers.
The ‘ Ice patrol’ was set up in 1914 to avoid a repetition of the disaster and operates to this day. It can be viewed on contemporary Pathe news reel where one of the titles reads “To Prevent Repetition Titanic Disaster – Ice “Patrol” now finds & warns all vessels of location of Icebergs brought down by abnormal heat from Greenland Coast.” Its well worth googling, although of course it is only anecdotal and doesn’t exist
tonyb
Hi Tony
Thank you for the link. I believe I did read it but to be honest I’ve become disorganized in keeping my bookmarks in an easily retrievable format.
I’m not familiar with your article about 1820, however. I don’t remember any references by anyone to that period. I would love to read it if you could provide a link.
The most disheartening thing about the current debate in Washington DC and elsewhere is the complete amnesia about our past warming periods and extreme events. Just by chance I began looking at heat waves in China and India. Of course they existed and they have been well documented. Instead of putting current heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones etc, etc, into historical perspective, every weather event is treated as “proof “ of AGW.
For those who are thinking of discounting the newspaper articles I’ve provided, I know it doesn’t falsify AGW but it should make it more difficult to be absolutely certain the current situation is completely AGW.
crescokid,
“The most disheartening thing about the current debate in Washington DC and elsewhere is the complete amnesia about our past warming periods and extreme events.”
I agree. But mass movements often use this tool. Erasing the past sets a people’s thinking adrift, cut lose from the anchor of its history. This is a surprisingly easy thing to do, for those that have controls of a society’s major institutions.
Ceresco kid
here is the article
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/22/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-two/
following research at the scott polar institute in Cambridge and the Met office archives it is apparent that there was a substantial arctic melting around the 1730’s and also several hundred years earlier when the north east passage at the top of Russia may well have been found.
However it is all treated as anecdotal and as they didn’t have computer model authentication or video film at the time its probably not worth writing the articles.
if we can discount arctic warming from as recently as 80 years ago what hope is there of providing sufficient evidence for earlier warmings?
our knowledge of history these days is little better than zero.
tonyb
All these government grants and video shows are paid to have this bias narrative. No facts, just poor suppositions for a couple of decades now.
Well argued, thanks! I am left wondering, though, if you are focussing on a rather narrow aspect of Extinction Rebellion. Fair play, Extinction Rebellion do talk of extinction of species (including man) but on the other hand is not the message more: current political and economic policy is locked into an extinction pathway? Is not our current way of life degrading not just climate but the etc. bit too? So even if the scientific evidence cannot convince us that climate change is the cause of species extinction, habitat changes are glaringly obvious why species are disappearing. And that is a threat. To quote XR “The air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth we plant in, the food we eat, and the beauty and diversity of nature that nourishes our psychological well-being, all are being corrupted and compromised by the political and economic systems that promote and support our modern, consumer-focussed lifestyles.”
Whilst the political system does nothing to address the current trajectory, it seems a sane response to get out on the streets. Maybe scientists like yourselves could lend a hand to getting real policy change to happen instead of implying (forgive me if I read the post like the devil reads the bible) that because the risk of species extinction is not verified by climate science business as usual is way to go! You could start by investigating the hypothesis that there are no long-term risks to humanity from the policies in place that determine the way society treats climate etc.
Regarding your “You could start by investigating the hypothesis that there are no long-term risks to humanity from the policies in place that determine the way society treats climate etc.”
I think these hypotheses have been confirmed, to say the least. Nor does society “treat climate” whatever that might mean. The way society treats climate is to try to survive it. You seem to be assuming that somehow humans control the average weather. We do not.
David, you wrote:
You seem to be assuming that somehow humans control the average weather. We do not.
On the other hand, David, you clearly assume we do control climate, and clearly, we do not. The weather does make up parts of the climate and you do not get the second without first getting the first.
There is a danger of hysterical reaction to overemphasized threats. An example: Some time ago the green lobby in Europe put through the bill of biocomponent in fuels. It turned out that the massive growing of oil rape and import of biocomponents not only deteriorated environment and soil in the producing countries but also produce comparable or higher amount of CO2 that is saved in cars. In some countries the massive subventions to solar electricity are said to have produced a rich class of “eco-barons” without meaningful prevalence of green energy. What is needed is “no regret” approach and gradual steps, not grandiose actions.
What is needed is actual knowledge of causes of natural climate change, knowledge of the good caused by more CO2, and the knowledge that more CO2 does no harm. If you want to have “no regret” you must understand all of this.
popesclimatetheory: “… the knowledge that more CO2 does no harm.” But saying that is exactly what triggers the emotional reaction because “we all know” that we have 12 years left to save the earth and the only possible way that can happen is by lowering dangerous levels of CO2. Anyone who says otherwise is a science-denier. And no, I don’t really believe that.
What we need is for people to get much more sophisticated about propaganda, which has a respectable name: “public relations.” This won’t happen, though, because the people who make use of PR count on us being dumb about how it’s used.
“Propaganda” is all around us and is more pervasive that we think, and it shapes how we view certain issues. A lot of us know this on an abstract level but how about on a concrete level? We might know about it regarding climate change, but how about our other opinions of the affairs of the world that might have been packaged for us to consume?
We’re sophisticated about a lot of things but we’re not very sophisticated about how to determine true narratives from false narratives– an essential skill?– and false narratives can be extremely elaborate. They just grow. Witness the climate catastrophe.
My vote is that people have to be able to distinguish BS narratives from non-BS narratives, and things will work out from that. People have to get used to weighing both sides of an argument by actually listening to both sides, and these days if we’re accustomed to certain channels of communication then it can be very hard to find the other side of the story. So, we have a very long way to go.
/end rant.
Doesn’t a huge monoculture of oil rape cause extinctions of many insect species?
Stephen,
“, if you are focussing on a rather narrow aspect of Extinction Rebellion. {they} talk of extinction of species (including man) but on the other hand is not the message more: current political and economic policy is locked into an extinction pathway?”
No, I’m focusing on the core message – that which gets their mass attention.
Without their message about climate as an existential threat, the rest of their program is the usual leftist boilerplate – which they have been preaching for since the 1970s.
Many on the Left have long seen climate change as means – a kind of trojan horse. Arouse fears that allow implementation of their standard program.
Larry is right. The core message is we are going to hell on a handcart because of capitalism, and only a world government will save us. In their eyes, it is the current political system at fault – everything else is subsidiary. The scare tactics of climate extinction is only the latest vehicle for achieving the change of government. Next month, it will be the oceans full of plastic, or some other threat they can plaster across sympathetic media.
No, the environment is improving in economically wealthy nations, and degrading rapidly in poor ones. The quality of the air, water, food and environment has improved everywhere in wealthy countries. Agricultural advances allow to produce more food using less agricultural area, leaving more space for wildlife. On the opposite, poor people, in Africa for example, are ravaging the surrounding of the towns where they live destroying the flora, and the fauna.
Thus the environment (flora, fauna) improves when people are wealthy.
For more detailed explanations see the video titled “don’t panic” by environmental economist Hans Rosling.
In fact the key claim made all along by Roger Hallam of Stinky Rebellion is that the UK will suffer mass starvation within ten years due to climate ‘breakdown’. While the net zero emissions by 2025 which they are demanding, would guarantee mass starvation, the country would grind to a halt. No surprise then that Christiana supports them.
Ulric,
“the UK will suffer mass starvation within ten years due to climate ‘breakdown’.”
Is the UK still there? How can this be? Fifty years ago, Paul Ehrlich predicted doom for UK by the year 2000.
“If current trends continue by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will simply be a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people, of little or no concern to the other 5-7 billion inhabitants of a sick world. …If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
— Paul R. Ehrlich speaking in London at the Institute of Biology in Autumn 1969. From “In Praise of Prophets” by Bernard Dixon in the New Scientist, 16 September 1971.
Larry
Brexit has made this the one and only Paul Ehrlich prophecy to come true!
An example of “the exception that proves the rule”.
There is no such thing as climate breakdown. Our major summer heatwaves in 1976, 2003, 2006, were solar forced and drivers of climate change. 1976 was the hottest and that was during a cold AMO phase. Summer 2018 broke mean temperature records in Central England for only one day, June 1676 in the Maunder Minimum was almost 2°C warmer than June 2018. Calls from Caroline Lucas that the omega block warmth late this February was climate breakdown, just equaled the record for one day.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_act_graphEX.gif
Rainfall trends for England and Wales from 1766 are flat despite temperature increases, with the wettest decade being the 1870’s.
The famous flooding of the Somerset Levels in Jan-Feb 2014, has an almost identical analogue in Dec 1876 – Jan 1877, which was marginally wetter for England and Wales. Dec 1876 – Jan 1877 was cold in the Northeast US, suggesting a similar NE Pacific warm blob blocking pattern. Followed by a Super El Nino in 1877-78.
https://craigm350.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/the-great-global-weirding-of-18767/
Climate change does not produce our weather extremes, nor dictate their intensity.
Just a few thousand years ago, places on earth were a couple of degrees celcius warmer than today, the sea level was three to five feet higher and all those mid-latitude glaciers in Europe, the US and southern hemisphere that we visit on vacations now were melted. Yet agriculture thrived, kingdoms prospered, civilization advanced. Ah, those were the times! Can we bring them back?
No, they ended abruptly. Then those left adapted, until the next abrupt end. They had their ‘religion’; their religion was their agrarian science, simple but effective and productive, that they could retain post the change. They had developed resilience.
Chicken Little, the sky is falling, has always been the path taken by people with influence who want to get more rich and powerful, to scare people into giving them money and power to save the people. This has never saved anyone, but it has always destroyed many.
As a relatively young environmental scientist – it was apparent that only rich economies can afford environments. The data compiled by the World Wildlife Fund seems to confirm that we in the west are at least holding the line – after earlier crashes – on the abundance of key populations. In biology there is a point where where mortality exceeds recruitment and populations crash out of existence.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/income-and-lpi.png
Across the planet there are reductions in species abundance – crashing populations of many 1000’s of species – over the past 50 years. Something that could be but is not yet exacerbated by climate change.
“We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced.” http://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
It is speculative and uncertain science – tipping points – in the Earth system. There are 9 of them apparently.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.3110ee8c1495db74432636f/1459560224012/PB_FIG33_media_11jan2015_web2.jpg
Speaking as an environmental scientist – there is an underlying reality. And tipping points are a clear and present danger. But these things are far from beyond the capacity of rich economies to mitigate or adapt to.
The myopic vision of urban doofus progressives involves narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals.
It is what they call a transformative moment. An opportunity to overthrow democracy and capitalism. “From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.” Hayek. It is something to be recognized and opposed.
Now if only we could focus on actual problems and real solutions.
“It isn’t enough to repair the damage our progress has brought. It is also not enough to manage our risks and be more shock-resistant. Now is not only the time to course correct and be more resilient. It is a time to imagine what we can generate for the world. Not only can we work to minimize our footprint but we can also create positive handprints. It is time to strive for a world that thrives.” Jean Russell
Sadly, climate sceptics must wish for just what we don’t want to happen, for the planet to cool as it did thru parts of the “Dark Ages” for humanity. Known scientific fact is that during past climate warming mankind has thrived, today we use warming as a political tool, crying “Extinction “. Please, get a grip and use your brain to think for yourself, instead of jumping on the fear mongers band wagon. We should be thankful our climate is finally clawing it’s way out of the “Little Ice Age” .
Carl Frohaug
Skeptics praying for cooling, alarmists for warming. A modern insanity?
Larry Kumer,
Thanks you for this interesting post.
It is a demonstration of how effective and damaging the climate alarmist cult has become.
Peter,
Thank you for the feedback. But the big question I have is – why did I have to do this? I am good at finance and economics, and somewhat knowledgeable about military theory and geopolitics.
Why have no climate scientists responded to the Extinction Narrative – and the others preaching that message – by citing the IPCC’s work?
Where are the climate scientists in this public debate?
There is no such creature as a “climate scientist.” Biologists aren’t. Modelers aren’t. Tree-ring soothsayers aren’t. Rent-seeking charlatans certifiably aren’t. Are atmospheric physicists?
Since climate is described as weather over time, maybe a meteorologist qualifies? They, of course, don’t try to model the weather 100 years out.
There he goes again- Larry should remember that this circus is not Fabius Maximus , and he doesn’t get to censor reality as is his custom there.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2019/05/paleontologists-discover-ancestor.html
In a way it’s a paradox. Why worry about species extinction when we can create better ones with genetic engineering? Can’t we just use our god like technology and create a new species of krill that can live in warmer water and thrive on mico-plastics.
They predicted the habitat shift here:
https://phys.org/news/2013-08-antarctic-seas-impact-krill-habitats.html
And 7 years later you have this:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-antarctic-krill-population-southward-polar.html
I infer that the optimum GMST for ecosystems is that which existed around the Eocene Thermal Maximum [1] and during the ‘Cambrian Explosion’, i.e. ~25–28˚C (i.e. 10–13˚C warmer than present).
1. Most major extinction events [2] have been due to bolide impacts, volcanism and ice ages, not due to global warming
2. The PETM was due to warming but it was less severe than most mass extinctions
“The most dramatic example of sustained warming is the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum [3], which was associated with one of the smaller mass extinctions.”
3. The cause of the Permian-Triassic Boundary mass extinction event has recently been reported as an ice age, not global warming (Baresel et al., 2017) [4]
4. I do not know of any major extinction events that were due to global warming when GMST was below the optimum (which was ~7–13˚C above present)
5. Even very rapid warming is beneficial for ecosystems. Coxon and McCarron (2009) [5] Figure 15:21 shows temperatures in Ireland, Greenland and Iceland warmed from near LGM temperatures to near current temperatures in 7 years 14,500 years BP and in 9 years 11,500 BP. Life thrived during these events.
6. Biosphere productivity is increasing during the current warming – the planet is greening. Gillman et al. (2015) ‘Latitude, productivity and species richness’ [6]
Biomass density (tC/ha) ~10 times higher in tropical rainforests than extratropical [7].
7. I infer from the above that global warming is net beneficial for ecosystems when GMST is below the optimum (which may be around 7–13˚C above present GMST).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#List_of_extinction_events
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep43630
[5] http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/1983/
[6] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/geb.12245
[7] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.4155/cmt.13.77 (p84)
Betcha none of that will make it into the UN IPCC AR6.
Many of the alarmists base their concerns on the fast rise of CO2, but in reality, the extra CO2, while helping photosynthesis, will add progressively less heat as the IR absorption bands of CO2 are close to saturation.
Below is a link to one page with a table and graph to clarify the point.
I hope this helps to allay the fears of the alarmists. There is good Science to back this data and improved projection on the heating from CO2.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zp99hxe8gal8ha9/CO2-Diminish%20Returns.pdf?dl=0
“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.” Daniel Kahneman
Both fringe extremes telling themselves and each other stories and calling it facts?
The rest of us are concerned that the real objectives of humanity are not lost sight of. It is simple in principle to take the initiative on the broad front of population, development, energy technology, multiple gases and aerosols across sectors, land use change, conservation and restoration of agricultural lands and ecosystems and building resilient communities. What we really want is much more clarity on effective policy responses – a focus on the real issues of global economic progress and environmental protection. Emissions of greenhouse gases or loss of biodiversity are far from intractable problems.
Also, your: “It is simple in principle to take the initiative on the broad front of population, development, energy technology, multiple gases and aerosols across sectors, land use change, conservation and restoration of agricultural lands and ecosystems and building resilient communities.” reflects your absolute ignorance in any of these diverse endeavors. They are each and every one highly complex, without easy solutions. If the solutions were “simple” then they would have already been accomplished.
If one takes them on a “broad front” then you will get Venezuela.
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum.
It’s all the logical consequence of ‘Climate Hysteria’ since the late 20th century… a hoax and scare tactic to marginalize American Exceptionalism gave birth to the nihilism of Amero-Eurocommunism.
Wagathon,
It would not be possible without the silent assent of climate scientists.
I doubt many of them are believers in Amero-Eurocommunism.
True, true but… Western academia’s role is less an instance of a stab in the back of Julius Caesar by Cassius and Brutus than the betrayal of Jesus and the defilement of ISIS.
It is simple in principle to take the initiative on the broad front of population, development, energy technology, multiple gases and aerosols across sectors, land use change, conservation and restoration of agricultural lands and ecosystems and building resilient communities.
The global economy is worth about $100 trillion a year. To put aid and philanthropy into perspective – the total is 0.025% of the global economy. If spent on Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals such expenditure can generate a benefit to cost ratio of more than 15. If spent on the UN Sustainable Development Goals you may as well piss it up against a wall. Either way – it is nowhere near the major path to universal prosperity. Some 3.5 billion people make less than $2 a day. Changing that can only be done by doubling and tripling global production – and doing it as quickly as possible. Billions of people have emerged from the direst poverty in recent decades. Much more remains to be done.
The key is understanding and enhancing economic freedom. This makes practical implementation a matter of free peoples using the information and resources available.
https://www.heritage.org/index/about
If you consider the details of the Copenhagen Consensus it is much more than a list of philanthropic opportunities – it is a road map of the highest value development objectives.
https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
The first is the foundation – the second the ways and means of social, economic and environmental progress this century. It is all happening but understanding how and where requires some intellectual effort.
There is more detail at my WordPress site – https://watertechbyrie.com/ – it is linked to my name above.
As for who I am – https://watertechbyrie.com/about-4/ – it even has has a CV that is representative not exhaustive.
Nothing on running substantive enterprises. Nothing on the technology of energy systems. Nothing on large scale economics, especially none on energy supply systems. Nothing on securing funding for large scale projects.
Building stuff is not running the company. A technocrat is not a leader; no real skin in the game. Advising and providing technical input is not directing outcomes.
An obsessive quest for “fun” over a decade is not a recommendation.
Robert,
You have posted 27 of the 56 comments to this post.
Larry – I was responding to disparaging, ‘trolling’ comments – most of it predictably disappeared. Rather than initiating such wayward discourse. The comment just above seems a bit wayward as well. Apparently I am not qualified to comment and I can take it from someone who is that I ‘have my head up my …’ And that solutions to pressing problems are socialistic.
Here I was expanding on the translation of in principle into in practice. By reference to the Heritage Foundation and the Copenhagen Consensus. The original, on topic and substantive comment has disappeared as well. A mystery to me. Judith’s moderation has always been a bit of a vagary.
This is something that is far more far more important for the future for the vast middle ground of humanity than the polemic of fringe groupings on either side.
cf https://judithcurry.com/2019/05/04/rebelling-against-the-extinction-rebellion/#comment-892324
Their tribe has an ideology – your tribe exists it seems purely in opposition. Opposition is an insufficient means of steering social aspiration. You are against calamity narratives but what are you for? Because the world, it’s water resources and it’s wildlife are in a dire state – even if that not caused by global warming.
cf https://judithcurry.com/2019/05/04/rebelling-against-the-extinction-rebellion/#comment-892304
– “{The Green New Deal} would only change the dates for planetary suicide by a decade or so.”
The Green New Deal is the latest version of planetary suicide that they have been promoting and actually putting into practice in many Western Countries. They are getting more and more desperate because more and more people are pushing back. We elected Trump for that very reason, to push back.
There is limited evidence that climate change will initiate mass extinctions, virtually no evidence at all to attribute documented recent species extinctions unequivocally to climate change. But the ‘sixth mass extinction’ narrative is obviously a powerful one and very politically useful and will be brought on board the climate change band wagon. We get a strong hint of how they intend to do this from the forthcoming major UN report on biodiversity. The so called ‘sixth mass extinction’ aka the ‘nature crisis’ is about to be elevated to the status of and conflated with the ‘climate crisis’. Though habitat loss, hunting, commercial exploitation, poaching, land use, pollution etc. – which all contribute significantly to reductions, pushing many vulnerable species towards extinction – have little to do with climate change, they will all be lumped together under the umbrella of the ‘nature crisis’, thereby obviating the requirement to provide hard evidence for climate impacts upon biodiversity. Emissions reductions then just become part of a raft of environmental policy objectives aimed at ‘saving the planet’ and all life upon it.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/03/climate-crisis-is-about-to-put-humanity-at-risk-un-scientists-warn
Jaime, your points get at my discomfort with the whole mass extinction notion. As someone said, when alarmists claim extinctions be sure to ask for the names and where the bodies were found. That is to say, actual extinctions occur in particular habitats (microclimates) that cross some kind of threshold a species cannot tolerate and is unable to migrate.
Interesting that studies have actually been done using the Koppen microclimate zones to see if boundaries (defined by temperature and precipitation patterns) have changed along with 20th century warming trends. The conclusion by Chen and Chen was that the zones are quite stable. So if climates are not changing, how is it that that creatures are at risk from CO2? More likely they are at risk from each other, as it has always been in nature’s jungle. More on Chen research at my synopsis:
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/data-vs-models-4-climates-changing/
Wildlife populations have crashed – although they may overplay the effect of global warming – it is nonetheless something to constructively ponder.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/threats_lpi_populations_11.png
Robert,
Re: wildlife loss
Habitat destruction, excessive hunting and fishing, and pollution are far greater causes of wildlife loss. These factors have been documented for decades, with predictions of future destruction that have in many cases proven too conservative.
This is an example of the ill effects of the climate hysteria – everything gets blamed on it, diminishing our ability to deal with imminent and serious problems.
An additional point is that biodiversity has actually increased during our era.
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/biodiversity_phanerozoic.png
Chris D Thomas Professor of Evolutionary Biology, University of York writes in the Conversation New species are coming into existence faster than ever thanks to humans. He is among those thinking we could be on the verge of a new Genesis overwhelming extinctions.
https://theconversation.com/the-sixth-mass-genesis-new-species-are-coming-into-existence-faster-than-ever-thanks-to-humans-80527?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2010%202017%20-%2078106191&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2010%202017%20-%2078106191+CID_bbb6817b35d7c133b14724e95488335c&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=new%20species%20are%20also%20being%20created%20faster%20than%20ever
Ron,
Thank you for that link to the article by Professor Thomas. That’s very non–consensus. Worth a close look!
Also, some caution is advised regarding WWF numbers.
WWF claims “The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate. MSNBC laments the “fact” that 100,000 species of flora and fauna will no longer be with us by next Christmas. And yet, WWF also estimates the number of identified unique species to be between 1.4 to 1.8 million, an uncertainty of 400,000.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/plenty_of_wiggle_room_in_scientific_certainty.html#ixzz3XIw5UJqd
The WWF living planet index is for populations of studied species – abundance rather than biodiversity. There comes a point where mortality exceeds recruitment. The passenger pigeon didn’t become extinct because the last pigeon was hunted. The population was reduced to a critical level and it crashed out of existence. Populations of 1000’s of studied species have declined in the modern era – since the 11970’s. These are unsettling changes to the biosphere. Some species do better of course.
We are of course a part of the picture. There is a wonderful PBS series.
http://www.pbs.org/earth-a-new-wild/home/
Ron,
Journalists have conflated two distinct claims. First, that many species (form insects to large mammals) are experiencing large population losses. That is certain in broad terms, although the specifics remain unclear or disputed.
Quite different is the claim of massive extinctions. There is little supporting data for that, just models. Also, they’re mostly beetles (it’s the Beetle Apocalypse). See the data here.
About the mass extinctions supposedly occurring now.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/10/04/mass-extinction/
https://i.imgur.com/EM3IGhy.png
JCH
A similar number of livestock have died in cold events in South America in the last few years. And an even greater number have frozen to death in Mongolia over the same period.
Recent weather events harmful to agriculture are mostly on the cold side:
https://www.iceagenow.info/frost-to-destroy-large-crops-over-central-europe/
https://www.iceagenow.info/50-percent-losses-for-burgundy-winegrowers/
https://www.iceagenow.info/russia-record-cold-threatens-crops/
While some climate catastrophes are own-goals resulting from renewable energy:
https://notrickszone.com/2019/05/03/new-study-finds-that-wind-turbines-could-have-impact-on-insect-populations-food-chain/
Mongolia is not a modern agricultural country, and it is simply not even remotely comparable. Queensland is pretty much state of the art.
How much corn will come out of western Iowa this year?
The last major die off of cattle in the United States occurred in the last half of the 19th century. That when we had a primitive agricultural system somewhat akin to what Mongolia has now.
I grew up in the cattle business. Our cattle commonly saw temperatures in the negative 20’s, F, and windchill far below that. They lived outside. It was very rare to lose an animal to severe cold. Young calves, newborn can die, but even that is unusual.
When did they die? An early warm front would often be followed by a lot of illness, and they would often die like flies.
JCH,
“The last major die off of cattle in the United States occurred in the last half of the 19th century. That when we had a primitive agricultural system somewhat akin to what Mongolia has now.”
I’m skeptical that a repeat of the two great late 19th C events in the US would be as benign as you imply. More likely, they would wreck fantastic devastation, perhaps more (in some senses) as they did then. Our ag systems are adapted to a slightly warmer climate – with little experience with the often brutal winters of the 19th C, to which the farmers and ranchers of the 1880s were adapted.
The great winter of 1880-81
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard#The_Snow_Winter_of_1880%E2%80%931881
“The 1887 Blizzard That Changed the American Frontier Forever” in Smithsonian Magazine – “A blizzard hit the western open range, causing the “Great Die Up” and transforming America’s agricultural history.
JCH –
Here is the link to The Smithsonian article
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1887-blizzard-changed-american-frontier-forever-1-180953852/
CO2 Armageddon skeptics are up against a well oiled PR blitz krieg. Here the people behind Greta : https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2019/04/27/greta-inc/
Little to do with Physics or Geology and much with (crowd) Psychology and Sociology.
Antonk2,
Thank you for posting that information article about Greta Inc. I’m adding that to my post.
The only thing worth saying to any country whose brightest and best minds come to the conclusion that the world is about to end and they must implement an extremist climate agenda: “go for it!”
Alex
When do you believe that temperatures started rising? Its been going on for some 270 years and coincides with the start of sea level rise after the LIA glaciers started to melt.
tonyb
Thanks Larry, good piece. My impression is that a far greater threat to other species is habitat degradation and pollution due to human activities, not climate change. You can see this in the US, where centuries of encroachment almost drove the Buffalo, Brown bear, grey wolf, and bald eagle to extinction. As the US started doing a better job of habitat preservation and pollution control, these species came back to some extent. In the developing world, this habitat destruction is a huge problem for example in India where there is huge pressure to convert wild land to agriculture. In the oceans its a problem because international controls outside the 200 mile limit are weak.
For activists these problems are unattractive because working them requires a very long term effort and actual understanding. Also most activists don’t have the stomach to travel to the 3rd world and confront poor villagers encroaching on wild lands. They actually might face physical danger, which would require courage, which these mostly young people don’t have in abundance. Protesting in the West, where they will be coddled is a vastly better way to do virtue signaling. It also guarantees that little progress will be made. But progress is not the goal.
Rich economies can afford environments.
cg https://watertechbyrie.com/2015/10/04/biological-abundance-and-economic-growth/
Dyp6629,
Exactly. This is an example of how the climate hysteria reduces our ability to rationally respond to problems. Effects of fixable problems – such as overuse (farming, hunting, fishing), pollution, and habitat destruction – gets blamed on the climate change bandwagon. We’re cannot afford this folly.
For example, see the ongoing destruction of ocean life.
Let’s defend the oceans, before it’s too late.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/12/13/oceans-fish-pollution-60148/
The oceans are dying. See their condition on World Oceans Day!
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2016/06/08/world-oceans-day-97413/
Larry
Don’t forget that all insects will die within 100 years.
It must be true since the BBC said so.
We have 3 demands:
1. All governments must declare a climate emergency immediately.
2. All carbon emissions must be zero by 2025.
3. All governments must have Citizens Assembly with full powers over economic matters.
Failure to enact all of these immediately will result in large-scale disruptive demonstrations across major cities.
Alex
Would you like to reply to my comment that climate change this time round predates any c02 rise by 200 years with the temperature actually rising since 1750 together with sea level rise and glacial melting?
There have been many other instances of climate change through the holocene with the warmest periods being the Bronze age followed by the Roman warm period then the medieval warm period.
You can also tell us how the world will function if carbon emissions must be zero by 2025? How will you keep warm, grow and transport food, get to a job etc etc. Can we see your master plan as to how you intend to destroy life on this planet as we know it? Thanks.
tonyb
Alex,
We have a demand for you: stop making demands in contradiction to the consensus of climate science. You are disrupting the policy debate process, making decisions about climate change and other key issues more difficult.
We demand the law enforcement maintain public order, and stop those attempting use of force to obtain their goals. If they succeed, others will copy them.
Oh yes, Brexit all over again – Shout all your demands, without any idea how they could be implemented and taking no responsibility for the consequences of imposing your values on the rest of the country.
I thought Brexit was a majority vote by the people, in a referendum. Is that not correct? If so then there is no comparison with the ER silliness.
Cool Alex, your demonstrations in America will guarantee Trump’s re-election. I was young in the 60’s and we had demonstrations too. Have fun. When can we expect them?
All governments! What a thought. I can hardly wait for your demonstrations in China, Russia and Iran. Please take pictures.
Phil,
“This fiasco is the responsibility of a generation of journalists and politicians”
First on that list should be climate scientists. When alarmists began to arouse fears beyond anything in the work of the IPCC and major climate agencies, they should have spoken out. The adage of “silence means assent” goes back to Rome. They are society’s designated and well-funded experts, and hence had the responsibility to act.
There are catastrophic narratives all over the literature – including in your IPCC quotes.
e.g. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
Including some interesting science.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
On the other side is WUWT saying no it ain’t. I presume climate scientists know this.
We have 3 demands
This fiasco is the responsibility of a generation of journalists and politicians agitating the population about exaggerated and/or fictitious pseudoscientific end-of-the-world stories. Now someone will have to clear up this mess.
This website is a Citizens Assembly for climate justice, to examine the science. It would be a gross injustice to base any policy on the kind of drivel that Roger Hallam is claiming.
Yes, sure people voted for Brexit, but it was always an empty idea, with no firm plan of how it could be accomplished, what sort of Brexit they wanted or what the consequences for the country would be.
XR uses the same sort unpractical sloganeering as the Brexit crew. Maybe it’s because the leaders of both groups come from that dismal part of the English education establishment where making the right contacts in youth is more important than critical thinking.
15.03.2019 …
The Verge: “In October 2018, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave the world only 12 years to cut carbon emissions to keep global temperatures from rising more than 0.5 degrees Celsius.” “Even if that goal is met, a study published by the UN this week found that Arctic temperatures are still projected to spike, which will worsen sea level rise. But if we fail to cut carbon emissions, sea levels will rise even higher and encroach further onto shore. Droughts and water shortages will be more severe, and coral reefs may disappear completely. THE CLOCK IS TICKING.”
The Guardian: “Those in power are not only betraying us, and taking away our future, but are responsible for the climate crisis that’s unfolding in HORRENDOUS ways around the world.”
France 24.: “But scientists have backed the protests …” “… 23,000 [?!] German-speaking scientists to sign a letter of support this week. “Because in a sense, it’s incredibly brave not to go to school for once.”
And here rare (very!) a voice of reason:
“One can’t expect children and young people to see all of the global connections, what’s technically reasonable and economically possible,” said the head of Germany’s pro-business Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner. “THAT’S A MATTER FOR PROFESSIONALS.”
In Fridays for Future: “… ACTIVIST Greta Thunberg …” “… 16 years old …” ”She has been nominated by three Norwegian lawmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize.” (…???!!!)
Conclusions:
1. Protests were frequent only in rich countries (haves strong parties of the left).
2. I listened to interviews: knowledge (participants of demonstrations) about a climate, was, simply, embarrassing …
3. „… activist Greta Thunberg …” “… 16 years old …” Sorry, but …
The demonstrators reminded me (I did not notice a significant difference!) Red Guards (Hóng Wèibīng, Hunwejbin) – and here, today, (as in China) the TOTAL IRRESPONSIBILITY of the LEFT.
Unfortunately, the same effects can be …
As we can all see with Alex’ call for climate soviets, and from academic voices such as Brennan, the left are now calling openly for an end of democracy to allow dictatorial imposition of their agenda.
This paper by Julian Reiss is an important well-reasoned rebuttal of calls to dismantle democracy in favour of rule by “experts”:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2019.1577513
“Expertise, Agreement, and the Nature of Social Scientific Facts or: Against Epistocracy”
Julian Reiss, Social Epistemology Volume 33, 2019 – Issue 2.
Abstract:
Taking some controversial claims philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book Against Democracy (Brennan 2016) as a starting point, this paper argues in favour of two theses: (1) There is No Such Thing as Superior Political Judgement; (2) There Is No Such Thing as Uncontroversial Social Scientific Knowledge. I conclude that social science experts need to be kept in check, not given more power.
In the meantime, Extinction Rebellion has warned the 11-day protests that paralyzed parts of London public transport are only the beginning of what a co-founder of the organization called a revolution. Now, the group is calling for mass refusal to pay mortgages and student loans in an attempt to motivate the government to consider alternatives to current economic model most of the world is using.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Needs-Urgent-Change-In-Politics-To-Reduce-Carbon-Footprint.html
How come these XR London artery blockers are not stopped by the police? Just look at Paris these days: shows where a national establishment stands. Same for one sided Twitter / Facebook/ Youtube bans, or MSM attention.
“Climate science” gate keeping was just a precursor…
Because most of the XR protesters are upper middle class, so have connections with politicians and the top of the police hierarchy.
We have a whole Metrics system for supposed Wealth, “Economics” with an increasingly tenuous relationship to the underlying physical system for which it purports to be a Proxy.
It is in an attempt to address this serious and fundamental deficiency that people have been working on EROI (as an example)
Conventional Economics takes no account of and is not in accord with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, as pointed out in Charles Hall lecture below.
Charles A. S. Hall discusses faults of the “Dismal Science”
“Economics is not a science because it doesn’t use the scientific method”
“ Don’t tell me dollars. Tell me energy. Because Dollars are only a lien on energy. That’s all they are”
“Encourage us not to teach fairytales in economics classes. We teach a million young people fairytales in our Economics classes”
“I had a wonderful talk at our biophysical economics meeting last week. And the speaker was an historian. He said the discovery of the 2nd law of thermodynamics absolutely transformed chemistry first, then physics, then all of the.. geology.. all of the sciences.. ecology.. Except one.. Economics. ”
http://tinyurl.com/mbqowln
Brentns1,
“We have a whole Metrics system for supposed Wealth, “Economics” ”
I suspect you are thinking or free markets using currency. They long long predate the science of economics, which is something different. That’s like conflating the metric system (eg, measurement of length using meters) with newtonian physics.
“with an increasingly tenuous relationship to the underlying physical system for which it purports to be a Proxy.”
Many branches of economics work quite well as descriptive sciences, which is how most sciences begin. A few have even advanced to be able to make reliable predictions – albeit on narrow domains (eg, price controls distort markets, producing bad outcomes if continued long enough). Economics is not a “proxy” for anything.
It is geneous of Judith to lend Larry a second echo chamber, but while stereo may be music to his ears, he appears here without the mute button that often turns his Publius Maximus persona into a Cato The Censor clone.
The colonization of science by fervent ideologues is as old as its rejection by those in the grip of religious fervor, but neither tendency has any traction when it comes to changing the natural history of climate forcing.
We are not the first species to alter the land, the air, or the seas- evolution has seen many instances of each in the course of deep time, and more changes are likely in the pipeline.
The inanity of the choral doomsaying of the left, like the religious right’s tendentious confusion of acts of God and man serves to remind us that whatever the climate wars may be, they are not intellectually serious. The real moral hazard they present is accordingly that of the normalization of idiocy as the ground state of public discourse.
The Romans of the Republic had a harsh word for those whose words or actions invited discord and indifference to the truth, and this pontificating Publius Maximus has sadly warped into a Stultifex Nefas.
No disinformation campaign , however concerted or prolonged, can change the reality of the interaction of limate and civilization by an iota either way.
Damned! I must have misread all the reports that I read as saying the climate has not changed/worsened since 1900. Thanks for pointing out my lack of intellectual rigor, russellseits.
Russell
It is very generous of you to remind us all of the warmer than today Roman warm period that also illustrated the UHI factor as Rome grew to a city of one million and various measures were taken to reduce the urban heating including the sale of ice cream, ‘umberellas’ and building new streets and houses close to each other to provide shade
russellseitz,
This post cites specific comments of the IPCC’s AR5 in contravention of the Climate Extinction movement’s forecasts.
Your comment does not reference anything said in this post, let alone explain in what way it is incorrect.
Can you provide a rational rebuttal to this post?
Which terms?
Larry Kummer, Editor | May 5, 2019 at 2:20 pm |
Journalists have conflated two distinct claims. First, that many species (form insects to large mammals) are experiencing large population losses. That is certain in broad terms, although the specifics remain unclear or disputed.
Quite different is the claim of massive extinctions. There is little supporting data for that, just models.
Larry Kummer, Editor | May 6, 2019 at 4:44 pm |
russellseitz,
This post cites specific comments of the IPCC’s AR5 in contravention of the Climate Extinction movement’s forecasts.
Your comment does not reference anything said in this post, let alone explain in what way it is incorrect.
Can you provide a rational rebuttal to this post?
Yes I can:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2019/05/paleontologists-discover-ancestor.html
Seitz,
Me: Can you provide a rational rebuttal to this post?
You: https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2019/05/paleontologists-discover-ancestor.html
Thank you for that clear answer: no, you can’t. That’s what I thought.
Europe May Use Trump’s Favorite Economic Weapon to Punish His Inaction on Climate Change
The threat in French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks last week was easy to miss. But if he follows through, its effects wouldn’t be.
More than 40 minutes into a meandering press conference, Macron reiterated his goal to put fighting climate change at the center of his government’s policies as well as those of the European Union, calling for a “carbon tax on borders” for the bloc
http://time.com/5582034/carbon-tariff-tax-fee-europe-macron/
And President Trump would not respond to increased EU tariffs?
Measuring Language Stimulus with EEG
Is that Epilepsy or Climate Psychosis ??
‘Global Warming’ Not Scary Enough, Alarmists Rebrand ‘Climate Crisis’
Enter SPARK Neuro, an advertising consulting firm that measures physiological data such as brain activity and palm sweat to quantify people’s emotional reactions to stimuli.
SPARK Neuro fixed electroencephalography (EEG) devices to the heads of 120 volunteers to gauge the electrical activity coming from their brains. At the same time, a webcam monitored their facial expressions and sensors on their fingers recorded the sweat produced by heightened emotions.
The group, which was evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, listened to audio recordings of six different climate phrases. “Global warming” and “climate change” performed the worst, beaten hands down by “climate crisis,” “environmental destruction,” “weather destabilization,” and “environmental collapse.”
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/05/01/global-warming-not-scary-enough-alarmists-rebrand-climate-crisis/
Nice piece
Problem: If folks had not spent so much time attacking the IPCC reports they could actually have standing to use it to combat the GND
basically, the science itself is the best argument against the GND
but most of my fellow conservatives ignored the science
and listed to guys like this
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/so-what-really-happened-at-sandy-hook/
The science was ignored by those using the UN IPCC reports to hype CAGW, Mr. Mosher. The fact is that the UN IPCC reports, through all the scientists contributing to them, concluded that the empirical evidence is that no climate metric was actually worsening. The globalist politicians writing the Summaries ignored the facts.
Most worrisome, except for Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., we have seen none of the scientists refute the broadly hyped fantasies of worsening hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. They are not true to their craft. The President’s Climate Commission will, hopefully, publish the facts far and wide.
The GND and similar “tax-the-hell-out-of-CO2” schemes will be destroyed at the ballot box. People are not willing to give up their free capitalistic society, low-tax, abundant economy and inexpensive, reliable energy systems for no reason.
Steve,
The narrative of high certainty of imminent (decades) global catastrophe (absent dramatic action) has been put out by presidents, prime ministers, high ministers, UN elite, religious leaders, NGOs, economists, businesses, and rafts of other authority orgs and influencers over many years. Not only does this narrative contradict the mainstream / IPCC science, it nevertheless falsely includes that the mainstream science supports the narrative! Without significant push-back from the mainstream science community, over many years it is almost inevitable that emotive ratcheting would continue and cultist fringes emerge. Given the above list trumpeting world-wide for so long, and so now with deep narrative penetration into communities and schools etc. why wouldn’t they? People believe this stuff, they feel they are threatened in a very immediate fashion. They feel authorities are driving towards a brick wall (see ‘terminal metaphors’ at link below) and have let them down. Hence ‘system change not climate change’, and similar sentiments.
The IPCC still has enormous credibility; the dominant narrative (falsely) still uses it to justify imminent calamity. Largely, the world views this org as the source of ‘the’ science (without knowing it is a layered org having different views at different levels). The attacks of skeptics over the years (justified or not), have had naff-all effect upon this situation until the recent age of Trump, and not much then outside the US. Inside, Rep / Cons never really bought into it anyhow (regarding the public, both sides believe what they believe due to cultural identity and not climate domain understanding anyhow). However, regarding the other minority group with some domain knowledge who attack the IPCC (i.e. the catastrophists, with a few very ardent scientists granted mainstream voice) and who say it’s way too conservative, they’ve had rather more success. Which indeed only reinforces the emotive view of said public fringes that the catastrophe narrative absolutely is backed by science, but sometimes is reigned back within the IPCC by overly cautious / conservative interests.
Unless the mainstream science community finally stand up and say together that their output does *not* support the many years of statements per the above authority list, and never has, nor the vocal output of catastrophists (scientists or others), then the emotive narrative of imminent global catastrophe will continue to gain ground and gain adherents. What’s to stop it?
Whether or not some folks buy what the IPCC does say, it’s still perfectly appropriate to leverage the public credibility of the IPCC technical output to point out what it *doesn’t* say, i.e. that it no way provides support for the extinction rebellion et al stance. But unless the mainstream science community itself expresses this, who is going to believe that message? Because a fundamental part of the catastrophe narrative has always been that it *is* supported by mainstream science, which falsity was never nipped in the bud. Hence objections along the lines of above will highly likely be seen as just vested interests trying to ‘distort the science’. And when governments negotiate with catastrophist cults and declare an emergency (as the UK has done), this only increases still more the credibility of the narrative and that science must indeed back it. Overall, the politicians are not being disingenuous; they believe the catastrophe narrative too. After all, it’s been around for most of their careers now, and scientists (largely) then or currently have not said ‘mainstream science does not support this’.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/14/the-catastrophe-narrative/
Part quote: “–. Because a fundamental part of the catastrophe narrative has always been that it *is* supported by mainstream science, which falsity was never nipped in the bud. –“; “– scientists (largely) then or currently have not said ‘mainstream science does not support this. ”
Perhaps a good part of the problem is that ‘mainstream science’ itself is built on shaky or ‘half-baked’ fundamentals.
Example: “We (mainstream science) still don’t know what brings on the ice ages” is a common science claim. Archaeology of Pre-history -is no better-. Geology: is hobbled by ‘Uniformitarianism’ in the face of glaring contradictions. Don’t blame the public’s (underlying?) skepticism of (established) science.
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. is the only voice of reality. It gained him nothing but official pain. Nobody is going to follow his lead, Andy.
This will be solved at the ballot box, when the politicians are forced to list the costs. The political opponents of the radical Democrat Party members pushing the anti-capitalist schemes will list those personal costs in great detail.
Dave, not only Pielke, but our hostess here and a few others. But yes, this is nowhere near the critical mass required to convince both authorities and the public that the catastrophe narrative is not supported by mainstream science / the IPCC. And for their honesty and willingness to speak up, they tend to get called deniers, even on occasion by other scientists.
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. indicated he was pressured by other scientists (?) to change his conclusions and presentations.
SM
How do you know all fellow conservatives listen to Goddard? How do they listen? There are many other resources beyond Goddard for getting this information. I noted you aren’t trying to falsify my links above about historical thinking. Why? Because you can’t. You would provide a service by discrediting what he has put on his site. So far just complaints, no data. This NOAA document seems to verify some of his work.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-content/temp-and-precip/us-trends/tavg/trends-tavg-ann-por-95ci.gif
For me Goddard is a starting point. Then I do my own research. There is massive documentation about past drought, heat waves, forest fire, flooding, cyclones, sea level rise, Arctic warming, etc, etc, that puts the unprecedented narrative in the MSM to shame.
If IPCC was about science they would have included Houston and Dean, 2011, in AR5. But they didn’t because it found no acceleration in SLR. If IPCC was about science they would have made an analysis of whether geothermal activity was material to contribution to GMSLR in Antarctica and Greenland. But they didn’t. To even this non-scientist, non-geologist, it was obvious when I saw an overlay of geological conditions and Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers that their contribution to SLR was being affected by something beyond atmospheric and oceanic factors.
They didn’t include those things because they would prefer no questions being asked about issues that go against the establishment narrative. The less anyone knows about the past, the easier it is to scam the naive and gullible public and complicit MSM into believing what they communicate with their loudspeaker and megaphone.
If they included all the scientific research, the skeptics might have a chance at refuting it……but they don’t.
Reply to: Houston, J.R., 2016. Discussion of: Boon, J.D. and Mitchell, M., 2015. Nonlinear Change in Sea Level Observed at North American Tide Stations
Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses.
One opinion versus another.
But more lovely is that H&R covering a period of only from 1993 is too short for a finding of deceleration. But of course not to short a time for acceleration with the satellite data. How great.
Mosher,
“If folks had not spent so much time attacking the IPCC reports they could actually have standing to use it to combat the GND”
As excuses go for reasons climate scientists can ignore the Extinctionists (and other extremists who contradict the IPCC), that’s beyond weak. How many in the general public have heard of Goddard or or cares what he says? How many times has Goddard been quoted in the NYT or by the BBC?
Richard Betts warned about this danger in 2010. Too bad climate scientists ignored him.
“Of course, we know that these things {extreme weather} happen anyway, even without climate change – they may happen more often under a warmer climate, but it is wrong to blame climate change for every single event. Climate scientists know this, but still there are people outside of climate science who will claim or imply such things if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda. …
“{D}o climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on ‘our side’ against the climate sceptics? …Climate scientists need to take more responsibility for the communication of their work to avoid this kind of thing. Even if scientists themselves are not blaming everything on climate change, it still reflects badly on us if others do this.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8451756.stm
Unlike you I honestly hope that you are right.
CORRECTION:
“Actual warming since 1940, cause unknown, was less than +0.08 (not 0.8) degrees C. per decade — about 1/4 of predicted warming rates.
That’s +0.8 degrees per century !
While some of us might care about the science, for the people of developed nations the climate issue is no longer about science but about emotions and feelings. They will not respond to evidence (or lack of), they will respond to emotional calls from opinion leaders. Though skeptics still constitute a sizable part, they have been effectively prevented from reaching the public, and are met with derision and ridicule.
One by one policies are being approved under the climate umbrella to force a transition that looks very uncertain. Technology cannot deliver what is required and car makers resort to cheating in tests when asked to comply with regulations that hurt performance, price, and competitiveness.
This snow ball is going to continue rolling downwards regardless of science and evidence. Joseph Tainter analyzed how societies collapse and it is quite illuminating. Societies build complexity to deal with problems by using surplus from their economic base. Over time the mechanism becomes less effective due to the law of diminishing returns, and more and more resources are needed to obtain less and less return.
Our main resource is energy. It is what allows us to temporarily use the second law of thermodynamics in our favor. But our society requires an ever growing use of energy to deal with extra complexity build up, and growing population. Climate change is used as an excuse to force an energy transition from a denser continues source to a more diffuse intermittent sources. It simply cannot work, and some proponents say we will have to do with less energy.
The problem is that Tainter has shown that it means societal collapse. The moment our energy cannot continue increasing to meet our ever growing needs, complexity starts to unravel thermodinamically. Our system is too complex to be simplified maintaining functionality. Once there is insufficient energy to keep adding complexity, many people stop seeing the advantage of maintaining such an expensive system, and they revolt, vote radical options into power, and secede. The Soviet Union experienced such a collapse.
Climate is the ultimate useless problem that doesn’t require solving, and climate-induced policies will add a huge burden to our economies at a time when the growth in some fossil fuels extraction appears complicated, and nuclear energy has been all but discarded by the developed world. It is also a time when the global debt has reached worrisome levels. We are contributing to create a perfect storm and could be surprised by its results. As this “World War Z” movie quote says:
“Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.
Takeaway? Don’t let the ba…tards start in 1950. Starting in 1950 allows the deceivers to avoid the inconvenient warming of the early 20th Century.
In reply to doublesixsixman.
Too bad climate scientists did not heed his warning.
Lol.
Let’s see, he’s corrected an actress named Emma Thompson, and there’s this guy:
https://i.imgur.com/fgziQXq.png
JCH,
I do not understand your comment.
(1) “LOL”
Why are you laughing. If climate scientists had listened to him, the public debate might look quite different today.
(2) What are you saying about his tweet? It seems sensible to me.
Which climate scientists did not listen to him? How broad is your brush; how complete is your knowledge?
We have Emma Thompson, an actress, and an octogenarian social scientist. After awhile I just stopped looking.
What’s wrong with the tweet? He’s a social scientist, and some climate scientist wasted part of his day correcting him with a tweet that almost nobody read.
And, like i believe you care a twit about how the public debate looks.
Perhaps ypu should run for Congress in New York.where your erstwhile climate science nemesis, Jim Hansen, has already appeared on TV denouncing the Green New Deal
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be3XvEPY8MI&w=300&h=200%5D
Seitz,
“Your erstwhile climate nemesis, James Hansen …”
Please don’t lie. It is bad for your soul.
This is silly JCH. Richard Betts’ tweet is correct but he’s an outlier and was criticized by a lot of alarmists for this tweet.
Seitz, I also don’t see your point. It’s so couched in ambiguity as to be invisible. Even Hansen is smart enough to see the Green New Deal as juvenile nonsense. It’s the work of an ignorant bartender. It has no relevance to the post here.
Richard Betts is not an outlier.
JCH
What do you mean he is not an outlier in response to someone saying he is?
I have had the pleasure of meeting Richard Betts several times. I would say he represents a strong brand of British met office pragmatism whereas living so close to upland Dartmoor he would find it difficult to say this is the warmest period in the Holocene due to the evidence of habitation/farming there at high levels in the past, but he would be fairly certain we were having some sort of impact.
He certainly believes in a considerable degree of natural variability. I met up with Anthony Watts and Nic Lewis the day after they had dinner with Richard for which he received a lot of stick. They certainly found him a good scientist and very open to discussing the ins and outs of climate change.
He also posted something semi sympathetic to sceptics and was hauled over the coals by many, including Sou.
tonyb.
Richard Betts is a mainline consensus climate scientist. He and Michael E. Mann are in far far greater agreement than Betts would be with you.
“There is a high risk that the large magnitudes and high rates of climate change associated with low-mitigation climate scenarios (RCP4.5 and higher) will result within this century in abrupt and irreversible…”
I stopped reading IPCC assessment reports in 2007. I feel they should come with advice in big pink letters – ‘don’t panic’. The primary literature is replete with ideas of transitions to a hothouse Earth, new climate regimes in the Arctic, collapses of Atlantic overturning circulation, disintegration of Antarctic ice, drowning of coastlines, agricultural decline, biological collapse, floods, famine and pestilence. There is nothing new under the sun.
“The hydrologist H.E. Hurst, studying the long flow records of the Nile and other geophysical time series, was the first to observe a natural behaviour, named after him, related to multi-scale change, as well as its implications in engineering designs. Essentially, this behaviour manifests that long-term changes are much more frequent and intense than commonly perceived and, simultaneously, that the future states are much more uncertain and unpredictable on long time horizons than implied by standard approaches.” Dimitris Koutsoyiannis
On top of an Earth system with a tendency to frequent and intense change – driven by internal chaotic processes – there is a new variable. Our changes to Earth, oceans and atmosphere. It is no wonder at all that people are concerned.
Part quote from above: “– to observe a natural behaviour, — , related to multi-scale change, as well as its implications in engineering designs.”
Pls excuse my repeating. The earliest ‘engineering designs’ tell that story in no uncertain terms. They are man-made designs, technically simple to unravel, still fully functional today. They point to anomalies in some of the scientific ‘beliefs’ on Earth behaviour that are undeniable.
The ‘engineering designs’ indicate that Earth changes happened before, repeatedly. Home sapience is still here, yet minus that ‘ancient sapience’.
https://i.imgur.com/XhcFcDB.png
https://i.imgur.com/6NHqOWg.png
Who said this?
https://i.imgur.com/Cgh6ypK.png
“‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ Ocasio-Cortez says…”
I am confused.
Gee, maybe somebody corrected AOC.
You mean correct her, when she didn’t say something. Assume she didn’t say something. He’s then correcting somebody else. We can’t agree on what Betts said. We can agree what she said. What does the world ends mean to you?
Dr. Curry, Hoping you might have seen this, from Powerline blog:
POSTED ON MAY 7, 2019 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ENERGY POLICY BATTLING OVER BATTERIES
“Green” advocates aspire to power the entire U.S. electrical system with wind and solar energy. How are they going to do that, given that wind turbines produce electricity only around 40% of the time, and solar panels produce electricity, in most areas, less than 25% of the time? The truthful answer is that whenever utilities build (or contract with) a wind farm or a solar installation, they also build a natural gas plant to provide electricity during the majority of the time when the “green” resources are idle. This is why wind and solar energy, unlike nuclear power, actually lock us into fossil fuel use for the indefinite future.
Of course, green power advocates don’t admit that they plan on using natural gas forever. They hold out hope that electricity produced by wind and solar facilities will be stored in batteries–giant ones, I assume–so that it can be used when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. No such batteries exist, of course, which is why they are not already in use. And any existing or foreseeable battery technology would rely on vast amounts of lithium, which must be mined.
Currently, the Chinese are “rush[ing] to dominate the global supply of lithium.” We do have lithium deposits in the United States, notably in the Panamint Valley of California. The Los Angeles Times reports: “A war is brewing over lithium mining at the edge of Death Valley.”
Recently, the Australia-based firm Battery Mineral Resources Ltd. asked the federal government for permission to drill four exploratory wells to see if the hot, salty brine beneath the valley floor contains economically viable concentrations of lithium. …
The drilling request has generated strong opposition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife, who say the drilling project would be an initial step toward the creation of a full-scale lithium mining operation.
That is the idea, I suppose.
They say lithium extraction would bring industrial sprawl, large and unsightly drying ponds and threaten a fragile ecosystem that supports Nelson’s bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and the Panamint alligator lizard, among other species.
“A lithium mine would destroy these spectacular panoramas,” drilling opponent Tom Budlong said recently as he and fellow activists buzzed over the Panamint Valley in a chartered Ecoflight aircraft.
The Times story includes this photo of the “spectacular panoramas” of the Panamint Valley. Most would say that it is a desolate, godforsaken place. If we can’t mine here, where can we mine?
For dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists, the brewing war over lithium mining poses a moral dilemma as it seemingly pits them against efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Constructed with the world’s lightest metal, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries allow vehicles to run on power generated by wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams and other clean-energy sources. …
Drilling opponents also acknowledge that the burden of producing lithium should not just fall on nations with less restrictive health and safety regulations and environmental safeguards.
“It’s a tricky question,” said Lisa Belenky, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We shouldn’t export the sacrifices to Bolivia and Argentina, for example, which have massive lithium mines … We also think that Panamint Valley is not the right place for it.”
Currently there is one lithium mine in the United States. I think we can safely say that environmentalists will never approve of another one.
Does it matter? There is great demand for lithium used in existing technologies–phones, laptops, electric vehicles, and so on. But the idea that batteries of any foreseeable design will combine with wind turbines and solar panels to satisfy America’s need for electricity is a fantasy. For one thing, batteries of the requisite capacity would be prohibitively expensive. It has been calculated that, using the most advanced battery technology on the market, Tesla’s 100 MW, 129 MWh battery in use in South Australia, it would cost $133 billion to store the electricity needs of my state, Minnesota, for 24 hours. That is more than one-third of the state’s annual GDP.
Thus, for the foreseeable future, wind and solar energy will be useless add-ons to an already-sufficient electric grid. If you seriously think that CO2 emissions endanger the Earth’s future, as so many environmentalists at least claim to believe, the only rational course is a massive investment in nuclear power.
Bravo!
Climate Hysteria has hit the Federal Reserve. After pressure from Congressman Brian Schatz, Hawaii-D,the Federal Reserve issued a letter explaining they will take measures to prepare American financial institutions for severe weather events.
The Federal Reserve has been in existence since 1913. Exactly when were there not severe weather events? How many financial institutions make decisions based on what may or may not take place in 2100?
Apparently the first response by Powell was characterized as garbage by Congressman Shatz. He said the Federal Reserve was ignoring a “climate financial bubble.”
This is just a guess, but I doubt the climate financial bubble will explode with the suddenness or magnitude of the housing financial bubble.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/07/jerome-powell-fed-is-preparing-us-financial-system-for-climate-change.html?__source=msn%7Cmoney%7Cheadline%7Cstory%7C&par=msn
Too bad the IPCC and others around climate debate haven’t yet considered my findings on the subject. Climate variability has been proven to be a completely natural variability and remains within strict boundaries. Climate shall cool down again as solar irradiance and solar wind have started favouring it to. My papers are available for quite some time at ResearchGate. I have yet received very favorable notes from renowned scientists. Those papers are quite important as they look deep into solar irradiance mechanisms and they are quite original science. People around climate should start considering them.