Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Christopher Reyer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the authors of a 2014 world bank publication “Turning down the heat: Confronting the new Climate Normal”, has claimed in an interview that economic collapse will ensure we never achieve global temperature rises of 6-8c – he expects the global economy to start to falter, after we pass 2c of warming.
According to Reyer (talking about the climate in the year 2100):
I guess it should be between three and four degrees hotter. We used to think that we were headed for +8°C, but that will never happen. We are not even on track for +6°C because economies will be collapsing long before we get there. We know that after +2°C, dangerous things start happening, and we start passing crucial tipping points, like the West Antarctica ice sheet collapse, which has reportedly already begun.
Reyer also has some doom laden predictions for the year 2050:
What will a two degrees warmer world, which we seem likely to inhabit by 2050, look like?
“Two degrees is not a picnic either. Imagine events like the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave which had repercussions on the global wheat market, and Hurricane Katrina, all of them happening simultaneously everywhere in the world.”
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/till-bruckner/climate-change-economy-gr_b_7056418.html
There are a few problems with these predictions. For starters, life thrived in Cretaceous period, which was around 4c warmer than today.
CO2 levels were around 1700ppm in the Cretaceous, 4x higher than today.
The Cretaceous lasted for 80 million years, so the 4c warmer, 1700ppm CO2 climate was a stable climate, by any reasonable measure. The ecosystem which gave birth to all those textbook pictures of tropical jungles and dinosaurs tramping about – that simply couldn’t have happened, in a world whose life support systems were on the brink of failure. In fact, the age of the dinosaurs didn’t fall, until a huge meteor struck the earth around 66 million years ago, and killed 3/4 of all living species.
The most productive regions of the world, food wise, are the tropics. Indonesia, with a land area of 1.9 million square kilometres, 1/5 the size of the USA, supports a population of 237 million people – many of whom survive by subsistence agriculture. If the USA had a similar climate to tropical Indonesia, it could potentially support a population of 1.8 billion people – even using the subsistence agriculture employed by many Indonesians.
Suggesting that a 4c warmer world would be a dying world of broken eco-systems and failed nations seems utterly implausible. As the Cretaceous period proves beyond reasonable doubt, as the global experience of tropical agriculture demonstrates, warm climates are incredibly abundant and supportive of living ecosystems, and humans, who evolved in the hottest climate on Earth, are well able to thrive in such environments.
Would returning CO2 to 1700ppm even cause a 4c rise in temperature? This seems doubtful to me, because the geography and geology of the modern world is different to the Cretaceous. The rise of the Himalayas, and the formation of the Antarctic circumpolar current, have consolidated our brutally cold Quaternary climate of frequent glaciations. I suspect it would take a lot more than 1700ppm to overcome these geological disadvantages, and restore a more benevolent climate, than our current ice age prone Quaternary.
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Alarmists are admitted misanthropes. This is exactly what they desire, so they write about it.
“A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior … a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy” (Wiki).
So in other words, they have to kill us to save us. It follows the theme of the Matrix and I-Robot.
more likely:
Claim: Global warming will prevent catastrophic Economic collapse
Well, somebody has just won a rare “daily double”:
The only academic crowd on the planet with a poorer record of prediction than “climate science” are the economists.
Congratulations to whoever did this research.
Whoopee!! a hotter World is a good World for the plants and stuff. The surf will be up too, by several 10’s of metres!!
Only ten’s of meters?? And I was looking forward to some close ocean beach here in Oklahoma.
With USGS researching all of our recent OK earthquakes and finding all kinds of faults which have been dormant for millions of years… beachfront property in El Reno- oh no!
(Will we still have chicken fried steak?)
listening to: “A Hard Rain’s A Fixin’ To Fall”- Bob Drillin’
(Will we still have chicken fried steak?)
Hay-ill Yes!
10’s of centimeters
What the elitists do not understand is should there be a major economic collapse, they would be killed for their food and other resources.
They expect to be safe in “gun free zones.”
Those they hire as guards, will be the first to turn on them.
I have sent him a one word email – Dummkopf!
So his guy expects there will be a 2C rise in the average global temperature over the next 35 years.
Well let’s see how well that one pans out hey!. l mean it all been going according to plan so far this century.
l mean “this”
Not only the atmosphere either – on the fish and chip thread link I posted, the BBC are pushing scientists quotes saying that the seas, well at least the North Sea, will be up by 2 degrees C in 20 – 30 years.
Apparently, flat fish are really in for it. I guess they can’t swim fast enough.
But they will anyway……, just for the Halibut. Get it? Flat fish.
2 more degrees C is going to cause all that? Hasn’t the temperature already gone up by about 1C since 1880? So, we should have already experienced about one-third of the additional catastrophes that we can expect. All those coastal villages of 1880 have long gone underwater. People a century ago never died from heat. Hurricanes were rare and only raised the waves enough to splash over toddler’s knees as they played in the surf. \sarc
(BTW, years for the five deadliest US Hurricanes: 1893,1893, 1900,1928, 2005)
Of course, before then people had the sense not to live on a beach.
Eric Worrall says, “There are a few problems with these predictions. For starters, life thrived in Cretaceous period, which was around 4c warmer than today.”
Cretaceous prosperity, longevity and well-being may not have been solely because of the warmer weather. Perhaps it had something to do with higher intelligence.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/d7/d7c5d384cb2999aee65a26ba021a919bc78fccf812661eca1778ae0f0c8154b7.jpg
Very interesting way of letting reader to think who has the intelligence of a clam.
i agree with you and all you other clams
Come on now! You all didn’t get the memo, humans are plague on the planet! I have been waiting for the world to end for quite a few years now, I’m sure it’s bound to happen sooner or later. Economic based destruction would do the trick, I’m sure but fire and ice are far more biblical.
———————————
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert frost
This might do it:
“The global derivatives bubble is now 20 percent bigger than it was just before the last great financial crisis struck in 2008. It is a financial bubble far larger than anything the world has ever seen, and when it finally bursts it is going to be a complete and utter nightmare for the financial system of the planet. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the total notional value of derivatives contracts around the world has ballooned to an astounding 710 trillion dollars ($710,000,000,000,000). Other estimates put the grand total well over a quadrillion dollars.This derivatives bubble is a “sword of Damocles” that is hanging over the global economy by a thread day after day, month after month, year after year. At some point that thread is going to break, the bubble is going to burst, and then all hell is going to break loose.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-size-of-the-derivatives-bubble-hanging-over-the-global-economy-hits-a-record-high/5384096
the writer, Till Bruckner, is with Transparify:
Transprify: Our Team
We are part of the On Think Tanks Labs, a collection of innovative ventures in policy research
http://www.transparify.org/our-team/
from About Our Own Transparency: Our project is funded entirely by the Think Tank Fund of the Open Society Foundations (George Soros), and has a total volume of $39,834.
not a lot of money, but amusing nonetheless given:
2014: Washington Free Beacon: Soros-Funded Study Ranks Soros Last in Transparency
Liberal billionaire George Soros’ foundation is among the most opaque think tanks in the country, according to a study funded by that foundation.
The study, by a group called Transparify, ranked 35 U.S. think tanks based on the amount of financial information that they make publicly available.
Soros’ Open Society Foundations rank dead last, earning zero stars out of a possible five.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/soros-funded-study-ranks-soros-last-in-transparency/
Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Economic collapse right there.
“…electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”
And more people dependent on government help. It seems to be a common theme.
Yes indeed, and when the present six billion plus population mostly burn wood for warmth, what will that to for both particulates, and CO2?
Germany has recently increased its use of coal rather than natural gas due to anti-fracking legislation’s increase in the cost of propane.
Looked at your health care costs lately? And it is becoming apparent that is all we have is health insurance in name only. Actually health care is becoming none existent. You have an emergency? We can make an appointment, in 4 months. Think VA, except on a national scale.
If they are promising higher electric rates, we won’t have electricity. We’ll be back in the stone age. Based on the stunning success of health care. (Success: based on what you want to achieve)
What it this a new PR term? “Climate Normal”
The setbacks that Reyer claims negatively affected the world economy have not prevented the world economy to continue growing. We are all wealthier than a decade ago.
It is always bizarre to read that, ultimately, the fundamental complain comes down to the lack of perfection of capitalist societies. Critical advances continue to take place yet they are systematically discarded because problems remain to be solved or because the solutions provided are not perfectly fitting.
The industrial revolution destroyed the environment wherever it took place. Nonetheless, it has resulted in a degree of collective wealth unparalleled in human history which, among other things, has resulted in an environmental restoration that poorer countries can only dream off.
I would not hesitate for a second to temporarily sacrifice the environment of the poorer nations so that those people can eventually provide themselves with the standard of living we all enjoy in the first world.
Well I don’t think I have ever been able to say I was wealthier than I was a decade earlier.
The government keeps inflating the currency so that money isn’t worth as much any more, yet my total tax rate on a dollar earned has never ever gone down. Right now, at least 65 cents of every raw dollar goes in total taxation by Federal, State, Local, sales, excise etc etc. A good deal of what I earn is taxed at least twice.
And the inflation has not been inconsequential.
I can still buy the same meat pies that I used to buy for lunch when I was going to grade school. And they cost more than 100 times the price that I used to pay for the very same construction pie, and size.
Government tells us there is no inflation; its just that prices keep going up.
I had a lot more discretionary income when I was younger.
So no we aren’t all wealthier than we were.
Well if you made over a $100,000 in 1967 or after, you didn’t do too bad. But everyone below that gained little or lost ground on income corrected for inflation. Also remember that inflation computation formulas have been adjusted many times since 1980, always in the government’s favor of course, so those at the bottom really haven’t done well at all. Hedonics was added in to adjust the index for “quality” increases, so who knows what your personal inflation rate really is.
“Hedonics (or Hedonic quality adjustment) is a technique that is employed in the current CPI calculation across nearly all items which have changing product qualities. It is a method of adjusting prices whenever the characteristics of a product change due to innovation, or when a completely new product is introduced. In practice this approach entails decomposing an item into its constituent characteristics, estimating the value of the utility derived from each characteristic, and then using those value estimates to adjust prices.”
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/consumer_price_index
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2000/ref_quality_adj_2742.html
https://priceillusion.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/manipulating-the-consumer-price-index-hedonic-quality-adjustments/
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/census/household-incomes-mean-real.gif
@george e. smith
Astonishing work of self-delusion.
Even if you are barely 30 years old, the evolution of urban infrastructure alone would have appeared as a miracle to the child you were then. Add to that developments in telecommunications or bioengineering and science fiction becomes reality.
If you are 40 years or more, what are you smoking?
“The industrial revolution destroyed the environment wherever it took place.”
Reality says this is nonsense. Countries with high environmental quality also enjoy the most industrialized economies. Examples? The US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Prosperous cultures care more and can do more to protect their environment.
See Bangladesh and Madagascar as examples of poor nation degrading their environments. Wealth lets folks set aside land for nature.
I just read a presentation by Conoco Phillips on a test project they just completed in Canada. They tested new technology for energy recovery devices that would reduce their drilling costs by 11%. The technology reduced energy usage by 15% and as an unexpected consequence also reduced N0x emissions by 60%.
New technologies can provide solutions to problems that they weren’t even trying to solve as a byproduct. That particular pollutant is a pretty nasty one in my book and would be glad to see a lot less of it.
It really baffles the mind at times. Please read my entire comment.
And that original environment DESERVED to be destroyed. When people think of “Nature” they’re apt to think of pleasant parks with trees and grass., which are artificial, not natural. My birth state of Michigan was full of swamps and mosquitoes before humans “degraded” the environment by putting in drainage ditches eliminating most of those swamps.
I saw a picture a few years ago of the border area between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On the Haitian side, the forest had been stripped bare, the other side it was still thriving.
Well said, Brute. Neo-Marxists insist that “free-enterprise” has “failed” because it hasn’t satisfied “all want” as if people “wanting” things is somehow in itself “bad” and supposed to be finite.
When science and AGW funding collide …
cool video. I guess all those bang bang westerns where folk hid behind thin wood walls was not realistic.
What was the impervious material at the end that both hollow point and armor piercing round shattered against?
I doubt that he understand that empiri always wins over models….
The Alarmist never taken time to study GUS – the Garden Under Sandet – the farm under sand….. if they had, they wouldn’t have tried the ice melt hype at all. They had known from beginning that Empiric data show their so called thesis as wrong as can be – disapproven by facts…. 🙂
”Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3°C higher than today.” Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fa11 1997, sid 40
My own comments in one of my blogg articles is:
One of the most common pollens found during the excavation of the Garden of Sandet was Cyperaceae, if you read Linnaeus, the virutal Flora on net, Cyperaceae isn’t supposed to have existed at all in such environment. But then neither Bilberry, Sapsella bursa pastorais nor crowberry should have been able to make it. Then birch and willow not mentioned…those trees were common in Greenland during the earliest settling years and also during the later. In between it was even warmer….
—- from Äntligen efter 671 år blir det, Norah4you 1 december 2012 At last After 671 years…….
@MarkY.
Try Google Translate.
You can use it to translate the contents of a URL written in another language.
Finally! After 671 years, it becomes
I was lazy enough to do that! So don’t complain that I hadn’t time to read line by line and translate. Btw there are hugh differences in validity between words mostly used in England and English words used in US and Canada.
I wrote the lines in Swedish and used Google Translate – I will try not to lean on Google Translate as much as some do.
Well, at least this seems more logical than increased prostitution, restless fish, the earth will spin faster, no more red hair, etc.
Somehow, I believe the slew of ridiculous claims not only turns the public off, but they also realize it is just BS.
l would have thought that there would be a greater risk of economic collapse if the global temperature fell by 2C. After all the White House was blaming the weaker US economy on the cold winter.
norah4you,
As an arborist, I wish I could read your articles. Alas, English is my only language.
Are they translated?
Yet they’ve been blaming our poor economy on the last couple of brutal winters. e.g.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/16/news/economy/boston-blizzard-2015-cost-economy/
They want it both ways, as usual.
“Two degrees is not a picnic either. Imagine events like the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave which had repercussions on the global wheat market, and Hurricane Katrina, all of them happening simultaneously everywhere in the world.”
“simultaneously”,…. 7 years apart.
Christopher Reyer’s sciencey veneer is wearing off and all that is left is a misanthropic hunger for dead and suffering people.
The current IPCC requirements for Carbon Dioxide reduction is already a formula for economic collapse.
It does not take much imagination to predict what will happen if oil, gas, electricity and coal supplies are cut and their price goes sky high.
Every thing we need to live above subsistence level is affected by these CO2 producing essentials.
No need to wait for a non existent rise in global temperature.
See http://www.green-agenda.com/agenda21.html
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
“For starters, life thrived in Cretaceous period, which was around 4c warmer than today.
CO2 levels were around 1700ppm in the Cretaceous, 4x higher than today.”
You must of course realize that there were a completely different assortment of species for most of the Cretaceous than now, right? The species that lived in a 2C plus don’t exist now.
And your point is? Are you saying that not one species alive today could live with a 2C increase in the AVERAGE temp? The tropics then would be the same temp as the tropics today. The only thing that actually increases in temperature, increasing the average, is shorter milder winters.
Of course, this is completely ignoring the solar predictions of the next 20-30 years of global cooling as we move into solar cycle 25.
And the arctic would be – 38 in the dead of winter rather than – 40. Looks like I could move there to escape British Columbia’s hot and humid winters of the future.
California is on average about 10 degrees warmer than BC, yet many people vacation there because of the perfect climate.
We wouldnt even notice a 2 degree increase in average temps where I live, Besides a potentially longer growing season with bumper crops . Sounds more like something to celebrate than to fear.
Hey trafamadore, does the temp stay what it is right now all year where you live? No?
Ah the “We’re changing too fast!” argument.
Well life seemed to have got through the overnight calamity that wiped out the dinosaurs. Literally overnight if it was a meteorite collision. I’m highly sceptical we’re changing too fast. As was mentioned above, the change is actually to the average, mainly night time and winter minimums. Not exactly “killer” changes and instead changes that IMO would tend to drive natural selection.
And how exactly would we know we are changing faster than any time in earth history? There is no way we can know the rate of change over a 100 year span 50 million years ago. It’s pure nonsense to make that claim.
My chameleon’s ancestors are 60 million old. He’s doing fine thank you.
Tuatara are reptiles endemic to New Zealand and which, although resembling most lizards, are part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. The two species of tuatara are the only surviving members of their order, which flourished around 200 million years ago
Garbage. Humans live in middle of the Arabian peninsula where it gets to 55 degC regularly, humans live Greenland and northern Canada and Siberia where Temps drop to -40 degC. I reckon humans can adapt to a 2 degC change.
I’m a fan of global warming. Humans look better when lightly toasted by Sol. A couple of C warmer would be very welcome at my latitude.
The species that lived in a 2C plus don’t exist now
Duh. Species “exist” where it’s 2C (and alot more) warmer than where I’m at now. And what must happen to all those poor, helpless species that have to tolerate a 10-20C daily temp change?
Come on trafamadore, you’re supposed to be educated.
Every species that I know of lives in a range of temperatures nearly an order of magnitude greater than 2C.
At most, the species ranges will shift a few miles northward (or southward in the southern hemisphere.)
The 2003 and 2010 heatwaves have nothing to do with mean global temperature, it’s just short term solar effects during the event, like the even hotter 1540 European heatwave. I captured the intensity and timing of the 2010 European summer hot bursts in a forecast given in February. Forest fire smoke in Moscow also exacerbated near surface temperatures. (note I no longer consult for WA):
http://www.phonic.fm/2010/sunny-festival-times-ahead
It wasnt even all of Europe. It was centred around Paris, and it was just for the first few days of August. The rest of the year for Paris was well within normal range. Berlin during that same time was normal, so was Spain and the UK.
Not so…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northern_Hemisphere_summer_heat_waves
CET daily:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
Unfortunately I lost confidence in any data reported by Wiki or the Met office a long time ago. If I remember correctly, it was during the Modern Warm Period. Oh how I long for the warmth.
The only thing that you can depend on about Wikipedia is that it is usually available.
I just wrote a blog post about this: So yes, it was local around Paris, and Berlin was perfectly normal. WUWT did at least one post on this just after it happened.
http://libertycannonmedia.com/2015/04/09/global-warming-causing-record-high-temperatures/
J. Richard Wakefield
April 15, 2015 at 5:57 am
“I just wrote a blog post about this: So yes, it was local around Paris, and Berlin was perfectly normal.”
That is willful ignorance, the 2003 heatwave was not confined to Paris.
What these people dont get is that an increase of even 4C of the AVERAGE does not mean TMax is what increases. But that’s what they are basically saying. You can have summers the same as now, but shorter milder winters and get a 4C increase in the average, without additional heat waves. I fail to see how shorter milder winters, a longer growing season, less energy to heat our homes, is a bad thing…
This is just more failed predictions.
With world debt the way it’s going, the EU on the brink, the US with it’s 16 Trillion debt, there may indeed be an economic collapse, not caused by warmer climate, but because of failed socialist policies around the world.
But the MSM will say the economic collapse was caused by climate change we were warned in 2015.
Of course. Socialism never fails, if something goes wrong, it’s because people didnt enact socialism correctly… The mindset of the left is truly amazing… Deluded more like it.
I’ve talked to people who still claim that communism has never failed, because it was never tried. Russia, China, whatever, the revolution was usurped by bad men who corrupted the system for their own benefit.
This time it will work because the right people (meaning themselves) will be in charge.
You’re behind the times… We’re past $18T already and that is just the declared on-budget T-bills, notes, bonds. The full burden is north of $100T: http://www.usdebtclock.org.
This fellow is, I presume, of significant intelligence to be at the Potsdam Institute. So what mysterious (chemical?) agent has made him lose his mind and utter such drivel? I see a conspiracy here. (sarc)
CO2?
…and then there’s this, we’re just riding a short uptic right now
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png
We are way above that short uptick now…
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GISP210k480.png
spaatch,
Who fabricated that bogus chart? The same alarmist blog you got it from?
That blog says that sea levels are gonna get us! Rising fast! Polar ice is melting! And so on.
I love charts. I have thousands of climate charts saved. I can certainly spot a bogus chart like that.
You don’t even need a chart. By all accounts, both sides of the debate — probably 97% of everyone — agrees that global temperatures have fluctuated only around 0.7ºC over the past century ( your bogus chart claims 2º+).
Does 0.7º scare you? If so, what is it you want, exactly? A 0.00ºC change over the next century? Tell us: what is the best temperature for Planet Earth?
After seeing the Chicken Little chart you posted, I think you must know the answer to that question. So tell us the ideal temperature. I’ll wait, while you consider your answer…