Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Michael Bastasch at TheDailyCaller recently penned an amusing article titled the 25 Years of Predicting The Global Warming ‘Tipping Point’. It’s an enjoyable read, beginning:
For decades now, those concerned about global warming have been predicting the so-called “tipping point” — the point beyond which it’ll be too late to stave off catastrophic global warming.
Bastasch then lists and discusses “some of the ‘greatest’ predictions made by scientists, activists and politicians — most of which we’ve now passed,” including:
- 2015 is the ‘last effective opportunity’ to stop catastrophic warming
- President Barack Obama is the last chance to stop global warming
- The U.N.’s top climate scientist said in 2007 we only had four years to save the world
- Environmentalists warned in 2002 the world had a decade to go green
The entire article should make you smile. You can find it here.
Aw bless all those little tipping points. I think it would make a good drinking game – round and round the drinking circle, everyone has to think up a different excuse for a potential environmental tipping point. If someone can’t think of a new unique reason in 10 seconds, they pay a “tipping point” penalty – they need to down the shot, because they obviously aren’t drunk enough to function at the level of mental competence of a climate worrier.
I don’t think Monbiot actively wants millions to side of starvation.
He just doesn’t really care if they do.
Uh, in those 12 years, did 125 million people starve to death?
More than 125 million died from obesity.
None of those “predictions” are anything of the sort. As to know when ” the point beyond which it’ll be too late to stave off catastrophic global warming.” has been reached and when – would require a trip in a time machine to several decades hence and an analysis of climate warming to determine it.
Internal variability would mask that point (both warming and cooling via oceans) until the anthro warming signal beneath was plain.
And naturally as the world (well, read part of it) refuses to accept there is a problem then people have to keep repeating the warning.
There is built-in warming yet to appear due intertia in the system.
Just like other predictions … their verification is yet to be determined.
In my book I dont lose the bet until the horse has crossed the ine.
Sorry your “pause” aint it.
So in 1975 we were entering into an ice age and it warmed. In 1995 we were all going to burn yet it’s cooling…
Every prediction of “This Is the last chance” is repudiated by the next such prediction.
So all of these predictions are accepted as “failed”.
So they have made an unprecedented quantity of failed predictions! Now we are getting somewhere, finally at least something is unprecedented!
/s
They did it their way
I am guessing the wheat and grape growers from the medieval warm period are laughing in their Viking decor tombs right now.
The fact that all the predictions have failed is proof that they weren’t predictions in the first place.
The flexible standards of the warmunists never ceases to amaze me.
Sorry, your climate catastrohorse not only crossed the line, it died years ago. Yet you alarmists keep beating it. Amusing really. The trouble is that the actual climate refuses to go along with your fantasy climate.
not ‘failed ‘ merely ‘delayed’
Toneb,
” There is built-in warming yet to appear due intertia in the system. ”
Are you telling us that the global climate models have warming inertia coded into the software?
Or did you just make that up?
✔✔✔
“There is built-in warming yet to appear due intertia in the system.”
In other words, dispersed energy will re-concentrate itself, violating thermodynamics in the process? I don’t think so. Throwing around words like inertia doesn’t make it any more possible.
uh, well……..After the winter solstice the winter hemisphere continues to cool even though the sun putting more heat into that hemisphere so there is inertia built into the system.
“uh, well……..After the winter solstice the winter hemisphere continues to cool even though the sun putting more heat into that hemisphere so there is inertia built into the system.”
Uh, well, uh, Pat………you are completely wrong about a great number of things. You may have set a new record for the most wrong things being said and /or implied in one sentence.
If you ask nicely I will explain some of them to you.
Sophistry aside, there are actual reasons for things, and there are actual meanings for words.
In order to understand the world, one must understand actual reasons.
And in order to communicate, one must use the actual definitions of words.
When do you cross the finish line? 20 more years? 200 more years? 2000 more years?
Scott – the finish line is always “…when I retire and have made my fortune by scaring people about global warming.” Remember, for global warming and climate scare-mongering “scientists,” it’s ALL about the money. Always has been – always will be.
Has anyone done a lagged regression on the relationship between government funding of climate research and the number studies claiming gloom and doom due to AGW? Or maybe a path model is appropriate, where you include government funding, changes in atmospheric CO2, change in global temperature, and number of stories of gloom and doom by major news outlets. Are predictions of and reports about doom and gloom leading or trailing indicators of funding, and are global climate metrics related, in any predictable way, to the number of stories, (my guess is total independence)…
Government funding is not the issue. It’s government employment at levels out of the public eye that are being staffed by advocacy groups.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” –Nils Bohr
Pointman
Prediction is very difficult in climate “science”, especially if it is about the past.
(with government run surface data sets)
I thought that was from Yoggi Beara.
Yoggi Bearas are extinct due to Climate Change.
BooBoo is so sad.
Boo Hoo even more so!
Auto
The end is definitely coming in 20-30 years MAX… for me.
Based on averages and not taking into account my bad habits and risky behavior (:)), the end of the world for me is 20-30 years out at maximum. I will likely be dead by 2045, and dissolved back into the earth.
So speculation about the end times being near does not scare me. I’ve come to terms with it.
Apres moi, le deluge.
Furthermore, young people think they are immortal so to speak. They may, in fact, worry about the planet 100 years from now, especially if the likes of Ray Kurtzweil get their way.
So what do we leave behind as a legacy?
The socialists have spent the legacy of the next 5 generations so, they will be impoverished. Sorry about that, but I did my best to warn ya. It is your bed now so ya better get used to lying in it.
The selfish excess of the boomers multiplied by the bizarre set of priorities adopted by a fiscally inept generation x, y, z (green policies) will yield excruciating economic stress. Combined with militarism from the middle east, and the inevitable WW3, I believe the green movement will die a natural death in about 20- 30 years. I hope I miss it. It will be hell on earth.
I did try to talk reason with the children of the selfish boomers etc, but they are in fairy land. They live in a post golden era world of materialism, personal excess, political leftism and self loathing, valueless, mediocrity. Imagine them trying to stand up to radical Islam. Really… it is over already.
So wrt environmental catastrophes, they are the least of my concerns.
I just dislike all the BS science and lying… as a matter of principle.
It sure seems that way sometimes. But, like gauging the climate, we are hampered in our outlook by our relatively short timespans here on this Earth. And, as with the climate, there are long term repeating patterns in decadence and virtue, decay and renewal.
Imagine living in an era where the President is looked upon as a God who can do no wrong by a large segment of the population, appealing to their sense of grievance and envy, and promising them a free lunch. He circumvents the Constitution at every available opportunity. He stacks the Courts. He has the major media in his hip pocket. And, all the while those media organs sing his hosannas, the economy stumbles along in a daze. Foreign aggressors run rampant, believing us toothless and timid, and the storm clouds of war gather on the horizon.
I am describing, of course, the 1930’s and FDR, in case that wasn’t clear. If we could survive that SOB, we can survive the current straits. Not that there may not be a lot of pain along the way.
Bart… You got me with that rim-shot “I am describing, of course, the 1930’s and FDR”.. Good one. I better go shopping for a nice remote grave site, one that the radical Islamics won’t find and destroy when they march through here. I am from dust, and unto dust I shall return.
I thought we were living in such times.
BTW Bart, you ignore the fact that little if any of the damage done to the US by FDR was ever repaired and much more damage has been done since.
” Imagine them trying to stand up to radical Islam.”
Radical Islam has one problem: No weapons.
The few weapons they get they get from helpful well-known 3 letter agencies (or 2-letter-one-number agencies starting with an M, or a certain 6 letter agency starting with an M.) for performing as told.
Otherwise, it’s Machetes and a few AK 47s.
DirkH
A few hundred million AK-47’s. A couple thousand tanks, a couple tens of thousands of rockets – already shot at Israel, more on the way. A few billion rounds of Ak-47 bullets. All courtesy of your friends and neighbors in the USSR/Russia … and their allies.
” All courtesy of your friends and neighbors in the USSR/Russia … and their allies.”
What? The “USSR/Russia” (make up your mind please) moved all those manpads from Benghazi to Syria?
Great, Paul Westhaver. Makes my day. Hans
CO2, the life-giving gas, not “Carbon Pollution”. A Limerick – and explanation.
What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?
A sinister, evil collusion?
CO2, it is clean,
Makes for growth, makes it green,
A transfer of wealth, a solution.
Let me first state I am serious about this Limerick. It is not even tongue in cheek. I am an engineer by training and look at the earth as a “living” organism that responds to changes in its environment.
First, the increase in CO2 concentration itself and how nature responds to it.
Second, the effect it has on the earth’s temperature and all its consequences, and finally
Third, the acidification of the oceans. http://lenbilen.com/2014/02/22/co2-the-life-giving-gas-not-carbon-pollution-a-limerick-and-explanation/
Hey, I have a limerick too!
” There once was a boy from Nantucket
Who had a…oh…wait…
I guess I better not tell that one.
OK, this one then:
“A red headed lass from Regina
Said she needed to…um…hmmm.
Yeesh.
Never mind.
You suffer from anthropogenic Limerick pollution. This is how it used to be (around 1924):
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept all of his cash in a bucket,
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
—Princeton Tiger
But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.
—Chicago Tribune
Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,
Where he still held the cash as an asset,
But Nan and the man
Stole the money and ran,
And as for the bucket, Manhasset.
—Exchange
Of this story we hear from Nantucket,
About the mysterious loss of a bucket,
We are sorry for Nan,
As well as the man—
The cash and the bucket, Pawtucket.
—Pawtucket Times
Have we reached the tipping point of tipping points?
Is someone who debunks predictions of catastrophic disaster a de-nigh-er?
Neil Degrasse was big on tipping points and melting permafrost in his docu. Why would somebody with such scientific accreditation star in a climate change propaganda film? Is it simply for the money or is is for the money and politics? or does this man really believe what he says in his docu?
2 options:
(1) He trusted the “settled science” without looking into it very much.
(2) Tyson is an advocate for expanding the operations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is one of the main beneficiaries of the government-funded climate-study research dollars. Follow the $$$$$$.
NASA seems to be highly corrupted on this issue.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
And the public still believe and endorse this unsupportable political agenda? Because 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is causing dangerous climate changes? Anyone capable of researching the internet can see the nonsense that is being thrust on us.
Apparently they do not wish to see!
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Let’s compress 365 million years (less than a tenth of the age of the Earth) into one yea, so that 1 day represents a million years. Dinosaurs died out about the 1st November. The last Ice Age ended 15 minutes before midnight on New Years Eve. The medieval warm period started 90 seconds before midnight. We have climate records going back to 13 seconds before midnight; we have detailed global temperate records 3 seconds before midnight on New Years Eve.
Making predictions about extremes of climate based on the information we have is like taking a random 13 second period out of a single years temperature history for New York and claiming that it is “the optimal temperature” and claiming that an deviation from this optimal temperature we result in all sorts of catastrophes .
That’s the sort of thing that turned me into a sceptic. Disaster was always 5 years away. Time went on and the future disaster was still 5 years away and bigger and badder than ever.
After a few years of this, the alarm sounded on my bullshit detector and I did some serious reading. I was very surprised by what I found.
They won’t pull the wool over my eyes again.
I thought the tipping point was the last shot of whiskey an inebriated person had before falling off the bar stool.
No…the tipping point is when the bartender calls, “Time gentlemen, please…”
According to the greens, we should have been dead years ago, many times over.
So stop fretting and start celebrating life.
“Remember the nineties, when we we’re put in a panic;
Global warming was coming, it would all get quite manic.
The temperatures would rise like never before,
Doom and disaster for us all, of that they were sure…..”
Read more: http://wp.me/p3KQlH-6X
Dooms Day cults are fascinating studies in human behavior. Typically, the cult leader needs to make a prediction as to when the world will end in order to galvanize the cult. I mean, who’s going to join a cult where the leader’s message is “repent! The end is bound to happen at some point.” So the trick is to specify an end date that is not too far distant to make people feel a sense of urgency. A lot of times, these cults fizzle out long before the specified expiration date of humanity. But occasionally, a cult leader can keep things going all the way through the specified date.
I think what’s fascinating is what happens next. Sometimes these things end tragically when a true mad man is involved. But more often, the cults are led by harmless nuts or fraudsters.
The retelling of the “Marian Keech” cult in the book “When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World” provides an example.
From Wilipedia —
Normally after the end date passes without incident, the followers become disillusioned and wander off. With CAGW, the cult leaders have figured out a cleaver device. After their predictions of doom fail, they reset it and simply tell the followers, “we now have better and more precise methods and our level of certainty is now higher than ever — this is how science works”. Never mind that the original claim was made with provisos of great and overwhelming scientific certainty. Or, in the case of the Himalayan Glaciers, when someone pointed out that it was physically impossible for them to melt by 2037 based on a calculation of the heat energy needed, they simply said, “oh, that was a typo”. Never mind that the cult leaders had promoted the 2037 end date aggressively and widely with press releases and media interviews, but somehow didn’t take note of the “typo” as they repeatedly stated it with great certainty. Its amazing to me that the CAGW cult followers simply accept these explanation without a critical thought.
“Repent! The end is bound to happen at some point.” Too funny.
Similar to the person who refuses to believe their spouse cheated on them, regardless of the evidence, CAGW followers cannot accept an authority they have placed their faith and identity would be dishonest to them.
In theology, and perhaps other fields of philosophical inquiry, this phenomenon is called “invincible ignorance”.
Hmmm… zippers and bra straps were discarded in preparation for the climax event? Sounds like it could be a fun cult to be a pet of!
In the run up to the jamboree in Paris these type of predictions will be falling from the sky like rains drops on wet day .
And the ‘best part’ is when they fail to turn up they can also claim that although it ‘has not ‘ it still ‘may ‘
Which works perfectly with the ‘heads you lose tails I win ‘ approach to ‘science’ they take.
well….
so it is too late to stop catastrophic warning;
to stop global warming,
to save the earth,
and to go green…
but may be it is not to late to save something else.
Thanks, Bob.
When I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, I was sure we had already lost the Earth. Poor planet, poor us.
Since then it has been a way up, the lies and misdirections have been peeling off.
This is the scientific process at work.
http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6007/941B100Z/posters/michael-shaw-waiting-for-godot-and-the-cable-guy-two-people-are-sitting-on-a-rock-an-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg
At first I read that as “Waiting for God”, which made me think that that could be long wait since Gods timescale operates at minimum on billions of years.
I don’t understand, Brother Bob. Surely, as what amounts to nothing has been done so far to avert AGW, and there is every sign that inaction will continue thru Dec. ’15, then the tipping point has already been crossed – temporal dimension semantics aside.
Let me illustrate; a car is driving towards an abyss at 200km/hr – on reaching a certain (tipping) point, even though the car has not yet gone over the edge, the Laws of physics dictate that there can only be one outcome.
Some may argue that we have not yet gone over the edge, but that the great geophysical experiment will run it’s course
Others will argue that the edge was never anything more than a marketing gimmick promoted by those who had need of ever larger amounts of other people’s money.
“Let me illustrate; a car is driving towards an abyss at 200km/hr”
Looking at temperatures of the troposphere measured by RSS and UAH over the last 18 years a better analogy might be a garden snail hurrying towards an abbyss a mile away.
Also, if natural variability is strong enough to compensate the almighty warming effect of dreaded CO2 which has risen relentlessly over those 18 years, why haven’t the great warmunist discoverers never foreseen it. Maybe because they’re charlatans?
Hint, knowing the definition of chaos and how it has been ignored by the warmunist discoverers gives quite some credence to the latter.
LOL, awesome analogy.
You are right, nothing has been done.
The entire political response such as carbon credits/taxes/trading merely redistributes where CO2 is emitted and does not curb emissions. The drive towards renewables such as solar and wind does not reduce CO2 emissions because of the intimitent nature of the beast and the need for conventional back up gereration.
The drive to biomeass actually increases CO2 emissions (due to the lower calorific value of biomass compared to coal or gas).
The only response that would result in a reduction in CO2 is either go nuclear, or cut off power altogether or say switch it off for 20 hours per day, or no power during summer, only during winter etc (on the basis that summer heat without aircon is an inconvenience, but winter cold without heating is death).
The reality is that there is no easy way to decarbonise. That should have been the end of the matter to any sensible person. The greens should have been given a choice, either agree to nuclear power or forget about it, and let the world adapt if CO2 induced warming becomes a problem.
Indeed, since there is no evidence that withstands scientific rigour that CO2 induces any let alone significant warming, and likewise no evidence that a warmer world would be a significant problem,
Adaption has always been the sensible policy. It covers all bases even the scenario where warming is a problem and that warming is not caused by CO2 but rather caused by natural causes whereas, the policy of mitigation does not deal with that scenario.
Adaption also covers the scenario where warming turns out to be beneficial, whereas the policy of mitigation (if eefective) would deprive the world of the benefit of warming (if warming turns out to be beneficial).
So in short, there has always been the wrong response, and a response that was always doomed to failure. Fortunately it appears that climate sensitivity if any at all is low, and warming is generally benefiical. So no end of the world problems even though a failed policy has been pursued. just an awful waste of money for which future generations will bear a heavy price.
“richard verney
May 6, 2015 at 12:05 am
…or cut off power altogether or say switch it off for 20 hours per day…”
I understand this is part of the energy policy being deployed in countries like the UK. Maybe not turning off power for 20 hours but shutting shop at 4pm rather than 7pm etc. There are plenty of countries around the world that experience this right now, mostly not as a result of deliberate action. And the poeple, while still paying grid connection fees to the power companies (Some state owned), live in misery.
+1
A simple and succinct overview of the present foolishness.
Is that a typo? Should it not read “tripping point”?
Sarc》
“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” Mr. Tisdale, as per Malcolm Gladwell’s definition we most certainly have reached that tipping point.
or “There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.”, name your favorite warmista media darling.
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
and here’s another one
“There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.”
If you want to imply that the warmunists have achieved to brainwash the whole population, forget it. I regularly talk to pure idiots. Involuntarily. Even though some of them are extremely in love with wind turbines (I’m in Germany), not one of them even dares to mention Global Warming for fear of becoming a laughing stock or boring anyone else stiff.
Might have been the Big Moral Panic of 2007 but that ship sailed. It’s the big yawner now.
I do not expect that any significant number of people under 55 or so have read Danté’s Divine Comedy, wherein he relegates the fates of those who had presumed to predict the future to the 8th circle of the Inferno, whith their heads turned backwards.
Nevertheless, the climate alarmists should have learned from the wondrous example of Paul Ehrlich, whose abysmal record at ‘forecasting’ has caused his academic career and credibility to predecease him by may years.
They have in fact learned very well the lessons Erlich has to teach. Be obstinate in your crackpot beliefs and you too can milk the system for a handsome income.