Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
It is not often that I get called a ‘denialist’ and a ‘troll’ for the dark forces of Al Gore on the same day, but it does happen.
It’s because I am a ‘lukewarmer,’ one who believes that the physics of climate change are not by theselves controversial, but who believes that the sensitivity of the earth’s atmosphere to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is not yet known, but is likely to be lower than activists have claimed.
I suppose it should bother me that I am getting slammed at activist websites such as Only In It For the Gold, Deltoid and ThingsBreak because they think I don’t go far enough, and slammed again here and at The Air Vent because I go too far. Although I want to be liked as much as the next fellow, it doesn’t, because the reasons given for slamming me never seem to match up to the reality of what I write.
Critics here have focused on a lack of substance, so I’ll try and address that in this post. I’m a bit amused at one commenter who yesterday said I understood nothing of energy. (Shh! Don’t tell my clients–I just delivered a 400-page report on alternative energy, and they’ll be ticked off…)
And I’m equally amused that I have to acknowledge that Michael Tobis (at last) got one thing right in a comment yesterday, when he wrote that the real problem we face is coal–and Chinese coal at that. (More on that in a minute.)
The LukeWarmer’s Way
The operation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is one of the least controversial ideas in physics. The calculations that show a temperature rise of between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius if concentrations double is also widely accepted, including by all skeptic scientists without (AFAIK) exception.
We don’t know the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2, so the effects of feedbacks are not know. Activists think it is 3 degrees or higher. Contrarians think it is very low–1, maybe 2, tops, some thinking it is even lower.
If activists are right we have a very big problem on our hands. If contrarians are right we don’t. If both are wrong, there is a lukewarmer’s way.
If you believe that about 2 degrees of warming is headed our way this century, it will be a problem–probably not for those reading this, because of our fortunate geography, but for those in the developing world, who will have to add droughts, floods and heatwaves to their current long list of miseries. And it’s not really the size of the temperature rise that worries me, although having a 2 degree average means it will be greater in some places, and again, probably in the least fortunate locales. But it’s really the speed of change that will make it tough to adapt to.
So as a lukewarmer I believe that if there are ‘no regrets’ options, by which I mean things that make sense for us to do no matter what happens to the climate, that we should move quickly to do them in hopes that it will a) help prepare for whatever temperature rise comes our way and b) may serve in some small way to lessen the total temperature rise and its impacts.
The devil is in the details, obviously, and a bigger devil lies in who should decide and how much authority we give them. And we probably don’t get to pick and choose at the right level of detail.
For example, I have no problem with the EPA actively encouraging power plants to shift from old coal configurations to combined cycle natural gas. It’s not a permanent solution but it’s a quick win. But I do have a problem with them classing a school with 3 buses as a major emitter of CO2 and getting them involved in the bureaucratic nightmare of emission control.
I do not want Maurice Strong to control our approach to the world’s environmental issues. I’m reading his book right now (‘Where On Earth Are We Going?, with a foreward by Kofi Annan), and it is horribly bad, and horribly wrong. I’ll give it a full review later, but suffice it to say that I wouldn’t trust him with any responsibility at all.
But there are some in both government and science who I do trust. And I’m willing to work towards helping them get to where we need to go. If a panel composed of both Pielkes, Judith Curry, Mike Kelly, John Christy, Richard Lindzen and a few others were to work on proposed solution, I’d be pretty happy. I might be alone in my joy, I realize.
Another no regrets option I’d like to see is a review of building planning, permitting and insurance in areas that are already vulnerable to tropical storms and floods. We are in the silly situation right now where middle class workers in the Midwest are subsidizing rich people who rebuild ruined but rich second homes in Florida or Malibu Canyon.
We could also allow planes to use modern technology to choose the most fuel efficient routes, descend directly rather than in stages and unblock no-fly spaces left over from the Cold War.
I’d like to see greater use of X prizes to stimulate innovation, as it did with private spacecraft. I’d love to see prizes for utility level storage or better use of composites for distribution, or improvements to HVDC transmission. Prizes almost always work.
I’d like to see more base research done on superconductors, for example, and other technologies that are threatened with being trapped in the Valley of Investment Death.
And I don’t think that list of no regrets options is too controversial, either here or with the activists. (I’m sure I’ll hear about it if it is.)
But the real problem is counting to 3,000. Because a straight line extension of energy consumption gets us to 3,000 quads (quadrillion BTUs) by 2075, with 9.1 billion people developing at present trends and GDP growing at 3% per year.
If those 3,000 quads are supplied by burning coal, we’ll choke on the fumes, no matter what it does to temperatures. China has doubled its energy use since 2000, it may do so again by 2020, and 70% of their energy is provided by coal. The massive traffic jam into Beijing a couple of weeks ago, 90 miles long and lasting three or four days, was composed primarily of small trucks bringing coal into China’s capital. And the pollution and soot that is caused by China’s coal travels–to the Arctic, hastening ice melt and over the rest of the world, as small particulates and just general haze.
So I also advocate pushing for renewable and nuclear energy. I think we’ll need them both. Nuclear is ready to roll right now, but it’s expensive and time consuming to put up as many plants as we’re going to need. Solar is on the verge, and I’d like to give it an extra push. Natural gas is a temporary solution in terms of emissions, but at current prices we can’t ignore its advantages.
We also need to push piecemeal solutions that will not solve our problems by themselves, but are important contributors at a local level, such as geothermal power, or small hydroelectric and run-of-river installations.
No matter what you or I believe about climate change, we face an energy issue that we need to address today. Our coal plants are dramatically cleaner than they used to be. China’s are not. If we don’t want the air we breathe to taste of China’s coal, we need to work on better solutions.
And the worst of all possible worlds is where we don’t do the right thing on energy because we are at war with each other about climate change.
I’m a firm believer in markets, and I like free markets better than the other sort. I also think they work better with light regulation. I think it’s legitimate to nudge the energy market in the direction we want it to go, without giving the reins and the saddle to government bureaucracy. And I do think it can and probably will work.
So I’m not a ‘denialist.’ I’m not a ‘skeptic.’ I’m a lukewarmer–and I’m right.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Thomas Fuller
There would be no global warming without new technology. And that’s not because new technology uses so much energy.
It’s because new technology has allowed us to measure new phenomena, and old phenomena with radically more powerful tools.
Mike Smith gives us an example in his book ‘Warnings’, a great story about how technology addressed the warning system for U.S. tornadoes (and which is advertised here on the right hand column). He notes that many tornadoes that are called in to reporting centers today would never have been noticed before, thanks to a growing American population and the ubiquity of mobile telephones.
The same is more or less true of hurricanes. Before satellite coverage began in 1969, we really didn’t know exactly how many hurricanes actually happened in a given year, nor how strong they were. If they didn’t make landfall, they would only be catalogued if planes noticed and reported them, and they would only be measured if specially equipped planes basically flew through them and charted their strength.
It’s certainly also true of measurements of ice extent, volume and area, which would not be possible without satellite imagery.
New technology has had a radical effect on the time series of measurements made for extended periods before the technology was adopted. Sailors used to measure sea surface temperatures using a thermometer in a bucket lowered into the sea. When Argos buoys began providing a network of more accurate measurements, there was a break in the timeline. When surface stations converted to electronic thermocouples on a short leash, the adjustments required caused another break in the data series. (I guess readers here might know something about that already.) Scientists have worked hard to make adjustments to correct for the new sources of data, but the breaks are still pretty noticeable.
The sensible thing would be to give the new technologies time to develop an audited series of measurements long enough to determine trends, rather than grafting new data on top of older, less reliable series. But there are two objections to this: First, who’s to say another new measurement technology won’t come along and replace our brand new toys and resetting the clock to zero? Second, and of more concern, there is a whole scientific establishment out there saying we don’t have time to wait for a pristine data set. Some say we’ve already waited too long, others say that if we start today (and they really mean today), we just might avoid climate disaster.
And if you start to muse on the remarkable coincidence that warming apparently started at the same time as we got all this new-fangled technology, why that makes you a flat-earth denialist. Or something.
As it happens, while serving in the U.S. Navy I took sea surface temperatures with a thermometer in a bucket. There were not many detailed instructions involved. Should I have done it on the sunny side or the shady side? Nearer the pointy end of the ship (that’s technical talk) or the flat back end? How long was I supposed to leave the thermometer in the water?
I wouldn’t want to make momentous decisions based on the quality of data I retrieved from that thermometer, which wasn’t calibrated–I think the U.S.N. stock number was like 22, or some other low number indicating great antiquity. I much prefer what comes out of Argos.
But there are times I wish all those fancy instruments on the satellites were pointing at another planet.
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Being a father of a son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and is being successfully treated, I have to echo what Elizabeth (September 17, 2010 at 9:04 am) has stated. I do that in the strongest terms possible.
While what Richard Halle (September 17, 2010 at 11:42 a.m.) states may be true in the country which he lives, it certainly can’t be said to be the case for my son.
Only those who lives have been “touched” by schizophrena can truly understand how devastating, frustrating, and mis-represented this mental disease is.
I suspect that many of you have had interactions with people who have schizophrenia but are successfully being treated without you even knowing it.
I ask for greater sensitivity to the use of the words schizophrena and schizophrenic.
“I’m a lukewarmer–and I’m right.”
Kinda shoots that whole “open minded, looking at both sides of the issue” theory right in the ol’ bung hole, doesn’t it?
Mr. Fuller sounds like Barack Obama when he says “I can talk with anyone…” Sure he can, but his ideology dictates no consideration of alternative solutions, other than marxism and its dictates. Similarly, Thomas starts from the ideological perspective that CO2 is accepted as a significant green house gas that will drive global warming as CO2 concentration increases. Neither part of this contention is settled or accepted science. Neither the current CO2 atmospheric content nor the extent of global warming since the conclusion of the last ice age are unprecedented. Both have been much higher in the geologic past, without strong correlation.
It isn’t schizophrenic to deny these facts but neither does it reflect honest intelligence. It reflects a strongly held belief system, an ideology or a religion, that will not consider fundamental facts that challenge the belief system framework.
Hence, the smug assertion “I’m a (insert your favorite ideology) and I’m right!”
Your 1 to 2 degree warming supposedly accepted by all is a lot closer to 1 and only if net feedback is not negative.
Here is a real question though: Why would anyone presume that 1 or 2 or even several degrees of warming would be a net negative thing? That supposition certainly is not supported by anything we know about the history of life on Earth. Looking at the how much argument is almost missing the main point. Isn’t warmer better for any rationally believable amount of warmer?
Dr.Dave
What I find so fundamentally absurd is that warmists believe we have reached the pinnacle of technological innovation
The problem is that they think that “Science is Settled”, that there won’t be and there is not any new possible (or perhaps “allowed”) knowledge we can reach, but theirs is the “ultimate”.
All recent progress, as you wisely pointed out, it is and it has been “technological”, derived from engineering practice or from inventions, not from science as such. Science has dedicated itself as dark magic to cook the weirdest possible descriptions of nature, to extremes only dreamt by stoned science-fiction-horror movie writers.
Only forced by circumstances has managed to describe actual functioning of other peoples’ creations or inventions by heuristic equations, the more esoteric the better.
Fortunately human ingeuity still exists, as still exists a Farmers’ Almanac in the realm of weather/climate, or the real advances in actual science which currently appear here in WUWT. All the rest is psychopathic or chrematistic.
An Inquirer.
yup. Instead of taking action on matters in the US, people have chased the dream of a global treaty. To what end?
policy based on adaptive management would dictate that the US do the best it can to prevent,mitigate and adapt to the specific risks faced by the US. not spend over 20 years chasing a global solution.
The solution ( a global prevention of C02 emissions) has been chased long enough.
I hope this isn’t too late for the conversation. I’ve just been handed a brochure about some smart grid applications and data about the consumer for their viewing such as meter usage throughout the days of the billing cycle and they want my opinion on it. A co-worker was also asked the same. I threw in the trash after a cursory 5 second glance and stated firmly I was against it. Why, I was asked. Isn’t encouraging energy conservation a good thing? I responded with “We are tripping over a twenty to pick up a dime.”
People that wish to track their usage already do. Its called walking to your meter and reading the numbers. Wow what a strange concept. No licensing fees, software and hardware installation, no additional costs. Further, as a worker in a small electric utility, I’m aghast at how many people would willingly invite utilities into their home with our eyes firmly fixed on control of their appliances! I’ve no more business in your living room as I do in your bedroom. Moreover, were it not for the alarmism and regulatory hurdles, energy would be as cheap and plentiful as sand on a beach. One doesn’t fight lunacy by appeasement. One confronts the aggressive power grab. I don’t accept that we have to conserve. I don’t accept that the costs should be as high as it is. But with the quickened pace towards smart grid and their many various applications, energy providers must increase the cost of energy because of the technology costs. Its beyond me why people can’t see this. We don’t save anything! Think of the consumption of energy to produce things such as a windmill! The of the cost of energy the windmill produces! Think of the man hours consumed in creating the technology that allows me to run your A/C from my office! All of this still doesn’t equal the greatest cost. Your freedoms.
China is going Nuclear and Solar in a big way. Retiring old and inefficient power plants.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/biggest-solar-power-plant-set-china
They realize that the basis of “the good life” is cheap plentiful electricity.
Used to be like that in the U.S. in the old days. The lack of planning forsight is sad.
Dr. Dave says:
September 17, 2010 at 12:25 pm
What I find so fundamentally absurd is that warmists believe we have reached the pinnacle of technological innovation.
——
Your assertion doesn’t make sense. The warmist standpoint is to
introduce carbon taxes, for to create incentives for technological
innovation. You could perhaps accuse them of overestimating
the role of technological innovation …
Fuller wishes to engage the debate on the argument that CO2 level is a red herring on the larger question of energy demands going forward. That is, let’s not let CO2 levels drive the debate on the following premises: 1) The global population will increase; 2) Along with it demand for energy will increase. I think his premises are grounded in some solid empirical evidence.
Those of you who are nitpicking at the CO2 question are validating his argument and if you can’t get your minds to where he wants to have the debate then you open yourselves to well-deserved ridicule by those who understand where the debate needs to be.
I find that if the temperature moving average is one degree above average for a month or so then there has been a succession of exceptionally hot days; so that if it was certain that by using fossil fuels the temperature of the earth would rise by two degrees, then I would take a position of extreme advocacy against fossil fuel use.
I do not believe that the Earth’s climate is so sensitive to so-called greenhouse gases though. The fact that we are in a sequence of ice ages for the last 3 million years indicates that the climate is indeed in a sensitive state. However the “sudden” onset can only have been caused by continental drift, which means that the oceans are an essential part of the feedback loop, and CO2 is not implicated.
Even if it were, efforts to limit CO2 usage in particular countries is futile. The developed countries already have their power generation infrastructure constructed. Replacing this infrastructure is a waste of resources. Instead an international scheme should be implemented to help developing countries construct nuclear plants for their power generation infrastructure, with countries like Australia playing a key role in providing nuclear fuel and storing spent fuel.
As someone else commented – when you stand in the middle of the road, you are liable to get hit from both sides!
I appreciate your articles and comments. While I do not totally agree with you, that is more because my mind is not made up on the issue. I guess my brains are going to fall out since I am searching for the answers, and refuse to believe that we have them all already.
Peter Foster says:
September 17, 2010 at 11:32 am
” The problem is that there are already far too many people on the Earth. ”
But, yet Mr. Foster here you are using energy to send a post to this blog, intending to eat supper later maybe a snack before bed, and possibly a drive tomorrow. Mr. Foster, I think folks like you really mean “There are too many people lesser than myself here on earth.” Mr. Foster by your presence you demostrate you really don’t mean what you said.
[Borderline – please refrain from ad hominem ~ac]
Borderline – please refarin from ad hominem ~ac
Some commenters challenged me on my statement:
“No-one has ever produced a model with a sensitivity of 1°C or less that can reproduce the recent rise in global temperatures as well as reproducing historical and geological temperatures to a tolerable accuracy.”
Perhaps they could enlighten me where this has been described then?
Btw, Philip, I never proclaimed certainty, so you’re arguing a strawman there.
“The warmist standpoint is to introduce carbon taxes, for to create incentives for technological innovation.”
Absolute rubbish.
The incentive to invent a lower cost energy source is HUGE. I couldn’t possibly be larger and a carbon tax will do nothing to change it. When wind/solar/bio outcompetes fossil fuel, the market will immediately dictate a switchy.
The taxes artificially raise the price of fossil fuels above the price of alternative energy. The tax is simply the mechanism for forcing the economy to change from low cost to high cost energy; which, by the way, will leave us all worse off, at least from an economic point of view.
If you think CO2 is destroying the planet, then maybe this is an OK idea. But please don’t pretend the tax is to spur innovation/creativity.
Allen says:
September 17, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Fuller wishes to engage the debate on the argument that CO2 level is a red herring on the larger question of energy demands going forward. That is, let’s not let CO2 levels drive the debate on the following premises: 1) The global population will increase; 2) Along with it demand for energy will increase. I think his premises are grounded in some solid empirical evidence.
Those of you who are nitpicking at the CO2 question are validating his argument and if you can’t get your minds to where he wants to have the debate then you open yourselves to well-deserved ridicule by those who understand where the debate needs to be.
*****************
precisely. I will add this. If you want to have ANY say in how the problem will or wont be dealt with, you dont win any credibility points by denying basic physics.
its far more effective to say “granted, C02 may cause problems, lets move on nuclear” than it is to say “You can’t prove C02 is a problem, lets move forward on nuclear”
THE major problem with the CO2 thesis is it is all focused on radiation physics. But the atmosphere is dominated by convective processes and water vapor. Major mismatch.
So reasonable thinking people certainly can look at the ‘CO2 as greenhouse gas’ thesis and say it’s broken on the face of it; since CO2 is not a glass barrier to convection, it’s just part of the megatons of mass flow from the surface to altitude where the heat radiates off to space.
Take just a moment to look at the three hurricanes in the Atlantic right now. Then ask: How effective is CO2 at blocking them from moving heat from the ocean to the upper atmosphere?
CO2 is a blind alley as it ignores the dominant forces in the sky. And no, we don’t need to do anything about it and we don’t need to have governments making decisions that ought to be made by energy companies. The choice of fuels and systems is none of the governments business.
I am glad to see people pick up my meme that the precautionary principle is just Pascal’s wager.
Philip Thomas says:
“You did not comment on your financial interests in promoting green technology.
Your CV and past employment suggests work in the promotion of private green technology companies. Do you benefit financially from marketing green technology? Can I again raise my last question.
“How can you satisfy me that your series of articles are not part of a new marketing campaign?”
****************************
Tom does market RESEARCH. sheesh do you even understand what that job is and how it differs from campaign marketing..
Wow.
Fuller is a nincompoop, but at WUWT, he is attacked by nincompoops orders of magnitude more ignorant than himself.
Thus we are privileged to view the almost infinitely regressing layers of stupid comprising climate science denial. Truly an appalling spectacle, but par for WUWT, I suppose.
[mod: Pee-Wee’s playhouse just exploded! the word of the day is “nincompoop”]
Amino Acids in Meteorites says “I knew about the traffic jam. I did not know it “was composed primarily of small trucks bringing coal into China’s capital”. This is what I want proof of.“.
Well, three photos might not be the complete proof you seek, but here are the first three photos from a search for “beijing massive traffic jam photo” :
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bjjafter40.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/traffic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bjjafter40.com/%3Fp%3D410&h=295&w=400&sz=48&tbnid=gzN4FHaIOsm2ZM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbeijing%2Bmassive%2Btraffic%2Bjam%2Bphoto&zoom=1&q=beijing+massive+traffic+jam+photo&hl=en&usg=__R4Lo5TPnyneHiAQVd53zDcMfIfY=&sa=X&ei=l-KTTPKjFY6lcdHytKQF&ved=0CB0Q9QEwAA
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.treehugger.com/traffic-jam-beijing.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/beijing-21-new-cars-per-day-welcomes-more.php&h=314&w=470&sz=48&tbnid=DLHm8loh1elkiM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbeijing%2Bmassive%2Btraffic%2Bjam%2Bphoto&zoom=1&q=beijing+massive+traffic+jam+photo&hl=en&usg=__5tW6EV7iXS2-7KLlNwjOar2v5GI=&sa=X&ei=l-KTTPKjFY6lcdHytKQF&ved=0CB8Q9QEwAQ
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.12news.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/traffic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.12news.us/china-traffic-jam.html&h=311&w=400&sz=61&tbnid=NHOH4NofpzvPtM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbeijing%2Bmassive%2Btraffic%2Bjam%2Bphoto&zoom=1&q=beijing+massive+traffic+jam+photo&hl=en&usg=__X78IfaBZ1JdtRc-GzMxsozeQjsA=&sa=X&ei=l-KTTPKjFY6lcdHytKQF&ved=0CCEQ9QEwAg
Number of vehicles positively identified as coal trucks : 0 (zero, nil, nada)
EM:
“THE major problem with the CO2 thesis is it is all focused on radiation physics. But the atmosphere is dominated by convective processes and water vapor. Major mismatch.”
sorry, look at the entire column form top to bottom
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/
“”” The LukeWarmer’s Way
The operation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is one of the least controversial ideas in physics. The calculations that show a temperature rise of between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius if concentrations double is also widely accepted, including by all skeptic scientists without (AFAIK) exception. “””
Well I presume that AFAIK is texting for “As Far As I Know”. So let’s just declare then that in fact you DO NOT know.
Well perhaps there’s a chance you could be right. Because I certainly am a Scientist; and in fact I am a Physicist; but then I realize I am NOT a skeptic. I’m quite certain; without any reservations that your conjecture is quite false. That being: “””The calculations that show a temperature rise of between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius if concentrations double “””
Well for a start, the IPCC says the number is 3 deg C; well +/- 50% or 1.5 to 4.5 deg C, or a 3:1 ratio, rather than a 2:1 that you claim is accepted almost universally.
By the way; Just WHAT TEMPERATURE is that that is supposed to increase by 1 to 2 deg C for a doubling of CO2.
The extreme range of Temperatures on earth goes from almost -90 deg C at Vostok Station to at least +60 deg C, and maybe as high as +90 deg C in the hottest tropical arid deserts; that is surface Temperatures of course which are the original source of whatever thermal radiation is captured by your CO2 which a lot of us certainly do agree with you is a greenhouse gas; at least in the way, that climate science refers to the greenhouse effect, even though real green houses don’t funtion that way.
And that range of Temperatures as sources for the LWIR radiation that activates the green house effect results in about an 11 to 1 or more range of Surface Radiant Emittances that supplies the greenhouse effect.
So clearly the Temperature increase of whatever depends on wherever the whatever is located on planet earth.
But you say that this 2:1 range of Temperature increase is “Calculated”. So why does it have a 2:1 range if it is calculated. You said this was well understood Physics so why is it 2:1 uncertain.
Perhaps you are aware of actual measured observations of this 1-2 deg C Temperature increase in whatever, wherever this doubling of CO2 took place. That would be useful information to pass on to us; because none of US have ever seen such data from actual measurments.
Well I for one, do agree that CO2 is a GHG; and that GHGs such as H2O for example, DO capture LWIR thermal radiation and create some warming of the local atmosphere where that absorption occurs. What happens next I am not so sure about; it depends on where you are in the atmosphere.
But so far in the last 600 million years or so, it has not resulted in anything catastrophic to life on earth; and it seems to have never driven the Temperature fo the entire planet above about +22 deg C.
But to get back to your worry wort fear thata couple or three degrees rise in Temperature is going to lead to disaster on earth; did I remeber to point out to you that on any ordinary northern Hemisphere midsummer day, you can find places on earth that can be as cold as -90 deg C (rarely) but -75 deg C routinely; or as hot as +60 deg C (surface) routinely and maybe +90 deg (rarely); and because of an argument by Galileo, Galilei, every possible Temperature within that 135 to 180 deg C range can be found somewhere on the earth at the same time.
And human beings live quite routinely in places where the Temperature can be in the +/- 55 deg C range.
So what was that you were saying about a 2-3 deg C change being a catastrophe ? You could do with a healthy dose of reality.
To some the glass is half full, to others half empty, consider the possibility of smaller glasses.
“The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.” – Bertrand Russell
It’s because I am a ‘lukewarmer,’ one who believes that the physics of climate change are not by theselves controversial,
As a general question: What level of cooling would be incompatible with physics as you know it? I.E. How much would the Earth have to cool before you’d say “That’s against the laws of physics”?
Mikael Pihlström says:
September 17, 2010 at 1:16 pm
“Your assertion doesn’t make sense. The warmist standpoint is to
introduce carbon taxes, for to create incentives for technological
innovation. You could perhaps accuse them of overestimating
the role of technological innovation …”
______________________________________________________
Man! If you actually believe this I have a unicorn ranch you might be interested in. If you think those tax monies will be spent on technological innovation you’re seriously deluded. Technological innovation does not require subsidy by means of confiscatory taxes. Technological innovation proceeds quite nicely without government intervention. In fact, it flourishes in the lack of government intervention. Please…name ONE thing that government does better than the private sector. Hell, government doesn’t even win on “military” anymore.
One has to stupidly assume government (any government) would levy taxes and then use 100% of those taxes to fund technology. Seeing as this has never happened in the history of mankind I think we can rule out this particular fairy tale. Then we have to assume that this “free” (taxpayer) money would be spent efficiently on the development of new technology. One has only to look at the BILLIONS that have been utterly squandered on “climate change” to know that government should get out of the R&D business.