This is from MTR 1377 radio today. Our regular feature, “Quote of the Week” just doesn’t work here. Neither does decade or century. No, a whole new category all by itself is reserved for this quote from the newly appointed Climate Commissioner of Australia, Tim Flannery, noted zoologist and author of the book The Weather Makers.
Here it is, brace yourself:
If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.
Lest you think that is an errant remark out of context, here’s the follow up from Flannery:
Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly.
Crikey! So much for the “think of the grandchildren” argument used by Dr. James Hansen.
Read the entire transcript and listen to the audio here
h/t to Lawrie Ayres and Scarlet Pumpernickel
I think that I have a last worked it out.
I thought that the whole world had gone mad.
I now realise that I have caught a serious virus.
I am unconcious and having a terrible nightmare.
I will soon wake up and the world will be rational again.
All that global waaaaaaaaaarming ho-ha wi is just part of my horrible dream.
That would be ~ 800 years ago
Flannery’s problem is he’s speaking from the CAGW hymn sheet when it’s based on incorrect science. It claims CO2-AGW is hidden by higher albedo of polluted clouds [smaller droplets] but that’s wrong, easily proved because as any glider pilot knows the clouds with highest albedo are rain clouds – large droplets.
So, the CAGW hypothesis was the result of a mistaken physics [from Sagan]. You correct it by adding direct backscattering predicted by Mie theory. The problem the consensus has is that pollution switches this second optical process off so it’s another AGW and better explains palaeo-climate than CO2-GW with its c. 800 year delay.
Because the process is self-limiting [albedo asymptotes to about 0.52], it also explains the recent increase of ocean heat content and ‘Trenberth’s missing heat’ – As Asia industrialised, increasing aerosol pollution led to low level tropical clouds passing more energy then this AGW switched off.
In time, the likes of Flannery will be forced to accept they were misled. The reality is that CO2-AGW is much lower than claimed and could well be net zero as predicted by Miskolczi. All that was needed was a second AGW, now discovered!
It’s been clear for a long time that the ‘Anglosphere’ is the Heart of Darkness. Not just Gaia, but every other variety of self-sabotaging idiocy. Other Euro countries are pulling out of the death spiral, re-learning how to protect their own interests against various external forces, groups and ideologies. France is leading the way upward.
Only the English-speaking world continues to surrender to every enemy. In the specific case of Gaia-worship, the Calvinist influence is obvious, but that’s not the whole story.
Poor Tim. He is not a bad person, he’s been seduced by fame but he still can lapse into honesty, as this quote demonstrates. However, it is still possible that the alarmists are right and he is simply stating how truly #$#&^% we are. I believe not and that the evidence of the last 200 years of warming suggests that life on Earth is enjoying the trend, whatever the cause but we all must admit that we do not know what the outcome of the this little experiment in changing the composition of our atmospheric gases will be. By all means let us ridicule cynical government policies like my federal government’s pointless carbon tax by pointing out the even the initiates like Flannery admit it won’t help in any way but let’s not pretend we know something we don’t. Humility is the only appropriate response to the spectacle of this remarkable universe.
I don’t know what you are complaining about. He is correct. If we cut emissions by 100% today, this will have zero impact on the temperature in 1,000 years time.
What’s wrong about that statement?
Anthony, an excellent nomination! Until you have had experience with a fair dinkum Antipodean idiot such as Tim Flannery, you have no idea of what you have missed. The folklore of the Australian and New Zealand bush was built around the monumentally ignorant individuals, mostly ‘new chums’ who thought they knew it all, who became the butt of everyday humour. Sadly, much of this folkloric humour which has been lost, swept away by a tide of PC correctness. Tim Flannery is living proof the type still exists.
Mike Lorrey, I think your’e on to something. The Warmist beliefs seem to be an echo of religious guilt with a good dollop of the ancient Puritan Witchfinder tactics in the mix; they can’t believe how great the world is, how clean the air is and how wonderful each sunrise and sunset is, so because they are generally having a Good Time it’s all going to come crashing down and ITS ALL OUR FAULT. CO2 has replaced Satan, and much of Mankind carries on with their ridiculous unevolved and primitive beliefs.
To read some really scary stuff, grab some books that describe the Puritan era in the UK – they were truly scary buggers who just knew the Devil was everywhere.
Bolt keep missing opportunity to ask anyone claiming that “all the reputable scientists agree on global warming and CO2” – to name top 10 of those reputable scientists and specify what exactly is their scientific field and where does their reputation come from?
Flannery is the master of Flim-Flam. He believes it all; but then he’s paid $750k to do so.
Tim Flanery is a goose and his quote of the week will not be reported in any Australian news meda because thay are all left wing and support labour very sad
Meanwhile in the real world the biosphere is booming while temperature has started to drop. How does this chap think co2 went down in the past from much higher levels?
The warmists are going to ask “what’s the evidence for this?” What peer reviewed paper has this come from?
Anthony,
An Ice Age cuts emissions quicker than we can.
Hopefully, the AGW cult will not last as long as the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834).
The idiocy of this guy’s remarks should help speed up the cult’s decline, the problem is there are far too many in the lumpen proletariat who are only too happy to blindly follow the baseless scaremongering of bad science, cults and religions.
But, but, but, but, hasn’t the planet has stopped warming, according Phil Jones, so what is Flannery thinking?
So if stopping all CO2 emissions globally will not “tackle global warming” and temperatures are going to keep on arisin, then I am gonna go out and buy a big 4×4, because obviously any attempt at tackling climate change is utterly futile and a waste of effort, time, money and energy.
There is no way in hell that the industrialised nations are going to voluntarily return literally to a technological stone age. So whatever we do now makes absolutely NO difference at all. So why keep on trying to tackle something that (a) (if the warmists are wrong, might not be a problem at all, or(b) if they are right, we literally cannot do anything about anyway?
So why are politicians still planning on bankrupting so much of the industrial world over the next 50 years with useless, pointless, futile carbon targets when they will not make any difference at all?
Mike Borgelt: ‘Now we have the label for these folks: “carbophobes”.’
I prefer “misanthracists” or “anthracophobes” for carbon-haters.
I think we need to start an archive of Flanneryism’s…
They are a bit like Bushisms but not so funny or intelligent…
Max Hugoson, I don’t know where you picked up that quote, but it is the sort of thing the present ‘new religion’ of the Church of AGW is throwing into debates. In part it is an effort to discredit religion, in particular Christianity and it is as false as the claim that the ‘Church’ opposed Darwin. That was a myth ‘spun’ by Huxley, a prominent anti-church campaigner in his time who re-interpretted letters and debates between theologians and Darwin to misrepresent their legitimate challenge to Darwin’s methodology, not his conclusions. The same is being done here. It has nothing whatever to do with science, it is simply a thinly veiled attack on religion and religious belief.
I read recently the opinion of a prominent author, that the Western Societies – ie: Europe and the North American nations, suffered a catastrophic and collective nervous breakdown and massive loss of self confidence and esteem in the late 1960s. In part this was fueled by the Psychological War being waged by the Communist Bloc who, through manipulation of anti-war and anti-nuclear campaign organisations, managed to spread hysterical fear of nuclear disaster. That has, I believe, fed into the psyche of todays ‘Greens’ and ‘Eco-warriors’ to the extent that the science is no longer the issue with many of them – the religion has become ‘we are all going to die because of evil capitalist profiteers stripping the planets assets and changing the climate.’
Hollywood must also take some of the blame for this sort of mentality, the bulk of any given population, seeing something like “The Day after Tomorrow” or “Volcano” don’t have the education or the ability to distinguish between fact and Hollywood fantasy. This is what will kill us, not climate change.
Gee if only that were backed by research.
Oh, what do we have here … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm
“The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped.“
When I hear Tim Flummery I am reminded of the way real medical professionals deal with “natural medicine practioners.” I work with a few medical professionals who must deal with said natural medicine snake charmers. They are invariably polite, even waiting for them to leave the room before rolling their eyes, but why make a patient unnecessarily anxious by disparaging something that they have faith in. However when that pseudo-science actually threatens the patients health they take action. In any sensible world the CAGW proselytizers would be treated this way, smile and nod then make an excuse to leave. But now they are threatening the very real economic well being of everybody. How did we get to the point in Australia where these idiots are in government and seriously proposing to tax the air we breath?
Hilarious, but for the fact that it’s people like Flannery who force through stupid laws taxing something that makes precious little (if any) difference to anything. He’d be perfectly at home in the UK’s corridors of power, too.
He really should have been called Flammery. OED definition of a flam:
1 A fanciful notion, a whim.
2 A fanciful composition of verse.
3 A fabrication or falsehood; (a piece of) deception; flattery, blarney.
– If only he’d made it rhyme, then all three would apply.
Well there’s no evidence that it’s warmer now than it was a thousand years ago so why should it be any different in a thousand years time?
But what has CO2 got to do with it?
The Climate Commisioners were out today explaining the science in Geelong, it’s been broadcast multiple times on the ABC. The Flannery quote that got me swearing at the TV was when he rather nicely described us all as a “Ghenghis Khan Species”. It a real privilege to live in Australia and have our government officials describe us all as barbarians.
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
“Are we collectively mad?”
Yes, we are collectively mad. We live in an age of hysteria. We are intent on grabbing any reason for fear and exalting it to high heaven. We compulsively treat low-risk fears as if they were serious. The idiotic non-principle known as the Precautionary Principle has been enshrined in Western governments.
With the Japanese tsunami, the MSM went around the bend. They took a natural tragedy and converted into a hate fest for nuclear energy. Why? Maybe our collective hysterical sickness. But maybe the entire MSM has now decided that the money to be made through environmental taxes and trading scams, such as carbon credits, is just too much to let go.
Of course, there is also the problem that our Left is communist and quite dedicated to Alinskyite tactics. But communism is enough. It pits each group against all so that the all powerful state is needed to protect each group from the exaggerated fears fed by the all powerful state.
Thanks for not asking that other question: What is the solution?