Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
As reported in the Guardian (so it must be true), we are treated to some great news:
World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns
If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change
Figure 1. Ominous looking clouds coming from smokestacks symbolize our uncertain future … or some nonsense like that. Photo from the Guardian article.
So … why is this good news?
Well, think about it. If the world “loses for ever” the chance to avoid dangerous climate change, then at least we’ll be rid of the thousands of people clutching their pearls and whining because of the understandable lack of action in response to the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Plus, we’ll be rid of the eponymous Boy himself, I’ll be glad to see his back.
And we’ll be rid of people wanting to pick our pockets to further their anti-development agenda under the guise of worrying about climate. If we get to where it’s “irreversible”, we won’t be bothered by them trying to take our bucks to reverse it.
Think about how peaceful that will be without that alarmism … bliss.
Then we can get back to the job we should have been doing all this time, which is trying to protect people now from climate disasters now. That way, whether or not CO2 turns out to be “teh eevil”, we will be protecting people as much as we can, and as soon as we can.
Only five more years until peace breaks out! I can hardly wait!
w.
PS—The headline itself was a howler too. Any climate change is indeed irreversible … to mangle the Rubaiyat,
The moving finger writes, and having writ, Moves on, nor all your piety nor wit, Can call it back to cancel half a clime Nor all your tears wipe out a word of it ...
Not only is any climate change irreversible, climate change is also inevitable … but please, don’t tell the IEA. They’re on a good path, we just have to stay schtumm for five years and we’re there.
PPS – I don’t think Willis will mind my pointing out that the deadline when Copenhagen COP16 was going on in 2009 was 10 years according to the Met Office:
Click image for story.
It seems that between 2009 and now, 3 years went missing. It must be worse than we thought.
I also made a screencap of the Guardian story for posterity, should it disappear.
– Anthony
I probably should have put in the [sarc] tags, so people would know that this is not serious …
w.
Who are the IEA Willis?
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Promise go,
Nor heed the music of a distant Drum!
Ah, Willis, you dewy-eyed waif. Surely you know in the popular press that disaster is always five years away.
It is only in the more cautious academic press that disaster is 20 years away. Of course, most of those authors plan to be tenured by then if they’re not now, or even more safely retired if they’re already tenured.
Oh Willis I Googled IEA, and an official in another article reckoned that all those who project clean energy are smoking dope? Seems the IEA must be another group? International Energy
Authority, they are for gas and oil.
Willis, I think we skeptics can tell the difference, plus in 5 years we will be laughing at them, yet again, but I guess they will have moved the goal post by then, and claiming they were misquoted like we have seen before!
I suffered irreversible climate change tonight as we flew from Kona to San Jose. Brrrrrrrrrr! It got cold, I was really surprised! Monday after witnessing the 49ers/Giants battle this weekend, we will drive home to Nevada where I won’t be surprised that it will be even colder yet. Next week, I should start skiing, that is if global warming will hold off from another season or so. Need to build a model so I can understand the future. 5 years to irreversibility…hope the XOM in my IRA can holdout.
My, the Green Energy lobbyists and propagandists are really putting in some serious overtime to maximise ‘climate awareness’ for Durban. Reminds me of the weeks before Copenhagen. Only this time my level of regulation anxiety is near zero, and I live in the EU!
Marcus
They said the same thing 5 years ago! Warmists moving the goalposts again.
But until then, we have five more years of undiluted excuses and alarmism that grow lamer and more desperate by the day…
Oh, I think you are safe enough, Willis.
Apart from Guardian readers, of course……. .
Let folks make their own minds up, Willis. The thread will be far more fun that way.
I would rather it be 5 days until I see that brat’s back.
It’s the Guardian, it’s not serious…of course it isn’t…
What happened to that ‘100 months to stop irreversible damage’ meme that was around a while ago? How’s that working out?
Oh, wait, here it is… http://onehundredmonths.org/
They seem to be in bed with at least one Guardian columnist, so that’s possibly where the ‘story’ comes from.
Isn’t is wonderful that they don’t even have to say in which direction it is changing? All change, in whatever direction is bad and irreversible. Bit of a “no lose” position, really.
Trouble is we’ve passed the “point of no return” several times according to various experts. People should have stopped whining ages ago.
When nobody listens to the doom merchants they have to resort to more and more alarmism to get people to listen. Finally, when still nobody listens (because common sense says it isn’t so) they give an ultimatum. At that point there are no toys left in the pram, so where do they go from there? They will move the goalposts ever forward, tell us their models needed some more research (and money). Willis I appreciate what you are saying, but these people never ever, shut up.
In five years they’ll say they were wrong, but just five more years and it will be too late. By then they can crank up the new ice age hysteria.
The good news is that we live at a time of unparalleled bliss. The world is relatively peaceful, the climate has not been better since the medieval warm period and we have masses of cheap abundant fossil fuel.
We live at a time when anti-biotics still work and most of us here have not had the trauma of seeing siblings or our children dying from the simple diseases that killed so many in the 19th century.
We live at a time of scientific knowledge: medicine, weather. We live at a time when technology is so abundant and cheap that even the humblest in our societies have access to a lifestyle of entertainment that would be the envy of any medieval monarch.
Things could still get better — but if the worst we have to worry about is that there may be a fractional increase in temperature — that things may get even better, is it any wonder that some people just can’t believe that we have it so good and look desperately for ways it is going to get worse?
The problem with knowing too much is that we know how good it is now and then see how much worse it could get!
a nice observation
Didn’t they say the same thing 5 years ago?
Omar Khayam would be proud- thanks W.
Yeah, one hundred months, ending miraculously in December 2016. Yawn.
Geo good point ‘disaster is always five years away.’
Just like the greenish dream is always only another billion away !
I just had a nightmare that in 2016 just before the UN climate conference in Tahiti a new report came out that said we have to act and abandon fossil fuel within just 5 years or the climate Armageddon would be upon us.
Thank God it was just a nightmare and I’m not eagerly awaiting for the tippping point to occur in the real world within just 5 years.