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
With the runaway alarmism about catastrophic global warming, the “Man is evil, it must be man’s fault!” mentality, the mangling of assorted historical temperature records, and the decades of real climate science research lost when the default assumption (sometimes unspoken) became “(C)AGW is happening therefore our work can only confirm it and/or describe how bad it’ll get”… I sometimes worry we missed finding out this interglacial will end very soon, and have lost many years where we could have been developing the extensive reliable energy sources and making the other much needed preparations we’ll need to survive as a society without dropping back to the stone age.
Really, I do.
“I probably should have put in the [sarc] tags, so people would know that this is not serious …”
Hmmm.
Willis, would you please provide a reference to Sufism predating Islam ??
No worries then, seems to be always 5 years from disaster…
Nice pic from the Telegraph of all those windmills not turning. I called up the story so I could zoom in and have a better look.
Question for the atmospheric experts: How did that rainbow form in front of that building near the middle behind the bird choppers?
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 …
…
The finger writes with ink that sticks like, er, glue.
It will run out in henceforth five years’ time.
—
There. A somewhat uneven A-A-B-A-C-B rhyme scheme tho – can anyone fix that for me?
Yet another home-run for Willis, if I was wealthy I would pay (very well) you to write 2 stories a month for my blog (of course they would only be seen by a few family members and friends but hey) keep up the great work and never let anyone get you down.
Mark ro says:
November 12, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Thanks, Mark. I fear that the origins of Sufism are lost in the past. However, there are plenty of oral traditions that Sufism predated Islam. Do a google search on ‘sufism “predates islam”‘ for a variety of references to these traditions.
The original source for my claim was the writings of Idris Shah, but I no longer have the book, I read it years ago. It was called “The Sufis“.
In support of my claim, Wikipedia says about Shah that:
Since the Sufis have always been a somewhat secretive mystical order, I fear that actual evidence is very scarce, and the best we have to go on are the oral traditions of the Sufis themselves. They say that their beliefs and practices are older than Islam … and I generally believe them.
Shah’s older brother and Robert Graves published what I consider the most accurate translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam … although not as poetically nice as the FitzGerald translation.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
November 12, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Sir, With all due respect, When was the last time you visited a land where lack of belief equates to beheading?
Mark ro says:
November 12, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Mark, despite my extensive travels, I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a land. The Koran says that you should whack people (or cut off a hand and a foot from opposite sides of the body) if they leave the faith and then actively agitate against Islam. Can’t remember the exact Sura, but it’s there.
But I know of nowhere that a simple “lack of belief” is grounds for beheading.
In any case … what’s your point? Yes, I’ve worked in Islamic countries, a number of them, if that’s what you’re asking. Can’t say I cared for the religion or how the folks treated each other, but that’s nothing new.
And?
w.
Someone who’s a lot better organized than I am could keep track of all of the time-specific doomsday prophesies from prominent CAGW believers. At the end of each year, they could look at all of the Venusian hell runaway global warming scenarios, disastrous sea-level rising scenarios, and other predictions that have come and gone, without incident. Then we could bestow a Harold Camping TEOTWAWKI Award upon the most outrageous. Although it couldn’t compete with one of the prestigious Darwin Awards, it’d still be fun, in a perverse sort of way.
I think the lads at the Grauniad need take a breath and a cue from their countrymen at MPFC
or perhaps this one
For most of my life, disaster was 4 minutes away. 5 years is an improvement.
Sea levels appear to be falling (why? no-one seems to know) and temperatures have flatlined and may actually be starting to fall again (although no-one has convinced me one way or the other).
We live on a dynamic planet. Climate change is inevitable. Earthquakes will always occur. Lightning strikes constantly. And idiots will always believe that it is getting worse and we are all on a rollercoaster to destruction.
A few weeks ago, for suggesting in comments below one of their articles that the intensity of climate change stories in the Guardian would increase as we approach the Durban conference, the comment was deleted, and I was put on the ‘pre-moderated’ sin-bin.
That Damian Carrington is desparately trying to fill the shoes of Monbiot on CC scare stories since Monbiot’s own self doubts have led him to move onto other subjects.
Dev Bahadur Dongol says:
November 12, 2011 at 1:57 am
Turbines are already installed in series where possible. I live on the shore of one lake in a chain of 5 manmade lakes formed by a series of dams along the Colorado River in Texas. There are hydroelectric turbines at each of the 5 dams. This comprises a series of turbines through which the same river water flows.
I fail to see what you’re running on about. Wherever practical hydroelectric turbines are already placed in series.
That is not series connection. please click on my name for details and email dev.dangol at yahoo.co.uk me for further discussion. please see the moderator’s note at the bottom.
…IEA warns If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change…
Actually that is very funny. Seems no one told these people we are in an interGLACIAL and that means “climate change” back to glaciation is pretty much certain.
However it will some how be blamed on “Global Warming” (rolls eyes)
From Gail Combs on November 13, 2011 at 6:03 am:
That’s because a tipping point was passed around 1998, and the anthropogenic global warming signal, as approximately measured by the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, became strong enough that it began paradoxically causing a chunk of the heating the planet must have been experiencing to go missing. As the AGW signal continues to strengthen, we are entering global cooling.
There is an overwhelming consensus among the climate models, their output data is irrefutable, the Climate Science™ is settled. If we don’t scrap our fossil fueled infrastructure within five years and convert to Absolutely Completely Free solar and wind energy, that AGW signal will get so strong that too much heat will go into hiding, and then the continental glaciations will start!
Gail Combs says:November 13, 2011 at 6:03 am
…IEA warns If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change…
Actually that is very funny. Seems no one told these people we are in an interGLACIAL and that means “climate change” back to glaciation is pretty much certain.
However it will some how be blamed on “Global Warming” (rolls eyes)
(sarc) Gail, have you not noticed, in the charts of CO2 vs temperature from the ice cores, that whenever CO2 gets to its highest point, along with temperature, bingo, a new glaciation starts! Of course it’s the CO2 and CAGW! (/sarc)
Willis Eschenbach says:
November 12, 2011 at 9:45 pm
“But I know of nowhere that a simple “lack of belief” is grounds for beheading.”
Thailand, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Dagestan, Sudan, Nigeria, Philippines, Yemen, Bangladesh, Egypt, India and Kenya just to name a few.
WARNING extremely graphic images and video of Muslims beheading Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, etc,etc.
[url snipped -w.]
Mark ro:
Just what is your point? You are equating the actions of terrorist outlaws with the religion as a whole. It has the same value as an assertion that being gay ir black is grounds for fbeing dragged to death behind a truck in the USA. Linking to that video is just pure bigotry and has no place on this thread. Your understanding of Islam and the conditions in the countries you listed is sorely deficient.
Finntastic says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:30 am
Does anyone actually know what they are talking about here? This is the IEA, propped up by fossil fuel money, which has previously been found to have downplayed the risk of peak oil.
This closely follows the study of 1.6 billion temperature records over two years by Richard Muller, a climate sceptic, funded by the Koch brothers for crying out loud, that found that global warming is real…..
___________________________
Oh good grief. Muller is in it for the money. He is not a “Skeptic” and never has been.
If you want a “Follow the Money” I did it here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/30/the-best-whopper-ever/#comment-783396
It leads right back to Shell Oil – SURPRISE!
The guy and his daughter own a “Green Company” with a Shell Oil VP as advisor. If CAGW goes down the tubes so does his very lucrative business. Privately owned companies are a very good method for receiving bribes through consulting fees and referred business.
Even the Huff & Puff is FINALLY documenting the banker/Green coalition: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-debord/the-fall-and-rise-of-the-carbon-coalition_b_910442.html
And it is a short step from banker to Oil, think Rockefeller (Chase/Standard Oil) Rothschild (Shell Oil) and Maurice Strong (World Bank/Petro-Canada)
Mark ro says:
November 13, 2011 at 8:42 am
Ah. I see the difference. I was talking about governments and official legal executions. You were talking about mobs.
In any case, ’nuff about that, back to the climate, thanks.
w.
O/T At the APEC meeting in Hawaii, the countries attending were all in accord to follow a Green future. Hmmm, even China? Beware of false profits, sorry, prophets. LOL?
Why must decarbonising the economy be seen as anti development? Surely it is an opportunity to develop technologies that work on renewable energy. Re-skill the economy and look to the future rather than celebrate the fact that we will become dependant on foreign power for energy security. Become world leaders in the new technologies that will power the world economies will provide jobs for college graduates as well as a basis to develop high quality manufacturing industry. We could try rebalancing the economy away from the financial markets and become a country that is good at making tangible things again….
Or we could sit about chuckling to ourselves at the stupider scientists and hippies while the Asian and Latin American countries leave us behind as they become world powers in the new century
tony says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:28 am (Edit)
Because at the moment we have nothing with which to replace fossil fuels … yet people still insist on reducing carbon. The only way to do that is to reduce energy use, which is anti-development. Simple.
Sounds great … but unfortunately, that plan is not working now, and has not worked the many times it’s been tried in the past.
Egads, you don’t want much, do you. Green jobs rears its ugly head again.
Tony, if you can figure out how to make that all work, more power to you. Spain tried it and it all went pear-shaped for them. Solyndra and others tried it. You may not be old enough to remember the various government ventures into the energy industry, from Jimmy Carter’s Synfuel Corporation to hydrogen and ethanol and so to Solyndra and the present. All of them have been dismal failures.
So if you know how to avoid the problems that have brought all of those projects low, tony, you will be a very, very rich man.
In the meantime, however, I’d say don’t quit your day job quite yet …
w.