This was in our guest author queue, but I was never notified of its existence. Better late than never. – Anthony
Guest post by David Middleton…
EA: Warming may be irreversible by 2017
Published: Nov. 11, 2011LONDON, Nov. 11 (UPI) — Rising energy demands could result in irreversible global warming by 2017 without strict new standards, an energy watchdog group said this week in London.
The International Energy Agency said in its latest World Energy Outlook, released Wednesday, that a “remarkable” 5 percent jump in global primary energy demand last year pushed greenhouse gas emissions to a new high due to the rebound of the world’s economies following the 2008 financial crisis.
And that, it said, bodes ill for efforts to reach a long-term target of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — especially with moves by governments to shift resources away from developing clean energy technologies as more economic problems arise.
“Without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed” to keep the temperature rise at 2 degrees or lower, the report said
[…]
What warming?
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And we probably know what’ll happen when that 2017 prediction doesn’t eventuate. Going by the many failings of the Chicken Littles.
The new cry from the AGW/CC warmist brigade:
If we don’t act now. Irrevisble warming by 2021:
Then there is the irreversible cooling that comes after the “irreversible” warming. But maybe Professor Mann can hide them both, though not irreversibly.
How long can they sting out this narrative of uncontrolled warming before the villagers take up their pitch forks and torches and attack castles of the climate doom mongers.
Wils: “[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably […]”
@P.F. says at 11:28 am: “Seems like with the Durban meeting coming up, we’re being subjected in the media to more dire predictions disconnected from reality.”
Reality: China building and planning 77 nuclear reactors; USA 10; UK 4; Germany 0; Socialist Republic of Vietnam 4; Russia 24.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
Remember that global warming will kill 4.5 billion people this month.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html
This is because of the Giant Wooly Mammoth Fart that has been trapped in the permafrost for thousands of years. Global warming melting the permafrost will cause the BIG SBD to be released tomorrow or Wednesday, dooming almost 2/3 of human beings to die by New Year’s Eve.
Sitting here at my computer in Sub tropical Australia where it is again much cooler than average and overcast when the norm is hot sunshine with occasional aftyernoon thunderstorms and for the second year in a row despite the idiotic protestations of the warmest year on record last year I have to agree – where is the warming ?
Has anybody else noticed the change in spin ? Now they aren’t the “hottest” years ever but the warmest.
Hooray! Mitigation is dead! Long live Adaptation!
With Adaptation, we can spend our money at home rather than sending it to the various medieval kingdoms that rule most of the remainder of the world.
On a related issue, has anyone seen the reviews on Amazon for the eagerly awaited new book coming out in March: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael Mann.
Here they are, hold onto your hats:
“Very few people have sounded more important alarms about our climate future, and very few people have paid a higher price for doing so. Michael Mann is a hero, and this book is a remarkable account of the science and politics of the defining issue of our time. — Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet The brilliant and courageous climatologist Michael Mann knows what it’s like to be viciously attacked by the well-funded deniers of scientific evidence and how critical it is to respond. In this gripping, personal, front-lines account of climate politics, Mann tells the “hockey stick” story, exposing the forces behind the denialist rhetoric, refuting the charges of disinformation campaigns, and eloquently conveying the importance of both doing great science and communicating its societal implications to a wider public. — Paul R. Ehrlich, co-author of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment and Humanity on a Tightrope Although not initially of his own choosing, Michael Mann has been the most important, resilient, and outspoken warrior in the climate battle–responding to threats and persecution with courage and resolve every step of the way. Anyone who cares about the climate issue must read his fascinating–and enraging–story. — Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future In The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Michael Mann presents his conviction that climate change is real and potentially deadly, and defends his now famous “Hockey Stick Graph.” A truly readable book on a topic that will remain evergreen. — James Lovelock, author of A New Look at Life on Earth and The Revenge of Gaia A must read to appreciate the endless disinformation campaign by climate change deniers at the highest levels of government and corporate America…and the chilling, but serious implications of the crusade to discredit distinguished scientists like Michael Mann. — Sherwood Boehlert, Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1983-2007, former chairman of the House Science Committee As one of the nation’s leading climate researchers, no one has felt the brunt of the attacks from politicians and the fossil fuel industry more than Michael Mann. This is his personal account from the center of the maelstrom, documenting the lies and distortions about his work and his heroic efforts to stand up for scientific truth. — Henry Waxman, Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee”
OK all you well-funded deniers, how’s that for a little high blown rhetoric? Pooooor heroic M. Mann, when are you going to stop picking on him?
Crosspatch, I agree that the indoctrination of school children is a problem. However, there is one unavoidable and steadily approaching reality that will turn the tide, and that is the rapidly cooling weather and climate. The winters in the USA and the EU are becoming more bitter each year and summer is patchy at best.
As the sun continues into it’s long slowdown things will get colder still, and remain cold long enough for the current generation of school kids to grow up, and when they do they will be angry at what will have become by then the evident fraud that the “co2 cause religion team” had foisted on them and society.
The backlash of these young voters, and perhaps rioters, against the blinkered politicians and so-called scientists (co2 fanboys) may well make the history books. I look forward to watching all this on TV as I wait for God, always assuming alzheimers isn’t going to spoil my enjoyment of it.
I am not convinced. They already adjust things like sea level and temperature measurements to show and up trend at times when there isn’t one. The satellite measurements show no warming trend so the warmanistas discount UAH and MSU even though they are taken by completely different instruments on completely different satellites and the raw data are interpreted in completely different ways by completely different teams of people yet largely agree.
They are going to try to convince you that it isn’t cooling, the data simply needs more “adjustment” to show the warming or that cooling is really an indication of warming.
Just watch and see.
If we keep pumping that coolant gas into the atmosphere and happen to time it with a maunder like minimum, we’re gunna freeze our proverbials off, especially at night.
“Get that? They are basically trying to figure out how to manipulate the masses on the issue of climate change. This is NOT ABOUT SCIENCE, people, this is about using climate change to push a political agenda. Now, want a REAL eye opener? Look at the participant biographies of those attending the March 2010 symposium.”
Who would have thought that the usual topic of conversation in Humanities faculty lounges would receive such spectacular funding? Especially because there was no need to fund it. All anyone has to do is go to the local Humanities Faculty Lounge. In case some might not know, the participants are all communists or communist wannabes. But everyone is invited.
Right. That is because the maximum temperatures haven’t broken records so they aren’t the hottest but the annual average is higher so it is the warmest year overall. It’s how they play with words. For example, if you look at the 2010 El Nino, it wasn’t as extreme at its peak as the 1998 event. But it was broader and more gradual. One way to roughly eyeball without actually doing the math if the average over one peak is going to be higher than the average over another peak is to get an idea of the surface area inside the peak. If the 2010 peak plotted on graph paper has more grid squares inside the peak than the 1998 did, then chances are pretty good the 2010 will have a higher average. A higher peak that is shorter in duration may produce a year with a lower average than a lower peak that is broader. So they are just twisting the numbers to best fit their message. 2010 wasn’t hotter than 1998 but it was “warmer” now the very next year, 2011 becomes “10th warmest in all of history” or something but we can’t know that because our instrument records don’t go far enough back in time to say that.
So the question becomes … with the largest CO2 increase in recorded history, 2010 comes in at only 10th warmest? Why didn’t we see the largest temperature increase if we saw the largest CO2 increase? That is because of “natural variation” in temperatures or something …. weather … which only happens when it cools. If it warms, it is due to CO2. If it cools, it is due to nature.
Somebody ought to tell Sydney.
Coldest summer start in Sydney in 44 years…
http://www.waginargus.com.au/news/national/national/general/sydneys-coldest-start-to-summer-in-50-years/2380861.aspx
Of course though, “weather is not climate”! Sieg Heil!
In other words, 1998 can be “hottest year ever!” because it had the month with the highest average temperature while 2010 can be “warmest year ever” because it had the highest annual average. So both statements can be true. But please, lets all forget about 2008, ok? 2008 was colder than 1979.
Latitude says:
December 5, 2011 at 12:11 pm
…another 6 years of temperatures falling
Cool! A new groundhog! We must have a new groundhog’s day. When? And what will we call it?
How about Weasel Day on January 15?
In all fairness what this is saying is that energy choices made now, will stick around for a long time. Personally I am all for energy efficiency, just so long as we don’t waste our important petrochemical resources by burning them as a short term solution to something that might not happen!
crosspatch says:
December 5, 2011 at 11:09 am
Look who else made the list: “Anthony “Van” Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy.”
Green energy tzar, anyone?
You can’t use a graph of only 10 years of data to talk about climate change. Climate needs to be discussed in terms of several decades, if not centuries.
Here is the same data used in that graph (HadCRUT3 Temperature Anomaly) since the 1860s http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif (source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/)
The IEA is a lost cause now.
With regard to the picture in the post.
The poor ice; it was already thin and ragged in July 2005, so what did they do?
They chopped it up some more with an icebreaker. Then they wonder why it’s ‘rotten’ or why it melts quicker.
Tells the same story. A rise in temperatures from the 1970s to about 2000 and flat since then. The trick that is played with the mind here is the selection of the zero “normal” and the coloration of stuff above it as “red”. What can even get more confusing to the eye/mind is when trend lines are added as this can imply a stable rate of change unless you make an effort to ignore the trend line and actually look at the data.
So the graph you link shows no change for the past 11 years or so. More importantly there is no significant difference in either the rate or magnitude of the rise from the 1970’s to 2000 and that shown in the graph starting in about 1910 and lasting to about 1940 before it goes roughly flat, too. So the rise in those 30 years from 1910 to 1940 is expected to be accepted as a “natural” rise in temperatures by the nearly identical rate and duration of the rise from the 1970’s to 2000 is man made?
Sorry, I’m just not buying it. Explain to me why the earlier rise is natural and the more recent one isn’t even though they are similar in their magnitude and duration.
So when those methane farting dinosaurs roamed the planet and CO2 levels were ten times that of today, How exactly did they prevent the global cooker from run away heating. Oh yeah they didn’t. And we had ice ages.
Google: “warming irreversible”
2008
Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions
Contributed by Susan Solomon, December 16, 2008 (received for review ….. CO2
perturbation and ocean warming. Irreversible climate changes due to carbon …
2009
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Global warming is ‘irreversible’
27 Jan 2009 … A team of environmental researchers in the US warns many effects of climate
change are irreversible.
2010
Thread Global warming ‘irreversible’ for next 1000 years: study …
10 Oct 2010 … Published (2010-10-06 13:47:00). Judged: 1 1 1 Earthling wrote: <quoted
text>That means, Global warming ‘irreversible’ for next 998 …
2011
Global warming irreversible, say experts | thetelegraph.com.au
22 Nov 2011 … HEAT-TRAPPING greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are building up so high
and so fast that some scientists now think the world can no …
And of course..
Global Warming Irreversible | The Onion – America’s Finest News …
30 Jun 2006 … According to the journal Science, the human influence on the Earth’s climate will
be irreversible within the next 100 years. What do…
http://www.google.ca/url?q=http://www.theonion.com/articles/global-warming-irreversible,15024/&sa=U&ei=DFLdTveRIuOlsALhwsWIDg&ved=0CA8QFjAA&usg=AFQjCNEzCQ1c59CcvTjCwVWP6Ubt6d_D9g
“is expected to be accepted as a “natural” rise in temperatures by the nearly identical rate and duration of the rise ” should be “is expected to be accepted as a “natural” rise in temperatures but the nearly identical rate and duration of the rise