From the University of Gothenburg , some appearance of sanity.
The identified critical threshold for dangerous climate change saying that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius seems not to have helped the climate negotiations so far. New research from the University of Gothenburg and Columbia University shows that negotiations based on such a threshold fail because its value is determined by Nature and is inherently uncertain. Climate negotiators should therefore focus on other collective strategies.
Presenting their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Astrid Dannenberg, Postdoc researcher at the Environmental Economics Unit, University of Gothenburg and Columbia University, and Professor Scott Barrett, Columbia University, explain the paradox of why countries would agree to a collective goal, aimed at reducing the risk of climate catastrophe, but act as if they were blind to this risk.
If the critical threshold for climate catastrophe could be identified with scientific certainty, their research suggests that countries very likely would propose a collective target certain to avoid catastrophe, would pledge to contribute their fair share to the global effort, and would act so as to fulfill their promises. However, if there is scientific uncertainty about the climate threshold, countries are very likely to do less collectively than is needed to avert catastrophe. Dannenberg and Barrett, who provide experimental evidence, grounded in a new analytical framework, show that failure of negotiations is practically certain, because the climate threshold is determined by Nature, and uncertainty about its value is substantially irreducible.
“Climate negotiations are more complex that the game played by the participants in our experiment. The basic incentive problem, however, is the same and our research shows that scientific uncertainty about the dangerous threshold changes behavior dramatically,” Dannenberg says.
Their research may explain why the UN climate negotiations have been framed around meeting the 2 degrees Celsius threshold and why negotiators wanted the threshold to be determined by science rather than by politics because only the former would be credible. Yet, the emission reductions countries have pledged in Copenhagen in 2009 virtually guarantee that this target will be missed.
“We will not know until 2020 if the Copenhagen Accord pledges will be met, but if our results are a reliable guide, countries may end up emitting even more than they pledged ā with potentially profound and possibly irreversible consequences. Our research suggests that negotiators should focus their attention on alternative strategies for collective action, such as trade restrictions or technology standards,” Barrett says.
Yea Gods Nature is conspiring against their CAWG negotiations. And no, we the taxpaying public, know the Copenhagen Pledges will not be met not by 2020 or any future date. Its over the politicians have run out of easy money.And climatic negotiators will need a new scam.
“explain the paradox of why countries would agree to a collective goal, aimed at reducing the risk of climate catastrophe, but act as if they were blind to this risk”
Yes, why ever would a government agency agree to embrace an idea that involves more regulation, laws, and taxes, and yet act as if they really don’t believe in it… It’s quite a puzzle.
I think it is a scam. I completed the survey and stated that “Anthropogenic climate change and claims of extreme weather caused by it are false.” Because I did not believe in the propaganda, I received the following message upon completing the survey: “Unexpected Error (SFC)”. Sounds like the typical way to bias a survey.
“However, if there is scientific uncertainty about the climate threshold, countries are very likely to do less collectively than is needed to avert catastrophe.”
Maybe they feel that the proposed actions will not stop a catastrophe or that a catastrophe in not certain. Why commit?
Are those goals I can hear moving?
Weren’t temperatures more that 2C warmer than today during the Holocene Optimum?
I wouldn’t expect too much sanity from a Postdoc researcher at a Environmental Economics Unit or from anyone from Columbia University. Seems to me like a similar career path to Franziska Hollender. Inmates of the warmist cult.
So why don’t these “climate negotiators” simply reveal the uncertainties in their predictions for all to see? Oh, wait… That would mean the climate catastrophe would cease to exist.
Never mind.
/sarc
Astrid doesn’t have a clue what a climate catastrophy looks like. It will be apparent when the ice advances down from the Arctic, covering productive farm fields and shortening growing seasons. All of the natural resources which lie north of Kansas will be denied to us, and the United States will have to figure out how to house and feed 40 million Canadians for the next 40,000 years.
Why is everyone still referring to catastrophe!? It must be because MSM, for some reason, has not checked the latest CRU GMT. They are certainly slow to publish this now official milestone. I don’t see how anyone can include the word “catastrophe”, in any discussion involving CO2 or AGW, from here on in. CO2 must be factored out or recast into a new modality.
There may be catastrophe ahead and it would sure be nice to see it coming before it hits. Remove the CO2 smokescreen and we might do… just that. GK
“Environmental Economics Unit” ……
Sounds like a “Unit” studying how to find a reason for increasing taxes…….
“potentially profound and possibly irreversible consequences”
So dramatic! I can almost hear the background music. Of course, the precautionary principle demands we act and uncertainty favors action just as that “scariest video” on YouTube illustrates with a decision matrix.
Well, I think if we donāt prepare for an Alien Invasion there could be profound and possibly irreversible consequences.
Decision Matrix:
SCN | AI | NAI
PAI | 1 | 2
DPAI | 5 | 0
AI = Alien Invasion
NAI = No Alien Invasion
PAI = Prepare for Alien Invasion
DPAI = Donāt Prepare for Alien Invasion
As the matrix depicts, the absolute worst case scenario is the one in which an Alien Invasion occurs and we havenāt prepared for an Alien Invasion, scoring a 5 on the precautionary principled catastrophic scale (PPCS*).
The next worst case scenario is the one where we have prepared for Alien Invasion but an Alien Invasion doesnāt happen, but this only rates a 2 on the PPCS since weāve only spent money needlessly.
The best case scenario is the one in which thereās no Alien Invasion and we didnāt prepare for it rating a 0 on the PPCS.
The next best case scenario is the one in which thereās an Alien Invasion and we have prepared for it, rating only a 1 on the PPCS.
The decision is clear, the precautionary principle demands we prepare for Alien Invasion. Much more research is required in order to determine how much money will be required for Alien Invasion preparations. As little as 1% GDP might be enough, but 10% GDP or even 50% GDP is not out of the realm of possibility considering the high stakes, limited time, and uncertainty involved. We must determine all modes of possible Alien Invasion from chemical or biological warfare to Nano-bots or giant monsters and then determine and implement the best counter to each mode of attack. This research is essential and should be well funded, if an Alien Invasion should occur we donāt want to be in the position of having to say āitās worse than we thoughtā it would be. We need our Best and brightest on this global problem of immense proportions immediately and they shouldnāt be shackled by budget anxieties. While some may cite a lack of absolutely conclusive evidence for impending Alien Invasion as a reason to delay preparation, this should not deter us from this vital task of preparation in order to avoid global disaster. The evidence that we do have is consistent with imminent Alien Invasion. Those that spread doubt and deny the need for Alien Invasion preparations will most likely be charged with crimes against humanity once the Alien Invasion has been successfully repelled. It has been conclusively shown through surveys of people that do support preparing for Alien Invasion that Alien Invasion preparationdeniers are also prone to not accept the standard NASA explanations for Global Warming and resulting Catastrophe, the existence of the Nibiruans/Anunnaki, the existence of phlogiston, or the validity of most any doomsday prophecy. These people (if we can call them that) are obviously paid off by the Alien Invasion denial machine. The time to prepare is now!
(* PPCS: The Precautionary Principled Catastrophic Scale is a scale from 0 to 5 where 5 is a global catastrophe which threatens the very survival of all life on earth and 0 is no catastrophe. Every rating in between 0 and 5 is speciously chosen.)
PS: Global preparations for the Zombie Apocalypse is similarly lacking in funding and hysteria.
PSS: AI (Alien Invasion) could also be Artificial Intelligence, another underfunded concern of all Precautionary Principled People (PPP).
This message brought to you by the Precautionary Principled Populaces of Paternal Planet Protectionists for Pretentious Preparation Provisions.
(For those that need it: ā¦.. /sarc)
I caught a BBC Radio 4 programme “Costing the earth” this afternoon as i drove home from a business meeting. Apparently Climate change is still going to be catastrophic, we are all going to starve – we are still going to hell in a hand cart.
What impressed me most tho’ was the fact that the presenters seemed almost desperate to get the bad news across to the listener.
The recent bad weather was put forward of “proof” that climate change is real. My passengers both said uncomplimentary comments about the BBC’s bias – I did not prompt them at all! So the reality is that the spin is backfiring if what happened to me is representative.
Sadly this seems to be the BBC at its “best”
The sooner we in the UK, get the `BBC’ to be pay per view rather than each household being taxed via a “TV Licence” (for those not of the UK – the TV Licence is a tax and you have to pay it) the sooner we will get this unbelievable bias and spin off our airways and TV screens.
Answer to MarkW:
“Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3Ā°C higher than today.ā Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fall 1997, page 40
Apart from that. In US you do have some of the older maps where all can see that what’s now called Hudson Bay was known more than 100 years before anyone officially sailed to that area. In fact the cartographer was there in second half 14th century. Never mind that, that’s an other story. What’s interesting if you look at Medieval maps and other maps up to 1570’s is that on many of them you will find the Arctic Ice far north of Ruin Island where Norse artifacts from long before Columbus set sail has been found.
It’s a long story not directly connected with the CO2-debate but with real hard facts that should give politicians something to worry about. Facts and Fiction isn’t the same no matter how much they try real facts are hard evidence against their theoretical beliefs where so called specialists shown they aren’t even up to taking all factors and premisses for writing a computer program. (Back in 1971 I became a systemprogrammer)
Tried to send this and more a few minuits ago. But this is the essential parts
Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3Ā°C higher than today.ā Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fall 1997, page 40
In US you do have old maps showing Hudson Bay cartographed more than 100 years before anyone officially sailed there. Look at those maps please. Also look up Ruin Island where Norse Artifacts from centuries before Columbus set sail westwards been found.
Yes it was much warmer and the Artic Ice was much more withdrawn than today….
I thinl the greenies should tell the sun to cool down and not get heated and bothered about it.
“Our research suggests that negotiators should focus their attention on alternative strategies for collective action, such as trade restrictions or technology standards,ā Barrett says.
–
What does he mean by “trade restrictions or technology standards”? Whatever he’s getting at, wouldn’t it require a global authority, with more power than the UN, to enforce such “collective actions”? It always seems to come back to this, which makes me think that power is what they’re really after. Climate alarmism is just the means to an end.
Everybody knows most drunks would recommend their drinking buddies for AA but won’t attend any meetings themselves. It’s just human nature–few people think of themselves as having a problem.
In the ~35 years since the end of the “global cooling” scare and after the expenditure of more than $100 billion in the US alone:
– there is no unique global emissions reduction GOAL which all agree must be achieved to avoid catastrophe;
– there is no PLAN which all agree to pursue to achieve that GOAL; and,
– there is no TIMELINE which all agree must be met.
All we have is a WISH that the global average temperature anomaly not exceed 2C. I would suggest that is a hugely expensive WISH. However, we are probably fortunate that is all we have.
collectively… collectively… collectively…
Yep, just as I thought, a bunch of leftists whose primary goal is to chain others.
If the critical threshold for climate catastrophe could be identified with scientific certainty, their research suggests that countries very likely would propose a collective target certain to avoid catastrophe, would pledge to contribute their fair share to the global effort, and would act so as to fulfill their promises.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How utterly naive. They created a model and presume that the world will act in accordance with it. They should have instead studied history. The words of Winston Churchill in 1949 come to mind:
“I was however a little disquieted that you find it necessary to debate the question, to quote Dr. Burchard’s opening address, “Whether the problem of world production yielding at least a minimum living to the whole population can be solved, and whether man has so destroyed the resources of his world that he may be doomed to die of starvation.” If, with all the resources of modern science, we find ourselves unable to avert world famine, we shall all be to blame, but a peculiar responsibility would rest upon the scientists. I do not believe they will fail, but if they do, or were not allowed to succeed, the consequences would be very unpleasant because it is certain that mankind would not agree to starve equally, and there might be some very sharp disagreements about how the last crust was to be shared. This would simplify our problem in an unduly primordial manner. “
An odd statement: The certain scientific outcome espoused by the IPCC and Hansen et al is the element that is said to be uncertain and political by these writers. And the actual number is to be determned by “nature”, suggesting that the outcome is not certain and the science, therefore, far from settled.
If the temperature rise was said to be a MINIMUM of 2C, then would that not be a “certainty”? But apparently this IPCC exercise cannot even say what the minimum would be, because “nature” not man or – most significantly – man-made CO2 doesn’t actually control the outcome.
So the settled science and certain outcome is … what? I don’t know, and the authors are saying the governmental strategists and negotiators don’t know.
All that work, all those reports, all the harangue, and nobody can say what the minimum WILL be?
And I thought consulting experts were supposed to decide something … other than the contracts need extending.
Can someone enlighten us all on what a ‘climate catastrophe’ actually _is_? Catastrophe is a nice word but it would be a lot more scientific to state what was expected to happen.
However, thinking about it that is why such an ambiguous but threatening word is used – the goal posts can be moved to fit any event that could be called catastrophic and blame heaped upon the miscreant frequent flying, SUV driving, big-oil shills.
It is good news indeed that the fake “climate negotiations” to cripple our economies with panic-stricken carbon-strangulation policies are likely to fail.
I have just finished reading the “Climate Change Education, Formal Settings K-12” report released today by the US National Academy of Science. If you live elsewhere hang on, they are citing research from all over the world on how to use education to get around widespread climate skepticism. The plan is not to teach Climate Science and Climate Change specifically but to teach what I have previously described as a collectivist political theory masquerading as a learning theory-the Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/develop-learners-who-think-and-behave-and-view-themselves-as-systems-citizens/ is a good overview of what Systems Thinking looks like in the classroom. It is designed to create a FEELING there is a crisis. Beliefs and emotions are what gets manipulated and the constant refrain that the individual must give way to the consensus of the Group and Humanity and the Common Good.
The report speculates that this systems thinking approach will make it harder for this to be controversial because it is harder to spot. The idea as always with systems thinking is to adjust the individual values, attitudes, and beliefs so that future behavior is affected in
predictable and desired ways. Most of my posts on systems thinking go back to the work of either Peter Senge or Bela Banathy. But Senge is currently training US teachers on bringing systems thinking and climate modelling based on the Meadows’ work and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth scenarios to classrooms as part of the Common Core implementation now being rolled out in a school near you. Actually all over the world.
So this is the bypass around actual temps and weather and sun activity and all the other real things that are in the way of gaining acceptance of these controlling political theories.
Heads up on Systems Thinking and how nefarious it is. NAS and UNEP think we will not catch this subterfuge.
We already have.
Catastrophe in climatology speak = end of funding. Now I understand the article.
Just noting that the 2.0C target is really 450 ppm CO2.
They originally wanted to set the max CO2 level to be 450 ppm and that is how it was originally described. But they switched it to a temperature target just so that it would be more meaningful for people (and more ominous sounding).
450 ppm = 3 / ln(2) * ln (450ppm / 280ppm) = +2.0C
If you think temperatures will rise at 3.0C per doubling then 450 ppm will limit the temperature increase to just 2.0C. Lags and uncertainty and the fact that 3.0C per doubling is not actually happening means that there is no real limits set with a 2.0C target. We will never get close enough to start enforcing GHG emission reductions.
We are only at about 0.75C so far (and only 0.4C when you pull out the fake temperature adjustments) so if 2.0C was the target, we wouldn’t have to so anything about GHGs for 100 years or so when temps start getting up to +1.5C or so (assuming the increasing every few months fake temperature adjustments are stopped sometime in the next decade or so).
“Our research suggests that negotiators should focus their attention on alternative strategies for collective action, such as trade restrictions or technology standards,ā Barrett says.”
========
Apparently someone has noticed that cutting CO2 at home by increasing taxes drive CO2 production to China. Along with that Co2 production goes the prosperity that access to low cost energy provides.
In this highly automated age of robotic manufacturing, if you have the lowest cost energy on the planet, then you can manufacture products more cheaply than anyone else and drive every other country on the planet into poverty in the process, by destroying their manufacturing base and the wealth it creates.
Anymoose says:
October 16, 2012 at 11:59 am
and the United States will have to figure out how to house and feed 40 million Canadians for the next 40,000 years.
=========
I vote they send us to Mexico, or anyplace 2C warmer than Canada. For 300+ days of the year the only thing you can grow in 90% of Canada is ice. Someone please explain again why warming is a problem!!
If the Canadian Arctic does open up to agriculture, trade and commerce, we might just be able to provide jobs for the 50 million Americans that currently don’t have one.
We also have to take another motive into account for wanting to back away from the 2.0C target. It is very likely connected to concerns about the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. The 2.0 C target has been pegged with the assumption, based on modeling, that the climate sensitivity is 3-4C for a doubling of CO2. Meaning with those assumptions, we can only got to a CO2 level of about 1.6 times preindustrial.
So what happens if countries sign a treaty limiting CO2 to 2.0C and the climate sensitivity is not in the 4C range? What if doubling CO2 actually has a climate impact of about 1C as many of us suspect? Well if we lock in a treaty allowing 2C worth of CO2 warming that would mean we could quadruple CO2 from preindustrial levels and still meet the 2.0C goal. I think this is clear evidence that they know the climate sensitivity is exagerated, and that when that exagerated value is figured out, the CO2 level can go much higher to achieve the result they have been asking for.
in australia, we’re doing everything to justify a carbon dioxide price…at everyone’s expense:
17 Oct: Australian: ANNABEL HEPWORTH/PIA AKERMAN Brown out in coal power squeeze
A MAJOR brown-coal power station in Victoriaās Latrobe Valley will cut production by operating only three of its four units, prompting new warnings that the federal renewable energy target is threatening the sustainability of the electricity market.
The Australian can reveal that Energy Australia will today announce it will scale back electricity generation at the Gippsland-based Yallourn power station. The company says the carbon price, which started on July 1, is driving up operating costs while wholesale electricity prices are weak and demand for electricity is plunging.
Energy Australia will also warn that the renewable energy target is suppressing wholesale power prices to uneconomic levels and point to modelling that finds the RET will cost consumers $53 billion ā almost 50 per cent more than the National Broadband Network.
The decision means that more than 3000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity has been cut back or closed in recent timesā¦
Mr Combet said the RET was bipartisan, remained a āvery importantā part of the Clean Energy Future package and was always intended to work with the carbon price to cut emissions by making renewable and low-emissions electricity generation more competitiveā¦
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/brown-out-in-coal-power-squeeze/story-e6frg6xf-1226497360617
“If the critical threshold for climate catastrophe could be identified with scientific certainty, ………because the climate threshold is determined by Nature, and uncertainty about its value is substantially irreducible.”
———————————————————————————————
If you listen very very closely, with only half a brain, you might possibly detect a signal to noise issue, embedded in what would appear to be normal interglacial climate. If the “climate threshold” during a normal interglacial envelope includes everything we have seen to date in the Holocene, then greater than +2C and +2C have occurred anyway. Assuming the present climate will go on forever we are going to have one heck of a time picking our signal out of unending interglacial noise if it is just +2C or say -2C.
But what if the current interglacial is just about kaput? It either is or it isn’t, there is no in between. So far, all the extreme interglacials have ended with from 1 to 3 strong thermal pulses at their very ends (MIS-19 had 3, MIS-11c had 1 and MIS-5e had 2….). In terms of sea level, which we have much better global agreement on in the paleoclimate literature, Sea level could spike anywhere from +6M to +21M (MIS-5e and MIS-11c, respectively).
How are we to know 1 end extreme thermal peak from another or 3 vis-a-vis anything we might spawn? Well it would simply have to be larger than whatever caused those 1 to 3 typical spikes which, goldarnit, just seem to happen anyway.
I seem to have lost my set of Murphy’s laws, but one of my favorites goes something like this:
“When in the course of any endeavor one finds oneself with a choice between an obvious wrong answer and an obvious correct one, it is usually wiser to choose the obvious wrong one first, thereby eliminating subsequent revision.”
Or something like that.
The obvious right choice would seem to be to recognize the inherent uncertainty contained either in unending normal interglacial noise, or the possibility that we might be at yet another end extreme interglacial with dramatically larger envelopes of end extreme interglacial noise, recognizing that anything we might, could, should must do will have an unmeasurable effect in either case.
The obvious wrong choice would seem to be to fail to recognize that either normal interglacial noise or end extreme thermal spikes is at the very least equal to modeled AGW “worst case” signals, or miniscule by comparison. Once you have ignored both envelopes of demonstrated natural noise (ignorance?) you must do something. Such as “propose a collective target certain to avoid catastrophe” “that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius.”
The neat part about the marriage between that Murphy’s Law and the Precautionary Principle is that it holds the potential to “eliminate subsequent revision”!
Cut CO2, sprinkle the oceans with iron, the atmosphere with aerosols (lemme see, that would be air pollution that is being recommended, right?, erect enormous ethereal mirrors in geosynchronous orbit between earth and sun (tip: buy meteor and maybe asteroid insurance for the mirror!) and now try to extract yourself from the inevitable glacial, whenever it comes.
Beyond the collective limits of our intelligence, failure becomes the next best instructor of success.
Good points, William. As one who is anticipating the end of this interglacial far more than some catastrophic, man-induced tipping point, I believe most scientists will be so caught up looking for the aforementioned tipping point they’ll miss our drop into the temperature abyss until it’s too late.
Then there goes most of the human race.
Answer to Bill Illies,
The biggest problem with the so called experts still leaning towards their dreamproject of reducing the CO2 is that they never learnt to understand the math…..
Doesn’t matter IF it had been true that there had been or in the near future would be a 450 ppm rising of CO2. As long as they don’t understand that not even 500 ppm would change the approximation of CO2 in atmosfere to 0.04 % when added to the figure which is approximated to 0,04…..
One other thing they forgotten: Archimedes’ principle shouldn’t be dismissed…. but of course some of them might have had to strong drinks due to no ice in the glass š
It seems that ‘catastrophe’ in terms of global warming equates to ‘we all die’ (politician terms). Until such a time, there will continue to be people, and groups of people, who are in denial. Who said that climate change is merely due to anthropogenic forcing? This gets even the skeptics thinking. Its not like this is the first time this has happened. If indeed warming does reach ‘worrying’ temperatures, for scientists the only way to get policy onboard…sadly…is to lie…or lets say exaggerate. What a great job everyone has been doing with that! Surely we have it all figured out.
I’ll have my drink with ice please, its very hot in Africa!
What will really happen:
countries will end up emitting far more than they pledged ā with agriculturally profoundly positive and climatically trivial consequences.
For [snip . . blasphemy is frowned upon here, sorry . . mod] sake, when is someone going to finally come out with it … the whole sodding climate change scare has been a scam, hoax, false alarm … the IPCC should be shut down … politicians should cease using climate science for political purposes … and scientists should get back to real science and stay the hell away from politics.
Is the Royal Society listening?
JR:
At October 17, 2012 at 2:03 am you say
That is so wrong it boggles the mind.
Firstly, there is no reason to think warming would or could “reach āworryingā temperatures”.
Secondly, scientists DON’T “lie” or “exaggerate”: they report their findings.
Thirdly, politicians “get policy on board”; scientists don’t.
But climastrologists have lied and exaggerated again and again and … Fortunately, nature is revealing their lies and exaggerations.
Richard
This only goes to illustrate the muddle you get into if real time data is ingored in favour of some model.