This will be a top post for a day or two, new posts appear below. For those waiting…PAYPAL is now available
I’m participating in this, as are some other well known climate skeptics. The producer (Australia’s video pundit Topher Field) has 4 weeks (28 days) to get it funded in IndieGoGo. I ask your help to make it happen. Note, I have no financial interest in this film, I’m merely one of the people to be interviewed. Thanks – Anthony
UPDATE from Topher:
What an incredible initial response! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated!
Paypal WILL be available soon (unless something goes horribly wrong). We are awaiting final confirmation from Paypal that our account is 100% set up and then we will enable Paypal donations.
UPDATE2: Topher responds to questions in this thread in comments, jump here
50-to-1 has the potential to shift the climate debate for good!
Watch the video to see how, or read on!
What if we could show you that trying to ‘stop’ climate change is 50 times more expensive than adapting to it? And what if we could prove it using numbers and formulas accepted by the IPCC, CRU and other ‘consensus’ bodies? Well that’s exactly what 50-to-1 does.
The original calculations were done by Lord Christopher Monckton who has since presented his conclusions to audiences of scientists, economists and mathematicians all over the world. You can see the calculations and a FULL LIST OF SOURCES here: 50 to 1 calculations and sources
Lord Monckton has now approached me to take the above and present it in a video and web package suitable for mass consumption on the internet. If we can successfully help the general public to understand the futility of ‘stopping’ climate change and the relative value of adapting, then we can stop wasting money on useless schemes and start putting our money where it will ACTUALLY make a difference.
The 50 to 1 project is designed to get this message to the general public in three different, complimentary ways:
1. A 7 minute video. This video is designed to be fun, easily understood and contain everything you need to know in one tight and beautifully produced package. This 7 minute video is the centrepiece of the project. It’s designed to be enjoyable, informative and SHORT enough that people will watch it and then pass it on via email and social media. This in turn will encourage people who want to know more to go to…
2. … The 50 to 1 website. The website will host the video and more importantly will contain ALL the references for ALL the information contained in the video (see the link above for an example). Anyone who wants to fact-check or dispute the video will have open access to all our sources so they can see for themselves that the conclusions drawn in ’50 to 1′ are consistent with the science as understood by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For those who really want to go deep into the issue and wrap their head around the current state of climate economics the website will also host…
3. … Expert Interviews. So far we have 7 confirmed interviewees, Former President Vaclav Klaus, Prof Henry Ergas, Prof Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Prof David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova . Whilst excerpts of the interviews will be used in the 7 minute video, the real value is that we will be spending 30 minutes to 1 hour with each of them (so 3.5+ hours combined run time!) and the full interview with each of these internationally respected experts will be available on the 50-to-1 website as they share their thoughts and perspectives on climate change and in particular policy responses such as carbon taxes and trading schemes.
Each part of the 3 part structure is designed to work together, attracting people with the professionally produced, fun, funny and engaging 7 minute video, and then allowing them to fact check and explore on the website and discover for themselves through the interviews the true cost of ‘stopping’ climate change… which is 50 times more than adapting!
50 to 1 cuts across all the noise and fury surrounding the ‘climate debate’ and gets right to the point: Even if the IPCC is right, and even if climate change IS happening and it IS caused by man, we are STILL better off adapting to it as it happens than we are trying to ‘stop’ it. ‘Action’ is 50 times more expensive than ‘adaptation’, and that’s a conclusion which is derived directly from the IPCC’s own predictions and formulae!
This video, website and interview combination is a game-changer and could radically shift the climate debate. But it will only have an impact if a large number of people watch the video. The video needs to be so fun, fast paced and visually engaging that people will not only watch it, but also pass it on for their friends to watch. 7 minutes is an ideal length because it’s short enough to keep people’s attention, whilst being long enough for us to pack in all the information required to understand the maths and economics behind 50 to 1. It’s effectively a short film which mixes the presentation of the maths and formulae with animations to illustrate every step along the way AND snippets of interviews with internationally respected experts lending the weight of their professional opinions to the subject.
President Vaclav Klaus, Professor Henry Ergas, Professor Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Professor David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova have all agreed to be interviewed and we are still waiting to hear back from a few others. Traveling with a production crew (to North America and Europe and back as well as around Australia) to get the interviews, as well as studio filming, editing, animating, colour grading and audio sweetening costs money. That’s why I need your help.
The 50 to 1 project has the potential to shift the climate debate for good. It has the potential to undermine political attempts to impose more taxes, stupid subsidies and the myriad of ‘green schemes’ which we’ve seen spring up in the last decade or so. It has the potential to save us all a small fortune in years to come if we can totally undermine public support for ‘Action’ on climate change and shift the focus instead to adaptation as required.
I’ve enlisted the help of an award winning production company here in Melbourne Australia to ensure the highest possible standard of production. All up we’ve calculated a budget (including all the travel etc) of $155,000 to do everything properly, although we can scrape by with less if we cut a few corners, potentially as little as $130,000, but any less than that and it will start to cost us money rather than enable us to pay our bills!
Your donation will help us to reach our minimum budget and once we get there it will be ‘game on’ and we will be able to get cracking and make 50-to-1 a reality.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change
Twitter Share Shortlink: http://igg.me/at/50to1
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No time to read the comments, but I did have time to contribute. I look forward to seeing the finished video. Thank you, Anthony!
50 to 1 is too low. We’re already, & have been adapting, however belated in some cases.
I suggest they set up a PayPal account for contributions.
I’m thinking of Australia’s recent hostility towards freedom of speech re: climate and that if the US can jail a whack-job video maker in the US, this guy has a fair chance of being criminalized in Oz. And why does he want to drive women to prostitution anyway? (If you’re not up to speed with the US Congress, you really should be. It’s not ridiculous so much as it is scary.)
So… the IPCC is now deemed completely correct ???!!! ROTFLMAO 😉 🙂 🙄
It’s all CO2?? Stop thinking the sun affects the climate ??
Tell me, who just hacked WUWT?
…”What if we could show you that trying to ‘stop’ climate change is 50 times more expensive than adapting to it?…”
Good luck with trying to change a committed Warmist.
Remember that experiment when a presenter asked an audience of them if producing a magic wand and stopping CO2 emissions would be acceptable (if such a thing existed)? The audience said “No!”. They don’t want to ‘save the Earth’, they want to make humanity suffer….
I don’t think the justification for passing an Australian carbon tax has a whole lot to do with local damage over a ten-year period. If you want to “change the debate” perhaps you should examine the costs to Australia of 800-1100 ppm(how much carbon is in those clathrates everyone is so excited about?) over the next several centuries.
It is true that Australia alone can’t stop global BAU emissions, but thinking that this calculation is going to convince anyone who is worried about climate is just a little revealing of the average information level on this forum.
Would love to contribute, sadly don’t have the money to spare, and I find it difficult to stretch myself for a production that concedes that CO2 has any warming power on our planet at all, when it is painfully clear that it does not. I cannot in good conscience contribute to something that advocates something that does not exists (GHE). Sorry … 🙁
I’ll contribute. Make sure to install the best anti-DoS and other hacker safe guards on the site. You know it will be a target for the malevolent types out there. They will be funded by Big Green, a.k.a. the crony capitalist bunch, and the rent seekers from the “centers for higher education.”
It falls into the trap that AGW arguments are fundamentally based on science or reason. AGW is (at the core) really about collectivism (statism) vs. private individual rights. There are a dozen subplots but global socialism and its rationalizations are immune to science, logic or facts. AGW is a perfect proof of this reality.
Accepting IPCC figures is a detriment in the longer-term debate as they are a statist entity that must be ultimately rejected or destroyed. Skepticism is as dominated by this convention (winning through data) as the AGW is dominated by “fighting Big Oil” or other Earth Day meme’s. Facing the actual political reality of why thing are the way they are is essential so this argument is another distraction for a small audience. It also is rhetorically validating numerous false presumptions of the warming interests and that’s harmful.
Thank-you for this initiative, you have my full support for the concept and my contribution.The carbon caping/trading and green scam mandates/spending is tranforming Western countries into third world countries and making no difference in total CO2 emissions.
Best wishes everyone.
William.
The money spent on inefficient green scams has made almost no difference in total CO2 emissions in the EU. The majority of the EU CO2 emission reduction is due to massive transfer of manufacturing jobs to Asia. If the CO2 input used to create the Asian goods and transport the good which are purchased by EU consumers, the EU net CO2 emissions have increased.
The EU has managed to waste billions of dollars on green scams such as wind farms which raise the cost of electric power (the cost of power in Germany is roughly twice what it is in the US) and which do not significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emissions per Kw of power generated. The problem is the wind is chaotic, uncontrollable, and the energy produced is at the cube power of the wind speed. Energy in must always equal energy consumed in an electrical grid. The grid must be balanced. The extreme variability and randomness of the wind farm result in a net loss in grid efficiency as highly efficient (60% efficiency) combined cycle power plants (a combined cycle cannot be turned on and off on and off) must be shutdown and replaced with single cycle natural gas power plants (40% efficiency). If one includes the inefficiency of using a single cycle gas power plant vs using a combined cycle power plant and adds the CO2 emission cost to construct the wind turbines and install transmission lines and substations to step up to grid voltage and to handle grid stability issues there is only a minor reduction in total CO2 emitted. (i.e. The scheme fails to significantly reduce CO2 emissions.) The wind turbines are in the media quoted there rated design power which requires optimum wind speed (too much or too little they must be shutdown). Actual power produced is 21.7% of rated power in Germany and typically 30% in the US.
The scheme to convert food to biofuel is worse. There is all most no reduction in net CO2 emission if all energy inputs are considered: to grow, transport, and convert the food to biofuel. The greater problem with the scam (in addition to a massive subsidy and the increase in cost of electrical power to industry and the consumer) is that as there is a limited amount of agricultural land, virgin forests are being cut down to grow food to convert to biofuel which results in a significant increase in CO2 emissions and a loss of habitat. As people also eat food and the scam results increased malnutrition in third world countries.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’
Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction. He says agriculture should also be subsidised in regions where it ensures the survival of local populations. Meanwhile, in response to a call by the IMF and World Bank over the weekend to a food crisis that is stoking violence and political instability, German Foreign Minister Peer Steinbrueck gave his tacit backing.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
EPA’s RFS accounting shows corn ethanol today is worse than gasoline
http://plevin.berkeley.edu/docs/Plevin-Comments-on-final-RFS2-v7.pdf
http://www.senseandsustainability.net/2012/01/26/scrapping-corn-ethanol-subsidies-for-a-smarter-biofuels-policy/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22372088
Trillion-euro shortfall facing EU energy sector – Lords Committee
Investment totalling a trillion euros (£846bn) is required before the end of this decade if the European Union is to stave off an energy crisis.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/spain-risks-default-now-more-than-ever-buiter-says-tom-keene.html
Spain’s Default Risk Is Rising, Buiter Says: Tom Keene
Spain has never been so close to default and Greece, Ireland and Portugal may need further bailouts, Citigroup Inc. chief economist Willem Buiter said. “Spain is the key country about which I’m most worried,” Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, said in a radio interview today on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt. “It’s really moved to the wrong side of the spectrum and is now at greater risk of sovereign restructuring than ever before.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7969102/The-Clean-Development-Mechanism-delivers-the-greatest-green-scam-of-all.html
The Clean Development Mechanism delivers the greatest green scam of all
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/asia/incentive-to-slow-climate-change-drives-output-of-harmful-gases.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. … … The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year. So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low, discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases. That means, critics say, that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/
Observations show major flaws
1. The missing heat is not in the ocean 8 – 14
2. Satellites show a warmer Earth is releasing extra energy to space 15 -17
3. The models get core assumptions wrong – the hot spot is missing 22 – 26, 28 – 31
4. Clouds cool the planet as it warms 38 – 56
5. The models are wrong on a local, regional, or continental scale. 63- 64
6. Eight different methods suggest a climate sensitivity of 0.4°C 66
7. Has CO2 warmed the planet at all in the last 50 years? It’s harder to tell than you think. 70
8. Even if we assume it’s warmed since 1979, and assume that it was all CO2, if so, feedbacks are zero — disaster averted. 71
9. It was as warm or warmer 1000 years ago. Models can’t explain that. It wasn’t CO2. (See also failures of hockey sticks) The models can’t predict past episodes of warming, so why would they predict future ones?
http://gigaom.com/2012/04/05/chart-the-death-spiral-of-solar-bankruptcies-counting/
The solar death spiral has been long and ugly. Over the past year, there have been over a dozen stalwarts and startups that have headed to bankruptcy court.
Two companies even filed for bankruptcies in this week alone: manufacturer Q-Cells, which was the worlds largest solar cell maker in 2008 and power plant developer Solar Trust of America, which just a year ago was on its way to build a few gigawatts of solar projects in the American Southwest…. …The fate of Solar Trust, which is mostly owned by Solar Millennium, is a reminder of the difficulties of shepherding a power plant project to completion, even when all the permits are in hand. Solar Trust’s crown jewel project was the 1 GW Blythe Solar farm in California, and at one point the company was set to snag a $2.1 billion federal loan guarantee to build it before it decided to withdraw from the loan guarantee process last summer and change the technology it would use for Blythe.
Solar Millennium tried to sell Solar Trust to a fellow German company, Solarhybrid, only to see Solarhybird, too, file for bankruptcy last month.
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-turbines-great-turbulence-consequences-grid.html
Wind turbines operate under great turbulence, with consequences for grid stability
The researchers modeled the conversion of wind speed to power output using data from a rural wind farm. The results showed that the intermittent properties of wind persist on the scale of an entire wind farm, and that wind turbines do not only transfer wind intermittency to the grid, but also increase it. The findings highlight the importance of fully understanding the physics of wind turbulence in order to ensure future grid stability
They explain that today’s grids are powered mainly by a few large generators with controllable input (mostly gas, coal, hydraulic, and nuclear power plants). Power generation from these sources can be modified automatically in order to balance power generation and consumption, and thus ensure grid stability. But while today’s power sources are largely controllable, wind power is uncontrollable and highly intermittent.
Sorry, I agree with several commenters that this is most likely not going to work because it sends the wrong message: that AGW is real. I think many people feel that any disturbance of the natural flow of things (whatever that would be) by us human beings is basically wrong -unnatural has a bad ring to it- and somewhat frightening.
It would be much more effective when a good communicator shows that the climate tends to ignore our CO2 emissions, that the atmosphere has not warmed for a long time and that any perceived change of the climate in terms of extreme weather is therefore not caused by our CO2 emissions. Only when discussing the last stronghold of AGW, the precautionary principle, can you mention that the cost of adaptation is 2% of the cost of prevention. Or in other words, that it would be silly to pay a fire insurance premium of 50 times the value of your house.
Evert Jesse
I just contributed.
This project looks swell, but what would really motivate me to donate would be a more humanitarian appeal. Climate change skeptics need to start emphasizing the dire need for energy infrastructure in poor countries where people die by the millions every year just because they lack heat, light, refrigerators, internet access, washing machines, transportation, et cetera. We need to start calling the alarmists out for the devastating effect that their campaign is having on poor people around the world.
John Christy’s story about giving people in Africa a lift in his van is a great example of how to get this message across. Watch it here, beginning at about 3:00 in.
I’m a big fan of Topher videos, alas this particular venture epitomises why us sceptics have not and can not win the AGW debate for decades to come. (Does everybody realise that the resurgence of the alarmists side is a mere El Nino away?)
Firstly, we fight too cleanly and honourably, like in old John Wayne movies. Reality is so much different.
Secondly, so long as we concede that AGW exists and the debate is a matter of degree, then the debate will last for as long as it takes for that degree to be narrowed down. That will be a life time or more away. In the meantime, the other side has annexed our universities, our institutions, our political parties and even the upper echelons of some of our biggest companies. Now they’re after primary and pre-schools. Good luck winning any debate whatsoever when these kids become voting adults.
In summary, I regretfully dub my side- the sceptics side -The Chamberlains.
My heart and mind wishes I could dub us The Churchills.
A question has to be asked: To what are we going to adapt to? Given that the climate has always been constantly changing, are we to adapt to the moving target known from the historic record or must we assume (love that word, don’t you?) the climate is changing along a known path going forward? If the latter, what is that path, why do you believe it is the one true path, and can you show your math?
If not the latter then what need we do that we have not been doing since before mankind had a written language?
“What if we could show you that trying to ‘stop’ climate change is 50 times more expensive than adapting to it?”
Well we can point out what a can of worms these IPCC tax-eating watermelons conjure up in their air conditioned ivory towers-
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-020513.html
Some ugly trade-offs to chew on there for the true believers?
Pardon me, but, AGW is a real effect, you folks that don’t think so, get over it, you sound like the slayers/principia cult.
The real questions are. How much? How sensitive is our atmosphere to CO2, and how many, how much do feedbacks contribute/retard depending on whether they are positive or negative?
Trying to sell “AGW isn’t real” won’t fly, no matter how you frame it, because rational skeptics, from Dr. Richard Lindzen right on down acknowledge the reality of it in literature with sensitivity studies and essays. Lindzen and Choi pointed out the sensitivity was small, less than 1C, and thus not a real concern. See our recent summary here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/25/a-compilation-of-lower-climate-sensitivities-plus-a-new-one/
This film will point out the futility of rush to judgement Pascal’s Wager type adaptation measures to an issue not yet fully quantified and understood by the scientific community, and with plenty of uncertainty still afoot. Dr. Judith Curry dubs the “uncertainty monster” as one of the big issues.
No film, essay, paper, documentary, or article is going to be perfect and satisfy everyone, but I have high hopes and expectations for this one. And, I’ll point out the film isn’t made yet, it is just a concept. There’s plenty of time to make suggestions. If I thought this film would be used to strengthen alarmist causes, I wouldn’t be involved at any level.
Bear in mind that if naysayers don’t want to help, that’s their choice, but I advise them to look around and see what other film and media efforts by skeptics are afoot. Unlike 10:10, nobody is going to get blown up and embarrass the skeptic community. This is going to be factually entertaining. And, since we skeptics still haven’t got that big oil check that the Mannites claim we get monthly, all Topher can do is ask with hat in hand.
I’m leading by example, because I think this project has merit and will be effective. I hope you will too and join in helping.
“Its controversial that title …”
No it isn’t. It is only controversial to non Brits who do not understand the difference between being a “Lord” and a member of the “House of Lords”.
His title of Viscount is hereditary. It is passed down from father to son. It is on his passport. In the UK you would call a Viscount: Lord. So the title is 100% genuine.
In days gone by, every Lord would automatically have been eligible to sit in the House of Lords. However, and this is where it gets difficult, our members of parliament have made some new rules stating that that is no longer the case. This allows them to select the members of the upper house in an attempt to stop them chucking out all their proposed legislation.
The question remains, although parliament has made some new rules, were they entitled to do it and should they have any effect? You might think that what parliament says, goes, but we have the Queen involved here as well. Parliament may be trying to change something that only the queen can change, technically. His Lordship, ever a stickler, is merely pointing this out. I appreciate that 99% of the world will probably not understand and it gives scope for his enemies.
So, in summary, he is a Lord but for all pratical purposes he is not a member of the House of Lords, but, even so, he may actually be a member on a technicality.
There has been considerable criticism of this video’s concessions to AGW theory and use of IPCC assumptions. While it is unfortunate to have to stoop as low as that, I believe it can be a very effective position to start from. Remember, when dealing with a public that is bleary-eyed from years of CAGW drivel and numb to any reasonable arguments against it, a great approach can be to take the very stick the warmists use–and knock them on the head with it. Having gained their attention, then lead them to the website, and finally to expert interviews of Singer, Watts, Nova et al.
The point is, it’s hard to reason with some people about this until you convince them that their deeply-held beliefs might be flawed. Start on their turf and walk them over to reality.
“The original calculations were done by Lord Christopher Monckton who has since presented his conclusions to audiences of scientists, economists and mathematicians all over the world.”
===========================================================
I remember Monckton referring a couple of times to other scientists who allegedly proved that thing about future costs. Now the calculations have become his own? This is not a good sign.
Second, he never presented even a more or less convincing outline of such a study. Everyone can claim to have proven whatever. My guess is that Monckton does not have a case here, just speculations.
Third, making a film based on assumption that the IPCC is right and speculations on the other side is a bad service, wrong strategy and distraction from the core issues. It is a good strategy only for warmists, because such an approach gives the public the impression that the IPCC is indeed right, because why would anyone make a film assuming that the IPCC is right if they were wrong.
Fourth, it is much easier to demonstrate that the IPCC is wrong on the core issues. In short, the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC (warming by back radiation) is even in theory physically absurd and therefore impossible. “Global warming” is practically impossible to prove scientifically, like any other “global” warmings and coolings in the past. Attributions (global warming causes…) are simply illogical, because they contradict the definition of “global warming”. All this is very simple to demonstrate in such a way that laypersons like politicians and journalists could understand it.
Why does the film crew need to travel at all? Either fly the European & American interviewees to Oz, conduct the interviews remotely or hire local videographers to shoot the talking heads, if they can’t shoot themselves with sufficient expertise & quality of product. Some shooters might work for free, as an in-kind donation or to promote their freelance careers.
And why not produce a partner video on the reality of climate change, showing that catastrophic, runaway, Hansenian Venusian global warming is a vanishingly small risk (arguably impossible on earth), & that even sea level rise is unlikely to be a problem, while accepting that doubling CO2 from three to six molecules per 10,000 molecules of dry air (currently almost four) might raise worldwide average temperature by one to two degrees F? So, no worries. It’s a good thing.
dp says:
May 2, 2013 at 8:54 am
We got to where we are now (almost) by ignoring climate. The present obsession with it can be viewed as a political strategy or a mental illness (fear of the unknowable).
The ’50-to-1′ project may be effective but I think only if it first resolves its problematic false unstated premise that it bypasses by starting with cost calculations based on the IPCC’s bias against burning fossil fuels. The project’s false unstated premise is that there is a net harmful impact on life from burning fossil fuels.
The project must, I think, dispose of that presumption of the myth’s truth first before calculating costs.
Otherwise, I am sure that the fanatical ideologically committed supporters of CAGW will just smile with derision at the strategy of the ’50-to-1′ project and say we must do the right thing about stopping the bad fossil fuel burning even when doing the right thing has costs so high that it seriously harms our lives.
I applaud the ’50-to-1′ project efforts, but am concerned its strategy starts with a non-fundamental, so misses the essential argument against CAGW.
If it fixes that, I would support the ’50-to-1′ project.
John
He chose some wrong interviewees
REPLY: Why Harry? Because he didn’t ask your office buddy at UCAR, Trenberth? Sour grapes. – Anthony