Guest essay by Marlo Lewis
Okay, they don’t do so in as many words. But in addition to being more confident than ever (despite a 16-year pause in warming and the growing mismatch between model projections and observations) that man-made climate change is real, they are also more confident nothing really bad is going to happen during the 21st Century.
The scariest parts of the “planetary emergency” narrative popularized by Al Gore and other pundits are Atlantic Ocean circulation shutdown (implausibly plunging Europe into a mini-ice age), ice sheet disintegration raising sea levels 20 feet, and runaway warming from melting frozen methane deposits.
As BishopHill and Judith Curry report on their separate blogs, IPCC now believes that in the 21st Century, Atlantic Ocean circulation collapse is “very unlikely,” ice sheet collapse is “exceptionally unlikely,” and catastrophic release of methane hydrates from melting permafrost is “very unlikely.” You can read it for yourself in Chapter 12 Table 12.4 of the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report.
But these doomsday scenarios have always been way more fiction than science. For some time now, extreme weather has been the only card left in the climate alarm deck. Climate activists repeatedly assert that severe droughts, floods, and storms (Hurricane Sandy is their current poster child) are now the “new normal,” and they blame fossil fuels.
On their respective blogs Anthony Watts and Roger Pielke, Jr. provide excerpts about extreme weather from Chapter 2 of the IPCC report. Among the findings:
- “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”
- “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”
- “In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.”
- “Based on updated studies, AR4 [the IPCC 2007 report] conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.”
- “In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extra-tropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”
Pielke Jr. concludes:
“There is really not much more to be said here — the data says what it says, and what it says is so unavoidably obvious that the IPCC has recognized it in its consensus. Of course, I have no doubts that claims will still be made associating floods, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes with human-caused climate change — Zombie science — but I am declaring victory in this debate. Climate campaigners would do their movement a favor by getting themselves on the right side of the evidence.”
For further discussion, see my post “Global Warming: Planet’s Most Hyped Problem” on this week’s National Journal Energy Insiders blog.
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See also: Global warming is ‘no longer a planetary emergency’
@ur momisugly Chad Wozniak
Yes, you are right… http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheWolfandtheLamb2
Get the UN Population Survey spreadsheet, and select the Low Band page. It’s the only one that’s ever close to accurate. Peak around 8bn in 30 yrs, declining thereafter. Depop will be the real crisis, just as cooling is the real danger instead of warming.
Green assessments and fears and warnings are 180° wrong. Let that be your guideline, it’s virtually infallible.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/rapidcity_zps7ab13c24.jpg
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/current/misc/google-maps-radar/Fullpage/us-canada-mosiac-radar.php
The United Nations Environment program (UNEP) published the alarming detail in 2005 predicting climate change would create 50 million refugees by 2010. By 2011 UNEP were quietly taking down the documents in attempt to hide the mistake. Or was it a mistake?.
The well-known and reliable blog site wattsupwiththat mirrored the tables, graphs, other factual documents and information on the prediction, which had been taken down in 2011 by UNEP.
‘And there you have it folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover up attempt,’ wrote Anthony Watts.
The UNEP gave a detailed ‘handy map’ on areas most likely to be affected: Bahamas, St Lucia, Seychelles and Solomon Islands.
A recent census on the islands showed ample population increases: Bahamas 50,047, Solomon Islands exceeds half a million and St Lucia recorded an overall increase of 5 percent.
Further investigation showed other news reports with identical alarming figures by 2020.
‘Coming in 2020: 50 million Environmental refugees,’ a headline read. A UN projection by Professor Cristine Tirado at the American Association for the advancement of sciences meeting.
In Australia, Chairman of the Climate Commission, Tim Flannery’s predictions have come under similar question.
Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun said: ‘Tim Flannery has just been hired by the Gillard government to scare us stupid,’ Heraldsun.com.
In 2011 Bolt returns to Flannery’s 2005 prediction that Australia will face ‘extreme difficulties with water,’ and reveals: Sydney’s dam levels have climbed to 73 percent, Brisbane 100 percent full, Adelaide 70 full and The Murray Darling is flooding.
AL GORE — AMERICAN BLOVIATOR
Forever, forever, its all Al Gore
Now, in the future and always before
Spinning himself with the words he can whirl
The earth is his oyster, he is its pearl
Whatever he says he truly believes
First before others himself he deceives
Then sure of the “TRUTH” his dictums are hurled
Like God, by the Word, creating the world
Sandy was not a hurricane.
Sustained wind speeds were well below the 33 meters per second threshold at landfall.
Post storm damage assessment is consistent with tropical storm winds, around 20 meters per second.
Water damage from tidal surge was due to non-existent planning and land use policy.
Had Sandy hit Florida no one would have noticed.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2700762412001
The IPCC is like the myrdraal in the Robert Jordan epic science fantasy story, The Wheel of Time. To kill them you must cut off their heads. They will still flop about like the proverbial chicken, but eventually they die, and all the trollocs (great hairy beasts) linked to them also die. The US needs to quit funding the IPCC, and to demand an audit and recompense from the charlatans involved in this scam.
If you can’t yet fire in a crowded theatre why can you yell warming on a crowed planet? Al Gore deserves a new home, in the Big House, not a big house.
Where are they now?
(WARNING: mildly disturbing — do not watch while using Bunsen burner)
Al Gore — making B grade music videos
Jim Hansen — Involuntarily Made Member of “Royal Society”
Mikey Mann and Heidi Cullen —
starring in a B grade movie about Yasser Arafat
********************
Yes. Their AGW nonsense is THAT BAD.
After a disgusted snort, the logical response is: … laugh at it.
.
.
.
(and, of course, politicians and/or entrepreneurs who used it to promote energy poverty should be put into prison)
California’s CARB agency introduced MTBE into gasoline where it stayed poisoning ground water for 15 years because it is water soluble. It’s the most grevious environmental disaster in Ca history but they continue on, well funded, ready to drive truckers and business in California into bankruptcy or fleeing to other states.
I’d love to be optimistic but in my state, at least, people have learned nothing and continue to support the party that supports CARB.
[Sigh] Doom just isn’t what it used to be. When I was a lad we were really doomed. It was total destruction of civilization. But now, maybe a slight inconvenience. Young people today don’t know what proper doom is. They think it’s just a computer game.
clivebest says:
October 4, 2013 at 2:37 pm
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Perhaps Clive is concerned that CO2 will make the ocean ever-so-slightly less alkaline (i.e. closer to the pH typical of the rest of the Cenozoic era).
clivebest: There is a real problem with CO2 but there is no imminent threat to life on earth and this can all be logically addressed within the next 50 – 80 years as required.
What is the real problem with CO2?
Gail Combs says: October 4, 2013 at 3:19 pm
You are correct there is a real problem with CO2. There is not enough in the atmosphere. When the earth slips back into a glacial and the CO2 levels plummet again C3 plants may become extinct.“
Ref. Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California.
___________
I generally agree Gail. CO2 levels are much too low to sustain life over the longer term. Here are some thoughts from 2009:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/#comment-79426
(Plant) Food for Thought (apologies – written too late at night)
Background:
http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/implementing-co2.html
1. “As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels – below 200 ppm – will cease to grow or produce.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere
2. “The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 kyr BP (Before Present). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied by volume between 180 – 210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 ppm during warmer interglacials…
… On longer timescales, various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 myr BP of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 myr BP of over 6,000 ppm.”
Questions and meanderings:
According to para.1 above:
During Ice ages, does almost all plant life die out as a result of some combination of lower temperatures and CO2 levels that fell below 200ppm (para. 2 above)? If not, why not?
Does this (possible) loss of plant life have anything to do with rebounding of atmospheric CO2 levels as the world exits the Ice Age (in combination with other factors such as ocean exsolution)? Could this contribute to the observed asymmetry?
When all life on Earth comes to an end, will it be because CO2 permanently falls below 200ppm as it is permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks, hydrocarbons, coals, etc.?
Since life on Earth is likely to end due to a lack of CO2, should we be paying energy companies to burn fossil fuels to increase atmospheric CO2, instead of fining them due to the false belief that CO2 causes dangerous global warming?
Could T.S. Eliot have been thinking about CO2 starvation when he wrote:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Regards, Allan 🙂
P.S.
A possible explanation is that ice core CO2 is directionally correct but low in absolute terms due to CO2 diffusion.
Leaf stomata data shows much higher CO2 values – up to 60ppm higher for peaks and 30-40 ppm on average.
See Fig. 2 at http://www.pnas.org/content/99/19/12011.full.pdf
Clive, last ice age CO2 got down to 170 ppm and if had dropped another 12% we wouldn’t be having this discussion. At 150 ppm plant life above the oceans stops. Followed shortly thereafter by animals. Before we enter the next ice age I for one would like a nice buffer margin of CO2 that is much larger than 20 ppm.
“RoHa says: October 4, 2013 at 6:23 pm – Kids think Doom is a game”. Ha, made me laugh. Good one. Growing up we had “thermonuclear warfare” and trigger happy generals (I’m a talking to you Curtis Lemay).
TRM,
My worry was General Buck Turgidson.
Gail, we should greatly thanks China, India, Brazil, Germany for their continued efforts in replenishing atmospheric CO2.
But much more work is needed. We play our part down here by supplying China and others with our coal (we can’t use it all ourselves), but you guys in the USA must get rid of the stupid people trying to stop the use of coal fired energy.
They are doing the whole world a great dis-service.
And the UK, well, good luck if it starts to get colder !!
The IPCC/Agenda-21 juggernaut rolls on untroubled by facts or reality. In today’s weekend newspaper in Melbourne, Australia (on Page 37 – now that is a good sign!) was the headline “Oceans in Dire Straits” (I read the story because I thought it was about a pop band). I swear it began “Once upon a time ….”, no sorry, wrong article. It actually began “Scientists say that ‘it’s worse than we thought, the oceans are in dire straits because of mankind pumping in pollutants, nutrients and heat, which combined with acidification and overfishing mean the oceans are at risk of dying …'” Amazing what you can learn from Page 37: the oceans are a living thing that can die. I moved to the Comics Section for a dose of reality and factual information …
“M Simon says: October 4, 2013 at 9:03 pm
TRM, My worry was General Buck Turgidson. ”
Who do you think that character was modelled after? I’m sure the Soviets had some fellows exactly like Curtis. During the Cuban missile crisis Lemay wanted to go nuclear and get it over with. I’m real glad calmer heads prevailed. Some real quotes from Lemay
– There are no innocent civilians.
– I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.
Yea our generation has some real doom to worry about but we made it and now the best they can do is “CO2 alarms” over weather? They need better marketing.
@TRM
Yes, total thermonuclear war was what I was thinking of.
There probably were some “Why wait? Nuke the USA now!” types in the Soviet Union, though we never saw them. (I recall Joseph Luns asked the US to keep its Mid-West Senators at home for the sake of NATO. He said they terrified the Europeans far more than the Soviets did.)
Fortunately, the Soviets also had Stanislav Petrov.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/the-man-who-saved-the-world-by-doing-absolutely-nothing/280050/
– – – – – – – –
Well, what Mario Lewis wrote will be seen by the following folks as confirming their conspiracy claims: Naomi Oreskes, Michael Mann, John Cook, Jim Hansen.
They claimed the fossil fuel industry was conspiring to disrupt the public from seeing to truth of a ‘consensus’ science finding of CAGW.
Now, with Nick’s points in mind they will say the IPCC was finally bought off by the fossil fuel industry.
Can we expect them to condemn the the IPCC and its AR5 in outrage?
Stay tuned.
John
Dear Ro Ha (re: 9:53pm),
That the Europeans were afraid is not to be ignored, but, (ahem), those U.S. Senators were focused on terrifying the highly motivated, fiercely determined, “we will bury you,” Soviets. Being “diplomatic” with that bunch would NOT have worked. M. A. D. worked. Thankfully, there were some sane people in the U.S.S.R..
Of course, now, when (uh, oh, the Thought Police are peeking over my shoulder…. meh, what DO I CARE) the I-zzl–m ick gee-hawd — guys are in the game, the self-restraint of the sane hasn’t a chance. All those little creeps understand is BRUTE FORCE. So, that’s what we must display — strength = peace.
Why did Cold War Europeans transfer their fears and anger at the U.S.S.R. to the U.S.? For the same reason a child who had a run in with the school bully comes home and snarls at his mom. She is safe.
I tell you, Ro Ha, please forgive my venting here, but, I’m really tired of Europeans complaining about the U.S. after all we have done for them. In 1944 and 1945, the Dutch transferred their genuine anger at the Nazis to the Americans — “Where are the Americans?! What’s their problem? They should have gotten here a long time ago.”
Now, we have a token president who for twenty years sat in the pews of a church where a pastor yelled, “God — da–mn America!”
Well, to end on a pleasant note, I hope you are enjoying a lovely “spring” day, down there. Thanks for all your many fine posts on WUWT using your linguistic education and your great natural facility with words.
An ally for truth in science (really!),
Janice
U.S.A.
Oh, fiddle! Sorry, mods. I forgot to write it “Nah–z-e–e-z”. Sorry for your having to read all that. Thanks. (red faced)
RoHa says:
October 4, 2013 at 9:53 pm
“There probably were some “Why wait? Nuke the USA now!” types in the Soviet Union, though we never saw them.”
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Submarines took that card right out of the pack.
Not saying we will “win”, but aint gonna lose.