From The End is Near department comes this video documentary from lefty talk radio guy Thom Hartmann that claims we are on the verge of a “mass extinction” due to climate change. Only one problem; the IPCC says “no” to his scenario. Ooops.
From the YouTube description, bold mine:
“Last Hours” is the first in a series of short films that explore the perils of climate change and the solutions to avert climate disaster. Each subsequent film will highlight fact-based challenges facing the human race, and offer solutions to ameliorate these crises. The initial short film series will culminate in a feature film to be presented prior to COP21, the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris.
An asset for the climate change movement, “Last Hours” will be disseminated globally to awaken modern culture worldwide about the various dangers associated with climate change.
“Last Hours” describes a science-based climate scenario where a tipping point to runaway climate change is triggered by massive releases of frozen methane. Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, has already started to percolate into the open seas and atmosphere from methane hydrate deposits beneath melting arctic ice, from the warming northern-hemisphere tundra, and from worldwide continental-shelf undersea methane clathrate pools.
Burning fossil fuels release carbon that, principally through greenhouse effect, heat the atmosphere and the seas. This is happening most rapidly at the polar extremes, and this heating has already begun the process of releasing methane. If we do not begin to significantly curtail the use of carbon-based fossil fuels, this freed methane threatens to radically accelerate the speed of global warming, potentially producing a disaster beyond the ability of the human species to adapt.
This first video is designed to awaken people to the fact that the earth has experienced five major extinctions in the deep geologic past — times when more than half of all life on earth vanished — and that we are now entering a sixth extinction. Industrial civilization with its production of greenhouse gases has the ability to trigger a mass extinction; in the extreme, it could threaten not just human civilization, but the very existence of human life on this planet.
The world community and global citizens urgently need to chart a path forward that greatly reduces green house gas emissions. To take action and follow the pathway to solutions to the climate crisis, you can explore this website and you can also sign-up for future updates. Thank you.
It’s the old “methane emergency” meme again.
But here’s the problem.
Apparently Thom never got the memo from the IPCC AR5. Note the third and fourth items in Table 12.4 from the IPCC:
Definitions for this table can be found in the section “TFE.5: Irreversibility and Abrupt Change” in the draft report. They say:
“Abrupt climate change is defined in AR5 as a large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems.”
But alas, IPCC says Clathrate methane release is very unlikely, and they have high confidence in that assessment. Permafrost doesn’t seem to be much of a problem either, as it doesn’t seem to have the potential for abrupt climate change.
Looks like Thom Hartmann will have to rework his video.
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I sent Thom the link to this post. thom@thomhartmann.com it didn’t come back so the address is good.
He used to have me blocked, the addy turned off or something. I was always reminding the weasel that half of his comments about historical political subjects were incorrect.
The supposed Sixth Mass Extinction Event is utter garbage, completely without any basis in reality.
After the End Permian, the second biggest MEE was the End Ordovician, caused by glaciation, in which about 85% of marine species perished, along with whole genera, families (more than 100 families of marine invertebrates) & whole orders. The land had not yet been significantly invaded by multicellular organisms.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.29.1.331?journalCode=earth&
Nothing remotely close to that has happened during the so-called “Anthropocene”, which is what alarmists like to call the Holocene, even when you include the demise of much of the Pleistocene megafauna. Some isolated orders have gone extinct, eg. New Zealand moa, due to human predation, but there is no planet-wide mass extinction event going on now or looming in the future.
This Hartman fellow is is rather strange. He is filled with hatred and anger and really needs to take a rest.
…Looks like Thom Hartmann will have to rework his video….
Why? The video looks like acceptable evidence to me that we’re all going to die of methane poisoning in short order. The IPCC will just have to rework their table to take into account this new evidence.
That’s how Climate Change is done…
I think that the general public in many western countries has tired of the whole “we are going to die by fire and then drown” routine. I know many skeptics have tried to tell the public the truth and given them real data and that effort, no doubt, helped a lot. But I think the continual “chicken little” heifer dust like this fellow’s crap is the [b]main[/b] reason. For 30 years they have been crying that we are doomed, doomed, doomed — and yet the climate is little different from what its was in the 1980s.
God please — let them continue to make fools of themselves. 🙂
“COP21, the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris.”
In 2015, the British electorate will go to the polls. This last couple of weeks has seen the nonsense of AR5 being discussed in the media, and, following Milliband’s(leader of the opposition) pledge to freeze fuel prices if they get into power, stimulated by a recent 8% increase in electricity prices by one of our electricity providers, two thirds of which is reported to be due to green taxes, the issue has become a major one in the media.
With another couple of rounds of energy price increases to go before the election, which could see us paying considerably more than we are now, I wonder how many of our wonderful political leaders will be rushing to endorse COP21
“Only one problem; the IPCC says “no” to his scenario.”
But in the post-normal, bayesian world of today this means he’s more likely to be right than if IPCC had said ‘yes’. (;>)
Science Fiction writers explored all of these fictional scenarios much better a long time ago.
That faux scientists and ‘comunicators’ are exploiting(derivatively) this sort of stuff is more a comment on the lack of imagination of these rent seeking expolitative AGW promoters.
*raises hand* Ooooh! Ooooh!
I know what the answer in the videos will be before even seeing them!
More political power and control in the hands of people who share an ideology with Thom Hartmann.
That’s always the answer, no matter the problem.
Stephen Wilde says:
October 13, 2013 at 7:34 am
The threat of a mass extinction is an effort to rush through energy control and rationing globally despite the climate not co-operating with previous scare stories.
The first I heard of it was when Bob Geldof’s outburst was publicised.
He is at the heart of the celebrity culture that supports the ‘alarmosphere’ so if he comes out with it in public one can be sure that it is an agreed strategy that is likely to be given a very hard push in the media in the near future.
It is now all about the manipulation of public perceptions in order to accrue power.
E.M. Smith has coined a term for the ‘alarmosphere’: Fuddites FUD plus Ned Ludd.
See http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/fuddites/
DirkH says (October 13, 2013 at 7:44 am): “More explosions and dying critters; and please license Requiem For A Dream or something like that, guys.”
Actually “Lux Aeterna” by Clint Mansell, featured in the 2000 film “Requiem for a Dream”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux_Aeterna_(song)
“l’Innoncence du carbone” de François Gervais –
It makes no difference. The only folk paying any attention to this video are the morons on both sides.
Miss the memo? This is already handled by the transmission operators … I’ve been over this subject at least a dozen times …
.
Garfy says:
October 13, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Thanks!
Short version of comments by IR radiation-specializing physicist & author of “The Innocence of Carbon”, François Gervais: CO2 has increased since the 19th century from 300 to 400 ppm, but the greenhouse effect from CO2 is now saturated. Since temperature fluctuations precede those from CO2, we have mistaken a consequence for a cause.
I enjoy listening to people I don’t agree with, and I turn to Hartmann’s radio show frequently. He seems to be a broadly knowledgeable guy but IMO, he will almost always puts politics ahead of intellectual honesty. He may actually believe this though; I don’t think it’s difficult to convince him of things that fit with his political agenda. That being said, I don’t believe he is open to considering any evidence to the contrary.
He grasps enough of the science to talk with an authoritative tone to his average listener who has next to no relevant scientific knowledge and is inclined to believe in AGW for reasons other than climate, but that’s about it.
This just goes to prove yet again that they are not interested in reports and will even ignore the IPCC if it doesn’t say what they want it to say. Their rule of thumb seems to be “Make it up and pretend all the world and all authority is behind the message.”
They are masters of bluff, not realizing that the mask has slipped and they are on full public display for what they are. Pathetic really.
We are on the verge of a “mass extinction” due to hope and change.
JimS says:
October 13, 2013 at 7:50 am
According to Table 12.4 from the IPCC, there is nothing catastrophic which will happen with any level of confidence, other than the melting of the Arctic sea ice within the next few decades.
——————————————————————————————————————-
It is good to see that the IPCC has such a remarkable ‘faith’ in the Arctic sea ice disappearing, because the Arctic seems intent on regrowing it,s boundaries. At the DMI site the sea ice regrowth is rising close to the 1979/2000 mean value line. JAXA also shows similar and both show about a 2 million km2 gain over the last 30 days since the low. A large % of land temperatures around the Arctic basin are at 14F or lower, 32F is the high in a few areas. Greenland is at -4F over most of it,s surface, while the entire Russian coast is at 14F or lower, with sizeable regions of -4 showing up in the interior. The “unusual” 2012 Arctic melt convinced all of the cagw supporters that the end was near. Their conviction became certainty, written in stone.
The really great aspect to this story is that when the volume of sea ice regrows as it is now starting to do, then this important high profile talking point will become a counter against their arguments, and one that the public can readily comprehend.
If the IPCC doesn’t agree with Hartmann, then I do! Nuff said.
So this doofus puts together a video to visualize methane plagues causing Warmageddon that his own Global Warming bible refutes. What a bozo. Yet ten to fifteen thousand of the world’s penultimate hypocrites will burn thousands of tons of fossil fuels flying to Paris, being chauffeured around, and staying and meeting in comfortably climate controlled hotels and auditoriums for a useless “climate conference” in 2015 that bozo wants us to support. Is this not close to the most stupid, most idiotic thing one can imagine?
It is really sad to watch those who ordinarily espouse separation of church and state acting like a cheap backwoods preacher.
All that’s left is to wait for dogs and cats to start living together.
given the track record of the IPCC….if they say methane release is “very unlikely”….watch out!!
“Jimbo says:
October 13, 2013 at 8:05 am
“Some thresholds that all would consider dangerous have no support in the literature as having a non-negligible chance of occurring. For instance, a “runaway greenhouse effect” —analogous to Venus–appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities…..”
IPCC
http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/inf3.pdf”
I see this argument levelled at me all the time by alarmists because the atmosphere is mostly CO2. More CO2 = more warming, more warming breaches a “tipping point” leading to a runaway GHE etc etc. Well, Mars *also* has a mostly CO2 atmosphere, but it’s so cold there. Excluding planetary distances, I suggest they go look up some gas laws, that have been around and proven for a couple of hundred years, in particular the ones relating to pressure and temperature. The surface temperature of Venus is stable for the conditions ON Venus. There is no runaway GHE. I learnt this when I was 8.
Read that and had to chuckle. That was a mistake in wording wasn’t it? Or maybe that meant the alarmists were saying our atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide… now that makes more sense. The way it stands, I seem to be able to read it either way and you think that. 😉