Robert B. writes via email with a question that we’ve just never asked readers to weigh in on here before in post, though has been bandied about in comments. I figure it is about time to put it to rest by asking up front.
He asks:
What is the perfect temperature of Earth? I’m assuming that climate change-related taxes will be used to bring our planet back to the perfect temperature, and I need to know when that has been reached.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What room is the thermostat going to be installed in?
The perfect temperature would be so nice, it would comfort even the most uneasy. The neurotic & self-pitying would be satisfied by this temperature. They would feel so happy they would simply try to live their lives, and not try to run anyone else’s.
They wouldn’t have to fly around the world organizing the change the temperature. They could stay in their air-conditioned homes and post on the internet about the ozone layer, or something.
Oh wait, 70F is too hot and 69F is too cold. Nevermind.
One to two degrees warmer than current (average planetary temperature) with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes. (i.e. The same as Holocene optimum.) The biosphere expands when the planet is warmer and contracts when the continental ice sheets return.
It appears regardless of our pool of preferred average planetary temperature that we are going to experience what causes the termination of the interglacial periods, a Heinrich event. All of the past interglacial periods have ended abruptly. As the planet resists forcing changes abrupt cooling requires a very rapid powerful forcing mechanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
Holocene climatic optimum
The Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years B.P. This event has also been known by many other names, including: Hypsithermal, Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, and Holocene Megathermal.
The Holocene Climate Optimum warm event consisted of increases of up to 4 °C near the North Pole (in one study, winter warming of 3 to 9 °C and summer of 2 to 6 °C in northern central Siberia).[1] The northwest of Europe experienced warming, while there was cooling in the south.[2] The average temperature change appears to have declined rapidly with latitude so that essentially no change in mean temperature is reported at low and mid latitudes. Tropical reefs tend to show temperature increases of less than 1 °C; the tropical ocean surface at the Great Barrier Reef ~5350 years ago was 1 °C warmer and enriched in 18O by 0.5 per mil relative to modern seawater.[3
The temperature achieved when 100% of global GDP/year is spent to slow CO2 rise.
Heretic!
Like the Global average temperature, the perfect temperature for earth is dependent upon your faith.
Or the 6-7 billion faces of God.
I too am fascinated by what answer the “team” IPCC TM would give, if we could get them under oath.
No good asking me.
32°C and 50RH is comfortable. 29°C and 90+RH is uncomfortable. If it drops below 16°C I start dreaming about frost-covered hillsides and my bones start to ache.
Disembarking from a plane a while back, they gave the temperature outside as 12°C. I (and a few other locals) started pulling out warm jackets. Another passenger commented “Ooh hear that? it’s lovely and warm up here … “
He knows very well there is no such thing as a perfect temperature no matter how you define it and striving for something that does not exist is an impossibility. Think about it.
Mr. Mann, et al. have already answered that question. It would be the long flat part of the hockey stick. So, just call your local politician and tell him that you want the shaft.
I suggest which ever temperature will bring in the most tax money will be the choice.
Sydney’s temperature range in the Spring and Autumn.
Also I am sure Al would like to know that it never snows in Sydney.
Great question – I too wonder what is the so called base line temperature best for the planet? No one seems to know. The AGW people keep telling us its too warm then what is their base line temperature they base that tidbit on? And where is that supposed to occur? Then what are the rest of our temperature supposed to look like? Where?
Bloody good question. It should be put to all the active alarmist players. I’m sure the assortment of answers will delight us and confuse and outrage them due to disagreement. Could be a good show in it. Not likely to be a consensus, however, no matter how hard they try. 🙂
Do you think O’Bummer might know the answer?
Who cares and for whom? Evolution made most of us tolerant of a range, pick a place. For those whose range is narrow, c’est la vie. Something else will fill the space. Nature abhors a vacuum, except between MM’s ears, in which she takes great delight in keeping it as devoid of anything as possible.
I would like them to skew the Earth’s axis hourly so that it is always exactly 74 degrees where I live.
(Please don’t tell me I don’t understand the physics and the energy involved; neither do the climate alarmists!)
Perfect for what?
Since in this brilliant new world of ours we can in essence vote on what climate we prefer, I’m partial to the Mesozoic Era when the dinosaurs roamed, who clearly had a good thing going. It was much warmer than today by about 10 degrees C. I’ve read, with little difference between summer and winter.
Might be too hot for some, but I’m a warm weather guy.
Whatever it was the week before all those wooly mammoths froze would seem to be a good level.
Nobody has that answer, and they spend billions of dollars insulting anyone who dares to ask.
Sorry, question should be- what is the wrong temperature?
FIRE AND ICE
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
The real question is:
What climate is optimum for the maximum biosphere and consequently… our food supply?
The answer is:
The climate – that is a little warmer – a little wetter – and an atmosphere which contains a little more plant food (CO2). Giant-ism in our food crops would also be nice.
Mankind’s food supply must always remain our prime directive. Man’s comfort, while sitting on the sofa, in his underwear, worrying about CAGW… NOT SO MUCH! GK
Answer: warmer than it has been the past few months in the central eastern US.
First, we would have to find a suitable orifice to insert a thermometer. Where is Gore when you actually need him?
To answer the question, I don’t think there is one. However, humans demonstrate everyday and in every zone where we have a footprint that we can prepare for and handle extreme cold and extreme heat and anything in between.
“EternalOptimist says:
March 7, 2014 at 5:44 pm”
And there was so much aluminium left over from aircraft manufacture that gave birth to London Transport’s Route Master Busses.
I think this is more likely to mean, what is the optimal average temperature such that the benefits exceed the costs integrated across the planet. When we talk AGW one must speculate that the trillion dollar benefits of CO2 fertilisation, must be included. The IPCC says the optimal is about 17 degrees two degrees above today, if I recall, which implies (assuming symmetry) that it’d have to reach 4 degrees before the costs would exceed the benefits relative to now. So that’s at 1600 – 3200 PPM at current trajectory with optimal in 225 years and break even in something like 1000 years time on IPCC figures. On my figures, never springs to mind, because at a sensitivity of 0.5, you could barely force enough warming from CO2 to cause 4 degrees of warming before you ran out of oxygen for combustion.
Yep, its really urgent, NOT!
According to “scientists”, whatever the temperature was when they first measured it is the permanent, natural, perfect temperature. Any deviation from what they first measured is a man-made, catastrophic, desecration of nature.
Already answered in the HitchhIkers Guide to the galaxy, duh!
42
@Chief – Celsius or Fahrenheit?