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.
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Tis a dang good question, and those proclaiming they can calculate that it is starting to get to hot should undoubtedly provide the answer. If they cannot, how can they proclaim what is ‘too hot’?
Personally I think we can easily handle a couple of degrees of (average) increase, as I have seen evidence that both ends of the planet are in fact frozen solid, and a little expansion of the space where and the time when things can grow seems unlikely to be a bad thing.
And it also appears that the tropics will not get warmer, there is little evidence storms are getting worse, and there is little confidence in the predictions that droughts will worsen.
Warmer seems a lot more attractive to me than cooler.
The ideal temperature is about 0.5 degrees warmer than now, with a CO2 level at about 500 ppm. If we can keep the green crowd from ruining our economies, and the sun cooperates, we will achieve that in about 2050. Otherwise it’s Ice Age time.
Stupid assumption.
Have we found the 21st century’s Voltaire? What a wonderful question.
Actually, there can NEVER be a ‘perfect temperature’ or they wouldn’t be able to continue wringing your tax dollars out of you…
I don’t know what the ideal so-called “global average temperature” is, but I do know it’s not warm enough yet. Everybody keep warming the planet, please. I’ll tell you when to stop.
A range,perhaps, plus/minus 5 degrees F?
Best temp for the planet or humanity or plant life or what?
I presume the question assumes what the perfect temperature of the earth is during an interglacial, not during the transition to the next glacial, or within the next glacial. Naturally such perfection does not include consideration of whether we are discussing the perfect summer, perfect fall, perfect winter and perfect spring temperature(s), but an annual global average of some kind or the other.
This is actually a very loaded question if you are a true environmentalist. If you really are for and of gaia, then you simply cannot risk impeding onset of the next glacial inception. It’s just that simple. If we were to inadvertently leave the CO2 climate security blanket (aka CO2) up there then the possibility exists we might delay, or heaven forbid, avoid the next ice age! Will the true environmentalists that prefer a perfect temperature instead of the normal natural interglacial/glacial wild climate ride please stand up!
Which makes pegging a “perfect” temperature a very different proposition, doesn’t it?
The perfect temp is what Mother Nature decides. We obviously can’t model it.
Just sayin. I have been colder than I like to be too often. I prefer sweating to shivering any day of the week. I believe it is healthier too!
Video redacted due to cold temperatures in Sarasota in March. I gotta move South》》》》
As well as the answer to the question: What is the perfect temperature of Earth? I would also like to know: What is the current temperature of the earth, right now?
Then when I ask again next year at this time, I will know for sure if it is warming or cooling.
The perfect temperature is about M30 Celcius as in Winnipeg for the past couple of months. We have 700 houses with no water due to frozen water lines and we have not heard from the AGW crowd about the last dozen years being the warmist in history.
To be honest I think it doesn’t matter within a few degrees either way. On the other hand I am pretty certain that temperature differentials in the ocean and between the land and the ocean are what drive our prevailing weather, which over time comes to be known as our climate.
Only God knows what the ideal temperature is. And he doesn’t care what mankind thinks it should be. His creation is incredibly complicated and is way beyond our ability to understand. To think we as humans can influence the trajectory of our atmosphere is laughable.
Let’s see: there’s a perfect temperature for golfing, a perfect temperature for duck hunting, a perfect temperature for snow skiing, a perfect temperature for water skiing, a perfect temperature for… Heck, it was 65F here today, so I like the temperature we’re at now. Problem solved.
Richard Tol has a graph showing a curve fit to 14 studies calculating net benefits/losses vs. temperature. The curve shows net benefits out to about 2.2 C higher than present, dipping below zero for higher temps. I can’t remember where the peak of the curve occurs, but it is probably just above 1 C higher than present.
Whatever temperature raises the shoreline to be just outside my back door.
Chief says:
March 7, 2014 at 6:17 pm
Already answered in the HitchhIkers Guide to the galaxy, duh!
42
Yeah, yeah … but what numeric base?
One has to have defined seasons friends. Or your deciduous trees won’t have a dormant period to regenerate, and you will have no fruit or nuts. Depends which country you live in, animals and trees etc., have adapted, so can humans. An no skiing season for some. Even Cyprus has a skiing season in winter, on the Troodos mountains. So does Australia. But the hotter it is, the more rain we can expect with higher humidity. So long as you live close enough to sea.
It is a good question that can never be answered, which is why it suits the alarmist dogma so well. Only in religion can you have the perpetual question that can never be answered definitively.
On a more practical level, there is no such thing as a global temperature.
http://www.l4patterns.com/uploads/local-vs-global.pdf
Ah, you beat me to it!
The perfect temp is whatever the agerage temp was when babyboomers were kids as that seems to be recurring reference point. (See Al Gore).
You’re missing not only the perfect temperature but the perfect variability too. Right now it’s all about exteme weather, so what temperature swings around the perfect temperature would be considered not extreme?
In Washington, D.C., the temperature should be eternally -5F. No government business should ever be allowed to be conducted ANYWHERE else.
Bob Tisdale says:
March 7, 2014 at 5:42 pm
“I would NOT have noticed the slight change we’ve seen, because where I live there are 55 deg C (100 deg F) swings every year.”
Not quite that much, but here in SE Virginia we saw a 52 °F swing in less than 24 hours in January. Not sure I would have noticed a +/- (almost nothing) change either.
Warmer than now, that is for sure. We are still dangerously close to tipping back into ice age. But since it won’t warm evenly everywhere and warming will do interesting things to rainfall and local climate you really need to take it slow and see what you get in the way of local climate in different places. Lets get back to the temperatures of the Roman or Minoan warm periods first, when civilization was booming in areas that are now desert. See how that goes and then think about if it might be worthwhile striving for the even higher temperatures of the holocene optimum. Not that we really have much control eh. But it is nice to imagine we could choose.