A pointed question

We also need to know the perfect orbit of the Earth and an appropriate level of solar activity. And the correct number of humans on Earth, with quotas for each race. These things must be properly administered.

LOL, just remember the majority of this planet’s population don’t have electricity!

The perfect temperature of planet earth should be just right! that’s why we keep ourselves warm when it gets cold and why we are cool when it gets warm.

Robert B. has given us the best riposte to any CAGWarmist. “What is the perfect temperature for the planet?” It’s unanswerable, as demonstrated in all the comments above & below this. It’s just so, so. so, Sophist!!
Well done Robert B,

Sometimes it’s helpful to look at a problem from a more remote perspective, so as to be more objective. So let’s slightly reframe the question: Suppose you led a mission to a nearby uninhabited star system, to prepare it to receive billions human colonists. You found an uninhabited planet in the Goldilocks temperature zone, marginally acceptable i.e. it’s just like Earth is at present. Thus it could sustainably support two or three billions, but you need it to support three times that number — and your team of paleontologists on the surface reports that the planet had much more life on it some 30 million years ago, than it has now. How would you alter this planet so as to maximise its human carrying capacity?
What’s the perfect temperature for the planet? What’s the optimum CO2 level? If I could adjust these, I think I would set them so as to maximize the amount of living biomass on the planet, i.e. to maximise what biologists call the net primary productivity. With more biomass, humans would make up a smaller fraction of the biomass and so would have generally less impact on the ecology.
NPP falls during ice ages, and was decidedly higher before the planet developed its present permanent ice caps. NPP seems to have been much greater than now during Earth’s carboniferous period. So I’d melt the ice caps, and raise the CO2 level to maybe 3000 ppm. I’d try to get forests growing like weeds, as they did here during the carboniferous.
Warmists would strenuously oppose such a plan on Earth. They fear “tipping points” at some threshold temperatures, at which the climate will spontaneously shift to a different climate regime. To explain abrupt temperature changes in the paleo record, they decided the climate is a “dynamic, nonlinear system”. They would oppose optimizing the Earth’s temperature because they fear a tipping point lurks just a degree or two above present temperatures. Hogwash.
For most of the time that life has been on this planet, there have been no ice caps, atmospheric CO2 has been many times current levels, polar temperatures have been temperate, and NPP has been high. The climate never tipped into a runaway greenhouse warming. There is no global warming tipping point.
There is, however, definitely a cooling tipping point. The planet has more than once gotten frozen over. We’re overdue for the next glaciation of the current ice-age. The glaciations have gotten progressively deeper (colder). A glaciacion now would reduce the planet’s carrying capacity, probably to well under a billion humans. Curtains on industrialized civilization. Yet that’s not the worst danger. Our planet is teetering on the brink of the next Snowball Earth event, the fatal tipping point, as is evident from the paleotemp record: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

I first posted that question in 2011. Here is an extract from a rather lengthy article I wrote then:
15. Every global warming advocate and politician should also be asked these two Killer Questions:
 – what is the optimum global temperature; &
 – what is the optimum concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
If we do not know the destination we seek, how will we know when we arrive there? Frankly, the world is too cool at present and the optimum for CO2 should be multiples higher than it currently is! If it is impossible for real scientists to determine then surely they are also unfairly tough questions for even the seriously dedicated cultists?
What is the temperature destination the cultists so desperately seek that we are willing to destroy the Australian economy to achieve it? What is the expected outcome and the key performance indicators (KPI’s) we can measure when we get there?
So, please review the science and decide at which point can we ascribe both the perfect temperature & optimum level of CO2 concentration? Here is a clue in an exchange I had with a Labor Member of Parliament and the Minister for Climate Change & Silly Walks, (G C):
“Greg & Andrew,
The AVERAGE global temperature is currently a paltry 14.9° Centigrade.
What is the optimum global temperature if any rise is thought to be somewhere between dangerous to catastrophic? Surely if we don’t know where we are going how can we formulate a realistic plan to get there?
Several years ago I did a rough study by trawling some websites on CO2 and its effects on humans and plants. The personal conclusion I reached is that 2,000ppm – 4,000ppm is the optimum level of CO2 for the majority of life on the planet, with a probable/maybe rise of 2° – ‘3° centigrade increase in temperature, mainly in the temperate regions. To help you out, please note that US nuclear armed submarines operate with a CO2 level up to 8,000ppm for extended periods without harm to the sailors breathing it. The USN has set a maximum limit of 12,000ppm before they become concerned, so no doubt that still contains a safety margin.
So, to seriously answer the question I think we need MORE CO2 – and soon as the quiet Sun is going to cause havoc in the coming decades with serious cooling the result. Ah, skiing in Melbourne, now that would send Flannery and Garnaut (Australian warmists) into a new series of incantations would it not? I await your reply with interest, especially if you can explain your ‘scientifically settled’ answer with references to the science supporting your view
I swear that if you can give me a scientifically supportable answer I will vote Labor at the next election. Otherwise, if you cannot I will join the vast majority.”
The exchanges ended here as I did not receive a reply from either of them.
However, if the graphic I provided is any indication then the optimum temperature (when life was at its most prolific) is about 18°C with an error bar of +2°C, but preferably at the higher end of the scale. This is >3°C warmer than at present.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere:
In 1800 it is thought that the atmosphere contained about 280ppm. In 2011 it is 390ppm and rising by 2ppm/year.
So, as we must stop this dastardly gases inexorable rise, can anyone tell me the actual ‘tipping point’ concentration after which catastrophe is inevitable? An open goal for the cultists to score I would think. What will the temperature be at this point and at what level of CO2 will the temperature stabilise into boringly perfect weather? The killer Question is:
What is the optimum level of CO2 in the atmosphere?
000ppm
100ppm
200ppm
300ppm?
As we are approaching 400ppm it must obviously be less than that. Also, as plants stop growing at 250ppm the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ must be somewhere between the two. I am breathlessly awaiting the answer from a scientist climate deceiver, but I am not expecting to receive one any time soon.”
The whole article called “The Political Agenda of the Climate Deceivers” is available if you wish.

This should be a fairly easy answer. The objective should utilize the largest amount of land mass possible for all life. Since most of the land mass is in the Northern Hemisphere it is only logical to raise the temperature to get the most useable space.
Then there is the whole continent Antarctica that isn’t even being used at all.
The optimum temperature would probably be around 10 Deg C greater then today or around 24 deg C. Weather would be a little more difficult to manage but got to take the good with the bad.

oops I mean High in the northern Hemisphere. wish I could edit sometimes 🙂

The question just shows how most people have lost sight of the basics, which is to be expected when the arguments became so divisive and tactical.
The perfect temperature is obviously that magical 0deg line on all anomaly graphs.
I would also like to know, to how many tenths of a degree the perfect temperature can be calculated for anomaly each grid and if that magical 0deg already exists for each grid. If it doesn’t then the whole global anomaly argument is completely bogus anyway.

The average of the 5 previous interglacials. 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

It’s whatever I say it is!