Pathetic handwaving double down from the UN
Eric Worrall writes: A number of MSM outlets are carrying news of a “leaked” UN document, which claims that global warming may be causing irreversible damage.
According to the Bloomberg version of the leak story;
“Global warming already is affecting “all continents and across the oceans,” and further pollution from heat-trapping gases will raise the likelihood of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,”
The problem with this vapid handwaving nonsense is that it is so vague. I mean, in the good old days, alarmists made interesting predictions;
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past; http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Al Gore’s ice free arctic (in 5 years!);
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/nature-proves-al-gore-wrong-again/
Rain will never fill Australian reservoirs again;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/18/hard-times-for-aussie-alarmists-flannery-begs-in-new-video/
The great thing about bold predictions is they are easily falsified – all you have to do is wait a few years, then point and laugh.
The survivors of that golden age of bold stupidity are far too timid – they issue vague predictions of calamity which won’t occur until long after we are all safely dead, and promises that if we wait a few decades we might see something worrying.
I mean, seriously folks, is this the best you can do? Can even the most rabid alarmists get enthused by such a pathetic effort?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Here is an example of why we should not pay any attention to alarmists. This is another FAIL. Irreparable!!!
CLAIM
OBSERVATIONS
Now this is interesting. Only 10% of coral decline is caused by bleaching.
Gosh, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg must be downright giddy with this news.
It is too late, again?!
We are all gonna die, again – the last time just did not take, we just did not stay dead. How inconvenient.
Why bother. The calamity is done and it is irreversble.
In plain language it means that we cant help, so we better use what we have to withstand the weird weather, instead of trying to change whats irreversible. Got it?
Pray tell me dear United Nations (or anyone else out there who wants to reply), how does humanity cause “irreversible damage” to the climate?? Does this not imply that the climate has no repair mechanism to undo what was done to it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Gotta love the “scientific” statement “raise the likelihood”…. What is the current likelihood that Anthropogenic C02 is having severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on people and eco systems? It sounds like the answer is based on one’s opinion rather than any sort of scientific data/measurement/study.
In 2004 James Hansen said we only had 10 years before hitting a tipping point of no return
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-04-03-tipping-points_N.htm
Well we passed his tipping point window and there is no return. I am so scared [/sarc]
Didn’t Britain’s Prince Chuck say more or less the same thing?
The report used the word risk 351 times in just 127 pages.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/panel-global-warming-human-caused-dangerous-25133004?page=2
Take a business card or, if you dare, a credit card, and flex it and hold it between your fingers in the form a bow. Then, with the tip of the index finger of your other hand, very gently press down on the bowed card. First, it deforms, then it buckles and then the bow suddenly snaps to its inverted position. It changes state instantly – that is a catastrophic change of state or it has, as Malcolm Gladwell described it, gone through a ‘tipping point’. An almost imperceptible alteration in the pressure exerted by your index finger has caused a radical and locally irreversible change of state. Rene Thom, described the ability of systems to suddenly change state mathematically and showed that any system controlled by two or more variables can flip suddenly and without warning from one state to another. With the climate the proposition is that its principal state variable (temperature) is controlled by two important greenhouse gases: water vapour and carbon dioxide. At low levels of CO2, any changes in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere produces a smooth transition from cold to warm and vice-versa. With the progressive addition of CO2, a relatively high persistence greenhouse gas, we have a splitting variable which whilst having what appears to be only a minor effect on global temperature can create dynamic instability – enabling catastrophic changes in climate state to occur. In reality there are many more variables influencing the dynamics of our climate – but they all have the effect of making the catastrophic changes of state more complex in impact and difficult to model. It is comforting to note, as I think Robert Brown at Duke has pointed out, sudden changes of state do not appear to be a feature of climate history and that we are not at, or close to, such a tipping point now. I am not so sure. At the present rate of change of global temperatures climate catastrophe appears to be a long way off. But, as a skeptic, the possibility of a climate tipping point is what really keeps me awake at night.
Given the scope of content of comments upthread, I so do sincerely hope you are speaking about a ‘tipping point’ towards a mini-Ice Age, Mr Ryan! Of which CO2 might play only some peripheral atmospheric chemical role – that is, one of many ‘splitting variables’, especially as it is by-no-means ascertained to any degree of scientific certitude that “the proposition is that its principal state variable (temperature) is controlled by two important greenhouse gases: water vapour and carbon dioxide”
Sincerely,
Mr Sharkey
In the alternative, try Lunesta
Its not good enough to say “I’m worried the sky is going to fall” – you have to give credible reasons why people should divert energy and effort from their daily lives to address the problem identified by your theory.
Credibility is what is missing from climate alarmism – their demand that we should worry about an imaginary problem, based on output from models which perform very poorly at predicting real world phenomena, does not compare well to problems we should be addressing right now, such as the horrifying Ebola outbreak in Africa, or the very real possibility that the next significant meteor strike will do more than break a few windows.
If we had infinite resources, we could address every remote possibility, no matter how outlandish. But in the absence of any real evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing a problem, we are better off using scarce resources to address problems which are killing people, right now.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/10/why-a-compelling-theory-is-not-enough/
The only tipping point we know of is toward cold not warm, that why we have ice ages. Present it the coldest it been in about ten thousand years even with a small warming period in the 1990s. If the climate was that unstable we would not be here to talk about it. PS the Mastodon feed on the steppes of the north after the last ice age, they went extinct when those steppes change to tundra. By the way steppes is another name for prairie or grass lands.
I remember studying Catastrophe Theory in the mid-1970s when it was still brand new. It was exciting to think ENSO phase could be predicted if only the right parameters could be modeled. Such dreams were crushed by the harsh reality of the complexity of the atmosphere and its interaction with the cryosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere. Without that ability, I think its foolish to speak of tipping points when you can’t mathematically demonstrate them. It becomes a propaganda buzz word at that point.
Leaked reports are magical, you can conjure up a bunch of lies, get it leaked, and then depending on the results deny you said or add to it, a win win situation, as the the initial leaked report sticks in the mind,
Didn’t tip when CO2 greater than 4,000ppm way back, why would it tip now at a paltry 400ppm?
I love that “leaked”, to try and give it more weight that everything is more catastrophic.
ah the font has changed, much better , the site looks good, much cleaner and easy on the eye, the font to me was looking weak but great now.
Everyone keeps repeating the mantra that “there is no irreversible damage”, but that’s not true. The billions wasted on this scam have already been spent. That money will never be available to spend where it could truly do some good. So, in fact, there has been irreversible damage.
According to this Times article (August 2014) Warm is GOOD, bring it on.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/P1010550_zps404843c2.jpg