Holy crap on a cracker! This Q&A with Michael Mann at some blog nobody has ever heard of called “Down with Tyranny” leaves me wondering, what is he smoking? I think the self imposed “climate interpreter” title needs some work.
-by Gaius Publius
One of my hats is as a climate interpreter to the interested lay person. I have something of a science background and can read the papers “in the original.” Another hat is as an occasional interviewer for Virtually Speaking. This month the two hats merged on the same head, and I got to interview the “Hockey Stick graph” climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann. – See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/10/michael-mann-on-climate-theres-very.html#sthash.y25kBteI.dpuf
[QUESTION] What level of CO2 is reasonable?
[ANSWER] Most still think that 350 ppm (parts per million) CO2 is what’s needed to keep us at the upper end of Holocene (era of civilized human culture) temperatures. For contrast, the ice ages averaged about 180 ppm CO2 at the bottom, and pre-industrial (pre-1750) concentrations were about 280 ppm CO2. Pre-industrial temperatures were at the bottom of the Holocene (post–ice age) temperature range, so there’s some headroom above that 280 ppm number. How much exactly? No one knows.
It looks like we’re headed for a IPCC-“safe” 450 ppm CO2 unless we stop. Not safe, IMO; nor in Dr. Mann’s. For starters, this “450 ppm” measures CO2 only, not other GHGs like methane and nitrous oxide. The effective ppm in “CO2 equivalent” with those other added GHGs is higher if only CO2 is at 450.
It’s roughly thought that the original ice sheet formations of 35 million years ago, which gave us modern Antarctic, Greenland and Arctic ice, occurred in a cooling environment that crossed below CO2 concentrations in the range of 550-400 ppm or so.
First, that’s a wide range. Second, that’s no indication of what will happen going the other direction, where the warming tipping points are. Hansen writes, correctly IMO, that real climate sensitivity depends on (a) the starting point (i.e., how near we are to tipping points), and (b) the direction (effect of warming of X amount is not necessarily correlated to the effect of cooling of that same amount).
Nevertheless, the massive uncertainty, plus the world-historical consequences, gives most of us pause. Me, I think 450 ppm CO2 is ultimately a death sentence for civilized humans. Back to life as hunter-gatherers for our third- or fourth-generation descendants. And if worldwide social chaos takes over before we stop, the process could run to conclusion, which, the old IPCC A1FI scenario says, tops out at +7°C warming.
On Mann:
“First, he’s actually good on the politics, better than most. But second, I wanted to get his thoughts regarding next steps. For me the key, core messages are — Stop Now… Zero Carbon “Budget” … Free Market Solutions Won’t Work. He surprised me in agreeing with the third point, and I hope he carries that message to the public going forward. He was already mainly on board on the first two, but I wanted to hear him say so for the record, since I hadn’t encountered his public comment on this. “
Source: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/10/michael-mann-on-climate-theres-very.html
H/t to Steve Mosher
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Let’s all do our bit to help reach 450ppm! I’m going to get a coal burner for home heating. What are YOU going to do?
🙂
I want to go hunting and gathering too! Lions don’t scare me:
Yes, the life of a noble savage is alluring. We gaze at the chilling stars, wondering when the Hansen Constellation -which the ancients called Canis Major- will foretell a return of Mann the God-Sage, when the oceans will freeeze and the Stick of Hock will sweep all unworthy into the arms of Denial-ia, goddess of the dark fearful underworld of Carbon-Sink.
CO2 helps plants grow. I intend to do a lot of gathering.
Let’s grow some BIG apples!
In recent decades the biosphere has been greening for some odd reason. World food production has recently been reported to be at record levels for some odd reason. Greenhouse growers typically recommend 1,000ppm for some odd reason. Finally, where is the worsening trend in extreme weather? It seems the more co2 we pump out the better things get!
It was just a regional blip. Nothing to see here folks.
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0277379113000553-gr7.jpg
Chop wood for my dad at his place (I don’t have a fireplace/stove).
Eric, we heat mainly with firewood at the farm. Oops, too carbon neutral. Switching to propane…
Dr. Mann is actually right, just not quite the way in which he envisions it. When the earth reaches 450 ppm Co2 and the world sees that it has resulted in a boon for the bio-diversity of the planet, they will hunt and gather all the CAGW alarmists and demand their money back.
Use them for fuel if the much vaunted “catastrophic warming” fails to reach Minnesota 😉
I’m Installing two wood stoves…
Get 3..
Fuel one with CAGWists, the other with Democrats. See what burns brightest.
This seems like it might work, until you realize that CAGWists are Democrats and vice-versa. There is no separating the two.
No Noes!!! It clearly states above high CO2 concentrations are associated with the world slipping back into an ice age.
“It’s roughly thought that the original ice sheet formations of 35 million years ago, which gave us modern Antarctic, Greenland and Arctic ice, occurred in a cooling environment that crossed below CO2 concentrations in the range of 550-400 ppm or so.”
HIgh CO2 will tip us into an ice age!!! Somebody tell the IPCC it is back to the 70’s again.
There are no words that do justice to this inanity.
I think Nelson Muntz could suggest a couple.
Humans switched from hunting-gathering to agriculture when it got warm and the CO2 became abundant enough to support increased plant growth. No evidence whatsoever that increasing temps would cause a reversion.
And if he can’t understand that free market solutions are the only thing that works, he’s delusional.
“Humans switched from hunting-gathering to agriculture when it got warm and the CO2 became abundant enough to support increased plant growth.”
There was enuf CO2 for that several billion years ago.
Yes, CO2 was very plentiful, and caused no problems whatever. So, where is your god now?
Yup, but no humans to do the switch. Only happened this interglacial.
The harder Warmists try the more determined I am to pump out as much co2 as I can. I am convinced most of them are delusional.
That’s after we ban CPR.
Right?
My last comment was for Jimbo. /sarc
Hunting and gathering societies have been much too maligned. At least such societies do not institutionalize chicken littlism.
And they had lots and lots of free oysters too.
Too many drone s out there.You have to raise people into an ideology and that’s why the US govt wants to teach your kids. Orwellian classes 1984-don’t worry were watching! fall in line. and don’t forget we care about U
Maybe high co2 in the Amazon evenings explains why some indigenous people there still hunt and gather. / SARC
Abstract – 2004
Increasing biomass in Amazonian forest plots
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/359/1443/353
This might backfire. I have known many who are very worried about warming that think humans made a mistake leaving our hunter gatherer past behind us.
Randy, I’m guessing those are also the ones that have thought things through and know that without animal husbandry and agriculture, the earth would only support a small fraction of the current population. What could go wrong (they should be asking themselves)?
About month 2 or 3 or 4, when every bush and tree has been picked over and every bit of wild game has been taken, they will have to compete against the other hunter-gatherers for whatever is left. They better be prepared to eliminate the competition before the competition eliminates them.
Yup. This is the fundamental point that they do not understand
I have tried explaining that farming and burning coal helps save the forests. Deforestation for firewood is happening NOW! Would it not be better to burn coal than cut down trees (not necessarily replaced) for firewood? Should I mention loss of animal habitat too?
If this can happen in wealthy Germany just think of poor developing countries.
The world is reaching breaking point due to Warmists’ misguided policies.
What exactly will they be hunting? It’s not like the wildlife will have sustainable populations.
Better not follow that thought to the logical conclusion.
Each other.
Yes they do without external inputs a hunter gather society optimize it population on the land, the human population exceeds the lands carrying capacity human self correct the population adjust( that was a nice way of saying humans starve.) If the climate changes the human population will either expand or contract depending on the direction of the climate change, if the climate changes to much the wrong direction a hunter gatherer population will go extinct. I think the earth carrying capacity for hunter gather human population is less than a million, it could be large but I certain it would not exceed a hundred million. No we do not want to go back to those times, and I doubt 450 PPm of CO2 would cause that to happen most intelligent people would expect the opposite, of intelligent and Dr Mann are light years apart.
Yup, and their private jets fly around the world (with titanium fan blades), whilst professing ….
Um…. just what are they professing ??
humans made a mistake leaving our hunter gatherer past behind us.
==========
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
http://www.planetclaire.org/quotes/hitchhikers/
What in God’s name is a “climate interpreter”??????????
Does it include crystals and eye of newt? Ouija board? Subscription to Ta Da Magazine, voice of magicians everywhere?
Good grief these people are……..crap, can’t come up with a G rated description………
It’s the alternative to a climate compiler. CLIMATE is the new (Monty) PYTHON. With statements like:
ELEVENTY!
OMG!
WORSER();
WORSTEST();
DENIER!
etc.
No matter what code you write, the output is always the same.
Perhaps John Cook would know. Isn’t he a “climate communicator” now. Apparently there is some kind of language barrier that afflicts enough people that interpreters and communicators are now required. I’d love to see them standing next to someone like Mickey Mann or James Hansen during lectures like deaf interpreters do!
JOSH! We need a cartoon of such a scenario!
Climate interpreter is to a community organizer as the false prophet is to the antichrist.
…these people are…
Barking mad
Mad as a hatter
Bonkers
Mad dogs
Rabid
Carbon Cultists
Barmy in the crumpet.
Toys in the attic?
Truly gone fishing?
Several fries short of a Happy Meal?
Special?
Certifiable?
The lights are on, but nobody is home.
A couple of cans short of a six-pack.
High Priests, medicine men, and shamans interpret “Signs from the Gods” for the common people (and if they value their heads, they slant the interpretation in favor of their rulers.) Since science is now incomprehensible to the common man (because our educational system has been subverted) media talking heads interpret it for us. Unfortunately for them, the “common man” isn’t as stupid as they’d like to believe.
What in God’s name is a “climate interpreter”??????????
The answer is here:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/6/19/here-come-de-heap-big-warmy.html
It’s the form you put your climate code in that can be run through climate compiler down to the climate assembler and hence readable at one end by humans and the other by machines.
😉
Permian had a 30 million year low of CO2 similar to our current 20 million year low. In between there was 250 million year period with 1000-2000 PPM and life flourished (with exception of those nasty asteroids).
450 is now bad? We should stay at 280-300 and wait for the next ice age to drop it below 150 and kill most land animals, including us? No I’m quite happy with increasing yields and CO2 climbing up to 600+ PPM.
Hey Josh, this screams for a cartoon about the elusive “climate whisperer”…….
Beat me to it!
I should have kept reading! Great minds!
Hunting and gathering research grants?
Mann already is a hunter-gatherer. He hunts for suckers then gathers in the money.
That seems to be a reference/comparison to being able to the original of the text of the Bible. There are many that could read it “in the original” that still had no clue what it was talking about.
But I also wonder if the reference about reading papers “in the original” is a tip to his role in “peer-review”?
(I’m sure someone can supply the appropriate Climategate reference. I don’t have it off hand.
I wonder if any of his hats matches that white sweatshirt he has that ties in the back…
I’m seeing a whole line of fashionable sciency hats we could sell here!
IMO the guy needs a new hat.
Beany with a whirly propeller, perhaps?
Oh, you really do not want to know how often these people mention that feudalism is an appropriate model for the future. Herman Daly does it in his for the common good book. In the conclusion of my book I point to a deeply disturbing 2006 Club of Rome report published in Poland that metions feudalism as well. It’s not the moats or knight’s gear either. It’s the ability of political power to dictate what people can or cannot do.
The point I wanted to make though goes to the virtual reality modeling and gaming in the classroom and Next Generation Science Standards for K-12 in the US. They are all falsely teaching that the climate is a closed system. That what goes in must shift the ‘equilibrium’ somewhere. It’s not true, but students are to taught falsehoods so they will be primed to act from instinct and emotion and not facts.
Well, Plato had even worse ideas, with his Philosopher-King state. No contact with the outer world, all citizens who are sent abroad subjected to comprehensive brainwashing, an extremely strict class society. And all would be happy. It really reminds me of our own alarmists.
Speaking of Plato, a good way to describe what is really going on in education as well as the Mann-led vision of CAGW is that we are all to think we are experiencing reality even though we are actually in a stage-managed cave looking at contrived shadows.
Mann yelps or sues when people try to call out that we are looking at mere shadows. We are supposed to accept the consensus that either is not acute enough to distinguish shadows from reality or has gotten lucrative financing to proclaim a certain truth without looking.
Here’s to continuing to perceive accurately instead of using the vision assigned.
Hunter-gatherers? Maybe that’s why my mouth watered when 3 TOUSes (Turkeys of Unusual Size) wandered across my backyard yesterday. I also had the urge to throw my camera at them.
As long as your mouth doesn’t water at the thought of similar Rodents!
(That movie was a classic.)
Bob,
Try leaving a trail of shelled corn from your backyard, into your house, through the kitchen and into the oven. With a little bit of luck, Thanksgiving dinner will take care of itself.
Bob, on my farm we throw lead shot at wild turkeys. Sometimes successfully. Sort of brings you back to the founders. Is very tangible.
You need venison, give a shout. We get tired donating Wisconsin ‘dairy deer’ to the state foodbank program. And with fewer active hunters and still no wolves the problem grows every year. Harvesting 6 on opening day is getting to be a disappointment. Read Sand Hill Country for reference. Just a hundred miles northeast of my overrun by CWD farm.
Regards to a self taught ocean expert from whom I have learned a lot.
Impressing, what’s his education? Non?
And the first thing the hunter-gatherers will gather will be the head of Michael Mann and all the other leeches currently sucking the teats of taxpayer money funded government research scams….wow, could be the first chapter of my next novel….
As Frank Zappa inscribed inside his album covers: “Don’t forget to vote.”
He also asked the question “who are the brain police?”
I find it hard to believe that CACA advocates actually believe that falling CO2 caused Oligocene glaciation rather than the isolation of Antarctica by deep channels beneath the Southern Ocean, & that GHG levels falling farther caused NH glaciations in the Pleistocene, instead of the interruption of north equatorial currents by the closure of the Central American Seaway. CO2 levels are an effect of colder climate, not the main cause.
They are an effect of warm climate as well, and that is mostly all they are
Like messiah, like son. He is a chip off the interpretee’s block.
OMG what if we throttle CO2 back too much?! We’ll all freeze to death or have to get used to eating frozen fish as a staple. But not to worry, the IPCC will create global taxes that will penalize people if they do not burn enough fossile fuels – it’ll defrost the climate and boost the economy…
That’s my climate interpretation, which is worth the same 2 cents as the Gaius Publius interpretation. It would be an unfortunate financial injustice if he was paid more than 2 cents for his interpretation.
Hey! I like this argument: the reason the planet is getting colder is that the Global Warming activists have already throttled CO2 back too much, and everybody needs to create more or the planet will freeze to death!
Of course it’s nonsense, but how on earth do they argue against it? Say the earth isn’t cooling? That’s a hard sell in recent years. Say that CO2 doesn’t Impact temperature? That will never happen or it’s game over. Off hand I can’t think of a counter-argument that they can use without abandoning their current position.
As I say, I don’t believe it for a minute but it sure is going to make it fun discussing this with my green friends.
Hunter-gatherers?
I see Michael Mann’s knowledge of pre-history is as bad as his knowledge of climate “science”.
If the CO2 was higher and temperature was a few degrees higher then we would have bumper crops (faster growing, longer growing seasons, etc.), why would we become hunter-gatherers when farming would be much easier?
Oh my, I smell a new book coming from the Mann. “Co2 apocalypse” maybe?
Reminiscent of “Day of the Triffids”!
I just find it ironic that such a “wanna be” tryant is interviewed on a site with such a name. LOL
Mann is a prime example of why i have ZERO respect for “credentials” the person is either 100% dishonest or simply stupid…….either way his credentials show colleges GIVE them away and they say nothing about the actual education the person has.
Actually, colleges SELL credentials that only certify knowledge. We confuse knowledge with wisdom in our society and the former without the latter is dangerous. They also can’t predict if this knowledge will be used to help or harm society. Some people use their intellect to deceive others of lesser insight but you can only fool some of the people some of the time…
I disagree. People BUY credentials from colleges after proving they can regurgitate the information given to them. This in no way certifies that the student has actually obtained “knowledge” of any quality. No one I know in my society confuses information with knowledge, or knowledge with wisdom. In my society we try to teach our children wisdom so that they can tell when others attempt to help or harm society with whatever they might be peddling as knowledge.
Yes Bill, but how do you feel about HATS? That’s really what is important here…mental headwear. Feudal Fedoras? Statistical Stetsons? Scientific Sombreros?
A ban on fossil fuel will turn our populations into hunter-gatherers.
That is the entire idea behind UN Agenda 21.
A doctrine sprouted from the brain of criminals, cheats, freeloaders and wannabe totalitarians.
So true. But, who will stop them?
Well informed hunter-gatherers who will eat their guts.
Gaius,
You sound like a far left liberal, overly emotional, not very scientific, easily swayed, exceedingly biased, young dreamer that ‘professionally writes’ for a small audience of similar psyches about all the capitalist disasters that are behind all the world’s woes of which we have almost zero chance of escaping due to all those deniers that oppose your unique brand of worldview and a peculiar, unnatural fixation on a few extra molecules of CO2 that are sure to doom us.
I could be wrong though… I am sipping a good Viognier, watching the beautiful fall colors and smelling the aroma of a barbequing sirloin which could be clouding my judgement.
Climageddonism, like any religion requires mythology. To those of us not of the Climageddonist cult/religion, those myths can seem weird, bizarre, and yes, totally bonkers. Mann is the Harold Camping of Climageddonism.
If the state assumes absolute power in order to fix “climate change” the absolute power will change the entire nature of politics and with no doubt reduce us back to an ancient archaic form of society with all of its attendant evils.
Interpret that, climate whisperer.
Wow. He’s lost his relevance in the debate and will say almost anything to get it back. In another thread, a troll hyping the warmist position spat all over the notion of tree rings reporting temperature. Talk about a LOL moment. Mann has been so debunked, so sidelined, so far out of the lime light, than newbies to the debate don’t even know that the hockey stick was based on tree rings, and scoff at the notion that they could be used as such.
ROFLMAO
That’s classic CAGW cult logic for you.
My favorite is the claim that the MWP and LIA were not global because the warming did not occur everywhere, it only occurred most everywhere. But remember, cold snaps, record snows, and a lack of warming in many places is exactly what we expect with AGW. The contradiction doesn’t even register with the cult.
Ouch! That one has to leave a mark, Mr. Hoffer. You might want to turn in a link to that comment in Tips and Notes. There’s still time for it to make Hump Day Hilarity, Thursday Thigh-Slapper, or Friday Funny.
If I have a moment, I may actually write it up as an article.
Free moments being far and few between, I may not get to it in a timely fashion, so here it be. The sentences in quotes are her quoting someone else. The sentences without quotes are hers. Astounding. As a newcomer to the debate, she dismisses the notion of tree rings as thermometers out of hand. The rest of her diatribe is pure talking points from the warmist side of things. She’s a skeptic and doesn’t know it!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/02/ipcc-prediction-of-severe-weather-increase-based-on-fundamental-error/#comment-1778127
JoNovace November 3, 2014 at 5:27 am
“….trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures…..”
Tree rings don’t show temperature, what is your source for this? Tree ring may correlate with temperature if other factors are removed.
“1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.”
…but we know the temperatures were rising so this is nonsense. This is why tree rings dont “show temperature” as you put it.
Somebody got dropped off the memo circulation list…